Sensory-Motor Dysregulation - An Effective Target for Persistent Pain

Overview

This online course is designed to build awareness and a toolkit for addressing sensory-motor dysregulation, also known as "smudging" of the sensory-motor cortex.  Exercise prescription is an evidence-based approach to persistent pain. However, many clinicians find that pain often improves with exercise, but that exercise doesn't resolve the pain. 

What if exercise programs could be targeted to the phenotype of pain that the person in front of you is presenting with?

Learn how to phenotype persistent pain using a broad-based biopsychosocial approach utilizing exercise that is directed at a variety of characteristics that we see in our persistent pain population. This course will focus on a major component of persistent pain documented in the literature, namely sensory-motor dysregulation.

It has been shown that 98% of low back pain patients show moderate sensory-motor changes when assessed using the Fremantle Back Awareness Questionnaire.  Similarly, moderate levels of sensory-motor dysregulation have been shown in the knees, shoulders, neck and perineum.

Most clinicians do not measure sensory-motor dysregulation and this becomes a potential missed target in exercise prescription.

Join Carolyn Vandyken as she explores her ten-year journey of addressing sensory-motor changes through novel, fun and non-threatening exercises to retrain the nervous system with the goal of improving pain, strength and range of motion.

This course is paired with a resource package of curated novel movement videos for every joint in the body (except for the hands) that can be easily prescribed to your patients to resolve this important component of their pain story.  The Resource Package - Novel Exercises for a Sensitive Nervous System contains 26 exercise videos for remapping for the neck, TMJ, hip flexors, pelvis, among many more. These novel movement videos have been created using principles learned from the Feldenkrais and Franklin methods. Patients love these exercises, compliance is high and results are astounding when paired with objective measures of sensory-motor dysregulation.

Learning Objectives

At the end of this course, participants will develop new skills in order to confidently:

• Assess body image using the Fremantle Questionnaires as it relates to changes in sensory-motor representation
• Prioritize which components of central pain mechanisms to address with individual persistent pain patients.  This includes the review of SAD CLLIFSS, an acronym created by Carolyn Vandyken and Antony Lo to help describe how to personalize a biopsychosocial approach with patients
• Understand how changes in sensory-motor representation within a sensitized nervous system require us to move beyond typical therapeutic stretching and strengthening exercises.
• Develop therapeutic skills for addressing sensory-motor changes including novel movement strategies for all of the major joints in the body.
• Teach your patients to create ease of movement using novel movement approaches.
• Increase your patient’s variability of movement using a functional approach to exercise.

Audience

This online course is for all healthcare professionals, including physiotherapists, occupational therapists, kinesiologists, chiropractors, osteopaths, massage therapists or other movement specialists who treat people with persistent pain. 

Bonuses and More!

Upon purchase, you will have 1-year to complete the course. If you complete the course within 1 year, you will be provided with lifetime access as well as the bonus courses:

• How to Incorporate Qi Gong into Physiotherapy & Rehab Practice
• The RESOLVE Study: Cognitive Sensory Discrimination in Low Back Pain