How Dermoneuromodulation / DNM changed my life

Four weeks ago, I was in Perth for a few courses as part of the Anatomy Trains Summer School, at their well-appointed clinic in Fremantle.

Initially, there was a one day movement course that very much sparked my interest, and I thought, ‘Well, it’s a bit silly to go all that way for a one day course, what else is on?’ So, I booked in for an advanced breathing course, and another entitled ‘A Neurofascial Approach to Lower Back Pain’ which was presented by Michael Polon, a Structural Integration practitioner from Denver, Colorado.

The breathing course was …alright. I already do a bit of breath work in practice, and didn’t gain as much as I’d hoped from it, which is OK, because that tells me I’m doing a fairly decent job of that currently. The movement course was great, and in particular, I’ve been using some of the rolling techniques to good effect with a number of patients, but the real magic came in Michael’s course.

I honestly hadn’t expected much more from that course than perhaps a slight update or fine-tuning of the understanding I had of the current and emergent theories around ‘why what we do, works the way it works’, but what was presented was pretty profound!

The first day was fairly theory heavy, and while I hadn’t personally read the specific studies presented, the neuroscience and neuroanatomy and pain science we discussed were all familiar territory. When Michael started pointing all of the evidence towards why you would want to work on the cutaneous nerves, the nerves in the layers of skin, it began to dawn on me that this had the potential to be something incredible! I sat there and thought to myself, ‘How, in the nearly 20 years I’ve been learning and doing bodywork, has nobody ever really talked about working with the cutaneous nerves?! How have I missed this??’

And the answer is, this really is cutting edge stuff. As Michael spoke, I realised that there was a solid, scientific, evidential basis for why the work he was describing would be so effective, and I was hopeful that, once we got to the hands-on component of the course, if it were even half as good as was being suggested, it would be an incredibly powerful clinical tool.

Across the three days of the course, I was blown away by the effects I felt in my own body, and the bodies of others on the course, and have consistently had my mind blown in the last 3 weeks, as I’ve begun to use it in practice. Because I was much more interested than most others on the course, Michael pointed me to a very good book in the subject, Diane Jacobs’ Dermoneuromodulation, which came out in 2017. While that may not immediately sound new, her specific interest and research into cutaneous nerves began in 2010, and, while 10 years from the early conceptualisation to DNM being used increasingly in practices around the world might seem like a long time, in the world of science, 10 years is almost lightning fast. It is not unusual for new theories/concepts/modalities to take 20, 30, even 40 years, to become accepted and make their way into texts, and tertiary education, and widespread use.

It feels quite bizarre in some ways, that something so new, something I’ve only been using for 3 weeks, has utterly changed my approach to soft tissue work, but ……you have to be open to these things, right? Just because the old ways are good, and get results, doesn’t mean there isn’t a better way.

How can something that is so gentle, and causes very little pain, to the point that it’s not really even discomfort, be so incredibly effective? As counter-intuitive as it seems, (because deeper must be more effective, right?) DNM makes basically everything else I’ve learnt in 20 years seem rudimentary, in comparison. It is refined, and specific, and when that is combined with being near painless, it’s effects seem almost like magic. Like it’s ‘tissue whispering’. That’s not to say other techniques don’t still have their place, DNM alone doesn’t fix everything, but it definitely makes for much, much quicker progress.

Diane Jacobs is very involved in research, and so in developing the dermoneuromodulation rationale, was careful to name it in a fashion that, while unexciting, was descriptive of what was actually occurring, and also didn’t rely on making it sound miraculous. When I say ‘it feels like tissue whispering’ and the effects really seem to occur almost by magic, that is how it feels. However, Diane perceives that it’s important to be accurate about what’s taking place, and help patients relate to the experience in as clear and rational a way as possible, rather than take advantage of mysticism and woo, which don’t empower anyone to help create change in their life, instead making it about some magical ability that the therapist holds, when really, it’s very cool and very important changes in someone’s own body that is giving the results.

How can placing hands gently onto skin, and gently tensioning it, be so effective? I’m sure that experienced touch -being kind, slow, light and intelligent- is helpful in the application, but really it’s the tissue, the nerves, the whole nervous system, the whole person being touched that is the valuable part of the equation.

I went to Perth, hoping to learn, and returned feeling educated, and empowered; better placed to help people with pain, reduced ability, and limited movement. I previously thought that the body was simultaneously both simple and wondrous, and I discovered an even greater depth to that, a greater understanding of the how, where and why, and became further humbled by the experience of working with the human body- I am thankful to work in a field where you can never know it all, where you’re an eternal student, and where profound insights continue to occur, continuing to enlighten us all as to why therapeutic touch is so very valuable. Especially when the effects feel so magical, yet are very, very real.