Staff at Oregon School of Massage – William Pleau, Chiropractic Physician

Meet another of our experienced OSM instructors. (From information provided by Dr. Pleau, edited by Ray Siderius, OSM Director.)

Since Fall Quarter 2010 William Pleau, DC, has been teaching pathology and massage classes at OSM, initially in Salem and more recently in Portland. When we learned of Dr. Pleau’s extensive background in massage and, especially, neuromuscular therapy (NMT) we asked him to develop an NMT series for OSM. To date several segments of that series have been offered. (Every quarter OSM offers an Introduction to NMT and one of the segments. See the current schedule for “NMT Introduction” and other NMT classes.

Given that at OSM we refer to each rather informally in the rest of this article I’ll refer to Dr. Pleau as “Bill”.

Bill says “It was through involvement in martial arts that I developed an interest in massage. I saw it as a way to help me improve my athletic performance. Experiences with my own injuries helped me to realize the healing effects of bodywork. What started as an interest quickly became a passion.”

He practiced massage for ten years in the Denver area and taught at Colorado School of Healing Arts* for 6 1/2 years. “After practicing massage and teaching I decided I wanted to take my education further. I wanted to have a physician’s level of understanding of the human body and of health and disease. I considered various physician education programs and settled on chiropractic because of my passion for manual (hands on) medicine. ”

In 2006 Bill graduated from Metropolitan State College in Denver, with degrees in biology and chemistry. He completed his chiropractic studies at Western States Chiropractic College in 2009 and shortly thereafter began a practice in Beaverton. He is currently working on a post-doctorate Diplomate in Internal Medicine. He lives in Beaverton with his wife Annie, and their son Oliver.

Regarding his philosophy, which he says has not changed since starting as a massage student in 1996, his goal is “to meet the patient/student/client where they are in their life and start by responding to what they perceive as their immediate needs. While doing so, we educate them about the causes of their problems and with their informed consent, begin to address those underlying factors as well. Then, as the relationship develops and trust is established, we continue opening doors for our patients/students/clients that lead them to higher levels of self-understanding and self-responsibility. Communication is of course, the foundation. We have to build a rapport and understand them so they may understand us. We help them create a vision of what they would like their life to be and then work to reveal their path to realization of that vision.”

Chiropractic and massage (and other forms of bodywork) are inherently synergistic. Every time I put my hands on someone’s body, I’m really doing both. As related professions, we have a responsibility to understand each other and work together for the good of our patients/clients. And we need to be better about communicating the value or our synergistic relationship to patients. I’ve worked with individuals who’ve reported to me that chiropractic didn’t help them but massage did and vice versa. We need to help patients understand that both chiropractic and massage are necessary and work together for attainment, restoration, and maintenance of optimal health. Massage therapists and chiropractors need to be familiar with each other’s philosophies and methodologies, and continue to strive to find more efficient ways to communicate and network with each other.

*OSM considers Colorado School of Healing Arts (www.csha.net) in Loveland, Co a valuable contributor to the field of the massage education.