• Who is STAMINA® Rehabilitation Therapy for?
• How many sessions do I need?
• What should I expect during therapy?
• What should I expect following my sessions?
• What can ergonomic assessment do for me?
• What role does Kinesiology play in my session?
• How does STAMINA® and Laser Therapy work interactively?
• How was STAMINA® developed and founded?
• How do I schedule an appointment for STAMINA® Rehabilitation Therapy?

Patients requiring STAMINA® Rehabilitation Therapy may experience any of these symptoms:

• Feelings of discomfort to extreme pain in either joints or muscles
• Numbness or loss of feeling or sensation
• Compensation by other muscle groups causing misleading symptoms ie: pain is felt in neck and shoulder but actually the hips are out of alignment
• Stiffness and loss of range of motion
• Structural joint or soft tissue compression ie: bulging discs / root nerve entrapment
• Reduced performance or delayed response time
• Unbalanced load distribution ie: striking heavy on one foot/one pelvis higher than the other
• Insomnia or irregular sleeping patterns
• General fatigue or a feeling of weakness in the body

An average adult patient begins with one 90 minute and two 60 minute sessions spaced 7 days apart. These sessions are then followed by three 30 minute sessions, spaced 2, 3 and 4 weeks apart until the patient is successfully retaining alignments, and is pain free.

If desired, long term maintenance can then be arranged periodically to improve overall function long term. Depending on the nature and complexity of the pathology involved the treatment frequency and number of sessions will vary to achieve the desired result. Children (under 10) generally start with two 60 minute sessions followed by three 30 minute sessions (depending on the pathology) and are then assessed for maintenance.

Most patients experience a reduction or elimination of their pain as the alignments and retraining occur.

The treatment involves five main aspects:

• Manual alignment of your skeletal structures
• Alignment of specific muscle groups which stabilize the joints and help with distribution of load throughout, relieving compression of nerves and soft tissue
• Re-education of neuromotor pathways to eliminate muscle compensation patterns
• Resetting the autonomic nervous system which drives soft tissue pain
• Retraining incorrect daily postural habits that create dysfunction

In this systematic approach the STAMINA® Rehabilitation Therapist is able to address the root cause of muscular-skeletal pain and dysfunction.

You may begin to experience any or all of the following:

• overall increased strength and energy
• increased response time
• in most cases significantly reduced or no pain (decreasing until eliminated)
• greater ease in movement
• increased ROM
• decrease in pain that you previously experienced
• improved sleep quality

Often the most repetitive strain injuries come from the tasks we do most frequently in our work or home life. Simply put, it isn’t necessarily what you do but how you do those activities. We can offer suggestions on stationary and active posturing for daily functions that will create a balanced distribution of load in body posture, thus eliminating the source of aggravation. Generally, this assessment is part of a full STAMINA® session.

Instructions will be given on how to correctly walk and sit to avoid further dysfunction. Some patients will receive additional exercises to specifically address problem areas in order to rebuild muscle tone and strength.

General rehabilitative exercise is part of STAMINA® therapy treatments but a patient can also benefit from a scheduled program of STAMINA® Yoga Therapeutics to further enhance their recovery.

Low Intensity Laser Therapy goes to work promoting healing in damaged cells, ultimately decreasing inflammation and improving tissue function. This will allow STAMINA® to be more effective to those damaged areas.

In 1994, feeling discouraged and sceptical, she attempted to find some relief with gentle hatha yoga postures. This seemed to give the most relief by far so she gradually increased the frequency two to three times daily with astonishing results. After steadily doing yoga daily for 6 months she was 90% pain free. Within 18 months she had a reversal of the nerve damage and was in full recovery and able to return to full time work as a massage therapist.

Aleyna began a dedicated pursuit to understand the underlying bio-mechanical changes that had occurred to produce her rapid recovery with yoga. This course direction furthered her quest to identify the key aligning and structural decompressive qualities of hatha yoga in combination with her training in manual therapies. Following Yoga Teacher Certification she founded The Canadian Yoga Institute in 2000 and began dividing her time between her full time massage therapy clinic and teaching yoga with a primary focus on restorative or therapeutic yoga.

It was during this time, through her combined experiences with applied studies in kinesiology, manual therapy techniques and restorative yoga that she was able to dissect what was occurring in the postures that provided so much relief. Specific patterns of muscle movement proved to consistently decompress the skeletal-muscular system and resolved questions around the primary causes of structural and soft tissue compression.

In her clinical practice she began to incorporate the directional movement in specific yoga postures manually for more rapid results. Through persistence and determination, this applied study resulted in the development of STAMINA® Rehabilitation Therapy. STAMINA® muscle alignment principles offer a total body system for physical therapists, massage therapists, yoga therapists and kinesiologists in the field of physical rehabilitation.