We help people along an anthropological path to neuromyofascial well being.
We can all agree, modern humans are sicker than their ancestors. If we are not in agreement about that, we encourage you to examine the number of people diagnosed with chronic illness in the past few years. We fully appreciate that numbers and statistics are altered to favor the medical-industrial complex. But one can hardly argue- people are suffering more than ever before.
A humble person will realize, our ancestors knew a lot about taking care of themselves. At Structural Elements we are interested in the physical structure of our ancestors.
When we use an anthropological approach to structural health we examine how our grandparents, their grandparents, their ancestors and our indigenous human relatives rested, played, ate, fasted and healed each other through touch. This is a simple path; a well traveled one and fat with opportunities for growth, connection, healing and self-discovery.
Let us teach you how to play, rest eat and fast like your ancestors. Let us help you through skilled touch informed by old world wisdom. Come with us down an anthropological path to neuromyofascial wellness. Read more below.
At Structural Elements we spend many hours digging into cutting edge research. Some of our favorite research topics include: neuromyofascia, human dissection, traditional osteopathy, structured water, physical intelligence, biomechanics, polyvagal theory, terrain theory, the microbiome, bacteriology, the virome, epigenetics and horizontal gene tranfer, fasting and insulin resistance- to name just a few. We work hard to balance what we learn from current research with the time tested wisdom of our ancestors and insights from studying healthy traditions of indigenous people. We place most of what we learn into four useful containers: rest, play, touch, eat and fast. We teach people how to use each of these elements to advance toward more pliability and structural balance.
Rest
Part of healthy resting includes relaxing under the sun, the moon or with a captivating fire in view. Our ancestors did plenty of this and they were healthier for it! Why?
The behavior of water in our bodies, how it moves and how it is organized is fundamental to health. Our modern, indoor, blue light and non-native-electromagnetic-frequency filled lives tend to bring havoc upon our water body. If the water in our bodies is not regularly exposed to sunlight, light form fire, the moon and human touch it becomes “disorganized.” Large amounts of “disorganized” water and lesser amounts of “structured” water in a body lead to stagnation, inflammation and disease. Many of us are just not able to spend enough time in the sun. We have adapted to be overly sensitive to sunlight. We are light deficient- living too much indoors and not enough outdoors. At Structural Elements we use infrared light therapy to help you make up the difference. Our infrared saunas and targeted infrared therapies may provide just the photobiomodulation your neuromyofascia, lymphatic and circulatory systems are craving. Come rest! You can sit, stretch or lie in one of our saunas before or after your scheduled session or reserve time just for sauna.
““...the simple bottom line is that regular contact with nature, exposure to the sun and the moon, contact with animals and physical touch with other people is critical to our health.” ”
Part of healthy rest includes breathwork, the practice of mindfulness and embodiment. Ida Rolf, the mother of Structural Integration said “the body is solid material wrapped around the breath.” We teach healthy breathing and breathing exercises as a way to calm the mind and organize the body around the movements of breathing.
Moshe Feldenkrais, a “giant” in the movement teaching world, taught extensively about the benefits of mindful movement. Thich Nhat Han, a meditation teacher, said that carrying our awareness with us is more important than carrying our cell phone. We agree! And as we work with those under our care, we spend ample time teaching about mindfulness, awareness and embodiment.
Play
Developmental (Restorative) Play
Our ancestors played more than we do. Although time for play may change as we age, should play-time go away? We think play should make up a large and integral part of a healthy life style. Part of healthy play includes using the motor skills we honed as babies and toddlers. We call this developmental or restorative play.
This training modality reconnects you with skills you learned during developmental motor learning as a baby or toddler. We use developmental and restorative movement teaching in almost every movement teaching session. It’s great “warm-up” work. It’s useful after intense play. It’s valuable as a stand alone modality.
Early motor learning is all about experiments. A three month old, lying on her back, waving her arm in the air is not engaging in meaningless movement. This is an experiment. She is learning to control the movements of her arm and hand. Her experimental movement will literally shape her arm and hand- preparing her for reaching. We run oodles of experiments as we begin to learn about movement. We wiggle toes and fingers. Sometimes we intiate wiggles that ripple through our whole body. We reach, We grab. We roll. Boy do we roll! We rock and scoot. We crawl. It’s all play and it’s indispensable if we are going to move well as adults. This play organized our neuro-myofascia and skeleton. We literally shaped ourselves through developmental play.
The pliability and motor patterning we played so hard to get can sometimes get lost as we move through our stiffer adult world. Are you feeling that? It can be extremely healing to engage in this kind of developmental play even when we are fully-grown. It’s restorative and we advise it. Through this kind of play, you can clean out some webs in your movement repertoire, wake up access to blue-prints you haven’t used in a while. Playing in this way will make you more pliable.
Developmental movement play feels really good. It can be profoundly relaxing. Using it before or after more aggressive forms of play or traditional training methods can be rewarding. Would you like to try some developmental movement play? Come play! At Structural Elements we are good at teaching this stuff.
Corrective (Functional) Play
As we age, become injured or mold our bodies to fit into the technological age some of our functional patterns sustain damage. We become stiffer, less pliable, weak or disabled in some or many ways. Does this description fit you? We can help! After teaching some developmental play we advance students toward corrective or functional exercise modalities.
Of the three groups of modalities designed to reconnect you to your playful side, the functional or corrective category tends to be the least playful. This may be the fault of teachers who forget the power of a playful mindset or the fact that some of these modalities end up in the hands of practitioners who are over focused on the results instead of the purpose of exercise. Did we mention the purpose of exercise? When we exercise, we are trying to meet our need for play!
When modalities in this category are taught playfully, encouraging curiosity and a beginner’s mindset, promoting exploration, mindfulness and flow, they can be extremely transformative.
Corrective modalities, when taught well, move bodies through many vectors and a variety of useful shapes. Through careful cues and by creating proprioceptive challenges the teacher creates a movement experience that is rich and satisfying.
A major goal in functional or corrective movement teaching is to “fix” unhelpful patterns you have picked up along the way and incorporated into fundamental shapes you use every day. Another goal is to help you achieve the pliability, stability, strength and power you need to make fundamental shapes or movements. So what are these fundamental shapes and movements?
Corrective or functional exercise helps you safely and effectively perform these movements:
Squat
Lunge
Rotate
Push
Pull
Object manipulation
Sit
Stand
Walk
Run
Bend
Hinge
These movements have been referred to as “primal,” “foundational” and “basic” human movements. The shapes you make when you move in these ways are very useful in every day living. If you are a farmer, rancher or do another kind of physical work, they are essential. Athletes definitely need to be well versed in all these movements. Our ancestors used these movements regularly with skill and grace. Refining your ability to move in these ways is very healthy play. We have included object manipulation as part of functional play because the movements of grasping, holding, lifting and carrying are basic to human activity. You developed many of these skills by handling all sorts of toys (even if your toys were only empty boxes, sticks or “just” rocks to your adult counterparts). Would you like to sample functional movement play? Come in for an assessment and some corrective training! At Structural Elements we are openly nerdy about bio-mechanics. We make your body our project and corrective exercise is just one of the ways we do that!
Integrative (Natural) Play
After spending enough time learning developmental and functional movement skills we advance students toward learning integrative or natural movement. A large portion of the movements we played with as children were low risk experiments used to prepare for more sophisticated skills we use as we move in and manipulate our natural world. Looking through an athroplogical lens, common motor skills used by all humans as they navigate their natural world come into clear view. This type of movement has been labeled by some as “natural movement.” The method for learning the typical skills of natural movement has been labeled natural movement training or Herbertism after the father of natural movement training, Georges Hébert. We place natural movement training squarely in the integrative motor learning category.
Moving in and manipulating nature for our enjoyment and survival is our birthright. Solving the movement puzzles presented to us by the wild and varied surfaces, natural jungle gyms, obstacle courses and living playgrounds of our earth is incredibly gratifying and healthy for humans. Playing in a natural environment where we are in direct contact with scads of organisms with whom we have symbiotic relationships is highly beneficial. Playing in sunlight, fresh air, clean and moving water is especially healthy stuff. There are myriads of benefits from playing in nature. But if we just practice the way humans move in nature, the skills needed for moving in nature, we can easily access the nourishing qualities of good movement. That’s good news because in our modern world, opportunities for moving in clean natural environments are diminishing. It’s always preferable to practice this type of movement outside in nature but we can still reap benefits from practicing the movements themselves, indoors. There are a few movement teaching systems that teach natural movement. At Structural Elements we use the MovNat® system. But why is playing in this way so good for us and what are the specific skills used in “natural movement?”
When engaged in natural movement training it is common for the experience to elicit spontaneous memories of childhood play. This is fun and invigorating, especially for adults. Natural movement trainers make generous use of all the elements of free play. They encourage mindfulness, curiosity, beginner’s mind, spontaneity, creativity, exploration and flow. They capitalize on the excitement and healthy anxiety that comes from anticipation. Natural movement trainers will carefully bump you into that “now what” feeling you had as a kid when you climbed to a higher branch or got yourself into other low risk pickles. Natural movement training definitely is play and will reward you in the same way. Expect to feel more pliable and to see gains in stability, strength and power from this sort of training. Expect the acquisition of real, usable movement skills. Expect to be energized and inspired after each training session. Like playtime, when a natural movement training session ends you’ll want to do it again.
Natural movement training will equip you with real skills you can use in nature and in the more physical aspects of good living. One of its main goals is to train you to be useful. This means you’ll learn skills that will enable you to be helpful in emergency situations, as an example. The training is both practical and fun, teaching you to help others around you and to take care of your environment. There is strong emphasis on “un-specialization” in this type of training. Training to be unspecialized diversifies your movement repertoire- a very good thing that will protect you when life requires adaptability.
We put the “integrative” label on natural movement training because it is a wholistic approach to motor learning. When teaching natural movement a trainer will usually help you maintain a big picture focus. That doesn’t mean the teaching is unspecific. It just means the trainer may help you lock onto the feeling of safe play rather than getting lost in the details of scapular rhythm, joint tracking, when and how to switch on tranversus abdominis or other corrective details. The work looks different than functional (or corrective) and developmental (or restorative) training. However, it is an excellent addition to those methods. Natural movement training can help you use the the motor learning you acquired during both developmental and functional training.
Here are the motor skill categories used in natural movement training:
Running
Throwing
Vaulting
Walking
Swimming
Fighting or Rough & Tumble Play
Balancing
Breathing
Carrying
Climbing
Crawling
Jumping
Lifting
When you engage in these movements and all their varieties, your body will remember “we used to do this!” It’s true. You “used to do this” as a kid. And your ancestors definitely used to do this. The movements vary in complexity. And there are loads of modifications and progressions in each category. Like any other good training, the idea is to learn the basics really well and then refine, challenge, refine. It’s a blast! And you can try some of this type of play on your own because it’s in your nature (especially when you're in nature)!
Rather than give you a specific drill we encourage you to go to a park or trail, patch of forest or even your backyard and try to walk on as many different surfaces as you safely can: grass, rocks, large stones, tree roots, ditches, hills, curbs, benches, stumps, gullies, puddles, stream beds, bridges, banks, pipes, fallen trees. Can you safely jump onto or off any of those surfaces? Can you step over them? Are there oppurtunities for ducking or even crawling under something? Play safe. But do play! This may sound chalenge-less to some. But you’ll quickly access your play drive and if you are used to coloring inside the lines with you training, a whole new world of movement puzzles will be revealed to you.
Touch
Corrective Bodywork
Corrective bodywork is manual therapy intended to alleviate symptoms related to misalignment. While this sort of therapy can produce tremendous relief and balance. Corrective bodyworkers are not always trained in Structural Integration but they use many of it's principles. This type of therapy uses manual techniques derived from Structural Integration but applies them locally. These techniques allow us to make useful changes in fascia that has become "stuck" or "fuzzy." This work is not wholistic but extremely powerful if your negotiation with gravity is causing you pain or acutely affecting your performance. With Corrective Bodywork our consistent intent is to build on your strengths and gently guide you toward more alignment in areas where you struggle. Corrective Bodywork can be applied is one session or a few sessions that each build on each other.
Structural Integration
Structural Integrative Therapy (SI Therapy) is wholistic manual therapy aimed at your nuero-myofascial net (connective, muscle, and nerve tissue). This therapy builds awareness of your "structural behavior." As SI therapists we are interested in helping you relate to two very powerful forces: gravity and ground reaction. Structural Integration is applied over 12 different sessions called a 12 Series (an introduction to the longer 12 Series is the shorter 3 Series). Connective tissue (fascia) is arranged in lines or planes in your body, spanning from your foot to your head.
In Structural Integration we work to differentiate, broaden or lengthen poorly organized connective tissue planes (also called myofascial meridians) this detailed work with all the major fascial lines in your body we help your body make sense of this new organization, working broadly across your pelvic and shoulder girdles. Then we gently drape your arms over your more integrated structure. The work is applied sensitively and with full client participation. Each session ends with gentle balancing work and includes some movement reeducation
““The idea in structural integration is to use connective tissue manipulation (myofascial work) and movement reeducation to lengthen the body and reorganize it around its vertical axis””
Eat & Fast
Restoration of Gut and microbiome
Please pardon our mess we are updating this page
Please Pardon our Mess. We are updating the information on this page.