The Scotson Technique Library

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Scientific Basics

The children’s progress is consistent and measurable and can be predicted over each period of home therapy. The approach is based on the recognition that the growth, development and maintenance of muscular, skeletal and cerebral structure is governed and best explained in terms of the growth and development of the respiratory system.

All cells depend on oxygen for their survival. Cells make up the body tissues and tissues make up the muscles and connective tissues and internal organs. Therefore it is not surprising that the development of all other physical systems should depend on the development of the respiratory system.

The Scotson Technique has emerged from many years of Linda Scotson’s PhD research at University College London. The Technique is supported by evidence from the available scientific literature and by the steady collection and analysis of research data.

The Scotson Technique sees respiratory development as a cohesive drive behind normal development. This allows us to chart the progress of brain injured children in terms of the relationship between their respiratory age and their chronological age.

The Exercise Application Science

The pressure applications create a gentle pulse by opening the tiny muscular doors (or sphincters) that allow blood to proceed more deeply into the microcirculation. As the blood flow increases within the body tissue it creates structural changes and brings with it the oxygen carrying red blood cells and the minerals which provide the electrical charge necessary for the brain to identify where the tissue is. Once the brain receives this electrical signal it is able to send an outgoing signal back to the tissue. The applied pressures of Scotson Therapy optimise blood flow in all levels of body tissue and are necessarily light and gentle. They imitate the pressure changes produced by breathing which both develop and maintain the strength and responsiveness of the body’s internal tissue. The patterns and placement of the prescribed pressures change and evolve as the children’s development progresses.

The Scotson Technique and Other Therapeutic Programmes

The Scotson Technique points out that the brain needs to respond to the electrical activity of the muscle in order to send an outgoing signal. The Scotson Technique is now not alone in this conclusion. For example, the University of California is treating stroke patients by implanting electrodes into the muscle so that the brain can detect muscle electrical activity and so send outgoing command signals to the muscle. The Scotson Technique approach restores and maintains electrical feed forward from the tissue to the brain naturally.

The Diagnostic Evaluation

The Scotson Technique explanation draws attention to the ways in which poor respiratory mechanics deform the brain injured child’s muscular structure, physiological development and growth and how this affects function. This evidence is more helpful than medical terms such as cerebral palsy, development delay, autism and so on because it is the basis for the restorative capacity and the predictability of the approach.

The evaluation shows how abnormal respiratory mechanics lowers the internal pressures against the trunkal muscles and connective tissues between the bones. It also shows how this situation leads to the observable deformities of the shoulder girdle, pelvis and limbs and the disruption of the general and cerebral metabolism. It describes and explains the relationship of the stages of normal respiratory development to normal structural motor and cognitive development. This allows the comparison between the child’s chronological age and its respiratory age. It is only through the restoration of the respiratory mechanisms that the foundation for more normal function and more normal functional progress will be gained.

How is Progress Predicted?

• By photographic and video comparison of your child’s structure and function with the stages of structural and functional change created by normal respiratory development.
• By extensive structural measurement by which each child’s structure is compared both with its own previous assessment and with normal trunkal growth patterns.
• By computerised measurement of abdominal and thoracic breathing patterns which are compared both with normal values and with each child’s previous assessment.
• By 3 dimensional computerised spinal probe measurements looking at the dimensions of the spine and its relation to the shoulder and pelvis girdles and comparing these both with normal values and to each child’s previous assessments.

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