How We Eliminate Your Pain

At Active Therapeutics, we help you resolve your soft-tissue problems. Our goal is to get to the core of your pain and get rid of it completely. We can also help improve your athletic and work performance.

Many people use massage therapy to treat soft-tissue problems. Though deep-tissue massage is an important part of our soft-tissue treatment, used alone, it often only temporarily relieves pain and can leave the problem to return or persist. That's why we now use it in combination with the other components in Active Therapeutics' comprehensive program—especially Active Release Techniques—so that our patients receive a more effective treatment plan including:

• Evaluation
• Active Release Therapy
• Deep-tissue Massage
• Stretching
• Exercise
• Education

Evaluation
We look at your individual history, injury, regular use of the area in pain and even your lifestyle. We thoroughly investigate the soft-tissue in a very hands-on way to make sure we get the complete picture of your specific problem. Most of our patients suffer from common soft-tissue problems—such as cumulative strain injury, repetitive stress injury and nerve entrapment syndromes—all which cause cycles of pain!

Soft tissue that is injured or forced to perform the same job over and over becomes irritated and then inflamed. The body responds to inflammation by laying down scar tissue (adhesive tissue) in an attempt to stabilize the area. Once this happens, an ongoing cycle begins that worsens the condition. The longer this condition persists, the harder it is to break this cycle. That's where Active Release Techniques come in.

Active Release Techniques
As certified Active Release Technique (ART) practitioners, we use our hands to evaluate the texture, tightness and movement of muscles, fascia, tendons, ligaments and nerves. We use ART treatmentprotocols—over 500 specific moves—to identify and correct your unique problem. Using ART is far from a cookie-cutter approach. Abnormal tissues are treated by combining precisely directed tension with very specific patient movements.

The use of ART in your treatment program provides a means to effectively and rapidly resolve injuries without surgical intervention. It's is a hands-on therapy that corrects muscular and soft-tissue problems that are caused by the scar tissues that are laid down due to overuse, cumulative, or repetitive stress trauma. Through this process, we are able to locate and break down the scar tissue—adhesions—which cause pain, stiffness, weakness, numbness, and physical dysfunctions associated with strain or injury. Like any treatment, ART is not a miracle cure for every condition; but properly employed, its documented success rate is over 90%, even with such chronic problems as carpal tunnel syndromes and rotator cuff tendonitis.

ART is different from other therapies
Many popular treatments that sound similar to ART do not achieve the same remarkable success rates. Unlike other techniques, ART allows us to follow the entire length of the soft-tissue structure to identify restriction or adhesions at different depths and levels within the tissue. Using a series of techniques while the affected muscles are in motion, we assess the damaged tissue and release the adhesions, separating bound tissue and restoring function. In this way, we are uniquely able to return complete motion to the full length of the affected soft tissue and to its adjacent soft-tissue structures.

ART does not use mechanical instruments in the process. The reason is that over 50% of ART protocols involve releasing a trapped nerve usually caused by inflammation and adhesions. In order to do this effectively, we must feel a nerve as it moves through the muscle. This requires an extremely tactile, anatomic approach so that the exact position of entrapment is pinpointed and released from the soft-tissue it has adhered to.

Improve your athletic performance
Many professional athletes have come to regard ART very highly for its almost miraculous results in treatment of serious injuries. Injury and tightness causes short, restricted soft-tissue structures that then become weak. The removal of these restrictions results in an almost immediate increase in strength, mobility and reaction time due to improved muscular and nervous function.

We at Active Therapeutics of Bend are committed to the wellbeing of our athletes. Across the United States, both ART and deep-tissue massage have become an integral part of the new athletic regimen from sports medicine clinics, to college training rooms, to professional locker rooms to Olympic training. Growing numbers of doctors and trainers believe that both Active Release Techniques and deep-tissue massage can provide the extra edge to athletes who participate in high performance sports. Both are fast becoming the necessary ingredients for a complete workout. More and more people are realizing that a complete workout routine includes not only the exercise itself, but also caring for the wear-and-tear and minor injuries that naturally occur with strenuous movement. The physiological and psychological benefits we provide using ART and deep-tissue massage make up a total conditioning program.

Deep-tissue Massage
We use deep-tissue massage because it is a technique that focuses on the deeper layers of muscle tissue. We release the chronic patterns of tension in the body through slow strokes and more direct, deep finger pressure on the contracted areas, either following or going across the fibers of the muscles, tendons and fascia. Like ART, deep-tissue massage helps us to break up and eliminate scar tissue. When muscles are stressed, they block oxygen and nutrients, leading to inflammation that builds up toxins in the muscle tissue. Once we release the soft-tissue and nerve entrapments using ART, our deep-tissue massage helps loosen muscle tissues, release toxins from muscles and get blood and oxygen circulating properly.

Deep-tissue massage can be beneficial for many other health conditions, which is why it's an important part of Active Therapeutics' comprehensive program. The healing touch of massage can reduce heart rate, blood pressure and stress hormone levels. It can also enhance immune function, boost levels of endorphins and serotonin—the body's natural painkillers and mood regulators - and increase blood circulation. All of these elements can affect your area of pain and the healing process.

Stretching
A key part to furthering the work we do with ART and deep-tissue massage is to stretch. Stretching the problematic and adjacent areas helps to keep the muscles moving and lengthened after they've been released and repositioned. Good flexibility enables muscles and joints to move through their full range of motion. Stretching exercises help to realign new tissue that is being laid down in the direction of the muscle fibers. Without appropriate stretches, new scar tissue may form in weak random patterns, resulting in new restrictions and problems.

"Stretching should be part of any therapy and fitness program: It improves flexibility, lengthens muscle tissue, improves posture, and helps combat stress," says Dr. Weil, a Harvard-educated doctor who has devoted the past thirty years to developing, practicing, and teaching others about the principles of integrative medicine.

We agree that stretching can improve performance and reduce your risk of injury in sports or any other activity. So does the Mayo Clinic. They recommend stretching because it increases flexibility and helps to achieve better range of motion of your joints. Stretching increases blood flow to your muscles. Blood flowing to your muscles brings nourishment and gets rid of waste byproducts in the muscle tissue. Improved circulation can help shorten your recovery time if you've had any muscle injuries. Stretching enhances coordination because maintaining the full range of motion through your joints keeps you in better balance. Coordination and balance will help keep you mobile and less prone to injury from falls, especially as you get older.

Exercise
Like stretching, exercise plays an important part to extending the work of ART and deep-tissue massage. With regular aerobic exercise, the body will receive the oxygen and circulation the soft tissue needs to be healthy and strong—and to lessen the chance of injury. Strength training is also essential to rehabilitation of any injury. Weak muscles need to be brought back to a strong condition in order for them to function at normal activity levels without pain and risk of injury.

When we treat damaged tissue with ART, it goes through a remodeling phase. When new tissue is laid down to repair an area, it is very thin and weak. During the remodeling phase, this tissue will increase to over ten times it original diameter if the appropriate weight-bearing exercise is applied against it. Without exercise and strength gained through weight-bearing exercise, the probability of re-injury remains high. The exercise program that Active Therapeutics recommends helps to improve agility, strength, and endurance that is required for your complete rehabilitation.

Education
At Active Therapeutics, we believe that an informed patient has a better chance of succeeding in a treatment program and preventing future trauma. Whether we work with your medical doctor, compliment another therapy, or provide your only treatment program, we make sure you know every part of your treatment. That's why we educate you about your soft-tissue damage, it's progress throughout our treatment program, and what's necessary to get you back to your normal activity—without pain.

What conditions do we treat?

Call now or make an appointment today to start living your pain-free life!

Contact Us

Return to top