Pain Reframed | Physical Therapy | Pain Management

In this episode, Liz and Jeff chat with Walt Fritz. Walt has been a physical therapist since 1985 and has integrated manual therapy into that model ever since 1992. He trained with many traditional tissue-based instructors, including myofascial release and craniosacral therapy, but became dissatisfied with the narratives used to describe the work and effects and began to move into a more biologically plausible explanation. While continuing to use a hands-on approach that visibly resembles those earlier models, he has neutralized the implied message by now referring to the work he uses and teaches as "manual therapy." Building on concepts firmly grounded in the biopsychosocial model, as well as the possibly undervalued third leg of the evidence-based practice model (patient preferences and values), his model of intervention and professional education stresses a patient-led experience. He believes that manual therapy need not be a passive modality, one that fosters patient dependency, but a subset of therapeuti