It was over in less than a second.

Donna Berg had spent almost an hour examining Dan Heleniak. Her fingers probed his body for hints of tension.

Her fingers gently searched for the signs, working her way up his spine, over his neck, face and head, deep into his abdomen and down his legs.

Sometimes she stopped to make a grease pencil mark at a stress point. After checking and rechecking for tension Berg had pinpointed what she felt was the dominant stress point on Heleniak’s 69-year-old body.

The culprit was on his back. It was the first rib on the left side. Berg had Heleniak sit up. She placed her fingers on the spot, had him relax and breathe in.

She quickly nudged the spot and released. Faster than you could say “ahhh,” it was over. Only Heleniak didn’t feel instant relief.

“To be honest, I don’t feel an immediate response,” he said. He wasn’t expecting it. But the retired Redding, Calif., resident has complete faith that Berg’s technique relieves his pain.

“I was able to get to there without all the pain. That’s what really sold me on Donna’s technique — it had a lot less pain,” Heleniak said.

“I know that when she’s done with her session and I get up and walk around, I feel so much more flexible,” he added.

Berg, a physical therapist, said the technique she used on Heleniak is called “mechanical link,” a treatment method developed in the 1970s by French physician Paul Chauffour. Berg began using the procedure in 1996.

Berg does all her work at patients’ homes, using a portable massage table. During her probing, she tests “lines of force” in the bones. She also looks for tension in the musculoskeletal and vascular systems, as well as the viscera, or internal organs.

She looks for tension. And usually there is a dominant point of tension on the body, she said.

When she finds that spot, she gives it a “quick stretch,” which patient Shelley Rynd described as a nudge. Berg described the quick stretch as pushing down, across and rotating quickly.

Once the major point of stress is relieved, it releases tension in up to 80 percent of the other points throughout the body, Berg said.

“It’s very different from the standard therapies. There’s absolutely no manipulation at all,” she said.

“It’s different in that it evaluates the whole body, rather than one part at a time. You look at the whole picture, rather than a knee or an elbow,” Berg said.

Rynd said that other physical therapies she has undergone were painful. But mechanical link involved no massaging or requiring her to move sore, injured areas, she said.

Heleniak said his doctors initially referred him to Berg after he had swelling, pain and stiffness following knee replacement surgery in March. But he has continued to receive treatment from her because he was so happy with the results.

Heleniak said that for years he had poor blood circulation, which caused his hands and feet to be cold.

But Berg’s treatments have improved his circulation, he said.

“I feel more alive,” Heleniak said.