Community

Welcome to the Postural Restoration Community! This is where you will read the latest industry news, hear about upcoming events, find helpful deadline reminders, and view a plethora of additional resources regarding our techniques and curriculum. The great part about it is--not only can you can view the entries we post, you can also post about the things that matter to you. Did you find an interesting article about a technique you learned in one of your courses? Do you have a patient case study you want to share with other professionals? Simply click "Submit an Entry" and follow the easy steps towards getting your information published in the PRI Community!

Blog Posts in February 2011

“It’s been the best money I’ve ever spent on continuing education.”

CLICK HERE to read “What I learned in 2010” by Eric Cressey, CSCS.  Eric’s discussion of asymmetry learned from attending both Myokinematic Restoration and Postural Respiration has been featured by TNATION. Eric is president and co-founder of Cressey Performance near Boston, MA.  A highly sought-after coach for healthy and injured athletes alike, Eric has helped athletes at all levels – from youth sports to the professional and Olympic ranks – achieve their highest levels of performance in a variety of sports.  Behind Eric’s expertise, Cressey Performance has rapidly established itself as a go-to high performance facility among Boston athletes – and those that come from across the country and abroad to experience CP’s cutting-edge methods.  Eric is perhaps best known for his extensive work with baseball players, with more than four dozen professional players traveling to Massachusetts to train with him each off-season.

An accomplished author, Cressey has authored over 200 published articles in all.  Eric has published five books and co-created four DVD sets that have been sold in over 50 countries around the world.  Eric has been an invited guest speaker in five countries and more than one dozen U.S. states. His Master’s thesis, “The effects of 10 weeks of lower-body unstable surface training on markers of athletic performance,” was published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, and Cressey was a co-author for the International Youth Conditioning Association’s High School Strength and Conditioning Certification.

Eric’s writing and his work with athletes have been featured in such local and national publications as Men’s Health, Men’s Fitness, ESPN, T-Muscle, The Boston Globe, The Boston Herald, Baseball America, The Worcester Telegram, Perform Better, Oxygen, Experience Life, Triathlete Magazine, Collegiate Baseball, Active.com, The Metrowest Daily News, Parents and Kids, and EliteFTS.

Posted February 27, 2011 at 1:04PM
Categories: Clinicians

Greetings PRI therapists!  Many of you have e-mailed or called me waiting for our recommended shoe list for 2011. HERE IT IS!.  All of us at the Hruska Clinic spent well over two hours evaluating and trying on shoes for this 2011 list.  Please know that there may be shoes that are not included on this list that we did not examine.  I would encourage you to examine shoes that you are questioning for a good heel counter, minimal to no lateral heel give, ability for your patients to find and feel their arches and to push off their big toe when walking. Most importantly, make sure your patients can maintain neutrality with PRI tests with their shoes.  What works for one patient can be different for another.  It’s difficult to evaluate all the shoes on the market.

You will see a “S-M-L” after each shoe and this is referring to the build of the individual that the shoe works for (ie. small, medium, large).  In addition, I have identified if the shoe is motion control, stability or neutral for your added information.

I can’t identify another shoe as awesome as the 2009 Asics Foundation, but I will continue on my quest for shoe greatness.  Shoes change every 12 to 18 months and the 2010 model of the Foundation is good but it’s not “greatness” like the predecessor.  Also, don’t grab your AED when you see a Mizuno on the list.  Jason, Dave, Jen and I all tried it on and validated it’s presence on the list.  Shocking, but they did change the design so make sure it’s the WaveRider 14.

I would encourage you to go to your local running store and assess these shoes for yourself so you can make appropriate recommendations for your patients. 

We hope this helps you all out!

Cheers,
Lori Thomsen

Posted February 25, 2011 at 11:50AM
Categories: Products

Last weekend, more than 20 Postural Restoration Certified (PRC) Therapists gathered in Salt Lake City, Utah for the 3rd National PRC Conference! The conference was deemed a great success and included the following presentations:

Jen Poulin - Importance of the Glute Med
Lori Thomsen - Interdisciplinary Integration and Vision Update; Pelvic Floor Dysfunction & New PRI Tests
Mike Cantrell - Postural Respiration Updates and Algorithms
James Anderson - Gait: Inhibition or Delay
Gibbie Duval, Jacob Wurth and J.R. Epley - Keynote Speakers on PRI in Strength & Conditioning

It was a great time of networking and sharing our passion for PRI!

Posted February 22, 2011 at 10:30AM

Ron Hruska and I sat down today with Jason Masek who is the chair of our recently formed Recognition Committee. This Committee was created last year to review and recommend processes for Certified Athletic Trainers and Strength and Conditioning Coaches to achieve recognition for their training in Postural Restoration. The Committee will be conferencing again soon to discuss many pending details. In the meantime, we are sharing with you the course recommendations that have been reviewed and accepted by PRI. 

Course Requirements:
Myokinematic Restoration
Postural Respiration
Impingement & Instability
Advanced Integration will be recommended, however, not required.

Posted February 16, 2011 at 6:00AM

After having countless meetings, integrative discussions and patient co-assessment and co-treatment interventions with Dr. Heidi Wise and Dr. Bob Edwards, I thought I would give an overview of the upcoming Annual PRI Interdisciplinary Integration course being held in April. Dr. Wise, Dr. Edwards and I are excited about interacting together and with you as we cover up-to-the-moment clinical advances and evidence-based successes in improving visual functional integration, using PRI positional and neurological principles. We will discuss and demonstrate how neurological input and output to the eye interacts with vestibular, postural-related autonomic function.

For the PRI Therapist, attending this course will help you assess a patient who is having difficulty in achieving or maintaining neutrality. We will offer an overview of the autonomic system, spatial awareness, binocularity, visual accommodation, orbital orientation, and patterns of postural adaptation resulting from the asymmetrically challenged vestibular system. This is an excellent opportunity to learn how eyewear can help or hinder a PRI intervention. Additionally, patient management strategies to facilitate visual integration will be presented, including PRI program sequencing to maximize integrated outcomes.

For those of you who know me, you know I’ve had a passion for the eye for a long time. The eye is integration. Our balance, our reference centers, our autonomics, our spatial patterns, and our learned behaviors are all reflected and revised by the visual system and visual cortex. This course will address this descending input and cortical interference by identifying ascending treatment intervention limitations and ruling out other system influences.

This course will identify up-to-date clinical information on global-orbital and orbital-global mechanical patterns, frontal plane limitations of the head and neck on the thorax as a result of visual influences on the sagittal and transverse planes, and postural imbalances as a result of visual-vestibular (spatial neglect) challenges. These include influences of un-corrected or corrected astigmatism on orbital position and ocular muscle, and autonomic-accommodation on system extension.

The three days will offer anyone with an interest in vision or the vestibular systems an opportunity to learn how basic cranial, cervical and thoracic mechanics can be influenced not by what we see, but by where we have to put ourselves to see it. Achieving neutrality can be frustrating for a PRI Therapist if neutral vision is restricted. Future PRI Vision-trained optometrists will understand how to use the visual system and ocular kinematics to achieve a balanced, neutral oriented visual system. This futuristic integrated-minded course will offer all participants an opportunity to become active in this PRI Vision process. I’m very excited about it! - Ron Hruska

Posted February 14, 2011 at 2:56PM
Categories: Courses

Jason Masek has been busy blogging at the Hruska Clinic. CLICK HERE to read his patient-friendly analogies.

Posted February 9, 2011 at 3:03PM
Categories: Clinicians

After 2 years of planning, Estelle LeClair, MPT, PRC of Essex Physical Therapy in Essex Junction, Vermont is proud to announce her plan for the first PRI Aquatic System!  Planning and design work is well under way with the pool scheduled to arrive this summer and open in the in 2012. We are excited to work with the Postural Restoration team to begin treating patients in the pool using the PRI principles that work for so many on land.  A huge thank you to Ron for bringing the science of Postural Restoration to aquatic design so that we are able to help more patients integrate PRI principles into daily living.  We are thrilled to be bringing this technology to Vermont, where PRI concepts are widely utilized in many physical therapy clinics and look forward to the collaborative efforts to improve patient outcomes through the use of this facility.

Posted February 8, 2011 at 3:19PM
Categories: Clinicians

Before attending my first PRI course several years ago, I often felt as if my patients were stuck in a revolving door – we often “fixed” one problem only to have them return with a new injury or a different body part hurting.  The Interdisciplinary Integration and Cervical-Cranio-Mandibular Restoration courses provided invaluable insight into when and why our patients need another discipline to accomplish their goals.  The proverbial light bulb switched on.  I began working with a local dentist who has expertise in splint fabrication, and through him was introduced to Herb Blumenthal, DDS, an expert in non-surgical evaluation and treatment of TMD.  Dr. Blumenthal has utilized an interdisciplinary approach in his practice for many years.  He enlists the support of chiropractors, massage therapists, and cranio-sacral therapists in his treatment of complex patients with stomatognathic dysfunction.  Notice that he did not include Physical Therapists in that list.  As he explained to me, he often did not accomplish good outcomes with PTs, as they do not understand the relationships between muscular activity in polyarticular chains and occlusal patterns.  He was so impressed with how PRI evaluation and treatment coordinates with and compliments his dental intervention that he invited me to join him in Arizona, presenting to a group of dentists.  It was a wonderful experience; the dentists made immediate connections between common postural adaptations as described by PRI, and what they see daily in their clinics.  They recognized that a PRI trained therapist can be invaluable in helping them accomplish optimal results with their patients’ splint therapy, and with their own issues of pain and dysfunction.  After all, those in the dental profession have jobs with “attitude” involving strong patterns of sustained and repetitive neuro-motor activity. Surprisingly, only 1 dentist had referred to a PT.  The rest had no idea how to find and make contact with a qualified therapist.  I highly encourage each PRI trained therapist to seek out and promote working relationships with dentists that specialize in TMD.  These individuals have experience with splints in addition to the flat plane splints most commonly made by general dentists, and will be open to how splinting can be used in the treatment of not only TMD, but other types of head and neck pain.  I am grateful that my PRI training has enabled me to change that revolving door into an open door of cooperation with others as we strive to attain the best possible therapeutic outcomes for our patients. - Kathy Johnson

Posted February 4, 2011 at 3:53PM
Categories: Clinicians

Products

CD Bundles
Non-manual Techniques
Manual Techniques DVD
Manual Techniques
Illustrations
PRIVY
PRI Video for You