America’s aging population wants to stay active!!

We can help them if we have the skill sets and the awareness of how to recognize the early, middle, and later stages of these 3 most common joint degenerations.

Hip - Knee - Shoulder

Approximately twice as many knee replacement surgeries are performed each year in contrast to hip replacements, 719,000 vs. 332,000 (2010) and typically 53,000 shoulder replacements are done each year.

What an amazing contribution we might make as professionals if we could reduce those frequencies even by a small percentage. Moreover, imagine the human suffering we might ease to assist patients and clients to improve their function as well as to reduce their pain. Consider how our professions’ images might be transformed as we assist the quality of life for our country’s baby boomers.

“It is estimated that 10,000 people will turn 65 every day for the next 11 years.” This same wave of aging began in 2011. Consider the sheer numbers of people seeking a more active and healthy lifestyle. This significant demand is our opportunity to provide therapeutic assistance, if we have the training to do so. (US Census Bureau)

That is what this course aspires to offer you.

During This Workshop You Will Learn: 

• The “Sacs & Tubes Theory of Stress”
• The hip and shoulder have an innate evolutionary pre-disposition for subluxation
• To help the knee, one must begin with the hip
• The viscera must be mobilized to help the hips... the kinetic chain begins “inside”
• That there is a fascial linkage between the shoulders, hips, and knees
• That subcortical reflexes often exist beneath the surface of joint degenerations
• That attention to these relationships resolves many chronic low back conditions
• That infections & pathologies may lurk in the background of joint degeneration
• An assessment protocol for early detection of hip, knee, & shoulder degeneration
• How to counsel clients toward medical options

Techniques Will Be Demonstrated and Practiced That: 

• Assist the femoral and humeral heads to “recapture” their joint space and the femoral condyles to find their “tracking” in relationship to the tibial plateaus
• Assist the myofascial suspension and re-balancing of these and related joints
• Mobilize the related viscera which co-participate in these degenerations
• Mobilize the joints of the pelvis, lumbars, & cervical spine to assist in distribution of strain
• Reduce the systemic congestion which inevitably participates in such degenerations

Instructor: Dale G. Alexander Ph.D. MA, BSEd, L.M.T. has had a Clinical Massage Therapy practice in Key West, Fla. since 1980. He has specialized in addressing chronic somatic dysfunction throughout his career and was named the top CE Provider of 2016 by the Alliance for Massage Therapy Education.

This course has organically grown out of Dale’s personal experience. In 1983 Dale and his step-son were hit head-on by a drunk driver. Both experienced orthopedic injuries. Dale’s right hip was shattered, the tibial plateaus were fractured, and his ankle broken along with additional facial and neck trauma.

An intrinsic understanding began to grow within his clinical awareness as more and more clients started to show up with varying degrees of hip, knee, and shoulder degeneration.

He believes this course pioneers an understanding of how we as allied health practitioners may contribute to people who desire to lead more full and active lives as they age. Identifying these 3 joint degenerations in their earlier stages is a necessary skill as is a willingness to encourage one’s patients or clients to seek a full medical evaluation.

And, Dale cautions potential participants that if they select to add these skills sets and understandings, they must be willing to fail. Most clients who seek you out in the beginning will be looking for a miracle. Sometimes this does occur. It’s quite exhilarating when it does.

However, it is his considerable experience that assisting clients to make functional progress thus, delaying an eventual surgery or, sometimes even encouraging it happening sooner can be as satisfying as preventing it. Clients often feel like they have a new lease on a healthy life following a joint replacement and most often will work with you to assist their rehabilitation. As a result, long term therapeutic relationships are formed.

This is the pragmatic philosophy behind the title of the course.

What to Bring:

Massage Tables, Linens, Viscous lubricant, 3 pillows, Snacks to keep your blood sugar stable, and Extra clothes should the A/C be cooler than can be controlled.

Attire during the clinical practice exchanges during the workshop should be either your underwear or sports bra and shorts that allow access to one’s abdomen and the ischial ramus and tuberosity whichever you are most comfortable with...

Related articles by Dale Alexander

Inside-Out Paradigm - The Aspiration to Prevent Hip, Knee, & Shoulder Replacements.

Part 1

Part 2

The "Sacs and Tubes theory of Stress" Article