Working with the homunculus.

why is so important for a manual therapist  to stimulate the homunculus?

Both BMT and Kinetics, although they have different procedures and techniques, work with the idea of stimulating the brain, motor and sensory areas. The idea is that if it is possible to change the afference of the area that hurts or is restricted, the brain will make a different reading, therefore the efference will be different and the pain-restriction feedback is broken.

Working with the homunculus

Both BMT and Kinetics, although they have different procedures and techniques, work with the idea of stimulating the brain, motor and sensory areas. The idea is that if it is possible to change the afference of the area that hurts or is restricted, the brain will make a different reading, therefore the efference will be different and the pain-restriction feedback is broken.

Homunculus

Some of you may think that the homunculus is of interest.
In kinetics and BMT it is prioritized, understanding the hierarchy of systems as the best approach to treat musculoskeletal body pain and motor dysfunctions.
Therefore the important thing is to access the nervous system that controls the afferent and efferent functions and information and their responses to different stimuli and the responses given by the body.
A key part of this is the homunculus located in the cerebral cortex.
It has motor and sensory functions and stimulating it will help us to control pain and movement restrictions at the nervous system level.
The sensory representation of the body in the homunculus is very important and here more space is dedicated to motor and sensory areas, such as hands, feet, fingers, fingers, mouth,
In BMT these areas are worked from distal to proximal because of the neurological representations and connections that these areas have in the brain.
Perhaps this is the big difference between BMT and Kinetics and what unites them is the logic in the work of the functionality of the joints and connective tissue, chains and muscle synergies.
Some examples: The index finger has a tendency to be associated with the extension of the wrist and elbow. Therefore it would be necessary to check the chain of the index finger (for example in its extension) which could lead to a problem of wrist or elbow extension. The motor chains must therefore be taken into account for treatment.
The myofascial chains are respected to improve motricity in order to give more stability, knowing that these areas are represented in the sensory and motor areas of the hip.
A rule of thumb is that increasing the stability of the extremities improves the proximal joints.
Other examples are dorsal toe flexor related to the psoas, tibialis anterior related to the latissimus dorsi.

To work on a shoulder restriction in extension we start with the toes and work the whole chain checking its function as well as its contractile capacity.