Dr. Ellison Melrose // #TechniqueThursday // www.ptonice.com  In today's episode of the PT on ICE Daily Show, Dry Needling lead faculty Ellison Melrose discusses an alternate technique to dry needle the lumbar multifidus. Take a listen to the podcast episode, watch the video, or read the full transcription below. If you're looking to learn more about dry needling, especially dry needling with e-stim using the ITO ES-160 stim unit, take a look at our Upper Body Dry Needling course, our Lower Body Dry Needling course, or check out our entire list of continuing education courses for physical therapy including our physical therapy certifications by checking out our website. Don't forget about all of our FREE eBooks, prebuilt workshops, free CEUs, and other physical therapy continuing education on our Resources tab. EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION 00:00 - ELLISON MELROSE Good morning YouTube and good morning Instagram. This is PT on ice daily show. I am Dr. Ellison Melrose and I am currently lead faculty with the dry needling division of ICE. So we are going to go over a alternative approach for dry needling the lumbar multifidus today. Um, before we get into that, I want to go over our upcoming courses. So this, the remainder of 2023, we have, um, a handful of courses. This weekend, Paul's going to be out in Anchorage, Alaska, and I believe that is capped. After that, he will be down in Seattle, Washington on November 3rd through the 5th for the upper quarter. I will be out in Rochester, Minnesota for upper quarter dry needling on November 18th through the 19th. We will both be teaching the first weekend in December. So December 1st through the 3rd, Paul will be in Bellingham, Washington, and he will be hitting upper quarter then, and I will be out in Clearwater, Florida, so opposite sides of the states, doing lower quarter. So if you guys have a chance to find us out on the road, or want to join us for the remainder of 2023, those are the courses. We have one other one also in Fayetteville, Arkansas, the second weekend in December, where we'll be doing lower quarter. out there. So if you guys have any questions about those courses coming up, feel free to message us here or yeah, stay tuned for those courses. And then 2024 we'll be starting out pretty hot with some more courses and our advanced course as well. It will be, will be coming, um, in 2024. 02:10 - COMMON APPROACH TO DRY NEEDLING THE LUMBAR MULTIFIDUS So what I wanted to do today was to go over an alternative approach for, uh, dry needling the lumbar multifidus. So there, We are not gonna go over clinical reasons for needling the lumbar multifidus, but for those who have been taught how to needle the multifidus, there is one technique that is used fairly widespread across all educators, and that is the wrap-over technique. For demonstration purposes, I am going to be using my knuckle as the spinous process, and then we will be demonstrating it on a human body as well. For that wrap-over technique, so we have our spinous process here, Wrap over technique, we use two fingers to compress within a one centimeter gutter, just lateral to the spinous process. And we create a target window with our fingers and treating within that zone. In order to treat bilaterally, so both sides, you have to walk around the table to treat the contralateral side, which is fine, But when we're talking about clinical efficiency, it may be conducive to be able to treat or to needle staying on the same side of the patient. So we have an alternative approach for needling the multifidus where you are able to stay on the same side of the patient, and that will be your dominant side. So I am right-handed, so I'm going to be treating from the right side of the table treating the lumbar multifidus. I'll demonstrate first the wrap over technique and the alternative technique. 04:02 - ALTERNATIVE APPROACH TO DRY NEEDLING THE LUMBAR MULTIFIDUS For that alternative technique, so instead of using that spinous pr