McKenzie Method

McKenzie therapy was developed for patients with back or neck complaints, with or without radiating pain into the arms or legs.

A “faulty” posture that has been present for years is not easy to change. Postural advice is important here, but also very difficult to maintain. The McKenzie method relies heavily on “repeated movements” – performing a particular exercise very often. It's usually a simple exercise, but one you're asked to do 5 to 6 times a day. This consistently reduces the load on the neck or back every day, progressively relieving the complaint.

In McKenzie therapy, each individual neck or back is assessed to see which movements feel good and which don't. What makes this neck or back improve, and what actually provokes complaints?

Through repeated movements in which the pain pulls back almost immediately – or briefly worsens – a picture emerges of how the spine responds to these movements, and therefore how the pain is organised (the preferred direction found), and more importantly, how the pain can be made to retreat again. This retreat of pain is called centralisation.

With a pain complaint in, say, the shoulder, certain neck and/or back movements can draw the pain back out of the shoulder. Likewise, with pain in the leg, specific repeated movements of the back can trigger the centralisation phenomenon, causing the pain in the leg to recede.

Depending on how the complaint responds to these movements, it is classified into one of three categories: 1) Derangement, 2) Dysfunction, or 3) Postural syndrome. This classification allows an estimate to be made of how the complaint is likely to progress.

Self-treatment and prevention of recurrence are core principles of the McKenzie method. This gives the patient real ownership and control over the course of their own complaint.