Episode
159: Can You Really Palpate the Psoas? (with Christopher DaPrato)
- Podcast
- The Thinking Practitioner
- Published
- Dec 10, 2025
- Duration seconds
- 1853
- Processing state
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- https://www.thethinkingpractitioner.com/e/159-gpt/
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Summary
🎙 Can You Really Palpate the Psoas? MRI Evidence, Clinical Debate & a Bonus Visit from the Researcher Can manual therapists actually palpate the psoas, or is it anatomically out of reach? In this episode, Til Luchau and Whitney Lowe unpack a new real-time MRI pilot study presented at the 7th International Fascia Research Congress by UCSF physical therapist Christopher DaPrato and colleagues. The study offers rare imaging-based insight into what really happens when we try to touch this deep, controversial muscle. And at the end, Christopher drops in for a brief bonus segment to share safety insights and his hopes for future research. The debate around psoas palpation has become a kind of proxy war in manual therapy — between pain-science and movement educators who question highly specific anatomical claims, and hands-on practitioners who have used psoas work for decades and find it clinically meaningful. This conversation explores how DaPrato’s imaging helps reframe that debate. In this episode, they discuss:- Why psoas palpation has become a flashpoint debate and a stand-in for deeper philosophical disagreements in the field- How DaPrato’s team used dynamic MRI to observe what happens under the hands during attempted psoas palpation- What the images showed about depth, tissue layers, and muscle deformation when pressure is applied- The surprising finding that even a higher-BMI participant showed clear psoas shape change under palpation- How viscera behaved under pressure — including what the study suggests about visceral compression and safety- Clinical implications for angle, depth, and pressure when working in the anterior hip/abdominal region- The role of tools like the PSO-RITE compared with hand palpation, and what may (or may not) be interchangeable- How this…