Some Trinitarian Advice

July 9th, 2010

Someone in a good position asked me:

As an established expert in our field, if you could offer students and new, grads one piece of advice to further themselves, what would it be?

And I answered:

The one advice God answers as a Trinity:

1) Be clear in your intent. Knowing what you intend to do can inform your hands and inform the client / patient at a subtle level in such a way that makes up for your ignorance of exactly where everything is and what is going on in their tissues. The other side of that coin – mucking around hoping to find something that works (the ‘press and pray’ strategy) is occasionally a way of causing damage.

2) The contrary but still consistent advice is: experiment. When what you know is not working, make a conscious choice to explore in search of a new way. How else do you think all the things you know now were discovered? Most scientific discoveries are not made to the sound of ‘Eureka!’, but to the sound of ‘Hunh?’.

3) The 11th commandment: Thou shalt not bore God. If you are bored, you are doing something wrong. This is the most interesting profession going and it’s a largely unexplored area. If you’re bored, you got down a cul-de-sac, and you need to back out and go on in another direction. If all your sessions start looking and feeling the same, this is a good indication you are bored. Get help via mentorship or a new class.

Fascial Release

July 9th, 2010

With so much going on about fascia in general, Anatomy Trains in particular, and this site in the middle, I though I would share a clarifying piece of an email I just received from James Earls, the head of Kinesis in UK. He and I are coming out with a book soon on Fascial Release. So, are we doing fascial release, Anatomy Trains, of KMI? (KMI is our flagship training in a Rolf-evolved integrative bodywork).

Fascial Release is a technique, a way of getting malleable but tough tissue – the sinews that hold us together – to relent long enough for the movement pattern to change. There are lots of people using such techniques, and other techniques that can be incorporated into the fascial release domain. It’s this simple: some massage techniques done deeper, slower, and with an awareness of the ‘wave’ in the fascia become Fascial Release Technique – by definition, but not necessarily in origin. ‘There is nothing new under the sun of manipulation’, said Ida Rolf, and I still find this true 30 years and many brand names after her death.

Anatomy Trains is a model – a map of how the myofascia connects in longitudinal slings around the body. As a map, it is neither definitive nor exhaustive, and it certainly is not the territory of the lived, whole body. But it is a useful map with explanatory power, especially in long-term problems where postural compensation has set in.

KMI – SI is a process whereby we gently and progressively unfold the client’s pattern toward something more complete, more open, more aligned, and juicier. We use the Fascial Release techniques as a modus operandi, and we use the Anatomy Trains as an organizing map, but KMI is a modus vivendi – a way of bringing all this to bear on the art of life and living in a structured, moving body.

The future of the massage profession

April 27th, 2010

In historical terms, the modern resurgence of the massage profession is just getting underway, and the opportunities to earn more if you learn more are simply tremendous in the coming years. The principles and knowledge-base of the contemporary LMT will apply to many different clinical and educational settings in the new social environment which will follow the renewal of health care in America.

Three aspects that new and on-going therapists need to learn are:

1) Holistic anatomy: There’s no way around it – to sit at professional tables in this field you need to know the nomenclature. All the same, traditional anatomy (origins, insertions, etc.) is increasingly irrelevant as anatomy is revised in light of the new research on fascial remodeling and kinetic linkages like the Anatomy Trains Myofascial Meridians. So we need to know biomechanics, and we need to be on top of the new developments. This is what we are doing at Kinesis – winnowing the latest research and giving you the results. Being up on developments will raise your status in the eyes of other professionals and clients, and thus raise your income through increased referrals.

2) Client education: This is an ever-increasing requirement for all manual therapists: the ability to give specific, relevant, and informed ‘homework’ to your clients to help them enhance what they get from your good work. The days of just having a relaxing massage without follow-on care are largely gone already. The skill level of Pilates teachers, personal trainers, and movement teachers must be matched by the massage therapist –a great learning and earning opportunity to distinguish yourself from the pack.

3) Self-development: Nothing keeps your income up like excitement; when you are excited, it communicates and people are excited to be with you. Nothing excites you like learning new stuff. Sometimes that new learning can be a concept, like 1) above, or a technique, like 2) above, but honestly the most exciting things are emotional or spiritual. While we hope you buy our DVD’s or read our books, the most exciting things happen in our longer training classes , or in family life or on an adventure where your deep insides get changed.

Fall in love. Go on a challenging trip. Allow yourself to be changed by your life partner (fall in love again). Really go into your own spirituality or pain deeply. Any of these things will probably result in a short-term loss to your practice, but in a long-term gain.

Neil Armstrong said he never exercised because he believed that one ‘only has so many heartbeats’, so he didn’t want to raise the rate unnecessarily. The problem with this argument is that the raised heart rate of an exercise session results in a lowered heart rate for the rest the day – a net lowering. Same deal: sacrifice some income temporarily to take real care of yourself, and you will find your income grows when you’re back on the job.

An Alternative To The “Myofascial Pain” Construct?

April 13th, 2010

Now concerning this Bogduk article on my site: — I gotta say I respect his careful method but not his conclusions because I disagree with his assumption of where the ‘instant axis’ of movement is when you contract the psoas: the spine does not support itself or move around the bodies / discs, but rather around the neural arch / facet joints. But that’s my observation and intellectual conclusion, not a scientific finding.

SI Schools and Education

April 10th, 2010

An update to an earlier post:
Structural Integration Brands

I am often asked what is the difference between Kinesis and Rolfing, and some of this is already spelled out on our web site:



For what it’s worth, here’s my take on the subject: the Rolf Institute and other SI schools offer excellent education. Each school has its own flavour, and different students will be better suited to the different emphases. Some are more anatomically or clinically oriented, some more psychologically or spiritually oriented. 

My problem is I like it all, so we try to include all aspects in our training.

 There are, in any case, far greater differences among practitioners than among the schools, so you will find (and should search out) a practitioner who ‘fits’ you, just as with a school.

 All that said: Anatomy Trains is a map of interest to a wide variety of practitioners of many methods, manual and movement. KMI is one application of Anatomy Trains to human structural compensation patterns. KMI is definitely evolved from the pioneering work of Dr. Ida Rolf, and the principles of the KMI 12-series are to her credit, not mine. KMI is unique in basing the sessions around these myofascial continuities, the Anatomy Trains. This makes the method independent of “Ida said do this next” kind of thinking, and easier to explain rationally to other professionals.

 I like to think we build good perceptual skills – both hands and eyes – in our students, and that we are friendly to and inclusive of other methods rather than being aloof or exclusionary.

 But as I say, all the schools and all the practitioners I know are sincerely trying to do their best to educate people in changing structural and movement patterning. And it’s a rapidly evolving field.


Whimsey in Ulm

April 5th, 2010
Sue and Tom and Robert in Ulm

Sue Hitzman, Tom Myers, and Dr Robert Schleip vamping on the whimsical snaky chairs in the Biomechanics Lab at Ulm University, March 2010.

At the Ulm University Biomechanics Lab: Carla Stecco, Robert Schleip, Tom Myers, and James Earls

Bowen Conference in London

April 2nd, 2010

I am looking forward to the Bowen Conference that is coming up in a couple of weeks, and I have chosen to speak on the concept of tensegrity there, covering the many hierarchies though which tensegrity sports itself from the molecular and cellular through to the organismic and societal.

Bowen is an odd approach, if you don’t mind my saying so, to soft-tissue manipulation. You can research the history of Tom Bowen and the various factions and different interpretations of his work, but I latched onto Julian Baker – or rather he latched onto me and we formed an immediate bond. Julian has an insatiable curiosity about how this all works, and the courage to ask the difficult questions of himself and of anatomy in his search to explain Bowen’s results.

The Bowen ‘moves’ usually involve rolling a few times gently over tendinous areas such as the biceps tendon or the origins of the erector spinae, with a long pause in between each move to allow the body to ‘absorb’ and adjust to the changes made. Given my long history of working with the fascia, this seemed ridiculous to me on two counts: that such small, gentle, and non-invasive moves could have much effect on tough fascial planes, or that several minutes were required to adjust to such tiny inputs.

And yet the anecdotal evidence for the effectiveness of Bowen was sufficient to pique my interest. Like Kinesiotaping, the story seemed firmly in left field, but the results were unignorable. In other words, both of these – Bowen and Kinesiotaping – are methods in search of a theory. And I admire and support Julian’s fierce courage (as well as his knockout sense of fun and sharp humor) in searching out skeptics and critics who might advance his quest even as they discounted his explanation.

And I would have been tempted to dismiss the lame theorizing myself until I had 1) seen Guimberteau’s film of living fascia, Strolling Under the Skin and 2) studied the research of Helene Langevin , whose findings about the highly active areolar tissue – same stuff Guimberteau is filming – show how biologically active and responsive this surface, soft, fractally organized, fatty, viscous, everywhere material really is.

It seems quite possible – nay, by this year leaning toward the probable – that the areolar tissue should be considered an organ system of its own, following Gil Hedley and combining him with Guimberteau and Langevin. What if Bowen somehow intuitively tapped into super-responsive areas within this soft and highly responsive system of loose areolar tissue (which lubricates between layers, around tendons, and anywhere things have to move). Langevin has shown how active this layer is to the stimulation of acupuncture. Perhaps Bowen causes responses in this layer also.

If so, the mechanism for carrying this information around the body would be cellular and intercellular tensegrity. It’ll be interesting to hear the questions and responses from this group later this month.

Tensegrity Cranium

March 31st, 2010

I’ve been in love with biotensegrity from the git-go, and so therefore smitten with the models of Tom Flemons Intension designs . Tom has found sophisticated ways to model the foot, knee, pelvis, and spine (whether accurately or not, only time will tell, but interestingly for sure). The cranium, however, was always a cartoon, just a round tensegrity sphere on top. Of course, the cranium is far more complicated and influential than just a happy face on top of our ever-so-complex tension dependent structure.

But now Graham Scarr, an English osteopath whom I met at the Ulm Dissection Conference, has proposed a way in which the dural membranes can be seen to hold the bones of the neurocranium apart as well as playing a leading role – as we knew they did, but this provides such an interesting mechanism – in the bone growth and shaping.

More on this soon, but here is a link: Tensegrity in the Cranial Vault

Self-care at the deepest level

March 31st, 2010

In historical terms, the modern resurgence of the manual therapy profession is just getting underway, and the opportunities to earn more if you learn more are simply tremendous in the coming years. The principles and knowledge-base of the contemporary LMT / PT will apply to many different clinical and educational settings in the new social environment which will follow the renewal of health care in America.

Three aspects that new and on-going therapists need to learn are:

1) Holistic anatomy: There’s no way around it – to sit at professional tables in this field you need to know the nomenclature. All the same, traditional anatomy (origins, insertions, etc.) is increasingly irrelevant as anatomy is revised in light of the new research on fascial remodeling and kinetic linkages like the Anatomy Trains Myofascial Meridians. So we need to know biomechanics, and we need to be on top of the new developments. This is what we are doing at Kinesis – winnowing the latest research and giving you the results. Being up on developments will raise your status in the eyes of other professionals and clients, and thus raise your income through increased referrals.

2) Client education: This is an ever-increasing requirement for all manual therapists: the ability to give specific, relevant, and informed ‘homework’ to your clients to help them enhance what they get from your good work. The days of just having a relaxing massage without follow-on care are largely gone already. The skill level of Pilates teachers, personal trainers, and movement teachers must be matched by the massage therapist or physio – a great learning and earning opportunity to distinguish yourself from the pack.

3) Self-development: Nothing keeps your income up like excitement; when you are excited, it communicates and people are excited to be with you. Nothing excites you like learning new stuff. Sometimes that new learning can be a concept, like 1) above, or a technique, like 2) above, but honestly the most exciting things are emotional or spiritual. While we hope you buy our DVD’s or read our books, the most exciting things happen in our longer training classes (http:://www,anatomytrains.com/newsletter/12), or in family life or on an adventure where your deep insides get changed.

Fall in love. Go on a challenging trip. Allow yourself to be changed by your life partner (fall in love again). Really go into your own spirituality or pain deeply. Any of these things will probably result in a short-term loss to your practice, but in a long-term gain.

Neal Armstrong said he never exercised because he believed that one ‘only has so many heartbeats’, so he didn’t want to raise the rate unnecessarily. The problem with this argument is that the raised heart rate of an exercise session results in a lowered heart rate for the rest the day – a net lowering. Same deal: sacrifice some income temporarily to take real care of yourself, and you will find your income grows when you’re back on the job.

Touring the Biomechanical Lab

March 26th, 2010

We got to tour the biomechanical lab at the University of Ulm today. I am both fascinated (on an intellectual level) and repelled (on a human level) with such research. It seems to me that people are going to a lot of trouble to reaffirm Wolff’s elegant Law (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolff’s_law), which my students have heard me paraphrase many times, to be carved in gold over the door if I ever build a school: The Body Responds to Demand. Wolff was talking about bone, and others (Davis, I think) have applied it to certain connective tissues, but Wolff got it first and got it right – so much of the Anatomy we now learn originated in Germany, building on the foundations set in Padua and Bologna by Vesalius and his compadres. See Spalteholtz and Hoepke, among others.

The current amour with tissue ‘remodeling’ in these labs is just elaborations on the mechanisms and limits of Wolff’s Law. It has been fascinating in terms of understanding the mechanism by which mechanical tension / compression in the extracellular matrix is conveyed to the nucleus to alter gene expression (again, follow Don Ingber, or read that latter part of the first chapter in the 2nd edition of Anatomy trains for my take on mechanobiology). The altered gene expression in turn allows the ECM and the body to respond within biological limits to the new load.

I was fascinated to learn how fast this happens: astronauts in space lose 200-300 mg of calcium per day from their bones, and there is up to 40%-60% loss of bone mass in a paraplegic’s paralyzed limb – apparently the limits are pretty wide. I can imagine that would mean that with the same old usual genes, we would be pretty much planet-shaped (round) after an extended period in space.

Now, I know a number of Americans are attempting to reach this shape via fast food, but not being in space (other than in their anti-‘socialist’ little heads. (if only you knew how crazy all the Tea-Baggers look from Europe, painting Hitler mustaches on Obama’s face for this tiny transitional step toward what every European knows: Hitler was very, very much worse (and truly fascist) than Obama, and socialism in health care is a very good and economical idea) Being big and round on the planet Earth is really hard on your knee ligaments and your heart, but in space, adopting a round shape would be a sound adaptation.

But it is those strained knee ligaments – in sports as well as obesity – that concern the bio-engineers here in this state of the art facility. Our loud Russian friend Leonid, a pig-tailed Sue Hitzman, Kinesis UK’s James Earls and his fiancée and Pilates teacher Ines and some others sat around a table (in ‘laboratory chic’) examining a cadaverous knee. It had been stripped of muscle, and the two bones set into cones of bright yellow plastic, which will be held by the machine.

The machine, a modern torture instrument in looks, can hold the joint complex very firmly, and then apply multiple repetitions of flexion-extension or tibial rotation while maintaining true knee movement ( which is anything but simple – sliding and gliding and ‘screwing home’ (that’s the actual term) in the last degrees of extension – all accounted for in this machine. But they can add extra torsion or valgus or varus into the equation and then measure what that does to specific ligaments or fascia.

You might be shaking your head in wonder or disgust (there was a big portrait of Isaac Newton on the wall – had they never heard of Einstein or Wiener?), but how the hell else are they going to figure out how to make good artificial ligaments or better surgical procedures?

Another machine pulls on tendons to test recovery from stress and what happens in tendinous injury. Really intriguing problem: how do you hold onto a tendon, which is really slippery, to raise the tension to 50,000 Newtons (5000 kilos, more or less)? The homely answer is sandpaper between two metal plates. In this little detail I suddenly felt heartfelt empathy for these researchers, however much I rebel into being a proponent of holism when I see their reductionist approach and the endless beeping machines.

They are of course sincere (and in this case well-funded), but the elegant and homely solution to this problem (as well as the whimsical sculptured chairs in the lobby) earned my slightly grudging respect. They are still studying the body in parts, and there is still more to learn from this path, even though my own path takes me down the road toward what can be learned for the synergetic interaction of whole systems. As I have said before, scientists have the luxury as well as the discipline to reduce each question to a narrow single variable.

On a daily basis, the working therapist must juggle a thousand variables which cannot be either put out of the way or ignored – of fear, of relationships, of predilections and stubborn beliefs, of the need to lift children and tend to parents – in our clients. So we live in a no man’s land between science and art and craft. A scientist in a lab can dismiss our ‘unscientific’ attitude all he or she wishes, but let him be faced with the range of human suffering and striving every day, and see how many of his neat delineations survive in the rough and tumble of real therapy, real life, and hands-on-the-body application.