Sound clinical reasoning makes treatment more effective, helps illuminate a treatment plan and allows for easy integration with other professionals. Diane Lee (40+ years of clinical physiotherapy practice) and Mark Finch (25 years of clinical massage therapy practice) have collaborated on this ever-evolving reasoning approach to treatment, which is flexible, adaptive and cohesive. They are sharing their knowledge and teaching ISM courses that offer education, clinical mentorship and certification and draw from the evidence as well as their extensive clinical experience and vast network of professionals.

ISM is a framework to help clinicians organize their knowledge and provide the best possible treatment for each individual. It incorporates new and emerging research and is an evidence-based methodology. Since every clinician has a different skill set, an ISM therapist will never be a clone of someone else, nor will they only adhere to specific therapies or processes. Each therapist is as unique and individual as the people they seek to help.

Using the ISM approach, our RMTs, Lucas Scrivener and Heidi Joy Brown, assess every patient as a whole person and devise a treatment plan to target the source(s) of the problem, not just the symptoms.

ISM provides an understanding of each individual’s “story,” how all past injuries, poor posture, emotional states and movement habits are linked and have contributed to their current state. Two people may have the exact same pain in the exact same spot, but those two individuals will behave differently and will require different treatment, because how the pain manifests is shaped by their story - who they are, what they think and how they feel. Sensory, cognitive and emotional dimensions are individual to every experience. ISM explores the relationship between pain and the mind, using your story to assist in understanding how all areas of the body are linked and interact.

A key feature of ISM is finding the driving cause of symptoms/pain in order to focus treatment. This involves understanding the relationships between, and within, multiple regions of the body and how impairments in one region can impact another. There are special ways to determine which impairments are ‘driving’ or causing other impairments, which ones are primary and which ones are compensating. It is not uncommon for the compensating body parts to be sore and the primary ones to be less painful. The impact on one site while manually correcting another is observed and documented. Clinical reasoning then determines the site of the primary region of the body that, if corrected, will reduce symptoms and improve function and performance of the whole body/person.

ISM incorporates all types of treatment techniques, including traditional manual therapy techniques, to facilitate decision-making and planning treatment goals. Your story, and the connections between localized pain and the rest of your body, can be determined and addressed by Lucas and Heidi, our ISM-trained RMT professionals.