Tag Archives: Tom Myers

Working with forward head: myofascial release

Posted on by
Reply

Read the first post in this series here. My notes are at the end of this post, along with a link to the following post. ~ MaryAnn

by Cate Radebaugh

So, I had another ‘forward head position’ appointment with Mary Ann. She is very excited about the new Zero Balancing work she’s learned and briefly contemplated adding that to this session, but decided against it. Myofascial release it was.

img_4981

Notice that Cate’s ear is in front of the middle of her shoulder. The SCM runs from behind her ear to her chest.

First, she took a picture of my neck so we can all track my progress.

Then, because this is “take some of your clothes off and cover up with a sheet” work, that’s what I did. (Those sheets are so soft. They’re made of microfiber. I suggest you get some for yourself. Or go do work with Mary Ann, because they’re part of the treat. Now back to the forward head thingy.)

One of the advantages of working with Mary Ann is she shares her knowledge about bodies with her clients as she’s working on them. I feel on speaking terms with some of my muscles now.

Two big ones are the sternocleidomastoids, SCMs for short. They run from my mastoid processes – the two bumps behind my ears at the base of my skull – down my neck and attach to my collarbones and sternum, and are what turn and nod my head. Continue reading →

Postural alignment, functional movement, and bodywork for breath and head-forward posture

Posted on by
Reply

It’s coming up on a year since I started doing functional movement classes with Matt Fuhrman at Tao Health & Fitness. I thought I’d report on my progress.

I am way stronger and sturdier than before I started doing this. It wasn’t that I was unfit before, but my body was still twisted and unevenly developed. I couldn’t run without paying for it later, not just feeling soreness in the muscles worked. It felt like structurally, the pounding of running was pounding my compensations into my body. Continue reading →

How yoga is connected to Rolfing

Posted on by
3

Tom Myers on The Century of the Body: Fascia, Yoga and the Medicine of the Future.

Loved this interview with Tom Myers, author of Anatomy Trains (which I hope to be studying in March at the Lauterstein-Conway School of Massage).

Until I read it, I had no idea that Ida Rolf was an early (1920s) practitioner of yoga, and that she developed Structural Integration (aka Rolfing (TM)) as a way to bring the benefits of yoga to people without the actual practice of yoga, since yoga wasn’t readily available.

Boy, would she be surprised at how popular yoga has become! And, the rise of yoga in America doesn’t seem to have put a dent in the Rolfing business either, perhaps because yoga helps people become more aware that their bodies are bound up, and they seek Rolfing.

My Rolfer, Mary Kimberlin in Dallas, told me that being Rolfed was the equivalent of doing yoga for five years in terms of the freedom of movement. I believe that. I was practicing yoga before I got Rolfed, and it definitely accelerated my flexibility in asana practice.

Here are excerpts from the interview:

Fascia—or connective tissue—is what glues us together. So, it’s a broad use of the word fascia. What we’re really talking about is the body-wide extracellular net that holds us together.

So, again, people have been paying a lot of attention to the chemistry and neurology of conditions like depression, and not much attention to shape. But shape is hugely important, and that’s where yoga and bodywork really shine.

We’re really just looking at the very beginning of the potential offered by body work, yoga, Rolfing, osteopathy, and so on—all these body therapies contributing to this realm.. This next century is going to be the century of the body, because this is the century in which we need to learn to change behavior.

We need to learn how to get people to change behavior, because so many of the big diseases are all lifestyle-related. At the heart of big, epidemic conditions like heart disease and diabetes really are behavioral, lifestyle issues. These are conditions where people need to change their habits more than they need to take the medicine.

Yoga was very small until quite recently. Pilates was very small until quite recently. And bodywork was quite limited until very recently. Going forward, I think we will see these unite into a very powerful combination of manual therapy and movement, where everybody is speaking one language.