Nicole Urell, LMT, NMT, CPT
Neuromuscular Self-Treatment Coach
Soft-Tissue Self Treatment Strategies
Strength and Mobility Coaching
& Somatic Exercise
Strength and Mobility Coaching
& Somatic Exercise
Fall 2026 update:
I'm currently pausing my in-office NMT practice. I'm now offering remote bodywork self-treatment sessions, along with strength, mobility, and somatic exercise programming.
After three years at my Belmont office, our landlords abruptly ended our tenancy. It's been 15 years since I launched my NMT practice in Cambridge, MA, later moving to Belmont. While I'm sad to leave our lovely office, I'm looking forward to new opportunities to bring NMT into peoples' lives.
As I've continued training in neuromuscular therapy, somatics, and different movement practices to help my clients, I’ve also been managing a series of my own injuries and chronic pain. What allowed me to keep working, playing, parenting, and running a bodywork practice has been one thing in particular: a set of neuromuscular self-treatment routines that fit into my everyday life.
I love hands-on NMT and manual therapy, but clients often tell me that changes in their self-care strategies are what ultimately make the biggest difference in their posture, pain, and movement. My goal now is to work 1-on-1 to provide assessment-based, customized self-treatment plans for those ready to learn, move, center, and restore.
I'm currently pausing my in-office NMT practice. I'm now offering remote bodywork self-treatment sessions, along with strength, mobility, and somatic exercise programming.
After three years at my Belmont office, our landlords abruptly ended our tenancy. It's been 15 years since I launched my NMT practice in Cambridge, MA, later moving to Belmont. While I'm sad to leave our lovely office, I'm looking forward to new opportunities to bring NMT into peoples' lives.
As I've continued training in neuromuscular therapy, somatics, and different movement practices to help my clients, I’ve also been managing a series of my own injuries and chronic pain. What allowed me to keep working, playing, parenting, and running a bodywork practice has been one thing in particular: a set of neuromuscular self-treatment routines that fit into my everyday life.
I love hands-on NMT and manual therapy, but clients often tell me that changes in their self-care strategies are what ultimately make the biggest difference in their posture, pain, and movement. My goal now is to work 1-on-1 to provide assessment-based, customized self-treatment plans for those ready to learn, move, center, and restore.
How Neuromuscular Self-Treatment Can Help
Neuromuscular therapy is problem-solving bodywork. It grew from the manual therapy branches of osteopathic medicine, and has been widely adopted by bodyworkers, physical therapists and other providers.
It's an evidence-informed approach to modulating sensation, working with touch or tool-based pressure; targeted positioning; muscle energy techniques; and/or restorative movements. These support regulation of the musculoskeletal and nervous systems, and can provide temporary physical changes in the soft tissues, which may support improved pain modulation, movement, and healing.
NMT can help manage chronic pain, aid post-injury healing, ease mobility issues, and improve posture. Often we see a positive impact on the body's stress responses with consistent treatment.
NMT is assessment-based. We don't "press and guess" but take a holistic look at a person's posture, mobility, health history, and pain presentation. We consider lifestyle factors that may contribute to stress and chronic pain, and consider that pain and other issues can arise from multiple sources.
Neuromuscular therapists are trained to know that pain and dysfunction can come from an area some distance from where we actually feel it. And we understand that pain - along with movement issues, stress, anxiety, etc. - are all nervous system phenomena.
Trigger Point Therapy is an NMT technique that very easily transfers to self-treatment using tools like tennis balls, foam rollers, etc. Understanding referred pain patterns is important in choosing which areas to treat, in what order, and how to move afterwards for best results. Nicole trained with Coaching the Body Institute in Trigger Point Self-Care, and is a certified trigger point therapist through Myopain Seminars.
Muscle Energy Techniques use the contract/relax cycle of muscle fibers to improve stretch tolerance and create comfort at new joint end-ranges. They can also be used as non-stretch isometric movements to activate weak areas, or create muscle balance across joints.
Neuromuscular Stretch Techniques - METs + stretching. We can use the contract/relax method in a few different ways. Not everything that feels tight needs lengthening, and sometimes a muscle in pain needs quite the opposite of a stretch. Nicole is a certified stretch coach through the National Academy of Sports Medicine.
Positional Therapy is a passive MET that helps re-set the tone of tense and tight muscles by supporting them in specific tension-releasing positions, incredibly useful for shifting neuromuscular tone before a stretch, a corrective movement, or within a soft-tissue treatment.
Positional Therapy Yoga structured positioning sequences with supported yoga poses, integrating gentle muscle energy stretches throughout. Nicole trained at the Kripalu Center to earn her Level II certification in Integrated Positional Therapy.
Somatic Exercises are a huge group of (obviously) body-based activities, used to increase body awareness and regulate the nervous system. Using self-massage, re-patterning movements, breath work, etc, Nicole has seen great results using somatic practices since completing several programs with the Somatic Coaching Academy.
Strategies for Self Treatment
How do we pick and choose the right treatments and movements, prioritize which areas to focus on, and somehow fit it into our already full lives?
Through NMT self-treatment coaching, we discover what's already working in your routine. Often clients have a great base of exercise, movement, and self-care, or have had some things that worked in the past that can be edited and re-introduced. Various assessments help us understand what to prioritize in treatment. Your needs and interests lead the way - some of us need more active, strengthening restorative movement; others may need time to reset and unwind on a mat. We can put short treatment and movement flows together to practice at home... or create a list of things to "sprinkle" in throughout a busy week.
The best way to begin is often by starting small and stacking self-treatment habits with what we're already doing.
Please reach out to talk more, and discover if working 1-on-1 might help you.
