with Kieran Schumaker
Registration for this three-day in-person course includes bonus lessons, community support, and one-to-one mentoring via live Zoom calls and recorded videos. Technique review videos will be available after your course is completed.
This introductory course to Neurovascular Release work can stand alone or prepare you for the deeper dive included in the next five courses of the full NVR curriculum. The techniques and lessons selected for you to start with will help you improve left-right and front-back balance throughout the body, rather than in just one region. This lays the foundation for understanding how to work effectively with the nerves and vessels that weave through the fascial layers.
The NVR curriculum integrates techniques, perspectives, and practices from structural integration, osteopathy, and clinical massage. This first course sets the stage for practitioners to begin working with osteopathic subtlety and precision.
In this course, we will lean into the practices and perspectives of a Structural Integrator. Clients are fully clothed for NVR sessions, so they are free to stand, walk, and explore movement during a session. Movement helps your client integrate the changes you are making, cultivating their interoceptive and proprioceptive awareness. It also helps you see and track changes in your client’s quality and range of movement.
We will discuss a few specific therapeutic applications (such as plantar fasciitis, whiplash, and scoliosis), but the emphasis in this course is on structural and functional balance in the fascial system, through the NVR lens. If your practice already focuses on orthopedic issues, you will be excited to add the techniques you learn in this class to your tool kit.
Our focus will be centered on:
- Improving mobility, stability, structural balance, and resilience within the fascial system.
- Learning to feel artery tension and how it affects muscle hypertonicity, pulling the fascial web out of balance.
- Learning to feel and work with individual nerve restrictions, and free various neurovascular tracts using myofascial techniques to more thoroughly address orthopedic issues and pain.
- Learning neurovascular anatomy and brushing up on your myofascial anatomy as you build your touch skills. You will emerge with a mental map of the nerves and arteries that helps you see how restrictions within the network can adversely influence posture and limit movement. Broadening your understanding of anatomy in this way will help you develop more complete session strategies.
In this course, you will be learning NVR techniques and approaches for the rib cage, erector spinae, neck, hip flexors, hamstrings, gluteal muscles, piriformis, and hip adductors.
Return home with fresh insight and immediately useful methods for improving overall front-to-back and left-right balance.
Prerequisite: Manual therapy license/license to touch (e.g., Massage Therapists, Nurses, PTs, OTs, Chiropractors, etc.) from your state. It is recommended that you have three years of massage experience, training as a structural integrator, or education in physical therapy or osteopathy before embarking on this NVR journey.