The different manual therapy modalities make use of a great variety of touch with varying degrees of pressure, stimulus, speed and direction of ‘ moves’. New neuroscientific research reveals how touch is processed by the brain which helps us understand how and why manual therapies work.

In this presentation, Paula Esson explores the function of a variety of different neural receptors to show how the input through touch is received by the brain and the rest of the body. We need to be aware that if we add in more of the same stimulus this can result in over-stimulation and we can actually cause a problem; getting the right stimulus is important.