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Simple Contact

The Clinician's Manual by Barrett L. Dorko, PT

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    • About Barrett L. Dorko P.T.
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The Clinician’s Manual: Essays on the Craft of Manual Care

by Barrett L. Dorko, P.T.

About Barrett Dorko

Barrett Dorko is an Amercian physical therapist, clinician, writer, and teacher. He contributed to the profession relentlessly for  more than 40 years.

Barrett is the originator of a method of manual therapy care, called Simple Contact, based on the premise that movement designed specifically to correct the mechanical deformation responsible for pain will emerge from the patient in an instinctive and effortless manner. This movement is instinctive, effortless, and present as long as life endures. He has taught pain and movement science and manual therapy care to thousands of therapists throughout the US and Canada.

Barrett is arguably the most prolific writer in his profession, and his writing has influenced the teaching of manual care in many physical therapy programs in the US and abroad. The “Essays from Dorko’s Desk” collection on this site has grown enormous. He wrote daily at the SomaSimple forums for 15 years.

The analgesia of movement: Ideomotor activity and manual care

Barrett L. Dorko, P.T. There is a certainty common to many of those who focus on manual means for pain relief: we are certain that the body naturally and perpetually …

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Without Volition: The Presence and Purpose of Ideomotor Movement

Barrett L. Dorko, P.T. The Presence of Ideomotor Movement Though it is rarely spoken of in discussions about human movement, descriptions of ideomotor …

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Why The Movie Cast Away Is Precisely About My Work

Barrett L. Dorko, P.T. Here we go again, back to the theatre to explain the nature of my thinking and technique. This time I m using Tom Hank s latest movie Cast …

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The Origins of Simple Contact

Barrett L. Dorko, P.T. Charles Brooks' Sensory Awareness: The Rediscovery of Experiencing (The Viking Press Inc. 1974) contains a chapter entitled "Simple …

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Do Nothing

Barrett L. Dorko, P.T. If you were to watch me work all day you d probably notice that I spend periods doing nothing. I mean I m like this when I m with patients. I wrote about …

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A Sense of Things

Barrett L. Dorko, P.T. In 1992 I did a presentation for The International Federation of Orthopedic Manipulative Therapists about the potential effect of …

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INSTINCT AND INHIBITION

In The Wisdom of the Body (Knopt 1997) by Sherwin Nuland, the author traces the origins of the word "instinct" to the latin "stinguere," meaning to goad or to prick. …

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Adaptive Potential: A new concept

Barrett L. Dorko, P.T. The term "flexibility" we commonly use in physical therapy means not only the quantity of movement available in a joint or group of joints …

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What do you think you’re doing?

Barrett L. Dorko, P.T. "I just can't do it anymore. I've got constant pain in my wrist and forearm. I've started to drop things and now I'm feeling it in my shoulder." The …

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