CAMPT Member Profile
BSc(Chem); BSc(PT); PhD
A physiotherapy graduate and Wesbrook Scholar (1996) from the University of British Columbia, Canada, LJ pursued ongoing manual therapy training with the Orthopaedic Division of the Canadian Physiotherapy Association (CPA) and became a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Manipulative Physiotherapy (FCAMPT) in 1999 with distinction. In 2001 LJ was certified in Intramuscular Stimulation as developed by Chan Gunn (CGIMS). With a background in competitive figure skating, and a love for playing outside, LJ has always been passionate about movement – understanding movement, and figuring out how to change movement so that people feel better, optimize performance, and have a positive experience of their body. From her work with challenging patient cases and the need to find a way to treat her own injuries, LJ became fascinated with the thorax early in her career. Combining her clinical ideas and research from other areas of the spine, LJ proposed multiple mechanisms to explain how dysfunction in the thorax could “drive”, or cause, many distal problems in the body, from neck pain, shoulder impingement, and altered neurodynamics to low back pain, pelvic girdle pain, incontinence and prolapse (LJ Lee 2005, 2007). LJ’s clinical ideas about motor control of the thorax and thoracic driven abdominal wall and lumbopelvic dysfunction led her to complete a PhD at the University of Queensland (2013). LJ is known for her unique way of looking at total body function in meaningful tasks related to function and performance to find the primary driver, or true underlying cause for clients’ pain and problems. The assessment framework of Meaningful Task Analysis (Lee LJ 2008) was developed in the context of LJ’s Thoracic Ring Approach™ and have become key features of The Integrated Systems Model for Pain and Disability (ISM) (Lee LJ, Lee DG 2010) and LJ's evolution of the ISM, ConnectTherapy™ (Lee LJ 2015). LJ has published her research and clinical ideas in peer-reviewed journals and books. She is an Associate Editor for the British Journal of Sports Medicine, a Professional Associate at the School of Rehabilitation Sciences, McMaster University, and an Honorary Senior Fellow at the University of Melbourne Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences. She mentors a team at her clinic, Synergy Physiotherapy in North Vancouver, Canada.