Foundations and Techniques of my Practice
‘TENSEGRITY’
In my work, I utilize the tensegrity model developed by Buckminster Fuller. If you think about it, the body is continuously trying to keep from falling over. the body keeps itself upright by balance and tension across several planes, with muscles doing the work of:
*keeping the head level
*body upright
*eyes forward.
When any of these aspects are compromised, the body is challenged there is compensation in one or more areas of the body.
Balance and tension in the body is in the muscles around the outside, and the placement of bones in the core of the structure. If the tension is off in the muscles or a bone is out of its normal movement range, the entire body can be affected. this causes discomfort, crookedness, and pain. I work to balance the tension, realign the structures along their natural lines of force, and balance to the body.
‘NO MUSCLE ACTS ALONE’
When muscles move a limb or a body part, there are always, always at least two muscles acting at the same time, one is tightening, and the other is letting out. I bring this recognition to every treatment, to work with not just the muscle that is feeling discomfort, but to the other muscles that play in the symphony that is the movement of your body.
Tools and Techniques I utilize in my practice-
MET- Muscle energy technique is a group of soft tissue therapies utilized by Osteopaths in the manual medicine component of their practice. The technique utilizes both physical and neurological repatterning of how muscles contract and increasing mobility and balance across planes of movement
PIR- Post Isometric Relaxation- is a muscle energy technique in which the nervous system reorients itself to allow muscles to relax or to reset the muscle memory of the relaxed state of the muscle to lengthen. The lengthening of the muscle is done gently so the body accepts the change rather that stimulating a stretch reflex, which would cause the muscle to shorten again.
PNF- Proprioceptive Neuromuscular facilitation (wow, that’s a mouthful), a group of movement and exercise based therapies that can reprogram movement habits and patterns of muscles and muscle groups of related movement.
Thai- an ancient massage modality, often called ‘the lazy yoga’ which is similar to yogic postures, but its more like having yoga done to you, as the client. Focuses on increasing mobility and flexibility, increased bloodflow, and balance.
MFR- Myofascial release. Focused on what is commonly called the ‘organ of structure’ or the fascia. Fascia can often become bound from over, or under use, and loses its elasticity, and mobility developing into adhesions, or stuck places. this therapy unsticks the adhesions, and helps to increase mobility of the muscles.
Muscle Stripping- a version of MFR, mainly focuses on multi-belly muscles, to ‘milk’ them in a particular fashion to alleviate tension inside the muscle, asa opposed to one muscle to another. can also be applied from one muscle to another.
…and, just so you know, I have been in two major accidents in my life, one where I strained my Left shoulder in an auto accident (out for four months), and another where I was thrown from a bicycle and landed on both wrists(also another four to six months major pain). So, I’m with you, I have been on the inside of pain and injury, and all the frustrations that accompany them.