Course: Primitive Reflexes & Sensorimotor Training For Recurrent Injuries & Chronic Pain

Chronic pain issues? Anxiety? Poor coordination? Recurrent hamstring tears? Persistently tight calf muscles? Shoulder impingements?  This course can help patients with these problems.

Who is this course for?
Suitable for musculoskeletal and chronic pain physiotherapists; for persistent pain and recurrent injuries including sports injuries, and also applicable to neuro and paeds.
​What symptoms will we address:
Chronic pain issues? Anxiety? Poor coordination? Recurrent hamstring tears? Persistently tight calf muscles? Shoulder impingements?  This course can help patients with these problems.

Course Description

As physiotherapists we aim to teach improved motor control and function to our patients. However clients with persistent pain problems and recurrent injuries don't always respond to even our best treatment efforts and this can be due to sensory processing deficits in the CNS. Sensory processing deficits may be present since childhood development or acquired through injury. For these people standard rehab needs to be enhanced with sensory processing training and primitive reflex inhibition.
People with persistent pain and recurrent injuries exhibit changes in the brain and central nervous system unlike people with first onset acute pain. Some of these changes in the brain relate to sensorimotor function, other changes are related to emotional function and they are interlinked. Normally the brain is continually being informed through the senses.
The brain must

1. Receive
2. Integrate
3. Interpret
4. Execute responses even a pain response.

Contemporary research is demonstrating a strong relationship between sensory processing function and the development of chronic pain. Specific sensory integration exercises can reverse some of the changes associated with chronic pain, as well as reduce muscle tone in tight structures causing persistent restrictions. Proprioception can be retrained using sensorimotor exercises and primitive reflex inhibition, including in elite athletes.
Some people are also hypersensitive to sensory stimuli and develop central sensitisation and/or anxiety.  It is proposed that sensory sensitivity coupled with sensory processing disorders may be a significant cause of anxiety due to sensory overload. Sensory processing training and primitive reflex inhibition can help to organise the brain to minimise anxiety responses and reverse some central sensitisation. 
Regardless of your experience level, this course can help.
The practical will involve assessment and rehabilitation of aspects of sensorimotor function including postural equilibrium control, proprioception, midline crossing, oculomotor function, auditory spatial discrimination, tactility and primitive reflex inhibition.    

Course Details: TWO-DAY PRACTICAL COURSE

Course Objectives

After the course you will be able to:

• Appreciate how sensorimotor problems including neurological soft signs affect movement and function.
• Assess and rehabilitate a selection of primitive reflexes and sensorimotor dysfunctions and recognize how they influence movement & cognitive function.
• Appreciate how sensory processing training and primitive reflex inhibition can be applied to other disorders affecting the CNS such as neuro, anxiety disorders and developmental learning difficulties.
• Know how to progress the sensory integration rehab, or make it easier to find an appropriate starting point for rehab especially where there is sensory sensitivity.
• Apply your new strategies on Monday morning.

$595 inc. GST per person ~ Cost includes a comprehensive manual

PLEASE NOTE: all courses are charged for in New Zealand Dollars (NZ$)
This course is currently being updated.