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Left or right. You sort images of limbs, nothing moves.
Graded Motor Imagery in North Liberty.
When the nervous system has become the problem, moving the painful limb is not step one. Retraining how your brain maps that limb is. This is the staged, evidence-based way in.
What It Is
Your brain holds the map. We redraw it.
Some pain stops being about tissue. The injury healed. The scans came back clean. The pain stayed, and it started spreading to things that should not hurt at all: a sleeve, a breeze, the thought of moving.
That happens in the nervous system. The brain’s map of that body part gets blurry, and the alarm stays switched on. Push the limb harder and you argue with the alarm. Graded Motor Imagery works on the map instead, in stages, starting where your system can actually cope.
You have already read everything. You have already been told to push through it, and pushing through it made it worse. That is exactly the kind of patient who does well here.
This is also why the training in this building matters. Natalie Johnston, MPT is a Fellow in Pain Sciences and a Therapeutic Pain Specialist with 26+ years in practice. Dr. Adam Janowski, PT, DPT, PhD earned his doctorate at the University of Iowa studying chronic pain and chronic fatigue syndromes. Staging this correctly takes that background.
Graded to your tolerance, never forced
What It Helps
When moving the limb is not yet an option.
A sensitized nervous system does not settle on its own. Left alone, the map keeps shrinking, and the list of things you avoid keeps getting longer.
How It Is Staged
Three stages, always in order.
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Imagined movement. You rehearse the motion in your head.
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Mirror therapy. Your good limb moves, your brain sees both.
Why It Works
Four reasons it earns a place in your plan.
Progress without provoking a flare.
A way in when movement is still too much.
Run by a therapist trained in pain science.
You control the next step, every time.
Pairs Well With
Graded Motor Imagery rarely works alone.
Questions, Answered
Graded Motor Imagery, no mystery.
It is built not to. Stage one is looking at images and telling left from right, and nothing on your body moves at all. That is the whole reason it is graded: you work at a level your nervous system tolerates, and if a stage provokes a flare we drop back to the one below it. Nothing happens without your say.
Most programs go straight at the painful part and ask it to move more. When the nervous system is the thing that changed, that can turn the alarm up instead of down. Graded Motor Imagery starts with the brain map, in stages, one-on-one with a licensed physical therapist trained in pain science. Movement gets added back once your system can take it.
We are not going to promise you that, and you have probably been promised enough. What we will do is a cause-first evaluation, tell you honestly whether this is the right tool for what you have, and give you a plan with an endpoint rather than an open tab. Call (319) 382-2743 and we will also check your benefits for you before you start.
Book Your Visit
Ready when you are.
Request a time and a real person calls you back. No phone tree. No ‘someone will reach out.’ Just a plan.
- Hours Mon-Fri: 8:00 am - 5:00 pm
- (319) 382-2743 Prefer to talk now? Call us.
- No referral needed in Iowa
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Typical response: under 2 business hours
Step 1 of 5
Request sent.
That’s the hard part done. We’ll call during business hours to lock in your time.
Visit Us
Care this good, this close.
Motion Matters Physical Therapy and Wellness
- 660 West Cherry St. Suite 2, North Liberty, IA 52317 (opens in a new tab)
- (319) 382-2743
- Fax: (319) 359-4114
- natalie@ptmotionmatters.com
- Mon-Fri: 8:00 am - 5:00 pm