Stoned At Home - Part 1

I have been using hot stones for the past eight years at Cornerstone Therapies, and I love my set of 50 basalt stones and 30 marble beauties. They work with me every day and I couldn't be without them! A common question from clients is 'did you name the business after them?'. The answer is no, I didn't, the business started two years before hand, but I am ever grateful for finding LaStone Therapy, Jane Scrivner and latterly The Jing Institute of Advance Massage, all of whom showed me how to use my stones to great effect within my treatment room.

Now I want to pass on my personal knowledge, passion and interest in stone work to all you guys at home!

My clients are wonderful; ever creative, interactive and switched on to their own personal journeys to find great ways to support their own full body wellness. Lately a few have been letting me know that they have picked up their own basalt stones from places they have travelled to; either seeing beautiful stones in rivers or on beaches, that they have taken home to use in-between treatments but once back they don't know where to start. Others have invested in stone kits from the internet and have not been happy with the stones or heaters that they have been sent.

So, this new mini-series is set out to help all you guys at home with your stones. It's time to get you stoned at home!

I am going to endeavor to create a couple of YouTube posts to go along side these so that you can follow along the set up of your stones at home as well, so hopefully these blogs and the videos will give you all the information you need to get cracking. But first we need to know why hot and cool stones are used in massage therapy both at home and in the treatment room so we know why we are looking at them as an important tool.

HEAT

I use these black beauties - Baslat Stones
for my hot stone massage. 

Classically we use heat to help chronic soft tissue based pain ease. Chronic simply means that there has been pain experienced for more than three months. Heat allows a flow of blood, lymph and nutrients to rush to the site of pain and allows a flush into to the area. This means that the stagnant old scar material that may have collected there can be refreshed and taken away to the lymph nodes or broken down by the blood cells. The garbage collectors can take all the rubbish away. Also, heat is very nurturing and can be a soft analgesic to the muscle, so if you are wanting to ease the joints and tissues, it can feel wonderful and aid in taking the bruising pain down to a manageable level.

In practice -  I have found that heat also helps with fascia release, so I use hot stones on the body as placement tools to allow the fascia to melt and release a little before I actually get my hands in there. There is also a great effect in my massage as the stones create a lot more flow in a short period of time than my hands ever could. This means that I can get a lot more work down in an hour than if I didn't use the heat. You guys come to me for effective and personal measured results, not for me to simply spend ages rubbing some heat into you! I have also developed ways of working with trigger points and stretching with the use of my hot stones and I find they give me space in my client's bodies when I work.

At Home - There are many hot tools that you can use at home, (not least a hot water bottle), but for those who like to incorporate massage into your close knit relationships with family and friends, stones can help bring warmth and nurturing effects by just being placed onto the body. Clients of mine also enjoy just heating their stones up and using them as hand warmers in their pockets on walks, and placing them around their bodies as they watch TV rather than a wheat pillow.

COOL

I use cool marble to help not only calm acute injuries,
but also to energize and refresh the mind. 

I often feel sorry for cool work as people tend to shy away from it as they think it only means freezing acute injuries with ice pack. It's true, for an instant treatment to injuries ice is great as it contracts everything and keeps the injury safely in control, reducing pain and decrease the amount of swelling. However after the first five days, people enter the vague and grey area of Sub-Acute, which means that there is still tissue pain, but the scaring needs to be flushed away.

The text books say that Sub-Acute is three months, but seeing as I have never had a client that resembles anything the text books say, in my experience sub-acute can last for any amount of time. My shoulder is a great case study for this. I injured it years ago and sometimes it's a chronic pain and heat really works, but after a day in the garden it can nag me as is it's a fresh injury; so I grab some heat on chronic days and then cold on others.

The point is that you can use cool stones either on their own or with your hot stones. Only use them for 3 minutes at a time, but do embrace them!

• You can use them in water with ice in it for the really cool work, 
• in cold tap water that has been in the fridge, 
• or just tap water for a not such a big freeze. 

Also, if you are in sub-acute you can mix and match your heat treatments: 

1. 3mins of heat
2. 3mins of cool
3. repeat up to five times and end with heat (because it's nice!). 

Why use stones at all? Why not just use a hot-water bottle and a bag of peas?

Stones are always used when they have been in water and are thus seen as a 'wet' treatment. Whitney Lowe's book 'Orthopedic Massage Theory and Techniques' has a great reason for using heat treatments to stimulate the healing process, which can be read and applied to the concept of stones: 

"Regardless of whether the thermal modality is producing its effects from heat or cold, it is important to understand heat transfer. Heat is a form of electromagnetic energy, and when this form of energy moves from one location to another there is a transfer of energy regardless of whether the end goal is production of heat of cold."

"... Moisture in these heat packs helps improve the conduction of heat from the hot pack to the body". 

To help bridge the gap between the treatment room and home, I hope these two videos help you! 

http://youtu.be/yn-Sg7KfdKI

http://youtu.be/bMUGex9jjGU

We are all set up with the theory of Stone Work, so in the next blog we can start looking at great kits to use at home so you don't waste time and energy on investing in products that may not work quite so well. 

Enjoy! 

Welcome To Massage Workshops

I thought it was about time for a small round-up of  all that is going on with Cornerstone Therapies at the moment as there have been quite a few changes behind, and in-front of the screen lately.

The biggest news is that Cathi Wye has joined our tiny team. Now being heralded as the new Creative Director for Cornerstone Therapies, Cathi is helping to develop the ideas that my clients bring to the couch as well as the ones I dream up in the shower!

Cathi is helping to create a whole new part of Cornerstone Therapies. I have been asked by many people over the years if I would show them how to 'do massage' for family and friends. There is a huge need to start a non-accredited workshop that can show how massage at home can help those who need basic massage on a regular basis. The aim is to show you how to offer a safe and effective massage for those with aches and pains in-between their sessions with their Professional Massage Therapist (MT).

Welcome To Massage Workshops

The great news is that we are well on the way to creating a five session workshop series for you! Over the five weeks, or during our weekend retreats,  you will be shown everything from setting up your massage couch and working out how to manage your sheets, to completing a full body massage.

I am really excited with the prospect of handing you the all information I wish I had had before I went to massage school! I am writing the workshops with the specific question: 'What do I wish I was shown before I got started?'.

Cathi has been sourcing some wonderful venues for you to come to and experience the Welcome To Massage Workshops, along with Earth sensitive massage couches, sheets, oils and baskets so that we can be as kind to the environment as we are to our bodies.

We will be hopefully getting to the photographers before Christmas so that the manuals can be
illustrated and then sent to the printers for January.

Cathi and I are working hard so that we can offer places on the first Welcome To Massage Workshops during February 2014 here in Godalming.

Do keep in touch via Twitter, Facebook, as well as the Website for all updates.

I look forward to meeting you on our new Welcome To Massage Workshops in the new year!!

Depth Charge

It has been a busy time at Cornerstone Therapies over the past few weeks, which I love! I have noticed over the years that clients come and see me with questions that appear to come up in waves in the treatment room, with topics being talked about by a few people rather than just one or two. I have a feeling that this often happens when areas around treatment approaches need to be addressed; and the answers and ideas that flow from that point dear readers, I bring to you on this blog. 

Over the past two weeks I have been asked by many clients; 'How do you know how deep you need to work?', which is closely followed by, 'Why don't you press harder?'.

My views on these subjects are personal to my practice and my journey, but here they are! 

How do you know how deep you need to work? 

For me, my sense of touch has been built up over 14 years of work. My hands are quite sensitive to touch and I 'practice' touch each day. If I am out for a walk I will run my hands lightly over a stone wall and ask myself what I am feeling. Is the stone brittle, soft, pointy, wet, dry, is there moss on it and are there cracks running past my hands? The same goes for iron railings, hedges, you name it! I like this exercise as I have to make quick interpretations and then move forward. I will also use different parts of my hand; finger tips, the sides, palm and 'top' of the hand and see if they pick up different aspects of the same substance. 

Bread making is also great as I can play with the weight I can work with that is directed through the body and I work out which part of my feet, legs, hips, back, neck, head shoulders, arms and hands need to relax and engage for different results in pressure all whilst I knead dough. This is a big reason why I bake so much bread! 

With around 20 clients a week, I also touch a lot of skin! Each person is different every time I see them and for this reason they will need to receive a different type of touch during each session. Indeed, different parts of the body need to be worked with varying touch. What is common to see in the U.K is thin dry skin - This skin may need more oil around the forearms and shins as touch can be quite painful there and the oil allows the nerve endings to dissipate and not jangle and the touch may need to be lighter. However, I maybe able to work with no oil, deep intention and quite a bit of pressure on their back. It's all a matter of moderating. 

The other aspect is when clients come to me after living life! I may have a client see me one week who is relaxed after a good lunch with friends who needs work done on her shoulder. She is open to deep work at this time and works with me through dynamic stretching and allows her body to go heavy and relax as her pain areas are treated on a deep level. The next week she sees me and she is fraught after a fight with her husband during the school run, has been late for an appointment and her kids got a bad school report the night before! During her session with me that day a more sensitive touch, with aromatic oils, and a sense of nurturing all need to be combined to allow her adrenalin to calm and her body to receive a treatment. I can't use pure deep intended strength during her treatment after she's been through a morning like that.

So many things come in to play with knowing how deep I can work on with my clients. Touch is important, but it's also vital to listen to how they are feeling emotionally before I design the treatment on the day. 

Why don't you press harder?

I was asked this yesterday afternoon and it was a very difficult question to answer on the spot. I was thinking about it even today as I was eating breakfast and I realized I had to go back to the question that started my deep burrowing into the field of massage seven years ago.

Back then I was a youngster! I had been working for seven years and I had been taught 'Sports' massage at my local college. I hated doing it to the point where I didn't even put my certificate up as I didn't want my clients knowing I had qualified, sticking instead to the classical Swedish form with a lot of oils and a lot of light strokes. The reason I hated Sports Massage was that it hurt me, (mainly my thumbs and back), and it hurt my clients. I remember the lecturer I had at college telling me that I should aim to cause a bruise during a Sports Massage as it meant that I had caused trauma around the area and the body would then rush to that place and heal it. 

I'm sorry - but really?!

When reading through history, looking at Jesus' miracle, signs and wonders, reading about amazing healing in the past and people walking out of temples with new bodies free from pain I didn't find any recorded evidence that Jesus, or any other Healer, invoked pain on the people who needed freedom in movement. It was a gentle touch that helped them. Oh, and often the power of God Almighty! 

Gentle Touch with measurable results as what I began to crave in my practice, with the firm belief that  what I had been taught at college was wrong. That is when I started slowing down my massage, finding techniques to sink down the layers of the body, create space within the tissue so that the body has room to heal itself and then soften the areas that are in pain. Which is the approach I basically apply to every person I treat and I now call it the Triple 'S' Rule: Slowly Sink and Soften.

Many clients do report personal measured results after they have seen me and I am very pleased that I can drop the 'Sports Therapist' title. If I want to pigeon hole my work Advanced Clinical Massage fits the bill much better! 

I personally feel that this is the right approach to Massage Therapy for me and the clients who meet me each day in the treatment room. We work together, often quite slowly, building up the foundation blocks that we can build on over time. The quip 'Fix In Six', which many Sports Therapists bandy around, is not something I personally agree with or understnad how it can work. I may be able to help ease a client's pain pattern in that time, but the core problem will not be sorted out that quickly in my experience. 

So; I hope you enjoyed this ramble through the depths of massage pressure, and I hope it answers two of the big questions that you may have thought about during your treatments. 

The Anatomy Of Movement

Today we are looking into the Anatomy Of Movement; an over reaching title, but one that sums up
what we have been doing over the past few weeks. This takes us back to where we started last month with Rotating Shoulders when I got stuck writing a blog series about shoulder pain and movement as I couldn't find the words to describe the anatomy in an integrated way. Our forms are too complex to isolate them into singular muscles, and so the past few posts have been exploring a little bit of the history of anatomy and how we see it today. No longer do we have to box the systems up and put them in pigeon holes; now we can see how we move in fluid flow.

The whole reason why I wanted to look at the movement of anatomy was to get away from the rigid terminology that Anatomy has been shrouded in over the past few centuries. I don't believe that we were created to be stuck in a mould that could be described with generalized, isolated movement testing. The clients that I see move! I move!

With 3D scanning and printing giving us such unique ways of looking at (and hopefully treating) the body, it is no longer appropriate to look at ourselves in such caged viewpoints of nerves, blood, lymph, muscle etc. We now see muscles contract and relax, massaging the lymph around the body and giving stimulus for the blood to keep going round. The joint capsules have direct relationships to all aspects of tendon, bone, ligaments, nerves and blood. Viscera, which is ignored by so many massage therapists, cannot be cut out of any equation. The body really does interplay between the sum of all parts.

The best part about the viewing technology is that we can see it all in real time as the clients/patients move and we can view them in all planes of movement. Feet can now be scanned in a 3D scanner whilst wearing heel and then the layers are taken away on the screen revealing the bones and the job they have to do to keep us balanced.

The Greeks, Romans, painters in the Renaissance, nor the Doctors 50 years ago could have dreamt that we could see the body in movement through cameras that can take away layers to see the reality under the skin. This means that we have to start playing catch up in the way we view the relationship between anatomy, language, movement and the treatment room. We simply can't afford to stick with a language that was developed to describe theories that are becoming outdated.

So, we need a way of describing anatomy in movement during massage and body-work and that is where I see Integrated Anatomy really helping us move (!) our work closer to a more realistic conversation between the clients and the therapists.

I also hope that integrated anatomy becomes a bridge builder between the differing types of Holistic Therapy, but also within the Medical world. I long for the day my clients can go to the 'Knee Surgeon', and they will take the whole body posture into account, video the gait movement, talk to the Lymphatic and Vascular specialists and take an over all picture of the background of the patient before simply going and 'tidying up' a bit of ligament or cartilage here and there.

I hope that the YouTube video helps explain this a little better and that you find it helpful. Excuse the scary face - I'm still working out how to use Google Capture! I'm sure there will be a re-take soon.

Integrated Anatomy - Holistic Anatomical Language

I have been excited about writing this blog for a while now as I get a chance to really explain why I personally believe the language of Anatomy needs to be changed. 

I decided not to publish the first draft as it read as quite a dry history lesson, even though the people behind the move towards a holistic understanding of anatomy are dynamic, brilliant and captivating! I would encourage you to follow these links if you want to read about some of the people that have helped me develop my thinking in the past few years. (They are ranked in no order - they are simply the 10 people and their books that I turn to almost every day.)

Ida Rolf

Thomas Myers

Ashley Montagu

R. Schultz

Gil Hedley

Julian Baker

C. Davis 

Leon Chaitow

Finando and Finando

F. Alexander

Ida Rolf, however, heads the pack in order of magnitude! The work that she did was ground breaking in relation to the understanding we have today of integrated anatomy. As a Ph.D in bio-chemistry she had a keen grasp of how the cellular structure within us works. After studying many Body-Therapy techniques, including Osteopathy and yoga, she slowly started work on her own approach to movement and body-work therapy: Structural Integration.

 

Structural Integration has fondly been called 'Rolfing' after Ida Rolf's legacy. It is the theory that during our lives, outside factors, emotional issues, internal illnesses and gravity take a tole on the body and it becomes misaligned. Ida Rolf was the first person to really embrace the fact that fascia, the connective tissue that holds us all together, could be seen as an organ in itself and that it could be readjusted to allow the body to realign and heal. Once the body is shown where it can soften and release through Structural Integration and Fascia Release, movement is then allowed new freedom within the person who is being treated as there is less restrictions that is hindering flow. 

Ida Rolf's work with Structural Integration, I believe, led the way for fascia to be looked at in a fully scientific way, which has subsequently led to body-work being researched in-depth into the effect that touch has on the connective tissue, overall health, well-being and improved movement. The idea that until 100 years ago we had missed the largest organ in the body - connective tissue - as a major factor in the anatomy 'systems' is amazing to me. 

Do not be fooled when new-papers tell you that massage has no scientific research. It's simply not true. There is a vast community leading peer reviewed research in the field of massage and body-work. To begin with, just visit the Journal Of Bodywork and Movement Thearpies for a taste! 

Fascia is the founding reason why I believe Anatomy needs to me looked at again with clarity of vision, and why a holistic language needs to be formed within the body-work. If we want positive outcome within our sessions we need to think less of isolated muscles and static terms of movement (i.e arm flexion), and look at how whole movement is formulated; restricted at first and released afterwards. 

Connective tissue also breaks down the argument that was formed throughout the classical view of anatomy. As it flows through all layers, encapsulating every cell, forming sheaths, creating webbed scar tissue and allowing us to be suspended in form whilst gravity pushes us down, I think it is about time we start looking at our bodies with new eyes. 

This is why at Cornerstone Therapies I make sure the people that I help understand that there is more to massage than simply moving muscle. We slowly soften and sink into the layers of the body, intending touch to show the body where it's tight and needs to release, where there are areas that need to move and change, as well as relax and sink back. My work is slow; one stroke can take a few minutes, but the intention is deep and thorough as I want to connect with all layers to make sure that not a single stroke is wasted. I am not interested in singular muscle movement as my intention is to move you to a different place! If I were to only treat one muscle in the back (as if I could!) I can't expect the whole of the back to release as I haven't asked it to change state with the isolated part. 

The language that body-work has needs to change with the knowledge that we have and the technology that we embrace. I long for the day when we can securely and safely store video data from the IPad generation of gadgets as we could then record movement in its whole rather than have tick boxes for movement tests such as flexion and extension - we could see how the form is reacting for the feet to the head in one move! 

Finally, I believe fascia, due to its sliding state, encourages us not to look at people in a static position that is often called the 'Anatomical Position'. Rather, it moves us towards a more realistic view of the natural form, which is living motion, instead of a standing pose. 

In the next blog we will look at movement in a bit more depth and see if we can get body-work and movement singing in harmony. 

A Trip Through Classical Anatomical History

Ancient art can show us a thing or two about the human need to embrace the anatomy that forms us. The Venus Of Willendorf  (pictured left), tells a story of a potter in 24,000BC. Forming this sumptuous, rolling, beautiful statue out of clay with their hands, the potter shows a vast appreciation of the female form, unveiling our eyes to the openness that the body can be admired. With her hands resting on her breasts, in an easy stance, this statue will hopefully be the first step along the way to understanding that the body, the shell that cases our life force, should be softly and easily looked upon. When we look at anatomy, we are looking at ourselves, and so the subject shouldn't be classified simply into the medical field of understanding, or with mental constraint.

We all have a basic right to understand how we function.

If we are going back to 24,000BC to start our search for why anatomy is not just integral to massage therapy, but also for our own understanding of ourselves, I hope you will forgive this less than in-depth blog! But I do believe that art can be a good way of looking at how we understand anatomy in it's Classical Westernized History.

The Greeks followed the Egyptians in the development of medicine. Not only did Hypocrates give us the oath on which Medical Practitioners still swear on today, but Galen performed brain and eye surgery. The Greek's observations of how the body functioned influenced medical thought right up into the middle ages in Europe. But it is the art that we still have around us today that we can gaze on to enhance our understanding of bodies and movement.

Take a look at the Greek and Roman sculptures in any museum and you will see bodies ripple with movement. As they are seen in battle, the worriers are depicted with  tension and anger, whilst the nymphs are refined and gaze into the middle distance. These different poses are great to look at as they tell of muscles, fascia, bones, organs, blood and lymph flowing in harmony to create the human existence. Experience is captured in stone, but the existence of the models who posed for the art is almost palpable. I have never stood looking at these amazing forms and thought about the singular systems that make movement happen; the 10 that are taught to every Massage student in the U.K. All I have ever seen are amazing bodies in flight!

Then we get to the galleries that house the Pre-Renaissance drawing. I love these as they are paintings of exquisite skill, but the hands are often 'wrong'!  If you see sketch books from the famous Painters, they will often be filled with sketches of hands as they are so complicated in the way that they move to express emotion. The truth is that artists didn't know much about what was under the skin, and so they had very little idea about how to draw the mechanics of the hand.

Leonardo Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man 

It was only until we hit the Renaissance that we see art catching up, (and the hands improving!) with anatomy as we know it today. Dissection work was limited to the Medics, and it took a lot for Leonardo DaVinci to get a place within the dissection rooms so that he could make a comprehensive study of the human form. His ideas of anatomy lay in the Greek/Roman ideas that all mammals were the same, just in different proportions. So, when Da Vinci found that he had the Tibia and Fibula (lower leg) of a man but no foot, he got a foot of a bear and drew it underneath the human leg. After 25 years he realized that human anatomy is unique, but due to the lack of human forms that he could draw from he drew a fully formed baby and then surrounded it with the uterus of a cow!

However, Da Vinic demonstrated that the Biceps not only flex the arm, but also supernate the arm, allowing your hand turn down toward the floor. This wasn't recognized for nearly 300 years after his work was put away into private collections.

Leonardo Da Vinci's work is also recognized for looking at the separate systems that we are so fond of today. The skeletal, vascular and muscular systems are all well documented. And I wonder if this is why we still see them in such singular entities today? Was it that his work was so ground breaking, and the work of the medics around him were so ahead of their field that the beauty of anatomy that they did find wasn't questioned until relatively recently?

Connective tissue, the Fascia that is so fashionable today, was the goop that was forgotten about, ignored and thrown away. Only now are we fully realizing that superficial fat is incased in connective tissue that is so important.

Western anatomy, in its classical form is sectioned into systems that we can understand. This is a fantastic building block to see how we move. It's also brilliant for physicians to grapple with as they can become expert in one part of the body. But as Body Workers it's vital to see the body as a whole, a sum of all the parts. I also think that the Medical World would benefit from looking at the body in a more holistic way - embracing how their expertise on one aspect has knock on effects to the rest of the body.

When you see the body depicted in art, start to ask yourself what the body is showing you. Can you see

Michelangelo's David
See where his body is shifted,
tilted and rotated!

where there maybe tension? A shortening in the musculature, a contraction within the stance. Are there parts that are overly long, causing weakness? Now see if there is a connection between them - can you spot that one side is long and weak and the other short and tight? Try and get your eye into seeing how this may change the posture in the statue or painting that you are looking at.

There are many ways to look at anatomy through time. If you are interested, I would recommend getting a bottle of wine and relaxing with and internet rampage for an evening or two! Start looking at a part you are interested in; historically or anatomically based, and go from there. One aspect you could look into is the Arabic texts; ancient manuscripts with intricate drawings of the eyes. Or check out the Greeks and the humors to find out how phlegm and bile were supposed to effect the body.

For me the unanswerable question is at what time, and why, did we start systemizing the body to such a degree that we stopped looking at it as a whole?

If you have the answer, do let me know! I look forward to chatting it over with you via Twitter, or through the Cornerstone Therapies' website.

Until next time, enjoy your own journey into Classical Anatomy  and enjoy the museums!

The Anatomical Exploration Begins!

Thank you for taking the time out to read this posting today. This is the beginning of a journey into the basics of anatomy - an exploration into the subject that all holistic therapists and their clients can stand firm on. Anatomy is our link and our method of communication, which means we should make sure we are talking the same dialect throughout these blog postings.

Why do we need to know about Anatomy? Because we need to move our bodies! 

The journey that we are about to take together will be filled with questions, opinions and beliefs, that all make a rich tapestry in our relationship as we get to know this vast subject. This being the case please do comment on each posting and start a conversation. This is all done to empower you as the client and the receiver of Body-Work so that you can understand the process that your therapist is taking you through. Don't be shy - get in touch!

I work in the U.K and so my view of anatomical learning is very much based on the experiences we have here in England. It would be great to hear from people who have trained in Anatomy across the globe so we can compare and expand that knowledge.

In the U.K Body-Workers are often trained through small private institutes or vocational colleges. Over the past five or so years there have been moves to take Body-Work training into Universities, but at the moment the vast majority of therapists will have studied in a college style environment. This is a fantastic place for people who are not classic academics, (which I am not!), and they are safe places for students to learn rudimentary human anatomy. When therapists leave their basic massage training, they walk into the treatment room knowing the basics of the human body and the systems of:

• Endocrine (Hormones)
• Vascular (Heart and Blood)
• Lymphatic (Immune System)
• Respiratory (Breathing)
• Skin
• Muscular
• Skeletal
• Nervous 
• Reproductive
• The Brain

The way that the systems are taught are in isolation, thus the modules in the class room are broken down into easy sections with little cross linking. The merging of ideas may happen with muscle and skeletal as they are seen as connecting tissue, but many therapists I have spoken to literally had the isolated systems explained. 

Notice that fascia, the connective tissue that I have been very excited about on this blog for the past few years, is not taught at all to new Body-Workers and that is saved for advanced teaching. Further concepts and the art of looking deeper into the systems of the body are taken up by a few Body-Workers here in the U.K who want to further their knowledge.  

I spent a year looking at the muscles and bones in the body, and got very good at Latin in the process, and I do believe that they are great part of the body to study and perfect as at the moment we are in a place where the 'Classical Anatomy', (of which we will look at in the next blog), still rules the roost. Also, clients are happy talking about muscles, their functions, the stretch and contraction. It's a great first step along the journey. 

However, I think we become too comfortable with this simplistic look at the body and there is a need to start looking at our amazing bodies with a wider lens. 

Meridians and the Eastern anatomy and philosophies are not touched upon at college, (or on this blog); it is left to the therapist to decide which path they want to take. Either they take the Clinical and Sports, or the Eastern Medicine route. Personally, I truly believe that it is best to stick to the one that is chosen for a good few years. If it took Leonardo Di-Vinci a lifetime to get to grips with the Classical Anatomy, I am personally not going to try to master both road maps!

On the next part of this Anatomical Journey we are going to talk about the Classical Anatomy, which we work with everyday in the Body-Workers Treatment Room. We will take a quick glimpse at the history of Anatomy and what that knowledge has brought us.

Take good care until next time!