Organ manual therapy works with the tissue of your organs—the muscles of your heart and intestines, the spongy tissue of your liver, the surprisingly dense substance of your lungs, and more. This hands-on therapy also works with the tissues that support your organs—their nerves, blood vessels, and connective tissue. This work helps position your organs optimally, calm their nerve signals, improve their blood flow, and free up restrictions in their connective tissue.

In addition to improving your organs’ function, organ manual therapy can also have profound effects on your skeletal alignment and musculoskeletal pain. The connective tissue that suspends your organs in place is attached to your bones and muscles. This tissue develops restrictions in response to illness, irritation, injury, and inflammation,and then these tensions and restrictions pull on your skeleton. This can cause hip, low back, rib, chest, shoulder, neck, and head pain. Often, organ manual therapy can be a key component of relieving chronic musculoskeletal pain.

Your organs also influence your mobility and movement patterns. Because your organs are so vital, your muscles, bones, and even your nerves and blood vessels adjust themselves to support and protect your organs without your conscious awareness, and these unconscious patterns shape your posture and your movement patterns. When your organs are less restricted, they can move more freely, which allows your whole skeleton to move more freely. This can support more grace, coordination, agility, and comfort in your movements.

The Barral Institute teaches organ manual therapy under the name of Visceral Manipulation, and many of Kinetikos’ organ practitioners have studied with this Institute. Within osteopathic medicine, this work is termed visceral osteopathy, and there are also traditional roots for manual organ therapy in Asian, European, and South American healing systems, including Chi Nei Tsang and Mayan abdominal massage.

Cindi Thomas, Holly Krebs, Kalen Ledbetter, Risa Kearn, and Samuel Beecher offer organ manual therapy as part of their Structural Integration sessions. Lilly Mason is a Certified Professional Midwife and offers this work for people trying to conceive as well as prenatal and postnatal clients, in addition to the general population and children of all ages. Read more about Lilly’s work below.