Mike Cantrell Digs deeper to heal pain

Mike Cantrell, co-owner of The Cantrell Physical Therapy Center in Warner Robins, is always on the go. Not only does he see patients at his practice, he treats Integrative Postural Therapy dental patients once a week in Atlanta. When he is not in Warner Robins nor Atlanta, Cantrell serves as a Postural Restoration Certified Instructor and Director of Faculty Development for the Postural Restoration Institute in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Since Cantrell began teaching for the institute in 2006 he said he has taught courses in over 67 cities in the United States, and twice in England. Therefore through these courses is how an invitation to teach at New South Wales, Australia came about.

“I teach an audience of physical therapists, athletic trainers, doctors, and dentists at these courses,” said Cantrell. “Not only are there some from the city/country I am teaching at, but I have some from all across the world. There have been some from Australia who have attended so that’s how I got an invitation to go to their country, and I am really ecstatic about it.”

Cantrell will be teaching two professional continuing education credit courses at Impact Health Studio in New South Wales, Australia. He will teach Myokinematic Restoration on July 16-17 and Postural Respiration July 23-24. Stated on the Postural Restoration Institute website, Myokinematic Restoration is a treatment that emphasizes the restoration of pelvic-femoral alignment and recruitment of specific rotational muscles to reduce synergistic predictable patterns of pathomechanic asymmetry. Postural Respiration is the focus to “balance” polyarticular muscular chains through focused functional assessment of the thorax.

“First, humans are asymmetrical so the left side of the body is not like the right,” said Cantrell. “For example a patient comes in complaining about knee pain well based on this concept your knee may be hurting because of this asymmetry. Your diaphragm is king. Above all else you have to be able to breathe. If you cant breathe, then you’re going to compensate. What we know on most people they breathe better in the left rib cage than they do in their right. So back to the patient with knee pain. What most don’t realize is knee pain or any pain is a symptom.”

“Could it be they are having this pain because their pelvis is not where is should be?” asked Cantrell. “Is the rib cage not doing what it should, or is it both, or is it even the head or neck? For me it then falls to analyze that patient– here’s why your knee is giving you pain it’s because your femur isn’t sitting in the hip socket, your pelvis position is screwed up, your rib cage is turning left and you can’t expand to the right. If we can increase the right rib cage expansion it should be able to resolve that knee pain.”

Cantrell also put it into another light as in the body has multiple chains of muscle that work together as a team. For example if you get a group of muscles working together, and then a muscle from a different group joins, Cantrell said a problem then occurs when the two different groups of muscle get a weird recruitment to help you compensate for your inability to breathe because you’re asymmetrical.

“I also deal with dentistry, teaching dentists how to help me manage knee pain,” said Cantrell. “I can’t look at a person anymore without sizing them up of what’s going on with them from head to toe. Why are they having the pain that they are having? How long have they have had headaches? My initial thought is I see someone who has what I call a left cranial side bend. So if they have that or a right cranial torsion strain going on in their bones and head that might be something I can’t fix by myself. So now I have a dentist help me fix that patient. For example a patient comes in with a TMJ problem. With myself and the dentist working together, we find the patient may need an oral appliance to go in their mouth. It in turn will help unlock their neck.”

When it comes to posture, automatically most people think you have to sit up straight. Well you can forget all what you have learned about having perfect posture with Postural Respiration. Yes, Cantrell says good posture is bad.

“In my world sitting up perfect posture is the worst thing you can do,” said Cantrell. “What you’re doing is really assuming this extended position and from a position of extension you cant breathe as well. The number one patients I see are ballet dancers, and gymnasts. They all have pain and are blowing through every ligament they have for stability and have a lot of problems.”

While attending the University of Georgia for bachelors degree, and Emory for masters degree, Cantrell said he didn’t learn any of these concepts from the Postural Restoration Institute. After graduating Emory he started work as a Physical Therapist for his alma matter University of Georgia, then opened up his private practice which has been in business for 20 years now. For six years he said he still had not heard of the Postural Restoration Institute.

“Around 1996, 1997 I took a class that the founder of Postural Restoration Ron Hruska was teaching,” said Cantrell. “At first it wasn’t clicking, but when I began to take more classes more light bulbs started turning on, and I became certified. My only goal after graduating with my masters was to open up my own practice, to treat patients my way. Well, my way has changed a lot. I had no idea I would end up doing this, but it’s been totally awesome.”

Cantrell also serves as a private consultant with the Atlanta Hawks, Philadelphia Eagles, Arizona Diamondbacks, and many more professional sports teams and athletes. Recently over the past couple of years Cantrell has been working with the Navy Seals in sensory processing disorders that they treat through acoustics.

“Most of the Seals’ injuries are blast injuries,” said Cantrell. “We realized we could get this one guy pain free with an ear plug. We just took away some of his hearing. He could hear fine, but when we took away some of his hearing and altered the way he positions his head and neck to hear, we shut down his pain. We were able to objectively establish that through tests. This is huge what we’ve been exploring through Postural Restoration vision and hearing. I truly enjoy this line of work and it gets me fired up every time I talk about it. Right now we have a lot of doctors and physical therapists certified through Postural Restoration Institute in the U.S., and our goal is to get more certified across the globe.”

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