We work with patients every day who’ve been living with persistent neck pain, recurring headaches, or jaw problems that haven’t responded to conventional treatment. Many of them have already tried physiotherapy, medication, or other approaches without finding lasting relief.
Our physiotherapists are trained in a range of specialised techniques, and the Mulligan Concept is one of the most effective tools we use, particularly for patients with neck and jaw symptoms. If you’re worried about what hands-on treatment might feel like or have had a bad experience with physiotherapy in the past, this article is for you.
What Is the Mulligan Concept and How Does It Work?
Like the McKenzie Method, the Mulligan Concept was developed by a New Zealand physiotherapist, Brian Mulligan, in the 1980s. Mulligan observed that combining a gentle, sustained repositioning of a joint with the patient’s own active movement could produce pain-free results in cases where other techniques had failed.
This core technique is called Mobilisation With Movement, or MWM. While the therapist guides the patient through a movement that was painful or restricted before, they carefully and steadily apply pressure to the damaged joint. If done well, the movement should feel much easier and not hurt at all.
Mulligan has created special procedures for the spine called NAGs (Natural Apophyseal Glides) and SNAGs (Sustained Natural Apophyseal Glides). These are especially helpful for neck discomfort and headaches that come from the cervical spine.
What makes the Mulligan Concept different?
A few things set it apart from other manual therapy approaches:
- The treatment is designed to be painless. If a technique hurts, it is modified or stopped. For patients who are nervous about hands-on treatment, this is an important reassurance.
- Results are generally seen right away. Unlike approaches that build gradually over weeks, many patients notice a real change in their range of motion or pain levels during the session itself. This gives both the patient and the therapist clear, immediate feedback about whether the technique is working.
- It is collaborative rather than passive. Rather than lying still while a therapist works on you, Mulligan techniques involve you actively moving during treatment. You are a participant in the process, not just a recipient of it.
What to Expect During a Mulligan Session
If you’ve never had hands-on neck or jaw treatment before, it’s normal to be unsure about what it will be like.
Our physiotherapists begin every session with a thorough assessment, asking about your symptoms, what makes them better or worse, and how they affect your daily life. We’ll watch how your neck or jaw moves and figure out where there are problems or pain.
During treatment, your therapist will put gentle, steady pressure on the joint that needs it while you move it through a range of motion. This could be a certain part of your neck, your upper cervical spine, or your jaw. The pressure is mild, so you might be surprised at how light the touch is. You’ll be asked whether you’re in pain, and if you are, the technique will be changed.
Sessions are interactive and guided, not something done to you while you wait. We want to hear your feedback as we work, not just when we’re finished.
How the Mulligan Concept Helps Neck Pain and Headaches
Many persistent headaches have their origins in the neck, a condition known as cervicogenic headache. These headaches are caused by dysfunction in the joints, muscles, or nerves of the upper cervical spine, and they’re often misdiagnosed or mistaken for migraines, which is one reason many patients spend years seeking answers.
The upper cervical spine — the top two or three vertebrae of the neck — is a common source of referred pain into the head and face. When these joints are restricted or not moving as they should, they might produce headache patterns that seem to originate from areas distant from the neck.
Mulligan’s SNAG technique addresses this directly. Your therapist applies a precise, painless glide to the affected cervical joint while you move your head through the range that was previously restricted or painful. This repositions the joint during movement, restoring normal mechanics rather than just temporarily relieving tension. The goal is lasting improvement in joint function, which addresses the source of the headache rather than masking the symptom.
In our experience, patients who haven’t responded to other physiotherapy approaches often do well with Mulligan techniques on the cervical spine, particularly when their headaches are consistently linked to neck stiffness or specific movements.
How the Mulligan Concept Helps Jaw Pain
If you’ve noticed noises when you open and close your mouth, difficulty opening your jaw, or pain when chewing, you could be experiencing jaw dysfunction. The temporomandibular joint (TMJ) is one of the most complex and frequently used joints in the body, involved in speaking, chewing, swallowing, and yawning. That means dysfunction here can have a big impact on your daily life.
Some patients with TMJ pain also experience ear pain or headaches that they don’t immediately connect to their jaw. This is where working with a specialised physiotherapy team like us can make all the difference. We understand that the jaw and neck are closely connected, meaning dysfunction in one can contribute to symptoms in the other. Patients dealing with jaw pain often also carry tension in the upper cervical spine, so treating them in isolation often produces incomplete results.
Mulligan techniques applied to the TMJ work by restoring normal joint movement while you actively open and close your mouth. Your therapist applies a gentle, sustained repositioning of the jaw joint while guiding you through the restricted range. As with cervical SNAGs, this process should be painless, and when it’s working, you’ll typically experience an immediate improvement in how far you can open your mouth and how comfortable that movement feels.
Benefits of the Mulligan Concept
The Mulligan Concept offers a number of advantages, particularly for patients who have already tried other approaches without success:
- Painless treatment: Every technique is designed to be comfortable. If something hurts, it’s modified, not pushed through.
- Fast, visible results: Changes in range of movement and pain levels are often apparent within the session, giving you and your therapist clear evidence that the approach is working.
- Addresses neck and jaw together: Because the Mulligan Concept is effective for both the cervical spine and the TMJ, it’s well suited treating the full picture rather than isolated symptoms.
- Suitable when other approaches haven’t worked: We regularly see patients who’ve had physiotherapy elsewhere without improvement. Mulligan’s techniques offer a different mechanism and often produce results in these cases.
- Complements our other techniques: The Mulligan Concept works alongside the Watson Headache Approach and the McKenzie Method, which we also use at HNJ. Your treatment plan may draw on more than one approach depending on what your assessment reveals.
Need Relief From Your Pain?
If you’ve been living with persistent headaches, neck pain, or jaw dysfunction, a proper assessment is the most important first step. The right treatment depends entirely on understanding the source of your symptoms, which is what our specialised physiotherapists are trained to identify.
Even if you’ve tried physiotherapy before without success, that doesn’t mean we can’t help. It could be that they haven’t identified the underlying cause, or the technique they used wasn’t the right fit for your specific problem. Our team takes a thorough approach to assessment, and we’ll be honest with you about what we think is likely to help.
Book an assessment with our team to find out whether the Mulligan Concept is right for you.
