Catch-ups and Needles

I finally got around to grabbing a coffee with the crew after my Pilates class this morning. I never seem to have time for that these days, so it was good to catch up on what everyone’s been up to. Shamita, the physiotherapist, told me she hadn’t been at the early morning class for a while – she’s been away doing a bunch of upskilling lately, with a view to opening her own physio practice.

As a massage therapist, I was pretty interested in hearing about this. Shamita said that just last weekend, she’d done a trigger point dry needling course in Sydney. I’d heard of this before – a couple of my colleagues are pretty into it – but I’m not all that familiar with the ins and outs of it. Shamita said she hadn’t been either, prior to doing the course, but now she’s feeling confident to administer the treatment.

I was surprised to hear that dry needling could be picked up over one weekend – I’d expected it to be a lengthier process than that. Shamita did mention, though, that you pretty much need to be trained as a physiotherapist in order to sign up for the course, so I suppose it kind of makes sense that it could be done in such a short span of time.

Anyway, it sounds like dry needling uses a technique that’s kind of similar to acupuncture in terms of the type of needles that are used. Shamita stressed to me, though, that it’s not the same as acupuncture  – it works on trigger points rather than energy meridians. This was interesting for me to hear, because although I have some clients who are all about their regular acupuncture sessions, I have others who are really cynical about it. I probably have more clients of the latter persuasion, which has kept me from investigating dry needling more deeply than I have.

Now I’m thinking that I should have more of poke around into the subject. I wonder what the go is with dry needling training in the Melbourne area? Maybe it’s time for me to invest in some upskilling.