Please note: These courses can be taken separately or all 3 back to back. Cost is PER class.
Schedule:
July 16-17 Tensegrity Spine; July 18-19 Shoulders & Arms; July 20-21 Head, Neck & Jaw
The Structural Essential series is a set of intensive soft-tissue technique courses divided into functional regions. Combining movement and manual techniques for the most efficient and long-lasting results, and using the latest research on the interaction between skeleton, muscles, joints, and fascial proprioceptors, this series of workshops will take you to a new level in therapy.
Designed with the busy manual therapist in mind, each Structural Essentials event gives you a new understanding of the relevant area. The content will outline how the structural and functional anatomy relates to many common issues as well as to the rest of the body. Based on many new and established approaches this series will give you the skills in palpation, BodyReading and functional analysis needed for the modern multidisciplinary therapist.
Tensegrity Spine
This course examines the spine as a tensegrity truss – how the bones float within the myofascial balance. Assessment and techniques for freeing and balancing the spine address:
- Anterior and posterior curvatures – lordosis and kyphosis
- Side bends
- Rotations (and counter-rotations)
- Guy-wires on both the front and the back of the spine, and
Balancing trunk spinal work into the cervical spine and sacrum
Shoulders and Arms
In this driving day and computer age, the arms get unique usage these days. This course travels from the shoulder to the hand on the Arm Lines, giving techniques for every station along the way.
These include:
- Releases for each joint of the shoulder
- Soft-tissue techniques for shoulder muscles
- Elbow and upper arm muscle releases
- Lower arm extensor, flexor, radial, and ulnar releases
- Wrist and hand work
Head, Neck and Jaw
The neck is a remarkable feat of biomechanical engineering, giving a combination of wide range of movement but maintaining a structural strength. It is often seen as the last site of compensation as it corrects for any alteration from below allowing the eyes and ears to orient to the horizon. Patterns can of course work their way in the other direction and particularly from the jaw and its many possible patterns of movement and holding. This course will focus on key areas of the neck and jaw complex to allow you to build successful strategies to ease these potential problem areas alleviating the issues working in both directions and setting the body up for a longer lasting change.
Highlights include:
- The sub-occipital muscles
- The laminar groove and deep cervical muscles
- The muscular wires of the front of the neck – anterior scalenes and longus colli muscles
- Intra-oral work for the hyoid complex, the tongue, and the floor of the mouth
- The jaw muscles, TMJ, the palate and facial muscles
Note: Anatomy Trains in Structure & Function course MUST be taken before taking the SE courses. Familiarity with the Anatomy Trains lines and concepts is key to getting the most from the program.
The Structural Essentials workshops are most easily absorbed in the order outlined below but you can do them in any order as time permits.
- Arches and Legs – 3 days
- Fans of the Hip – 2 ½ days
- Abdomen, Chest and Breath – 2 ½ days
- Tensegrity Spine – 2 days
- Shoulders & Arms – 2 days
- Head, Neck & Jaw – 2 days
