HOW TO MAKE MUCH GREATER LENGTH, LOOSENESS & INTERCONNECTED ALIGNMENT 

A class with a following one day and two day workshop, introducing Structural Integration Bodywork
 

• Techniques you can do right away

• Information you can use describing our "interconnected" body structure
  & body "section alignment"
  
  This program teaches you the “How” of making a lot more looseness and flexibility, and removing a lot more stiffness, stress and tension, faster.
  
  And it tells you “Why” it works so you have the bigger picture of body tightness and body improvement that most people have not told us about.
   

  Let School Certified Master Postural Integrator Lou Gross
  Give you the benefit of his 20 years professional experience
  and his warm, informative and clear teaching style.
  1-321-726-9083       louisryoshin@yahoo.com

  
  You’ll also be able to purchase some of
  Lou’s Unique How-To Instruction Articles & Video/DVD's

Especially for Massage Therapists & Physical Therapists
Gives you tools and knowledge to immediately apply on your clients & patients

Great Education for Chiropractors, Orthopedic Surgeons, Osteopaths & Acupuncturists
Shows you first hand how adding these advanced techniques will help your own work do a better job for your patients.  Gives you the tools.

Helpful for Nurses, Athletic Trainers & Personal Trainers
Even if you don't yet do massage, you can add these techniques to your abilities.  And the class information will tell you how to use your talents in a "bigger context" of human body structure.

Also great for all other physical medicine practitioners
and non-professionals wishing to help themselves and their family and friends.
 

You can now learn the principles of the world renowned Structural Integration Bodywork System that creates much greater length, and lasts much longer than most other body loosening approaches. 

And once people have this treatment, or even a large part of it, other methods such as chiropractic, massage, reflexology, shiatsu and acupuncture are usually able to do more of what they, themselves are specifically designed to do, and do it easier.

 

HERE'S WHAT'S IN THE COURSE
The class is a prerequisite for attending workshop days.
You may come to the class only, and space permitting,
decide then to come to the first day, or both days, of the workshop.  You may also sign up ahead of time for the class and 1 or 2 days of the workshop.


One evening 3-4 hour introductory class explains the approach and benefits of the Structural Integration System and provides free mini demos.  The general areas of the sequence of 10 steps and some advanced work is described, with brief comments about how much time it requires to do each step well so that the whole body is properly realigned.

Class participants will receive copies of some of my original articles, including “The Increasing Benefits of the 10-Step Process,”  “An Outline of many of the Goals and Benefits of each of the 10-Steps,” and “The Principles of the Structural Integration Process,”  all excerpted from my book, Back Fix Bodywork, Understanding the Cause of Back Pain and How to Fix It.

A brief reading list will also be provided, with comments about what’s in some of the books.

Following the Class will be a One day and Two day workshop which explains the general areas of the body to be treated in more detail, explains why each step precedes the next and describes the interconnected system approach to treat back pain, carpal tunnel, neck and shoulder stiffness, hip and knee problems, arm tightness and overall stress and trauma. The explanation also points out ways to help athletic performance even if the athlete feels “fine” and has no pain.  These explanations will be verbally describes and illustrated on a writing board.

The 7 hour one-day workshop will teach a hands-on basic loosening sequence that massage therapists, chiropractors, MD’s and even acupressurists can use to give their clients and patients a lot of tension release.  It includes how to work an integrated system of back, shoulder, arms, neck and head tightness re-lengthening and then a verbal explanation of what to do next on one’s own.  Some Structural Integration Body Reading will be included.

The second day of the two-day workshop will add another 7 hours for my enhanced version of the basic recipe first session step, of the chest thoracic cage, upper back, and outer pelvis.  (We covered the arms part of this step in day 1.)  Here I add a little more overall on the back and pelvis, and a little on the abdomen and legs.  This enables most people to breathe deeper and easier, stand up straighter with less effort and even walk a little freer.  We will “tie in” what we learned in day one.

Each WORKSHOP DAY  includes a demo on the sequence, then partners pair off and do the sequence on each other.  I will be coming around and supervising and assisting. 

Note that these techniques are not meant to teach you how to do the whole structural integration process.  Rather, they are interconnected muscle group loosening, made with connective tissue manipulation rather than massage strokes.  The aim is to help people do a better job of loosening these commonly tight areas than they already do with massage strokes alone.

A commonly asked question:

What’s the advantage of doing Structural Integration techniques when I already give a good massage and I even have some training in the system of Myo-Fascial Release?

The difference between Structural Integration Method of Connective Tissue Manipulation and other forms of body tightness releases is that the Structural Integration Method always approaches the body as one interconnected compete unit, where muscles and bones in one area of the body are recognized as affecting other parts, and in addition, the fascial (or myo-fascial) connective tissue suit that surrounds our whole body and goes through all the muscles everywhere, is also an integrated “set” of body suits in layers from head to hand to toe.

Rather than working on arms, or legs, or backs, etc, we treat the body in sections, of muscle groups, and sets of muscles in different areas.  We re-lengthen and reorganize within each area and between the interconnected areas.  And that creates an integrated system of muscles, bones and joints, that functions in a better way.  We have re-lengthened the life-long accumulated shortness in all pats of the fascia that has been restricting many different muscles’ movement.  And that has created a body that has its parts more in alignment with each other and with the ongoing force of gravity.

We are approaching the body as an architectural structure and we use special knowledge about that structure to bring out many of its best features, functioning that is inherently our musculo-skeletal birthright, but that has been covered up more and more, even since we were born.

The muscles have become less compressed and longer as well as looser.  Their neuro-muscular and metabolic functions now operate at a higher and more efficient level.  And the person looks and feels better, too.

There are 10 steps in the original “basic recipe” with more applied in “advanced” sessions.  I add a general back, neck, shoulder and head loosening step in the beginnings and include some advanced work in a number of the basic steps.  I also explain as we go along how each step is part of the whole “10-step treatment” on the body’s system, and I include a number of techniques that improves the energetic, metabolic and psychological-emotional improvements of the bodywork itself.  I also include a number of my own books and descriptive articles as texts and reference material in the course, along with the basic anatomy training.  I have found this approach gives students a lot more understanding, confidence and capabilities right away.

Chiropractors, and those who work with chiropractors, can learn a lot about how to make the chiropractic do more, easier. 

I receive repeated reports that vertebrae go in easier, more vertebrae can go in, and adjustments stay in longer, including those that couldn’t even during months of treatment, there’s less or no side-effect pain somewhere else in the back from putting some vertebrae in, and kinesiology has more access to a looser and more properly organized musculo-skeletal structure.  The front to back curves of the spine and the zig-zags side to side at pelvis and spine and head and spine, all get better.

Orthopedic Surgery for repair can be done in a body structure that is looser and better aligned, with more of the proper bone, muscle and joint positioning. 

This can help lower backs stay more pain free after the surgical treatment on the specific area because there’s a lot less improper pulling on the vertebrae.  Likewise, the knee, hip and ankle joints are also freed of a lot of tight pulling from leg muscles and they are more aligned to the way they are designed.

Massage Therapy can do more because the tissue is more malleable and the blood and lymph channels are more open and available. 

Massage can then push more waste products out, bring more nourishment in, stimulate more physiological conditions, relieve stress deeper and more thoroughly throughout the body, and even release more tightness than before when the person routinely bunches up in the short term.  Generally, even people who were hard on the outside or very pain sensitive to pressure, now enjoy the benefits of deeper massage.

 

Class Topics
A layout and explanation of the
4 hr introductory educational class

1. Self Introduction – including my background, training, expertise in interconnected structure and mind-body connection, and fixing backs and other pains as well as increasing elite athlete performance.
2. Guided mind-into-body relaxation and focus

–        a mini self help and help the clients process you can use immediately“show” then “tell.”  Increases mind into body self awareness, relaxes mind and body better than an out of body vacation kind of relaxing, and increases presence of mind to move the body and stay more aware.

• -         Starts with an easy-to-remember 10 place release technique.

• -         Helpful for dentists, doctors, psychotherapists, chiropractors. body therapists, even school teachers – all of whom would like their clients, patients or students to be able to relax better and have more awareness in their bodies.

3. Structural Stretching

• –        a few basic special kind of stretches to lengthen key areas –based on an interconnected approach and fascial soft connective tissue spreading technique.  It is some Structural Integration Bodywork done with stretching.

• –        This will show athletes, yoga teachers, chiropractors, physical therapists. Trainers, gym teachers and others who teach stretching a couple of more effective ways to do all their own stretching

• –        another mini self help and client help

• –        show then tell that further increases mind into body self awareness, relaxes mind and body better than an out of body vacation kind of relaxing,

• –        and increases presence of mind to move the body and stay more aware.

• –        Also educates the stretcher about his or her own condition and about the way the body is put together and can be made to work better.

4. As we do them, there’s explanation. And I’ll add more explanation when you sit down right after.  These two experiences will illustrate the difference between releasing neuromuscular tension and fascial shortness, and will also give you tools to use in analyzing clients’ and patients’ conditions as well as helping them.  They also increase circulation and mind-into body self awareness.
    

5. Muscle-Fascia anatomy description, including

• …how it bunches up,

• …the three kinds of shortness it creates in the body simultaneously,

• …and an analysis of whole body misalignments, going from head to toe

• …and including the spinal curves

• …with an analysis of pinched nerve and disk problems.

6. Further parts of the mini Guided relaxation process and a repeat of the structural stretching  exercises – to show how a second round works better than the first, and how the structural release we did before enables the neuro-muscular releasing to go further.  This illustrates, in one’s own body, how lengthening the fascia increases the amount of relaxation available with neuro-muscular treatments.
7. Then, an integrated movement technique for using the body more effectively in sitting down and standing up.  This also stretches the psoas, abdominals, hamstrings and adductors.  This exercise is also something that helps the clients stretch and work better in daily life, and it gives some more practitioner analysis about what is long enough and what is too bunched up.
8. This stretching and movement part will include comments about how structural length and shortness is inter-related with physiology and cell respiration.  This also relates to endurance, recovery time, and athletic economy of effort.
    

9. Review of the Structural Integration Method principles

• -         principle of soft connective tissue form

• -         principle of interconnected structural parts – bone, joint, muscle, fascia, and planes of fascia

• -         principle of one whole system of 10-15 steps done over a number of days and weeks, rather than a multiple repeat of 10-15 times the localized treatment

• -         principle of stacked body sections aligned with themselves and aligned with the downward pull of gravity

• -         principle of muscle group improved re-organization

• -         principle of tensegrity, the interconnected functioning of all parts of the body at a very high level – including the relationship of compression structures and pain to the tensegrity structures and greater agility without pain.

10. Further Structural Stretching and Mind-into-Body relaxation with an integrated movement way of reducing tension when we move, and to increase mind-body awareness.
     

11. Overview of the 10-step basic structural integration process, enabling many body practitioners and yoga-stretch teachers to work with clients more effectively.

-         Included are a few general tips on correcting structure to correct lower back problems.

12.  If time permits there will be sample free technique experience for some people while question and answer session occurs.

ABOUT LOU GROSS

Master Postural Integrator Lou Gross BSEE  has a BS in Electrical Engineering and Master’s work in Business Administration, was an officer in the US Army, and worked as an electronics development engineer and engineering manager.  In 1982 he became a Postural Integrator Bodyworker and in 1983 accomplished the Master level.  He also studied Structural Integration and related body therapies from a number of teachers in other schools, and he has certification in Chinese Medicine acupressure.  He has worked in two college training rooms, has had a number of ongoing Olympic athlete and college coach clients, has worked in two chiropractic offices, and a number of 10K races.   

Lou is the author of a number of articles and his books include Back Fix Bodywork, Understanding the Cause of Back Pain and How to Fix it, How to Make Your Body Work Better and Do More For You and Structural Stretching, How to spread your Connective Tissue Better and Get a Lot More Length.  He also developed the Energized Relaxation system of guided mind into body relaxation, combined with a number of energy balancing and strengthening techniques.  And he has been published in Positive Health, the largest alternative health magazine in Great Britain.

 Lou is the founder and director of The Institute for Enhanced Performance. 
His theme is, “I make who you are better so everything you do is better.”
And his “service motto” is, “Your success is my business.”

 

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Copyright 2002   Louis A. Gross   All Rights Reserved

STRUCTURAL STRECHING – Some Details
A More effective Way to do stretching

By Master Postural Integrator Lou Gross BSEE   1-321-726-9083, http://www.backfixbodywork.com

This method teaches you how to pull and lengthen the soft connective tissue of the muscles, the fascia, to both make muscles longer and also align one part of the body with another.  It creates long term benefits, even curing back pains and lessening sciatica, fairly quickly.

The techniques can be done in a suit, work clothes or evening gown, as well as in shorts at the gym.  Some can be done sitting down at the office.          

·        Noticeably increases mind and body relaxation while it makes us looser and more flexible.  Helps sleeping.  Also helps relax tension before a dental appointment or other situation like a job interview.

·        Quite effective as a mini tension reliever on long car drives, airplane trips, and in the work office.

·        The special mind-into-body technique actually increases focus and attention as it removes the tension and tightness.  Good to do before a presentation as it also gives the body a more upright and “alive” energy.

·        Makes yoga stretching go further, easier, and helps athletic performance.

·        Works with all stretching positions and in conjunction with other stretching books.

·        Teaches through one’s own experience and information I explain, how the limbs affect the torso, especially how the legs affect the lower back, and arms affect the neck, shoulder, upper back and depth of breathing.  This method based on the whole body interconnections shows how to do more effective overall stretching than is usually given in physical therapy instruction.

·        Makes it easier to get in meditation positions and improves the energy flow.

·        Can even be done and some modified for people in wheel chairs and at retirement and nursing homes.  I used to teach them at senior centers each week.

     This is a series of stretches that are done in a different mind-into-body way than most people stretch.  The positions themselves, and then the "feeling" technique both increase the amount of stretch people get, the enjoyable feeling of the stretching and the safety of the stretching so nothing tears.  The method also removes emotional and mental tension and serves as a concentration meditation method.
           What I've done is use the "feel" I get from giving and receiving Structural Integration Bodywork, and put it "inside" the muscles, and groups of muscles, that we're stretching.  I've combined this with what I know from my many years of body-awareness concentration breath meditation, and from my yoga and tai chi practices
           The body lengthens best when it's the fascial soft connective tissue that's lengthening, rather than say, the harder tendon and ligament tissue.  In fact, these harder tissues aren't mean to stretch and efforts to do that can cause injury.
            In addition, each muscle's soft connective tissue is part of the entire "whole body suit," and soft connective tissue shortness anywhere pulls on the muscles all over the body.  Shortness in the legs, for instance, keeps the back and neck tight.  Shortness in the arms and sides, restricts breathing.  So what we do here is work section by section, getting our minds into the tissues, and get both the local area and the longer, interconnected areas to give way.

          I've taught these techniques to private clients, a track team and Olympic athletes, yoga students and groups of seniors in my Rejuvenation Classes for a couple years running.  Everybody got looser.  One yoga teacher and Bodywork client said, "This is how yoga should be taught."  In the athletes' and others' testimonial pages you'll see where a few people said things like, "These are good stretches."
           The method's been in use since the mid 1980's, and has gotten better by adding additional stretches taken from my own intense yoga classes.
            I helped one world class athlete stop his sciatic pain with 45 mins of this method.  A staff member of a health club had his back pain go away after 40 minutes.  One very tight, 66 year old athletic senior, who'd been trying intensive yoga for over a year, with very little benefits, started getting much better results using this technique alone, and in his yoga, even after just one hour of the Bodywork to help.

           People get longer stretches, easier.  Hamstrings, especially, lengthen better, and the positions for hamstring and calf stretching are more effective than the usual physical therapy and athletic training room methods.  Arm and hand loosening positions are also better, and they're connected into torso stretches.
          People get stretches up the side, through the internal organs and along the muscles connecting one vertebrae to another along the spine. Leg tightness holding torsos tight, is also lengthened.  This understanding of the inter-connectedness of our different body parts comes out of my Structural Integration knowledge.
           Breathing gets deeper and bodies feel lighter.  Stretching "feels" better to do.
 

ENERGIZED RELAXATION

Some Details - A More effective Way to Release Neuro-Muscular Tension and Stress while

Simultaneously Increasing Kindness, Attentiveness and Awareness

By Master Postural Integrator Lou Gross BSEE   1-321-726-9083, http://www.backfixbodywork.com

To be relaxed and energized at the same time seems a contradiction in terms but in this case it doesn't mean hyper-activity.

It means to be a lot looser, have more energy in a calm and "even," or "coherent" way,  have a clearer mind that's more focused into "the present," and feel refreshed and "nicer" emotionally.

·        The process also improves health by releasing even deep tension in the organs and blood vessels.  It increases a lot of the body's energy flows and balances them out.

·        It helps both to get to sleep and to sleep deeper.  And it can help with a refresher nap in the middle of the day.  This relaxation program is excellent for inducing sleep (I, myself use it), as it creates a very thorough relaxation in both body and mind.

·        It's a mini-vacation from thinking, from ongoing emotional activity and from physical tensions we've accumulated. 

·        It is also an excellent training program to teach people how to put their minds into their bodies, how to release psychological and emotional stress wherever they are, and how to locate and energize both their central and peripheral energy centers. 

·        It shows people what to do to get more out of their breath meditation and yoga.

·        It can even help people with an illness or injury because it tends to improve blood circulation and turn off muscle tension. 

·        Great for Massage Therapists to play for their clients during treatment.  Dentists can even have patients listen with an inexpensive walkman during treatment.  This method has the person actively turning off nerve signals to muscles, organs even blood vessels all over the body, and even relaxes into the bones, brain and digestive functions.  Even gives guided relaxation for emotional improvement and increasing and balancing the body’s energy centers.

           This is a much different kind of relaxation tape than almost all of those you can buy in the store.  Those are mental oriented.  They guide your mind to "go on a vacation," away from your body.  The idea is to stop the thinking about tense and over-working subjects.
           But one part of the real problem, is thinking itself, because that all creates neurological tightness in body muscles and organs.  Another problem is that we accumulate nerve activity all day long from both physical and emotional reasons, and from "bad habits" of tensing ourselves just to do everyday and work "things."
           In this system, we purposely take our mind into the body, stopping all the thinking because we're simply paying attention to sensations, and we purposely turn off all the nerve signals, even into deep places like organs, glands, blood capillaries and joint and bone tissue.  So we're relaxing both mind and body.
          This is a much more powerful kind of relaxing for both body and mind.  At the end of the process, it has also produced more aware and alert people who are both physically relaxed and usually, emotionally "nicer," (or at least temporarily relieved).
           Results happen right away.  And the more one does the process, the bigger the effects and the longer they last.  I have played the tape over and over in the same Bodywork session, and the person I'm working on gets more and more relaxed.

           People can use this kind of mind-into-body releasing method to improve the results they get from massage, Structural Integration, various other kinds of bodywork, acupuncture.  That's how I myself developed part of the program on myself.  Practitioners can play it before, or while, working on their clients.

           If you're familiar with the yoga "dead man's pose" where we go through one section of the body after another, mentally relaxing each one, you know how effective it is to bring your mind into the body and purposely turn off the nerve signals we accumulated during the day.
          The first part of my "energized relaxation" system does this, but in a more thorough way.  For instance, "Relax your toes, relax your toe nails, relax the bones in your toes, relax between your toes, relax the blood vessels and nerves in your toes, relax the joints in your toes," and so forth.
          The second part has us release the gripping experience we all seem to do with our muscles and bones.  Then it has us open into our own biological energy systems and use our breath to clean them up, balance them and strengthen them.  It even has us create a loving supportive energy all around us.  People can do this.  Our bodies are wired up this way.  And the effects usually last for a little while.
            All of this releasing helps relax the organs, nerves, blood and lymph vessels, and many more parts of our being.  And it simultaneously turns off mental "noise" while also increasing our ability to concentrate, focus and stay aware.  It really does this, providing you're still awake if you do it in bed late at night. (haha)
            Once we're this freed up from our daily neuro-muscular tensions, the tape guides us into a simple process to connect our energy centers with those of our loved ones, when we picture them in our mind's eye.  I do this with couples in my "couples' bodywork sessions, and we can also do it while we're physically separate from the people.  We make connections inside ourselves on a deep level of energy and body tissues. Whether you believe in the ability to connect energetically or not, doing the actual process in the body and mind is emotionally enjoyable and very, very relaxing.

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Copyright 2002   Louis A. Gross   All Rights Reserved