Floating Pain I want to describe a session I recently had with you. Client’s complaint was hip and pelvic pain that “floated” into the lower back once in awhile. I started at the feet. I checked the plantar flexion and dorsiflexion in each ankle. The right ankle moved easier into plantar flexion with limited dorsiflexion. […]
Bladder Issues I am teaching SMRT hips, lower back, & abdomen right now. Getting to Fort Worth for this class was an adventure. We had an enormous blizzard in Aurora, they cancelled my flight, closed all major (and most minor) highways in and out of the city, I decided to drive around the highway closure, […]
Abdominal Wall Let’s talk about psoas major. In all of our SMRT hip classes, I tell the therapists attending that psoas is a victim of many things and a perpetrator of very little. Yet, massage therapists, when we think of abdominal work are focused mainly on psoas. In part this is because we do not […]
SMRT Basic Series After the class I just taught, one of the students wanted to take her practical test for her full body SMRT basic series certification. The way this practical works is that I give the therapist a real issue with my body (in this case, right hip pain) and they use SMRT in […]
Hip Girdle I was in an airport (what else is new) after teaching a fantastic SMRT hip girdle in NY. Typically in any hip girdle class, we have a few people in class who end up with immobilizing lower back pain from having their posterior hips, sacrum, abdomen, and lower back worked. Plantar Flexion This […]
Thyroidectomy What happened in SMRT class in Pittsburgh? So much!! First, we had a therapist in class who had a thyroidectomy. The scar tissue in the front of her neck was pulling her chin and trachea inferior and posterior. On Saturday, we did SMRT for the anterior neck and I did some extra work on […]
Pelvic Pain and SMRT One of the newer clients I have is a 21-year-old girl with severe pelvic pain who has seen multiple doctors. The consensus is that the issue is muscular. The muscles around the tops of her thighs are amazingly tight and painful for her. There are little ways to work on this […]
Hips & Legs the SMRT Way Yesterday I saw an elderly gentleman (a very active 81-year-old) complaining of weakness in his left leg. He said it all began when he had open heart surgery over a decade ago. At first, it was his right leg that felt weak and would not support his weight. But, […]
SMRT Home Courses I just had a very nice conversation with a therapist who purchased a full body set of SMRT video courses from Full Circle. I asked her to call me because when she took the test for the CE credit for our SMRT: shoulder, axilla, ribcage, & upper back course, I realized that […]
Working SMRT on the Hips Wednesday I did one of the last massage sessions for 2017. One of the men I saw that day has had 4 surgeries on his right hip. The initial was a full hip replacement, which has been fully redone twice, including this latest surgery, done 6 weeks ago. The surgeon […]
I was recently working on a client who happens to be a massage therapist. We had worked on each muscle in her abdominal wall as well as iliopsoas. The tension in her abdomen had decreased and the alignment of her hips had greatly improved, but her right lower back tension had increased. SMRT for the […]
During our SMRT: hips, lower back, & abdomen in Raleigh, NC several things happened. We had a moment in class where we were assessing the alignment of the pubic symphysis on one particular student and we found that her left pubic bone was twisted. We did a specific SMRT position to release the muscles and […]
One of my new clients is a very muscular police detective who had pinched nerve or a nerve impingement at the base of his neck. I think he was shocked when I began by assessing his rib cage. His left rib cage was shifted to the right and his entire rib cage was rotated to […]
This past Thursday I did a tutorial with a therapist who has taken several SMRT classes with me. We were in her office working on her clients. She is a lymphedema therapist, so all the clients we saw had lymphedema. I too am a lymphedema therapist, using lymph drainage with SMRT. A Client with Lymphedema […]
While at the AMTA convention, we did free 15 minute SMRT sessions at our booth to promote the technique, videos, and classes. I spent quite a bit of time working on lower extremities while there. One of the therapists I worked on (who also happened to be a CE instructor) had a chronic hip problem. […]
I recently worked on a client who has chronic neck pain. We were focused on her legs. She broke her left tibial plateau a few years ago and the hardware was giving her grief, plus she had hurt her right foot about a month ago and it still had residual tension. How the Body Connects […]
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. […]
After working with my clients, I’m often asked to explain to them what it is I do and how SMRT works. I received this message from one of my clients: “I don’t know what you do. I tried to explain it to my physical therapist, but I don’t know how. I ended up telling him […]
I recently had a client complaining of pain in her sacral area. When I was in massage school, almost all of our instructors skipped this area. We learned in Swedish to push the sacrum inferior as we made a long stroke down the back, and in deep tissue we learned to do a little bit […]
I recently was teaching a class on the lower extremities, and many of the therapists were focused on the hip. We were changing the hip balance by working on the lower extremities. One therapist came in with TFL pain that he had been foam rolling constantly for months without lasting pain relief. He was working […]