Postural Respiration or (PRI) is a holistic approach to correcting pain, weakness, and mobility issues caused by the human body’s inevitable tendency to create asymmetric adaptations in its quest for efficiency. For the purposes of PRI “holistic” merely means being open to the the idea that no one discipline or treatment methodology will work for everyone. Postural Respiration teaches its members to look for multiple ways to correct dysfunction in the body.
The body creates patterns for efficiency so it can conserve strength and energy. These patterns can cause muscle imbalances by making one leg, arm, or side dominant for a specific series of tasks. Over a long enough period of time this will cause imbalances all over your body, which leads to pain and injuries. A lack of mobility in your ankle can cause pain in your neck. Postural Respiration aims to fix this by deploying manual, muscular, and respiratory exercises to counteract the imbalances found in nearly every human at some point in their lives.
PRI differs from “traditional medicine” in the sense that chiropractors will always manipulate your back, acupuncturists will always want to use needles, and doctors will typically recommend a combination of drugs, surgery, and physical therapy. PRI is meant to find the source of pain and use the best “tool” possible to correct the injury. Sometimes this means referring clients to other specialists.
How is PRI different From Chiropractic?
PRI takes the entire body into account, not just the back. They scan the entire body to try and find where you have “cut corners” in order to determine the source of pain, weakness, and limited mobility. Additionally, PRI uses “back-cracking” as a last resort ,whereas chiropractors tend to crack backs with impunity.
Chiropractors start with the back and typically stay there. Chiropractors will rarely check the range of motion in your ankles or shoulders. PRI specialists evaluate the entire body. They view the imbalance as a giant math problem they have to reverse engineer to truly fix. If an issue with your ankle causes back pain you need to start with the ankle. Massaging or manipulating the back may provide short term relief, but until you fix the source issues will continue to pop up.
Ideally PRI specialists will try to give you exercises to do to try and correct imbalances naturally. This includes breathing exercises, stretches, changing the shoes you wear and the way you sit in a chair.
What is Unique to PRI?
While PRI specialists are trained to evaluate the entire body, they have a special training to monitor the diaphragm and rib cage. The diaphragm is much larger on the right side of your body as opposed to your left. This can cause numerous thoracic and rotational issues many people will try to correct with drugs or chiropractic adjustments. PRI specialists have a ton of training centered around the rib cage and diaphragm positioning. Where chiropractors will evaluate the spine PRI will evaluate the rib cage.
Personally I have seen an enormous amount of success with PRI. This is definitely not the best article out there to gain a full understanding but was helpful for me to organize my thoughts about the practice. If you want to get more info see the official site here.