Well I am officially back in cold, wet, depressing, and miserable Ireland! Ah, its good to be home! I had been really looking forward to this weekend for a while, not because I was coming home, but because I had a 2 ½ day seminar with Don Kelley on the cervical spine, and the cranium. Don is an outstanding LMT for Tennessee, who has been teaching with NMT centre in Florida for the past 19 years. Dons excellent teaching style and sense of humour made the weekend not only extremely informative, but also extremely enjoyable.
As I stated above I was really looking forward to this seminar, but at the same time, a bit cautious as I knew that I was going to be a bit out of my comfort zone with some of the work that we were going to be doing. But everyone else in the class were in the same boat. Plus if you want to be the best got gota learn from (in my opinion Don Kelley is) the best.
Don was extremely trough with all of his presentations, and demonstrations. This made the work of the cervical and cranium far less daunting.
Friday 7-10
Don give his usually (as I have had Don as a tutor before) Friday night presentation on what we could expect for the weekend, before getting into the Anatomy of the cervical spine, and cranium. Hi give a great example of how poor posture can play a role in Tempomandibular joint (TMJ) dysfunction. Try this. Sit really tall on a chair and clench your teeth together and try to remember where your top and bottom teeth are in relation to one another. Got it. Then slightly open your so your teeth aren’t touching anymore, and allow yourself to slump forward into a forward head posture, and re-clench your teeth. If you did that right you will notice that your teeth were in a different position to one another.
Saturday 9-6
We started Saturday off with treatment of the lamina groove of the cervical spine, which we did both supine and prone. Then we moved onto the subsoccipitals. Here we concentrated on rectus capitis posterior major, minor, and obliquus capitis superior, and inferior. Again we treated these muscles in supine and prone. These muscles are highly rich with proproiceptors as the give constant feedback on the position on the head in space. Rectus capitis posterior minor actually has a connection with the dural of the spinal cord. Next up was Sternocleidomastoid (SCM). You gota love that name.
Finally we ended the with some anterior work. Up until this everything had been pretty routine, but now came the ‘out of my comfort zone part’. We treated all the muscles attachments to the hyoid bone, before moving on to longus colli and capitis. Martina if you are reading this you would have love this!! For the treatment of the longus colli and capitis you have to displace the hyoid bone, thyroid cartilage, esophagus, and your trachea laterally to make room for your one of your fingers to treat the anterior surface of you cervical vertebra. We were told repeatedly be extremely careful of the carotid artery.
Sunday 9-6
We began with treatment of the scalenes. Treating all 3 heads (posterior, middle, and anterior). We were told to be cautious of strumming from anterior to posterior (which was not advised) over the tubercles of the transverse process of the cervical when treating the scalenes as you may rub the brachial plexus against the tubercles of the transverse process.
Then we finally moved onto the cranium. Here we treated the external muscles of the TMJ, as well as treating them internally. I don’t think I will get in dept about the techniques here as I could spend all day writing about them. But we treated the superficial cranium, external aspects of the temporalis, masseter, and the pteryoids (silent p). We then went on to the styloid and mastoid processes, treating the muscles attaching to those sites, before moving onto the internal work.
This was the part of the weekend that I was looking forward to the most. Getting to stick my finger into someones mouth!!!! We treated the intraoral temporalis tendon, masseter, medial, lateral pteryoids, soft palate, and finally the tongue!
So you might be asking why would you be treating any of all the muscles I have just talked about. Well you would treat these muscles if someone has the following. Chronic headaches, blurred vision, constant sore throat, thoracic outlet syndrome symptoms, chronic tooth aches, back pain (yes even back pain) and many other symptoms that I have to go back and check my notes for.
If you feel confused by any of this imagine how I was by the end of the weekend. Even though the weekend was very intense it was also very enjoyable, thanks mainly to Don’s excellent teaching skills. I learn a hell of a lot, and takes exactly what I wanted.
I would just once again like to thank Don, and Kevin (who is our course director) for all their great work the past weekend.
Until next time folks, stay strong,
RB
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