Unified Manual Therapy | Joseph Shindoll | Denver Alternative Therapy Treatment

I am pleased to welcome you to my privately owned manual therapy practice. Congratulations for taking a step towards better health. During the course of your therapy, please feel free to ask questions or express concerns.

Joseph Shindoll
1776 S. Jackson St.
Suite 614
Denver, CO 80210
303-332-6275

Testimonials

Reflections on my Independent Study with Joseph Shindoll
by Katerina Altgelt

...A lot of what I learned is non-linear and therefore, it makes writing a paper challenging.  Some of what I learned through observation and discussion will never be able to be captured well in an essay, so I leave you with these reflections as a token of the work I did over the semester.

Observation and Proprioception:

I have refined my observation skills and my proprioceptive ability through my time with Joseph.  I learned some ways of evaluating patients and was able to occasionally feel and see some of what Joseph does through having my hands between his and the patient’s body while he was evaluating and working.  Joseph has refined his proprioceptive ability beyond anything I am familiar with; he can distinguish between minute details and feel such things as the nervous system and neural impulses, blood flow and restrictions within the vasculature, the lungs with their fissure and alveoli, the bronchi, the organs and their subtleties, brain structures, bones and their alignment, as well as injury to bones and how that affects blood flow and structure.  His proprioceptive refinement is truly admirable, just like some people can hear or taste remarkable nuances, such as sommeliers who can determine where and when a wine was made as a result of its taste. 

He gains deep access into the body by working very gently and precisely.  His goal is not to force a change, but instead he works with the body’s own rhythm and often initially goes further into the dysfunctional pattern allowing the body to recognize that it is not allowing for an optimal state.  Joseph is then able to gently augment the dysfunctional pattern into a healthier new homeostasis.  Having the opportunity to begin to feel this through my hands was phenomenal.  It allowed me to then begin to feel things in my own body in ways I had not been able to in the past.  Through my hands I was able to begin to distinguish between the organs of my GI system (stomach, liver, SI, LI) and some blood flow especially from the aorta and inferior vena cava.

Similarly, having him point out what kinds of things he looks for when diagnosing, was very helpful.  The first question he asks is where is the area of greatest tension and then the question becomes what is causing it.  It was also reassuring to confirm my observation with what he perceived in clients, and this helped to develop my visual diagnostic ability.  Observations included things such as which hip was anterior or posterior, if things were overly rotated, flexed or extended. He pointed out that flexion, adduction, and internal rotation often will co-occur.  Similarly, extension, abduction and external rotation usually coexist and if one is limited in someone they will likely be limited in them all.  For example, if a shoulder is internally rotated it will likely be adducted and flexed, have restricted motion in extension, abduction and external rotation. 

A Cycle of Cause and Effect

Joseph and I discussed the various causes and contributing factor to injury and continued dysfunction, and he explained that the body is influenced by many different factors, some of which are more obvious than others.  Injury is an evident example by which our body patterns around the injured area in an attempt to protect itself from further harm.  There is an intricate cycle of cause and effect which eventually lead to several other effects—the effect of the effect.  If an injury is not initially adequately dealt with, patterning around the injury will become increasingly engrained in the body- eventually leading to a “new norm.” These subsequent effects within the body make it more difficult to track back to the cause or underlying pieces that will then release many of the overlaid resulting patterns.  In this way an acute injury can become chronic due to the ongoing compensatory responses.

A noteworthy example of this was when a woman came in to see Joseph who had repeatedly hurt her right foot in the past week.  Her second metatarsal was injured the worst, due to her hitting the top of her foot on concrete stairs while walking a large dog.  Her hip was significantly rotated so that the right side looked posterior.  After working on the foot for a while (mobilizing the joints, giving the joints more space, working with the bone and encouraging more blood flow) the pelvis rotated back and the right side actually came slightly anterior.  This demonstrates how the body patterns itself around injury in an attempt to protect the area from further damage, minimizing the force going into the system.  In her case she resolved the issue before it became a chronic compensatory pattern.  Injury masks other underlying compensatory patterns by overlying another effect upon the existing effect that was present, which leads to the body being more vulnerable for future injuries, because the forces can no longer move through the body in their natural course.

This cycle of cause and effect is how the body functions no matter if there is an injury or if the individual is healthy.  When building up a healthy body there is a positive/reinforcing feedback mechanism which promotes more health; when the body feels good one is often inspired to keep that up by exercising and/or eating well. This reinforces the sense of feeling good which continues the cycle.  With injury or disease this positive/reinforcing feedback mechanism is also often in place, and in order to counter this cycle another input must enter the body.  The body is relatively good at coping with injury without treatment, yet compensatory patterns will result. So I am saying the body is resilient and delicate at the same time.

Reintegration of the Body Systems

What I have come to realize and discuss often with Joseph is that the body is a beautiful, complex and resilient yet delicate vehicle of interconnected systems.  There are many intricacies of the body as all the systems work together to form the whole.  Learning the systems and the names within each system is a monumental task in itself.  But as a practitioner, one must learn the systems, and the skills of treating, such as specific procedures, techniques, perception and touch.  However, this is often where the formal education stops, but here is where I think it really should begin. 

What I think is unique about Joseph Shindoll, and the minority of other practitioners doing similar work, is that they have reintegrated the body systems after breaking them down (to more manageably study them).  I am using the term system to refer to “a group of interacting, interrelated, or interdependent elements forming a complex whole; a group of physiologically or anatomically complementary organs or parts: the nervous system,” skeletal system, muscular system, organ system, vascular system, dermis, fascia, adipose etc.  (American Heritage Collage Dictionary). 

Joseph has thoroughly studied the sciences having a good grasp of anatomy and physiology, while having refined his proprioceptive perception and reintegrated the systems to a complex interrelated whole.  He has studied many techniques all stemming from osteopathic origins, but what sets Joseph apart from other practitioners is his ability to synthesize and reintegrate the systems to determine what the primary issue is for each individual.  In other words, he is able to find where the issue/tension is and then what system is causing or contributing to the issue and then he can more directly treat that issue.  

For example, I have seen several patients come in with back pain, and it turned out that their kidneys had suffered from a significant force jarring one or both.  The force affected blood flow in and out of the kidney, often diminishing blood flow into the kidney.  When the kidney is gently worked with and repositioned so that it is in its optimal place, the back pain is often resolved. 

I have seen that tension often originates from an organ level and that it is rarely treated that way.  Other practitioners often look to the musculoskeletal issues for such pain and while certain exercises are performed regularly the pain is kept under control.  But when the exercises are not continued the pain often returns because the underlying organ issue is rarely resolved.

Joseph has shown me through his work how powerful it can be to reintegrate the parts to an interactive, dynamic whole, being able to see how they influence each other.  The systems do not work independently from one another, but instead they work together to influence one another.  This sounds good and may even be mentioned or occasionally taught in institutions, but often it is not taught at all.  My independent study with Joseph has begun to teach me this interconnected framework of the systems. 

...Many practitioners use this authoritarian and deductive view to treat and then only specialize in a few systems.  The larger overview is often lost and the specialist often fails to learn all the systems in-depth let alone re-integrate them all.  For example, craniosacral practitioners look at the central nervous system with the focus on the cranial bones and cranial fluid, believing that if this is treated, the rest of the systems will shift and correct itself as a result.  This will occur at times, and cranial work can have great results, but if the primary, secondary or even tertiary problem is not in the craniosacral model, there will be minor results that do not hold well.  MDs are also becoming increasingly specialized, and their thinking tends to be deductive by nature often looking to the cellular level.  MD’s often try to treat symptoms with drugs that have specific cellular targets, instead of looking at the larger picture of the patient (which cannot be attained in 10 minutes or less visit.) 

Physical therapists also tend to be deductive and look at the musculoskeletal and nervous system (leaving out many other systems such as the organs and the fascia).  While they do reintegrate the muscular, skeletal and even nervous systems they fail to look beyond them.  Often PT’s isolate the area of injury and work on strengthening the area for stability.  The underlying pattern is often not addressed though, so the dysfunction is strengthened-not resolved.  Observing this strengthening of a dysfunction in a hospital made a strong impression on me.  This was while I was doing my observation hours for the application requirements for PT school.  The PT was working with an individual who had a knee replacement.  The patient/woman had back pain and her whole right side of her torso/ribcage was collapse.  The PT only worked on gaining more strength, flexibility and degrees of motion in the knee.  She had the woman put up her other leg to stabilize the back, but the alignment of her body was never addressed.  Her poor alignment and collapsed right ribcage was most likely causing the back pain and probably eventually lead to her knee needing to be replaced.  Instead of fixing the primary problem the secondary problems got operated and then through therapy the dysfunction was strengthened.  After such a long time of the dysfunction warring on the knee, no doubt the knee needed to be replaced, but not fixing the alignment issue that lead to the knee being replaced in the first place, is where the broader viewpoint could have been taken.

Copyright © 2009 Unified Manual Therapy. All Rights Reserved.