The Integrative, Holistic Physio Approach to Injury Rehabilitation
As a freshly hatched new grad physio, I had a toolbox of assessments and techniques that were pretty good.
You do some assessment of the problem areas, do some massage or some joint mobilisations, prescribe some exercises and Boom. The client’s better.
Australian physios have a great reputation for good reason. Our education is respected internationally, and we’re part of a caring, intelligent, health conscious community.
We value prevention over cure and pride ourselves on being truly evidence-based: we don’t do things unless the research has proven it’s effective.
Sometimes this can lead to being overly cautious about adopting new and different approaches to treating pain, dysfunction and injuries- even when we have the research to back it up.
I love being a physio, but for a while, it wasn’t enough. Try as I might, the tools I had just didn’t get great results for enough of my patients for me to feel satisfied.
As a physio who now proudly treats people using visceral manipulation techniques, I remember vividly how I judged another physio negatively for this same approach when I first graduated- purely from lack of understanding of what it is he did.
I graduated into a landscape where people were confused if they should even be using manual therapy techniques like massage, joint mobalisations and dry needling.
We know that exercise based treatment is often the highest value treatment we can provide for a lot of injuries, and I wasn’t confident in my hands on skills at all back then.
Flash forward nearly a decade and I’m convinced that yes, exercise based treatment is the bee’s knees. Strength, mobility, and progressive loading are foundational for long-term recovery.
But! There are SO many things we can do besides that that make huge and lasting differences to people’s pain, quality of life and ability to do the things that are important to them.
Over my career I’ve seen so many people whose progress has plateaued even through they’re doing all the right exercises at the right time.
They might have been getting stronger, but their nervous system was still wound up or guarding. Their organs weren’t gliding or moving well, and their breathing was dysfunctional or stiff. They had bad sleep or not enough of it and their stress levels were unmanageably high.
Their injury rehab needed more than just load management and 3x10 of a red theraband rotator cuff exercise.
My clients are very clever people- often they’ve looked up what their problem is online and done a pretty good job of diagnosing it. They’ve looked up all the exercise suggestions for how to treat it.
But still… they have pain. If exercise alone solved every issue, we’d have a lot more pain free people.
Introducing Integrative Physiotherapy
A blend of
Traditional physiotherapy: education, manual therapy, joint work, dry needling, biomechanics, load management, movement analysis, and exercise rehab
Health coaching
Nutrition advice (for qualified practitioners)
Visceral manipulation: exploring how organ and connective tissue mobility affects pain and movement
Functional neurology: improving the brain-body coordination that underpins movement
Breathing retraining: essential for movement efficiency and nervous system regulation
Stress management and recovery strategies
And more, depending on each physio’s training and curiosity
Integrative physios understand that pain doesn’t always start where you feel it. Often, the sore area is the victim, not the culprit. We calm the pain first, but we go deeper and look for the true origin of the problem.
We know from research that simply understanding pain can reduce it. And we know that stress, sleep, and nutrition profoundly affect how people heal and feel.
In an integrative approach, we don’t only ask “Where does it hurt?”
We ask:
Why is that area overloaded?
What system isn’t keeping up?
What else is contributing to the stress on that tissue?
Are we treating the cause or just the loudest symptom?
Sometimes a knee is sore because the knee is the problem. And sometimes, the knee is sore because:
the hip can’t stabilise
the ankle isn’t absorbing ground forces
the walking gait is a bit wonky because your vestibular system isn’t working well
the diaphragm isn’t managing pressure well
poor sleep is impairing tissue recover
A stiff or droopy kidney is putting pressure on nerves that refer to the knee
What Does Integrative Physio Look Like?
A session might include:
Taking a thorough history of not just your injury, but your overall health
A detailed musculoskeletal exam to check strength and movement
Assessing movement patterns for protective or compensatory habits
Looking at how your organs move and how your nervous system is functioning
Treating the areas your body highlights as part of the bigger pattern, even if it’s not where it hurts
Shifting from the lens of purely traditional physio to an integrative and holistic approach has helped to re-ignite my love of physiotherapy and reconnected me with my original passion for anatomy.
When we start seeing the body as a collection of deeply connected systems, rather than just a meat case that moves us around, everything changes.
We can create longer lasting results and a deeper understanding of what’s really going on. And importantly, how to stop those issues from coming back.
While I might be the guide, the real wisdom lies in truly seeing and listening to the person in front of me.
Our bodies are always communicating; we just need to learn how to listen properly to uncover the root cause.