So why choose visceral manipulation? Think of viscera like the engine to your whole body. If something happens that inhibits your viscera from perfoming exactly how it should, you have a glitch in how the whole body works.

Just like any other muscle in your body, viscera is made up of tissue. If this tissue deveolps adhesions, it can restrict organ perfomance and motility and more.

VM History

The guy that started all of this is Jean-Pierre Barral (JBP). Born and raised in France, he originally trained as a physical therapist, but then he chose to pursue further training as a Doctor of Osteopathy (D.O.).  During his training, he worked with patients during their life and was also able to participate in the autopsies after their passing.  In this unique opportunity, Jean-Pierre saw something that really intrigued him.

WHAT HE FOUND

He saw that organs were surrounded in a thickened tissue and had attachments to other parts of the body.  This tissue is a type of fascia that has a specific function for organ stability, vitality, and mobility. As his curiosity and investigation continued, he observed a direct connection to how this fascia surrounded the organs (a.k.a. viscera), and directly attached to other structures of the body, impacting how well they were able to move and function.

Jean-Pierre observed that the structural (skeleton) impairments he was trying to correct, would self-correct after proper visceral manipulation. Not only that, but it had a ripple effect throughout many other body systems.  From that time until the present day, this discovery has led to a whole new way of treating the body for improving mobility, decreasing pain and soreness, improving health and wellness for people around the globe.

“The purpose of Visceral Manipulation (VM for short) is to recreate, harmonize and increased proprioceptive communication in the body to enhance its internal mechanism for better health.”

-Jean-Pierre Barral

WHAT IT HELPS

Our organs are attached to our skeleton and are meant to slip and slide past each-other.  Consider your 20-26 ft of intestines in your abdomen. All of these loops and tubes should move like well-oiled spaghetti noodles in your abdomen.

However, the aforementioned section of causes could result in sticky “noodles.”.  Have you ever cooked spaghetti, drained the water, left it in the pot, to come back and find them all stuck together?  Yes, that can happen inside of us! That could result in decreasing absorption of your food into your body, a decreased ability for you to get waste out of the body, and cause a big, jumbled mess. Now your intestines are attached directly to the front of the vertebra, or bones, of the lower lumbar spine.  Tightness and dysfunction here could be related to some of the following ailments:

• Joint pain in lower limbs
• Sciatica
• Acute or chronic low back pain

Remember, this is not a prescriptive list, meaning that if you have back pain, sciatic pain, or joint pain, that you have a restriction in your viscera. However, if you have these diagnoses and not found relief using other modalities, this is an area that we are specialized in.

WHAT HAPPENS IN TREATMENT

That is a great question, and I will try to make it as simple as possible. When the tissues around the organs develop tightness patterns, that information goes to your brain.  Your brain wants to protect you and the life-giving things (organs) inside you, so if you try to move throughout your day that causes tightness into this organ system, chances are you will experience tightness or pain. This isn’t because something is “wrong” with your body, it’s your body is trying to protect you from causing damage to something that is important for your survival.  Who would have thought pain was something that was helpful?

What we do then is by releasing the tension within this tissue surrounding the organs, this changing tightness pattern decreases the “threat of harm” to your organs, which then the body is able to move with greater ease.

As this happens, you are able to adapt better to your environment and have a greater expression of health. Remember, the body wants to be in a state of health and well-being, disease is not the natural state.

SOME CAUSES FOR VISCERAL ADHESIONS

• Bugs in our system:  Viruses (has anyone been through a recent pandemic?), staph, strep, Parasites, fungus, mold, the list goes on.
• Physical Events:  any sort of physical contact to your body, ranging from sports to motor vehicle accidents, physical abuse, injuries such as falls, sprains/strains, broken bones, and a really common one being surgeries of all shapes and sizes.
• Movement:  This can be too much of the same movement, or a lack of movement. For instance, swinging a golf club one way but not the other. Sitting too long.  Bending forward but never backwards or sideways. Working exclusively right or left handed. Posture.
• Diet:  This one is as wide as the ocean, but generally eating foods that raise the level of inflammation in the body. This can be different for different people, but most of the highly inflammatory foods could include dairy, wheat, corn, soy, alcohol.
• Environmental toxins: This one could be air pollution, exposure to environmental allergies, clothing, water, lotions, really anything that you could put on or breathe into your body.
• Emotional Stress:  Another really big category, but some examples include stuffing emotions and not expressing yourself, past experiences that could be traumatic, negative thoughts/feelings towards others or yourself.

For more info read: Visceral Manipulation by Jeffrey Burch