This class is intended to develop a thinking process that can be applied to virtually every patient. The goal is to lay a foundation for the participant to be a skillful user of the clinical reasoning model conceived by Geoffrey Maitland in the assessment and treatment of patients in orthopedic manual therapy. The intent is to apply hypothetical-deductive-inductive reasoning to patient assessment that liberates the therapist to create change in the behavior of physical dysfunction as a priority over diagnostic categorization. There are foundational concepts that when applied appropriately & consistently can literally guide the thinking process for making decisions about what we can do with patients who arrive with common clinical presentations and novel circumstances. These foundational concepts will be the primary focus of the class.