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Structural Integration is most often the only
bodywork needed to restore functioning to your whole person and release
deep-seated holding patterns. Sometimes, however, a person will gain
additional benefit from deep relaxation and mind/body integration
techniques either before, in conjunction with, or separate from
Structural Integration. Carol offers additional
modalities to complement Structural Integration:
Sensory Re-Patterning
This bodywork modality is very playful and gentle.
The
session consists of a series of gentle, rocking, shimmering, or wave-like
motions. Care is taken to move you only within your available and
pain-free range of motion. Clients report how utterly peaceful they feel
afterwards.
The session is designed to impart a sense of a
lighter, freer body on the body’s nervous system. Stiff, tight
bodies melt into softness. It integrates the body and the mind and is a
wonderful stress reduction modality. It is a no-oil alternative to traditional massage modalities but with
effects that are cumulative and lasting. The work can be received in
light clothing if preferred. While the work feels wonderful to
everyone, Carol often uses this modality with elderly clients and those
suffering from Parkinson's or MS. as well as for individuals with deep
physical, emotional hardening of their tissue.
Scar-Tissue Clearing
Surgical scarring can impede one's structure
significantly. Internal organs can be impeded from their natural
mobility and motility from surgical scarring. Scar-tissue clearing
is a relatively quick process but with powerful results. If you
have had any surgical intervention, no matter how small you think it's
after effects are, you will be amazed at how much better you move and
feel once that scar tissue is cleared. Read what Ida Rolf had to
say about scar tissue barriers:
"What does this word "barrier" mean in this
connotation? One of the simplest "barriers" to a muscular unit can
be seen and felt in the infiltration of scar tissue into muscular
tissue. This is an experience we all have, so commonplace in fact
that is hardly needs description: the accident which cuts or destroys
flesh. Some people fail to realize that for the most part "flesh"
as distinguished from "organs" or "organ-meat" consists of muscles
together with their individual envelopes, technically called "fascia".
When this material is damaged, particularly if there is any impediment
to healing, e.g. a slight infection occurs, the wound is too wide, or
too deep, or it has not been cleaned thoroughly, or closed by
appropriate stitches; the healing process may be slowed to the
point where the area becomes permanently infiltrated with a less elastic
connective tissue, popularly called scar tissue. This holds the
broken ends together, but it also effectively prevents the free stretch
of the original, more resilient and more highly oxygenated tissue.
In so doing it makes it necessary for a movement that requires as
stretching of the muscle in question to be transmitted around rather
than through the scar tissue. Needless to say, this is a much less
efficient system and needs a longer time to accomplish the movement even
if it does succeed in substituting for it effectively. In many
instances it displaces the muscular movement and requires work of an
adjacent muscular structure which may not be as well suited to the
particular task."
Movement Education
Movement education is part of every session of Structural Integration
given by our practitioners.
Improper ways of moving are what caused you to develop body imbalances
and seek out help through bodywork like Structural Integration. Most of
us stand, walk, sit and generally move in ways that compress our bodies.
Much of our daily activities put strain in the body. Through movement
education, you will gain new and easier ways of sitting, standing,
walking and just being which will help you from becoming imbalanced
again.
For those who desire or need further movement education, both Carol offers
sessions devoted just to exploring movement. She offers
movement lessons either individually or in small groups. The
results of movement education can be as profound and as dramatic
as those achieved through direct physical manipulation. Movement education
informs you how to better keep and deepen the changes made by physical
manipulation by
helping you to discover more efficient ways of using your body.
Visceral Manipulation
Our organs have a natural motility cycle which can
become distorted due to injuries, accidents, stress, surgeries.
Through the use of gentle "listening" with the practitioner's hands,
this natural motility cycle can be restored. The effects are
profound.
Visceral Manipulation is a gentle hands-on therapy
which was developed by French Osteopath, Jean-Pierre Barral. For the
Structural Integration community, Liz Gaggini selected and adapted the
techniques for core integration.
Visceral Manipulation treats the connective tissues which surround the
various organs and the structures that suspend them. At optimal
health, the relationship between the organs and structures of the body
(muscles, membranes, connective tissue and bones) remains stable. But
when one organ can’t move in harmony with its surrounding viscera (The
entire inside of the torso is called the viscera, and the organs within
are the visceral organs) due to abnormal tone and adhesions in the
connective tissue, it works against all the body’s organs and
structures. Connective tissue also called fascia, is the thin, almost
translucent tissue that protects and coats the muscles and organs and
allows them to slide over each other. When damaged by injury or disease,
fascia “sticks” the muscles and organs to each other. Then, the muscles,
organs or ligaments can't perform their intended function.
While it may not appear obvious at first, strains from the viscera can
affect the body's posture, balance, and alignment from the inside, just
as the strains from the greater structure affect the body from the
outside. Strains in the viscera can result from surgical scars,
adhesions, illness, posture, or injury. For instance, following a
surgery, adhesions can occur between visceral surfaces within the body
cavity or at the scars themselves. These "stuck" spots can develop
tension patterns through the connective tissue network deep within the
body, creating a cascade of effects far from their sources for which the
body will have to compensate.
Using visceral manipulation, a practitioner can release the fascial
strains of the viscera, restore the normal motion of the individual
organs, and rebalance the relationships between the different visceral
structures. Doing so can revitalize a person and relieve symptoms of
pain, dysfunction, and poor posture.
Visceral work has been found to be so effective that osteopathic schools
in Europe now require six months of visceral manipulation training.
Visceral work is available from some osteopaths and an increasing number
of Rolfers, Practitioners of Structural Integration and Physical
Therapists who are attracted by its gentleness, speed, and
effectiveness.
Rossiter System of
Facilitated Stretches
For more information on these powerful techniques
which can be taught in the workplace,
click here.
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