Where does ABR belong in the rehabilitation system?
Where does ABR belong in the rehabilitation system?
In the rehabilitation system, many therapies are focused on gaining functional ‘decimeters’ as soon as possible. However, without realizing that you first need to build the millimeters. This means building the basic structure to have the centimeters to reach the functional decimeters.
In general, we can divide most of the existing therapies in the rehabilitation system into three categories.
The first category are the therapies that try to fight the symptoms. They try to solve the problems locally, do a quick fix etc. For example; a spastic muscle? Let’s insert Botox. Dislocated hip? An operation is the way to go. Medication and operations are often the solutions here. ABR doesn’t belong in this category.
The second category is when a therapy tries to gain performance of a proper function from a weak structure. For example, forcing a proper hand function while the clavicle and shoulder blade are not stable at all is mechanically impossible. This focusses on the functional outcome whilst the basic structure is not yet in place. ABR doesn’t belong here either.
Last category, the ‘miracle therapies’. We certainly don’t belong here either. We do not have a guru in a distant country who is going to carry out special healing which miraculously solves all your problems. If we find one however, we’ll put it in the newsletter.
ABR Therapy
But what does ABR do? Whilst all these therapies work on the decimeters, we work back to the millimeters. It is impossible to gain decimeters if you don’t have all the fundamental elements of the structure and the movement in the first place. For example, sitting can never improve if you do not have the basic head control, a stable neck, mobility and strength of the spine, an unlocked lumbar area, stability of the pelvis, a well-developed sitting platform etc. All these elements are what we class as the millimeters. We have to build these before we can even think about the functional decimeter; sitting. ABR is a completely different approach which first builds the fundamentals which are vital before the body can go into action.
