Healing Modalities: Manual Therapies

Strain and Counterstrain is a form of manual manipulative therapy that uses an indirect means of passively positioning a painful or restricted joint or muscle to relieve pain and mechanical dysfunction; it is applicable to a large range of musculoskeletal dysfunctions.

Technically speaking, it is "A passive positional procedure that places the body in a position of greatest comfort, thereby relieving pain by reduction and arrest of inappropriate proprioceptor activity that maintains somatic dysfunction. In addition, it is a mild overstretching applied in a direction opposite to the false and continuing message of strain from which the body is suffering" (Kusunose, Randall, PT, OCS, Strain and Counterstrain I For the Spine, The Jones Institute, Carlsbad, CA, 1995.).