Basic Class: Intro to Spinal Unwinding Teachers: Tom Gordy, Denielle Basom Class Description:
Soft tissue techniques form the foundation for deeper interventions to the body. Students will learn unwinding technique on muscle and fascia. Students will learn how to specifically apply soft-tissue and unwinding techniques in order support structural balance as well as ease joint restrictions throughout body. Students will learn basic visual and palpatory assessment.
3 Day (Weekend) Class
Advanced Class: Spinal Unwinding & the Interstitium Teacher: Tom Gordy Class Description:
Spinal unwinding is the specific and comprehensive unwinding of the deep fascial/interstitial layers in order to alter fluid pressure within those layers. These manual changes in fluid pressure indirectly create new movement tendencies in adjoining bony segments - specifically, the vertebrae and ribs. These new movement tendencies are intended to open and decompress the interosseous space (the “between-bone space”), which, at the vertebrae and ribs, is where the super-highways of neurology run. Over time, gravity and trauma, these between-bone spaces compress, squeezing the neurology within. This mechanical/structural distortion results in a loss of function to innervated tissue.
Students will ultimately learn to decompress these neural pathways through gentle, indirect means. The gentle nature of the interventions makes this approach highly suitable for old and elderly clientele as well as clients that present with severe spinal issues including acute and chronically acute problems.
The class will proceed in three modules:
1. Accuracy 2. Assessment 3. Treatment
Each class will include a lecture on theoretics, a demonstration, and partner exchange. Students will be required to have education and experience in manual therapy. This class will not be offered on a first-come, first-serve basis. Students will be selected via an application. Each module will build on the previous module. At the end of each module, students must display the necessary competence required to proceed to the next module and/or graduate from the class. Exams may be oral or written in nature. Palpatory and problem-solving skills are emphasized.
Each student will receive considerable individualized attention. By the end of class, students will have identified, road-mapped, and charted their own spine and every other student’s entire spinal column and ribcage; each shift, each bend, each rotation, pattern and distortion. Along with this information, students will have gained the knowledge of how and where to work in order to ease those patterns and resolve troubling issues.
Module 1 Accuracy
Upon completion of the module, students will be able to accurately identify and count each and every rib and vertebrae in the human body. Students will also learn to locate and identify the positions of the anterior thoracic vertebrae through the ribcage. This level of developed accuracy will enable practitioners to track their interventions and alter them as necessary, perform individual research and note both differences and commonalities across their spectrum of clientele. Information from individual practitioners may also then be compiled into a cumulative body of research.
Students will switch palpation partners daily throughout the class, allowing refinement of palpation skills on a wide range of physicalities.
Module 2 Assessment
In Module 2, students will learn to “see” the body from a new perspective — that of fluid support/pressure, transfer, and flow. Students will learn to identify specific points of joint restriction in the spine and ribcage that also restrict neural flow and movement. Areas of immobility will be identified visually and will be confirmed by palpation. Students will apply the accuracy learned in Module 1 to particularly assess and chart each specific rib and vertebrae as to movement potential, position, distortion, and severity of neural compression. Students will learn to identify rotational and shift patterns in the body, both at the individual vertebral level and with group patterning.
Students will also begin the practical application of unwinding technique, first focusing in the appendicular skeleton. Students will learn to both elicit and identify audible fluid movements that signal a deep release. These audible responses, combined with accuracy as to each rib and vertebrae, will further allow practitioners to fine-tune their interventions — knowing precisely where they are and what has released. This will allow for, at a level not previously attainable, individual research data.
Module 3 Treatment
The final module focuses heavily on the sequencing of interventions into the body and the practical application of technique to the spine and ribcage. Students will learn a “recipe/system” for sequencing their interventions. This recipe will give practitioners a detailed framework for comprehensively unwinding the spine and ribcage. The framework is based upon commonalities towards distortion and loss of joint space that are present across the human form and are inherent in our makeup. The framework will also allow for practitioners to adjust their particular focus and interventions based upon individual differences in structure and client needs.