Recently, my friend Karen Clay introduced me to a little book of posture and movement cues called Stack Your Bones, by Ruthie Fraser, a Structural Integration practitioner and yoga teacher. It’s a charming book of brief insights, not a narrative. I like it a lot. It’s one of the few books about posture I’ve looked at that…

In the last month or so, I’ve had the opportunity to teach two classes using an updated model of direct technique, and it’s been quite lovely. I’ve changed 2 distinct things: using a spiral/counter-spiral test to refine any given technique (as I mentioned in my earlier post, The magic of precision), and using a new scheme…

This year, the WA State Board of Massage enacted a change to our professional credential: from licensed massage “practitioner” to licensed massage “therapist.” Besides the linguistic hitch of remembering to say or type a different word, is there a difference? There’s Shakespeare’s “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other…

Autumn is the time for making changes — releasing what’s no longer working and reorienting to the simpler versions of all our activities. This year, we’re making the change away from land line: secure email fax service (hooray!) and me shifting calls to my cell phone. I still prefer email for appointments and conversations about…

Of the qualities that are part of bodywork methods, the one most impressively mysterious to me is the magic of precision. Although there are many types of precision, I want to focus here on directionality. (Unsurprisingly, I’ve learned the most about precision from Judith Aston). My current version of direct technique (releasing tissue by moving…