TheraSuit Intensive Therapy Program

What intensive therapy is

Intensive therapy is pediatric physical therapy delivered in a concentrated block instead of a weekly appointment. At Joy Therapy and Learning Center it follows the TheraSuit Method and runs for two consecutive weeks, two hours a day, five days a week. Ten sessions, twenty hours, in the time a child on a standard schedule would get two.

The reason is repetition. A child learning to sit, stand, transfer or walk is building new connections in the nervous system, and those connections are built by practicing the movement over and over, correctly, with enough support to succeed and enough challenge to matter. In a weekly session a physical therapist gets a handful of repetitions before the hour is up and a week passes. In an intensive, the same therapist practices the same movement patterns with your child every day, and each day starts where yesterday ended.

Two pieces of equipment make that possible. The first is the TheraSuit, a soft orthotic suit that holds the body in better alignment while your child moves, which is why families often call the whole approach suit therapy. The second is a Universal Exercise Unit, which most families know as the spider cage, a frame of pulleys and elastic cords that lets a therapist support, resist or isolate a movement precisely. Both are described below.

This is a program within our pediatric physical therapy service, led by Lora Carrion, PT, DPT, who is certified in the TheraSuit Method. It is not a replacement for a child’s regular therapy or a first step. Most children who come for an intensive already have a diagnosis and a therapy history, and the intensive is chosen because a specific goal needs more concentrated work than a weekly schedule can give it.

The TheraSuit

The TheraSuit Method was developed in 2002 by Izabela and Richard Koscielny, two physical therapists whose own daughter has cerebral palsy, and it has since been adopted by children’s hospitals and pediatric clinics across the United States. The suit at the center of it is a soft, dynamic orthosis: a vest, shorts, knee pads and shoe attachments connected by adjustable elastic cords. The cords are set by the therapist to pull the body toward correct alignment, so the trunk stays upright, the pelvis sits level and the joints load the way they should. A child who normally has to spend most of their effort staying upright can put that effort into the movement instead.

The suit does several things at once. It provides external stabilization for a trunk or hip that cannot yet hold itself, it applies gentle pressure and resistance that helps normalize muscle tone, it gives constant tactile feedback about where the body is in space, and it loads the joints vertically through the hips, which supports bone density and alignment in children who do not stand or walk much on their own. Because the resistance is adjustable, the same suit that supports a weak muscle can also be set to make a strong one work harder.

Head and trunk control are where the effects show up first. A child who is better supported through the middle of the body has an easier time controlling the head, and with it breathing and voice. Families sometimes notice a change in speech during an intensive that has nothing to do with speech therapy and everything to do with a stable trunk.

The Universal Exercise Unit

The Universal Exercise Unit, usually shortened to the spider cage, is a steel frame with pulleys and elastic cords. It has two jobs. In one setup, a child works against weights through the pulleys to strengthen a single muscle group in isolation, which is difficult to do any other way with a child who cannot follow an adult exercise program. In the other, elastic cords attach to a belt at the child’s hips and clip to the frame on all sides, which is where the spider cage name comes from. Suspended like that, a child can stand, balance, step and even fall safely, with the cords absorbing the weight their legs cannot yet hold.

For a child who has never stood independently, the cage is often the first place they experience upright balance without an adult’s hands on them. For a child who walks but falls, it is where they practice recovering their balance hundreds of times without getting hurt. The therapist adjusts the cords session by session as strength and control improve, so the support disappears at the pace the child no longer needs it.

Who intensive therapy helps

Intensive therapy is designed for children with neurological involvement, meaning the difficulty with movement comes from the brain or nervous system rather than from a single injury. Families usually come to us because their child:

• Has a diagnosis such as cerebral palsy and a movement goal that has plateaued in weekly therapy
• Cannot yet sit, stand or walk independently and is ready to work on it every day
• Has low or high muscle tone that makes ordinary strengthening hard to do
• Has uncontrolled movement that gets in the way of what they are trying to do
• Is recovering from a fracture, a surgery or a period of immobilization and needs to retrain movement quickly
• Has been told an intensive block could help and wants a program closer to home than the ones they have found

Diagnoses we work with in the intensive program include:

• Cerebral palsy
• Seizure disorders
• Down syndrome
• Rare genetic disorders
• Developmental delay
• Hypotonia and low muscle tone
• Traumatic brain injury
• Developmental coordination disorder
• Sensory integration disorder and autism
• Post-fracture and post-surgical retraining

This list is not exhaustive and nothing on it is a diagnosis. If something here sounds like your child, an evaluation is the way to find out what is actually going on.

What a session looks like

Every intensive is planned around the goals set at your child’s evaluation, so no two look identical. A typical two-hour day has a shape, though, and it helps to know it before you arrive.

1. Warm-up and preparation

   The session opens with stretching and hands-on work to prepare tight muscles and get your child’s body ready to move. Tone, sleep and mood all change from day to day, and the therapist reads them before deciding how hard to push.

2. Strengthening in the Universal Exercise Unit

   Using the pulleys, your child works specific muscle groups in isolation, with the therapist choosing the weights and the number of repetitions. This is the part of the day that builds the raw strength the functional work depends on.

3. Functional work in the TheraSuit

   With the suit on and set for the day, your child practices the actual skills: sitting, transitions, standing, stepping, balance and walking, depending on the goals. Repetition is the point, and the therapist finds ways to keep a child engaged through a lot of it.

4. Carryover and cool-down

   The day ends with the therapist showing you what changed, what to expect tomorrow and what to do at home that evening. By the end of the two weeks you will have a home program built from what worked.

Credentials

The intensive program is led by Lora Carrion, PT, DPT, who holds:

• A Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT) degree
• A current license to practice in the state of Georgia
• Certification in the TheraSuit Method, including the TheraSuit and Universal Exercise Unit
• Clinical experience with children who have cerebral palsy and other neurological conditions

This page is not a diagnosis and nothing on it is medical advice. If something here sounds like your child, an evaluation is how you find out what is actually going on.