Experiencing KMI Sessions

KMI sessions can be used to resolve particular problems in an integrated way or as a “tonic” for your posture, movement, and what used to be called “carriage” - how you carry yourself through the world. Your body is your most proximate tool - how do you use it? KMI can be seen as an intensive but finite course in re-acquainting yourself with your body in motion - whether you are a finely-tuned athlete or a computer-bound couch potato.

Most of us have collected patterns of extra tension through the course of our lives - either from injury or surgery, from imitation of our parents or heroes, from repetitive activities, or from attitudes we've acquired along the way. These injuries and tensions form a recognizable pattern of posture and “acture” – patterns of motion - in our bodies.

While exercise, and our mother's nagging to “Stand up straight!” may help, most of this patterning happens below our conscious awareness and becomes part of “who we are”. These patterns become written into our muscular tensions, or skeletal form, and into the tissues that go between - the connective tissues. Understanding the anatomy and condition of these connective tissues – largely unexplored until a few decades ago – is key to unraveling and transforming these patterns.

The KMI approach is to free the binding and Shortening in these connective tissues – what we refer to as the “fascial network” – and to re-educate the body in efficient and energy-sustaining (as opposed to energy-robbing) patterns.

This process happens over a series of sessions - the KMI process has 12 separate and progressive sessions, although the actual number you personally need may vary a bit. To begin these sessions, your KMI practitioner will talk over your history and help you set realistic goals for the process. He or she may take pictures of your body posture to have a visual record of where you started and may examine your postural pattern with you in front of a mirror.

Most KMI sessions are done with you in underwear or a bathing suit. (Your comfort is paramount, but we need to get directly to the tissues that are restricting the free flow of movement.) Much of the session work is done on a treatment table, though some moves are done sitting or even standing.

Your practitioner will contact specific tissues with fingers or hands and ask you to move, thus stretching and freeing old restrictions and encouraging the tissues back to a natural place called for by your body's inherent design. You and your practitioner can work out how deep
and intense or how gentle you want the progression to be.

The sessions progress through the body: the first four sessions are generally more superficial, freeing the tissues on the front, back, and sides of the body, and freeing your shoulders and arms from any binding to the trunk. The middle four sessions address the “core” of your body, working into the central stabilization muscles closer to the spine and pelvis. The last four sessions integrate “core” and “sleeve” into your habitual movement (and address specific problems you bring to the table), leaving you with a lasting and progressive change that will echo throughout the rest of your bodily life.

Most people undertake the sessions weekly over the period of a few months, although they can be compressed into a few weeks, if necessary, or stretched over six months or so if you prefer. It is beneficial (though not required) to have the earlier sessions closer together and the later sessions more spread out.

Although the benefits of these sessions vary widely from person to person, most people report greater energy, a more open and positive attitude toward the world, and greater efficiency and less pain involved in movement. The performance-oriented can look for improved functional abilities. For the person engaged in normal activities, a new “spring in your step” about sums it up.