Posts in category: health

When the snowman brings the snow, well…you just might like to know: he puts a great big smile upon somebody’s face.

Not here though. We’re sadly relegated to a hot and dusty Christmas in the middle of absolutely nowhere. Here we sit on the edge of the outback, in a town of a hundred, isolated from anywhere interesting. You’d think since everyone knows everybody else’s name, we’d all get together for a big old Christmas party or something. Nope! Mrs Renshaw doesn’t even decorate the town hall, even though she keeps a draconian watch over absolutely everything else that goes on in there.

It’s just SO provincial. The biggest news of the entire year was Sheila Bryant going off to the big smoke in Sydney, doing a dry needling course. Everyone in town reacted like she’d come back and started brewing potions, and casting spells. Dry needling is ‘new’ and ‘fangled’ and ‘new-fangled’, it would seem, so the people of Jurumbee are suspicious of it. Some people here still get their water from a well and think that the internet is a secret government plot to steal your soul, so the fact that Sheila is now making a career out of something they’ve never even heard of is scaring everyone stiff.

I wonder how long it’ll be before Jurumbee gets dry needling? I’m going to say…never. Like, not at all. I was shocked when we actually got internet, although it’s still deathly dial-up speeds. It takes the nearest internet technician two hours door-to-door to get here and fix any problems, and yet there are so many that I’ve basically become the town’s resident technology fixer-upper.

But dry needling, eh? I bet Mrs Renshaw thinks that it’s some kind of advanced bush magic. Doesn’t matter that Sheila Renshaw is one of the only people around here with some sense. I should take a leaf and move to Sydney. I’d surely be casting off the trust of the community, but…whatever. Do dry needling courses do group bookings in Sydney? We could get the whole town in on it, make it our first actual community event. Now wouldn’t THAT be something…

-Carlos

I’d been an osteopath for seven years when I started hearing more and more about trigger point needling, or dry needling as a really effective way to treat patients. I was treating people with chronic pain and sometimes I just knew that the possibility of helping my clients was quite limited. When I found a whole bunch of dry needling courses that I could fit into my schedule, I thought it was a great way to improve my existing practise. It was the best thing I’ve done for my career yet.

One of the best experiences as a practitioner of dry needling was through a colleague whose daughter had severe back pain. He was a physio in the practise we worked from; I treated his knee injury with expected success. He was so impressed that he also undertook the same study to become a dry needling practitioner in NZ, and when he treated his daughter with success, she decided to turn her studies to dry needling as well.

Strangely, one of the biggest barriers for me in studying dry needling was my aversion to needles, which, yes, I had been ashamed of as a professional, but something I am very pleased to say I have definitely overcome. When I apply dry needling to a client in significant pain, I can see the muscles responding, I can sense how much a patient will get this is the best outcome possible. I no longer consider needles something to be afraid of, but rather celebrated.

I am 100% confident that treating patients with dry needling therapy will only become more and more popular in the years to come. Seeing the immediate relief on a client sticks with you- the wearing nature of pain is a heavy cross to bear, and if I can remove that burden as a professional, then I’m happy.