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 […]
Student Interaction Recently I had the an interaction with a student/therapist in one of my SMRT classes about “new” bodywork. He came into class assuming that this SMRT class would be a breeze for him because he had 30 years experience and had been made to take CE classes every 2 years for license renewal. […]
Implant Work I just got back from teaching an SMRT shoulder girdle class in Fargo where a really cool thing happened. We had a woman in class, maybe late 50’s who went through breast cancer treatments about 5 years ago. She had a unilateral mastectomy on the left, 7 nodes removed, chemo, and radiation. Then […]
Spontaneous Muscle Release Technique SMRT stands for Spontaneous Muscle Release Technique, which is a positional release modality. When teaching SMRT, we do not subscribe to protocols. Each client is different and in need of a treatment that fits their body story and their individual needs. A student/therapist recently said this: “I so, so, so appreciate […]
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 […]
I want to tell you about a massage therapist I met while in Austin, TX last week. He was in the SMRT: Shoulder, Axilla, Ribcage, & Upper Back class there. He is an older gentleman who came to massage later in life, about 3 years ago when he was in his late 50’s. About 4 […]
While in Austin, TX I met a 36-year-old woman who was in an intense amount of pain in her left chest and breast. Apparently she had been this way for about 5 years. She had seen many doctors and therapists, had many tests, and still had no idea why she was in pain. I want […]
Here are some more examples of how SMRT is making a difference in people’s lives. Today I worked on an acupuncturist client who came in with hip pain. Her hips were shifted to the right. I assessed further up and down her body and found that her rib cage was sheering between her 7th and […]
Last night I got a wonderful phone call from Patti (who begins teaching SMRT on her own in a week! My first traveling SMRT instructor!). About 3 weeks ago, Patti, Robert, and I taught an SMRT hip girdle course in Tucson, AZ. Patti has a second home about 30 minutes south of Tucson. One of […]
A student in the SMRT: Head & Neck and SMRT: Arm & Hand courses that I just finished teaching in Chapel Hill, NC had adhesive capulitis, better known as frozen shoulder. She is a young woman, maybe in her 30’s, who reached into a clothes dryer in a strange way and has been unable […]
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 […]
Two weeks ago I saw a woman for the first time who has had extreme pain in her piriformis muscles for 10 years. She is a nurse and has seen a number of doctors and physical therapists with limited relief. She gets regular deep tissue massage with limited results. The pain is great, but she […]
This week I worked on a 17-year old girl having pain her left temporomandibular joint. She had braces removed about a year ago. Six months ago she began to have pain when yawning. She says she has to “loosen” her lower jaw before a yawn or the pain radiates up into her left […]
My chiropractor came to me for a session this week. She has fallen several times in the last couple of months. The most recent fall came after stepping down wrong and twisting her ankle. Her right ankle was incredibly inflamed when I began to work on her. I began by using her calcaneus and […]
Today I had a rolfing session. My ribcage was compressed and immobile on the lower right and my right middle trap and supraspinatus were, as my rolfer said, “like bricks, totally unyielding.” I said, yeah, it’s my first ribs, they are out of whack (whack being a technical term). She asked if we could do […]
Last week I was finally able to take a minute and get a massage myself. I went to Veronica, the woman I have written of before who works for the spa and has not yet taken any Spontaneous Muscle Release Technique workshops. I booked a full body massage, but my feet were killing me, […]
Patti and I have been teaching quite a few Spontaneous Muscle Release Technique workshops lately. About every 2 weeks we’ve been in a new location. Here are some of the emails I have recently received from students: “Hello Dawn and Patti, I just wanted to thank you for making this learning experience a great one. […]
Recently I have been working on an 11-year-old girl who is a flyer in cheerleading. Apparently flyers have a high occurrence of ankle issues. This young lady is having an ankle issue, but not from cheering. She was chasing her brother and hit the wall with the medial side of her foot. The doctor […]
Today I received this email from one of our recent Moorhead, MN students: “My head has been spinning since my return from class. I use SMRT daily on everyone…not all of it, but each day I add more muscles to my memory bank. And, for some, I just put the manual on the belly […]