New-Fangled Needling

Until this time three years ago, I didn’t know anything about manual therapies. If you’d asked, I’d have speculated that they were something to do with helping you make sense of a car’s user handbook. And yet here I am, about to have my baby grandson stick a bunch of needles into me.

I can’t help but still see Franco as a baby, despite the fact that he’s going on 25 and is a qualified myotherapist. He’s just been off doing some specialised training in Sydney. Dry needling courses, apparently, are a desirable accessory for an allied health professional – I’ll have to take Franco’s word for that, as I’ve never heard of any such thing. I’m only just starting to get my head around the basics of his job description.

I know it’s not such a far out field of work. I’ve just never really engaged with it – perhaps I’ve always had a notion that this type of thing is for hippies. But Franco’s convinced me that it’s very normal for all manner of people to have a go-to myotherapist, physio or remedial massage therapist these days, even for things like having needles stuck in them and cups suctioned onto their backs. He thinks it might help with my shoulder tension.

Anyway, I’ve just been looking up ‘trigger point dry needling courses’ on my phone while I wait for my turn to become a human pincushion. From what I can make out, these are accredited professional development courses for graduates in manual therapy disciplines like physio – not just some half-baked nonsense. That’s good to know.

What I want to know is how, exactly, this is actually supposed to work. I suppose Franco will explain it all once we get started. He did mention something about myofascial release and musculoskeletal presentations… I’ll confess that I tuned out over the phone around that part of our conversation.

I suppose, for starters, I’ll just be happy to know that it’s not going to hurt too much. I’ve been assured that it won’t, but we’ll see.