Why Instrument Assisted Soft Tissue Mobilization? (IASTM)

Instrument Assisted Soft Tissue Mobilization (IASTM) is a specialty therapeutic treatment which is also referred to as “Scraping” or “Tooling.”  It is similar to “Graston Technique”

Why Instrument Assisted Soft Tissue Mobilization (IASTM) “Scraping”?

Scraping is a great way to address many different types of soft tissue problems or injuries throughout the body.  Whether it’s plantar fasciitis, tennis elbow, knee pain, shoulder pain, or scar tissue from an old injury, scraping can help.  So many painful problems or ailments throughout the body can be addressed with IASTM.

After a brief assessment of your pain or problems, we can determine if IASTM is the right course of treatment for you.  Scraping is a cumulative treatment (Like Therapeutic Massage and Cupping).  This means that as you improve a problem with scraping, you can keep making further and further progress with multiple treatments. Since you are essentially restructuring the soft tissue problem, multiple treatments may help fully resolve your pain.

At Structure Therapy, I often will perform “scraping” in conjunction with a normal Structure Therapy Therapeutic Deep Tissue treatment, or even therapeutic cupping in order to help get rid of your pain or problem area.

What to expect?

IASTM is a treatment where very dull edged metal tools are used to scrape at problematic soft tissue areas.  Sounds painful right?  The goal is irritation to the problem area.  It does not need to be painful, but some of the worst areas may be more sensitive.  Similar to cupping, the scraping irritates the skin and can cause breaking up of the blood vessels beneath the skin (also called petechiae).  This is completely normal and actually helps stimulate healing to that area.

Often the procedure actually feels quite good.  It is a process where pressure is applied gradually breaking through layer by layer of soft tissue damage.  Similar to a massage, you slowly work deeper into the problem areas.  Each session that follows continues to progress deeper into the problem.

After the first time that you have scraping done, you may be sore for a day or two afterwards.  Often, it depends on just how bad your problem is.  After that first day or two, you should start feeling a lot better.  Each scraping session following, should leave you less and less stiffness or pain afterwards.

One scraping session generally takes 5-20 minutes in one specific problem area depending on the area and the degree of the problem.

At Structure Therapy, I offer 20 minute and 30 minute (IASTM) sessions.

You may also schedule a combined treatment where one half of your session is a massage and the other half is (IASTM).