As a nurse she found that what she enjoyed the most is the one to one time spent with clients to meet their needs. She wanted to make more of an impact on helping others in the health care field with more time spent helping them. She entertained the idea of becoming a Registered Massage Therapist, as this profession was her ideal environment for providing the best one to one health care to clients without having strict time frames of a few minutes (as in nursing) to help clients to their maximum potential.
She was aware of Osteopathy and its benefits but as Manual Osteopathy is not well known just yet she thought this will be a challenging career to make it well known in the city. Since there is many Registered Massage Therapists in her hometown of Thunder Bay, she decided to study Manual Osteopathy and help make it more well known for its benefits for the whole body and share this wonderful modality with her community.
Due to the physical demands on the body, in her nursing career she was always seeking RMT and Chiropractic care for her own health treatment plan. Massages were very therapeutic, de-stressing and effective in relaxing tight muscles. Chiropractic care was effective but was not long lasting and always required frequent “adjustments”. Cheryl thought there must be more that can be done to be structurally sound without Chronic pain and without having to have adjustments every 2 weeks and wondering how to train the body to “hold” the new pattern that was set by the Chiropractor. I am glad to inform the public that Manual Osteopathy does just that!! Manual Osteopathic Practitioners find the restrictions in the body, use Grade 4 mobilizations (Chiropractors use Grade 5 mobilizations with HVLA -High Velocity, Low Amplitude thrusts to adjust) Which is much needed at times. Her concern was the always returning to a therapist for help so often with no relief. The difference with a Manual Osteopath’s approach is the type of therapy called “Muscle Energy Techniques” , this is to promote the weak or hypertonic muscles that were just “adjusted or mobilized” to remain in their proper positioning and to become stronger, develop muscle memory in the correctly adjusted position and thus increasing mobility in the body to help the skeletal system to remain aligned for the long term. This in result, will help the client seek less needed therapy. Manual Osteopathy has been effective, Cheryl had a lot of clients that no longer have chronic pain and have been discharged from two times a week visits to now a monthly maintenance program. Honestly, it is a wonderful treatment overall.
Founder and owner of Back In Balance Health Centre, Cheryl loves working with her clients and gets an enormous amount of personal satisfaction from watching them improve their health, functional ability and decrease their Chronic Pain. Clients are often surprised at how good they feel after a treatment and often 2-3 treatments are what they require before advancing to the maintenance program to maintain their health. Most people think living with “pain” is just a part of life as we age, and most accept it a normal part of everyday life. There is no reason to live in pain when Osteopathy can help.