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Dry needling, is it in our scope of practice?

I have been a massage therapist for almost 5 years now and my body is falling apart due to a lot of things but I would love to continue doing body work and have had huge results when receiving trigger point acupuncture and would love to provide that for my clients who have problem areas.

Does anyone know if we as Licensed Massage Therapist can do dry needling, or if that is for PTs and Chiropractors only?

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Permalink Reply by Gordon J. Wallis on August 28, 2016 at 8:40am

There might be some overlap, but they would be different. Maybe not so much between Dermatomes and myotome, but different.. In the attachment below is a sclarotome pain pattern chart. All I'm saying as an example is... If there is a rash on the skin in only one specific area. And let's say it's covered by the C5 Dermatome. It could also( doesn't mean it has too)indicate a disease of the bones of the C5 Sclarotome. And what I'm guessing about acupuncture is that sticking a needle in a specific spot in the skin on a meridian may have wide ranging effects on internal organs, bone and muscle. And that may explain how acupuncture works. Also , internal organ pain is also projected to the bodies surface. But as a massage therapist I'm only interested in eliminating muscle pain in the form of trigger points. But a dysfunction in a spinal segment because of internal organ stress could be the reason for an abdominal trigger point. I'm just talking in here. Don't expect to be able to explain how acupuncture works on a western scientific level by reading what I'm saying. I certainly don't know. But meridians being muscle chains seems to ME, the connecting mechanism of the entire body mind. Instead of some mysterious chi energy flow.

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Permalink Reply by Gordon J. Wallis on August 28, 2016 at 12:18pm

I've written over 70 pages in here. A typical experience. It's kind of like a blog. I try to back up what I say, but ultimately it's just what I think. And I may very well be incorrect about what I say. But I think our profession has been, for whatever reason, led down the wrong path. As in the paragraphs above. I think that soft tissue is the neglected aspect of the health care system which on pain alone is a 630 billion a year industry. With some tweaking of our education system we should be major players in that industry. Instead of working for a little over minimum wage.
Mitsuko Ito said:

Gordon, do you have a blog or website?
I'd love to follow you.

You mentioned "Each spinal segment has nerve roots that controle portions of bone(sclerotome),muscles(myotomes), skin(dermatomes),and internal organs(enterotomes). "

Do you have any good links/images to those?
I've seen a dermatome graphic somewhere, and I just now looked up sclerotome on google, but didn't find it to give me what I am thinking I"m looking for. Are they basically affecting the same area ? For example, You mentioned in you rpost above that the nerve root that intervates the big toe (dermatome) is mostly L5. Would that be the same for bones, muscles as well?
(Internal Organs probably have different patterns.)

I really like how we are starting to find the connection and correlation between what western science says and TCM has presented for a long time.

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Permalink Reply by Gordon J. Wallis on August 30, 2016 at 2:10pm

Here is an internal organ pain referal chart.

Gordon J. Wallis said:

There might be some overlap, but they would be different. Maybe not so much between Dermatomes and myotome, but different.. In the attachment below is a sclarotome pain pattern chart. All I'm saying as an example is... If there is a rash on the skin in only one specific area. And let's say it's covered by the C5 Dermatome. It could also( doesn't mean it has too)indicate a disease of the bones of the C5 Sclarotome. And what I'm guessing about acupuncture is that sticking a needle in a specific spot in the skin on a meridian may have wide ranging effects on internal organs, bone and muscle. And that may explain how acupuncture works. Also , internal organ pain is also projected to the bodies surface. But as a massage therapist I'm only interested in eliminating muscle pain in the form of trigger points. But a dysfunction in a spinal segment because of internal organ stress could be the reason for an abdominal trigger point. I'm just talking in here. Don't expect to be able to explain how acupuncture works on a western scientific level by reading what I'm saying. I certainly don't know. But meridians being muscle chains seems to ME, the connecting mechanism of the entire body mind. Instead of some mysterious chi energy flow.

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