360 NMT® FAQs
What is the history of Neuromuscular Therapy?
NMT has origins in Ayurvedic, osteopathic and chiropractic medicine. It has been around since the 1930s, first in Europe, then in the United States.
In Europe, Stanley Lief, DO and Boris Chaitow, DO originally developed Ayurvedic manual therapy principles. Lief emphasized palpation to assess sensitivity in soft tissue.
In the United States in the 1940s and 50s, Janet Travell, MD, established herself as a specialist in treating muscle pain, producing many publications. Travell became the first female personal physician to a President in the White House, treating Kennedy with trigger point injections to relax ‘cramps’ in his spinal muscles. In 1983, Travell and David Simons, MD published the first of two trigger point texts Myofascial Pain and Dysfunction – The Trigger Point Manual(s). These revered texts have been translated into many foreign languages and were expanded and updated in 2019.
A US chiropractor named Raymond Nimmo came across Travell’s trigger point theories and noted that these noxious points coincided with his own clinical soft tissue findings. Dr. Nimmo, who rejected the ‘bone out of place’ paradigm, may be considered the grandfather of NMT in the United States.
Paul St. John, LMT, (a student of Nimmo) popularized Nimmo’s work beginning in the 1970’s; he called the modality the St. John Method of Neuromuscular Therapy™. Judith DeLany, LMT, trained with and taught for St. John, and went on to develop her own seminar program that she calls NMT American Version™. Douglas Nelson, LMT, who also trained with and taught for St. John, also developed his own seminar program focusing on assessment and critical thinking called Precision Neuromuscular Therapy™.
Throughout the century, the European and American versions maintained a similar theoretical base, but employed different manual techniques. In 1996, a groundbreaking relationship between Leon Chaitow, DO, ND (nephew of Boris Chaitow) and Judith DeLany resulted in the publication of Modern Neuromuscular Techniques. Dr. Chaitow and DeLany later combined their talents and ideas again to write the two volume texts called Clinical Application of Neuromuscular Techniques.
Two additional leaders in the field of myofascial pain and research, Jan Dommerholt, DPT, and Robert Gerwin, MD, founded Myopain Seminars™ which honors Janet Travell and is considered the most prestigious Myofascial Trigger Point Therapy training program in the United States. Stew Wild, a former co-owner of 360 NMT®, developed the Manual Trigger Point Therapy course program for Myopain Seminars™.
360 NMT® techniques integrate the best of Precision Neuromuscular Therapy™, NMT American Version™, and Myopain Seminars™ resulting in a problem solving approach combining NMT with trigger point deactivation techniques.