The History of MLT
Manual Ligament Therapy™ is a brand new, cutting-edge therapy with a patent-pending. MLT™ uses the sensory qualities of ligaments to relieve hypertonic muscles and rebalance joint space. The end result is proper structural alignment of the body with very little effort on the clinician’s part.
Research studies at International Universities have revealed that ligaments are a significant source of acute, sub-acute, and chronic muscle pain and dysfunction. MLT™ is the only known technique that recognizes this fact while other therapies normally just address the muscles and tendons. With this advantage, MLT™ is able to resolve both simple and difficult injuries and pathologies quickly, and with little or no discomfort to the recipient.
For further information on MLT™, please click the “FAQ”.
Who is Arik and why is he uniquely suited for this purpose?
Arik Gohl, LMP-c, MMLT has been an LMP for over 10 years, researching, developing, teaching and practicing cutting-edge clinical manual therapies. Arik has won the endorsement and respect of DC’s, PT’s, MD’s and a PhD who is one of the top five researchers of musculoskeletal dysfunction in the world.
Arik and our practitioners have combined their experience, intellect and vision to create a training program that will change the face of bodywork. They seek to empower therapists by providing tools to increase their longevity, productivity & effectiveness, all the while enhancing a client’s health and healing.
The History of MLT
MLT was born in early 2004 when Arik Gohl, a medical massage therapist in Tacoma, Washington, was searching for more effective and less physically demanding ways to treat his patients. In practice since 1999, and within three years after being licensed, Arik had suffered a repetitive stress injury to his right forearm due to overuse. It was at this point that Arik decided there had to be a better and more potent way to treat musculo-skeletal injuries other than using heavy-handed deep-tissue and trigger point therapies. He decided to ask a close friend of his, a Doctor of Chiropractic, if there were any modalities from the chiropractic world that he could use within his scope of practice. One of several things that Arik was shown was the Logan Basic Technique. This therapy utilized gentle pressure to a low back structure called the Sacrotuberous ligament. Developed in the early twentieth century by Dr. Hugh Logan, this technique was found to have great effect in quickly reducing muscle spasm in the muscles of the back and is still used to this day for scoliosis patients.
After being shown this treatment, Arik inquired as to whether other ligaments of the body could reproduce a similar effect with different muscles. After he was told that this had not yet been explored, Arik decided to start his own research into the subject. Within a short period of time Arik found that many of the ligaments in the body could be gently coaxed into greatly reducing muscle spasm and tension very quickly and with long lasting results. Now that Arik was onto something, it was time to find out why these results were occurring. After consulting several other doctors and clinicians, it was recommended that Arik refer to the Pub Med database of case-studies (Pubmed.com). At Pub Med, Arik found a myriad of high level research articles showing that ligaments played a very large role in giving the brain information on how to keep the body in balance using muscle tension and that even slight injury to ligaments could induce significant dysfunction within joint and muscle structures.
Within three months, Arik arranged a one-on-one meeting with a PhD and world renowned researcher by the name of Dr. Moshe Solomonow at the University of Colorado in Denver. Having seen many articles written by Dr. Solomonow, all of which supported the active role that ligaments play in regulating neuro-muscular control, Arik felt it vital that he had the support of someone highly respected in the research world. After spending several hours with Dr. Solomonow, it was obvious that Arik was onto something very unique and uncharted. Leaving Denver with the endorsement, support, and respect of Dr. Solomonow, Arik now knew that he had to further his studies and spread the results of his research and practice.
