The Tools Michael Uses to Heal Clients

Michael uses a variety of skill sets in order to address his clients’ neuromuscular, musculoskeletal, and postural imbalances. His diverse training and effective techniques give him great advantage to identify the source of pain or discomfort and prescribe a proper strategy to address them. When working with clients, Michael may call upon any one or more of the following tools in order to reestablish the balance needed to live a life of ease.

Rolfing®
Rolfing® is a specialized school of bodywork which focuses on establishing structural integration and equilibrium between the tension of the muscle, bone, and organ systems. This is achieved by releasing the adhesions within the connective tissue network (caused by trauma or stress) and by using hands-on therapy and learning to align and move oneself with greater ease. Rolfing is also an educational process that allows clients to understand how posture and movement habits they have developed over a lifetime influence present health, balance, and physical presence. Michael relies heavily on the principles and philosophies he learned at the Rolf® Institute and applies them to every modality he has studied.

Massage
Michael completed a demanding and comprehensive 1,000-hour massage program as part of his education with the Rolf® Institute. Massage is often an important means by which to get clients familiar with hands-on bodywork, an effective tool in training muscles to relax, and a great way to help patients recover from stress or athletic conditioning. Michael considers massage a vital and everyday resource to help his clients.

Yoga
Yoga can be an effective and appropriate tool for those who have become weak, tight, or disconnected from their body as a result of lifestyle stress. It’s also a great barometer for measuring the strength/length balance in the body. Michael has studied yoga intensely for 20 years, especially the more alignment-focused styles of Iyengar and Anusara. Yoga makes the body supple, strong, and adaptive—all important elements of somatic health. Michael draws from a library of yoga asanas, or poses, to compliment his clients’ specific structure, provides gives great detail in teaching these poses, and often recommends poses as homework. Michael is well connected in the yoga community and collaborates with local studios to lead functional anatomy classes. He often refers clients to appropriate teachers for their continued progress.

Personal Training/CrossFit
Strength is essential for support in a well-aligned body, and Michael often uses resistance training to create stability in areas that have become weak from disuse, overstretching, or hyper-mobility. Michael is also a CrossFit Level 1 Trainer. CrossFit is a system using varied, multi-joint, dynamic functional movement under load. Whether the goal is to stabilize hyper-mobile joints, build muscle tone, or address bone loss, every body needs strength.

Pilates
Pilates is a physical fitness system designed to strengthen the core postural muscles through a series of repetitive, precise movements. Like yoga, Pilates is reliant on the body’s ability to engage and lengthen simultaneously, creating neuromuscular re-patterning and more efficient movement patterns. Michael’s study of Pilates led him to translate these exercises into therapeutic uses for post-injury rehabilitation and sports performance goals.

Motor Learning
Motor learning is the practice and application of movement re-education using biomechanics, kinesiology, and the physics of movement. The way a body is shaped and the way that it moves go hand in hand. Often, releasing the body part that is creating restriction is not enough to restore proper movement. Motor learning teaches the nervous system to establish a new way to move based on the newfound freedom.

Other Somatic Tools
While the above mentioned are Michael’s primary skill sets, his exposure to and study of many other somatic practices such as the Feldenkrais Method® (which emphasizes awareness through conscious movement), Cranial Sacral Therapy (which focuses on the subtle, energetic manipulation of the skull and pelvis), and the Alexander Technique (which encourages natural gait and ease of movement) give him an edge at determining the most effective strategy to work with clients.

More than just a sum of his wide and varied experience with training and teachers, Michael relies on his innate ability to assess his clients’ body structures and acknowledge their limitations and needs while guiding them toward a better way of life.