Deep Muscle & Connective Tissue I work on quite a few therapists and doctors. So, this week I saw both a massage therapist and a chiropractor whose complaint was hip pain. Both times it turned out that the hip was a symptom of pain coming from lower down the leg. For the massage therapist, the […]
Gluteal Amnesia Yesterday I had a new client complaining of lower back pain. “It just hurts right here!” She said, grinding her fist into her right SI joint area. She asked questions throughout the session. I began by working on her abdomen but quickly recognized that her left gluteus maximus muscle had decreased tone. Something […]
Foot Pain Last week I worked on a teenage girl with foot pain. She had not had a direct injury, just foot pain. When I began, her metatarsals had extremely limited space between them and she was very tender. Mild pressure elicited a squeal of pain. SMRT allows me to get results using very light […]
Lower Back Pain A few weeks ago a new client came to me with a complaint of lower back pain. This was not chronic. He had only developed it about a month before, but it was severe enough that he had gone to the doctor and gotten imaging, which did not show the cause of […]
Let’s Talk About SMRT Let’s talk about SMRT (Spontaneous Muscle Release Technique). We call it a bodywork modality and we teach it with a specific set of positions. But, we then tell you to modify every position for the person on the table. So, why do we use a set of positions if you are […]
Some days I really love what I do. I recently worked on a woman having knee pain. There was a mass, for lack of a better term, of bound up tissue in her lateral gastroc. I touched it. She yelped. It was very, very tender. I gently assessed it and then used an SMRT position […]
One of my regulars presented a few weeks back with pain in her right hip. She pointed to the pain in the right hip and pointed out the pain as I worked on that hip. I only spent a few minute on the hip before I moved to her left knee, lower leg, & foot. […]
In May, I became a certified personal trainer. I did this mainly to add value to my teaching and the SMRT video streaming service. I also did this because several states have prohibited bodyworkers from giving clients stretches or exercises and I think more will follow suit. I feel like the exercise piece is the […]
An update for the client in the “Tibialis posterior and foot dysfunction” article: the client/student/massage therapist/acupuncturist/volleyball goddess came back to see me yesterday. Her feet still felt much more centered, but the pain in her knees had returned. We moved further up her leg and I checked the pattern in her right femur. I […]
By Dawn Lewis Tibialis posterior is located deep in the posterior compartment of the lower leg. It originates from the lateral side of the posterior tibia, the medial aspect of the posterior fibula, and the interosseous membrane between the tibia and the fibula. It inserts on the plantar surface of four of the tarsal bones […]
I just returned from an SMRT class that I taught in Trinidad, CO. The class was small, but I always take a teaching assistant in case we end up uneven. The class we were teaching was SMRT: Hips, Lower Back, & Abdomen. I decided that my TA and I would get into the trades. This […]
One of the reasons that I love being a massage therapist and being a massage therapy instructor is helping people. The feedback I get from some clients is that the work gave them their life back, and I see in the faces of some of my students that the entire way they think about the […]
While in Moorhead, MN teaching last weekend I met a man, one of the students, who told me he had a bullet go through his right ankle 40 years ago. No surgery, no pins, no plates, no metal, just chronic edema, lack of range of motion, and pain. He asked me if I would check […]
By Dawn Lewis The posterior sling is comprised of the latissimus dorsi muscle on one side of the body, the ipsilateral or same side thoracolumbar fascia and then transferring to the opposite side or contralateral thoracolumbar fascia and the opposite side gluteus maximus. We will explore the implications of this in 3 ways: 1) Latissimus […]
In our Santa Fe course we had a man who did not like to have his feet touched. He had quite a bit of stored trauma in his feet. The courses we taught in Santa Fe were SMRT: Thigh & Knee and SMRT: Lower Leg & Foot. He took both. We use the foot quite […]
By Dawn Lewis I have osteoarthritis in the MP joints of my big toes. I have had 3 foot surgeries. Each time, the surgeon (there have been 2) says to me, “you rehab better than any patient I have ever had.” The first surgeon did not go further. He did not ask me what I […]