Finesse Physical Therapy in Great Falls aims to 'dramatically decrease' patients' chronic pain
Born and raised in Great Falls, Montana, Dr. Jodi Knable brought her business, Finesse Physical Therapy, to The Electric City in 2014. Knable studied biology at Portland State University, MSU tech, and the University of Great Falls for an undergraduate. After, she was accepted to the Physical Therapy program at Loma Linda University and later received her doctorate in 2006 from the university. She is also a mother of two teenage daughters.
Knable specializes in visceral and neural manipulation, which is manual therapy using light and gentle touch or force to help encourage normal mobility where physiologic motion has been impaired.
“So they come in here, we trace it down just using tension. That's really all it requires. I put my hand on their head, and just that loading of the body, makes them shift to protect whatever is hurting. And that's where I start. So if we can get that spot moving again, their pain dramatically decreases,” Knable said.
One of Knable’s driving factors to start her practice was the technique used by her physical therapist for her own chronic pain even before beginning physical therapy school.
“I said, ‘oh my goodness, what did you just do?” Knable said to her physical therapist. “It was so profound. I was looking for it for the rest of the time. I was out of PT school before I actually found the instruction for it, and they came to Bozeman, so I took my first class [and was] blown away and I have never stopped. So I just kept taking classes until I could absorb everything they had.”
Knable said her business is not your average physical therapy, and she encourages all to give the style a try, especially those patients who have been told their pain may be “all in their head” or have seemingly run out of other options.
“Typically the patients I see are 30- to 50-year-old women and I think it's just because they're the ones that got fed up with it and they're looking for an alternative. I've treated babies as young as 18 months. I treated one in the womb. That was awesome. And then I've treated a 96-year-old, so I don't care if you're in pain you deserve relief.”
Knable said lifestyle plays an important part in patients' healing process. Since lifestyle education is an integral part, Knable has been able to build relationships with counselors, fitness instructors, and medical doctors to refer her patients for specific needs.
“I do a lot of lifestyle education. So it's teaching people how to eat better, how to choose," she said. "Choose better. Meaning not just-food. I'm talking about relationships. I'm talking about your thoughts. I'm talking about your everyday activities. Just make better choices, more positive choices. So you don't have to go back to this.
"Because an interesting part of this technique is that as I'm treating frequently trauma comes up previous trauma, just because our bodies tend to store trauma because we don't know how else to deal with it. [It] comes a point where we can't store it anymore. We have to get rid of it. And that's why pain shows up sometimes. And so as I'm treating, a lot of those stories will come out. And then I immediately refer to a counselor and say, listen, I'm doing this part. You do this part. And it works much better if people do both. At the same time.”
She practices what she preaches by also seeing a physical therapist, checking in with her counselor, praying, and participating in all sorts of outdoor activities and will even bring her daughters along for the fun.
Her overall goals are to educate her patients so they can take care of themselves, to help relieve pain, and to grow her business.
"I believe that this is a God-given gift and I want to be able to share it to those who need it. It's truly unique and I hate hearing stories of people who have been hurt by the medical profession, partly although I hate to go there, but if I can relieve some of that pain, why not?"
You can keep up Finesse Physical Therapy and contact her through her website at finessephysicaltherapy.com or her Facebook page, Finesse Physical Therapy. She welcomes all. Finesse Physical Therapy is a provider for Blue Cross Blue Shield, Allegiance, Aetna and Pacific Source.
This article originally appeared on Great Falls Tribune: Jodi Knable, owner of Finesse Physical Therapy in Great Falls
