Functional Bodywork with James Earls
Exeter
Functional Bodywork with James Earls is a progressive course which blends functional movement principles with hands-on manipulation of the soft tissue to give you completely new and exciting assessments and treatment strategies for your clients. Using Functional Bodywork allows the practitioner to work with motor control, joint and soft-tissue problems all with the same technique – the client is simultaneously assessed, treated and re-educated with pain-free interventions.
In this particular Functional Bodywork course James will explore how to work the major joints and tissues in standing as this is a great position to access tissues comfortably while still allowing your client to move.
Bodywork for the 21st Century.
Clients seek hands on because they want to reduce their symptoms and improve their performance – we want to help with both at the same time.
Functional Bodywork allows the practitioner to work with motor control, joint and soft-tissue issues with the same technique – the client is simultaneously assessed, treated and re-educated with pain-free interventions.
Previously known as ‘Born to Move’, the Functional Bodywork workshops blend functional movement principles with hands-on manipulation of the soft tissue to give you completely new and exciting assessments and treatment strategies for your clients. There are 2 Workshops in the Functional Bodywork series: Functional Bodywork in Standing & Functional Bodywork Side-lying and 4-Point Kneeling.
This workshop is Functional Bodywork in Standing where you will learn how to modify client positioning and movement to create predictable reactions through the client’s system. The work can be done in whatever position is most appropriate for client comfort, strength and balance, or according to the needs of the treatment plan. By the end of the of training, the therapist will know exactly how to create movements that support the client’s goals.
Not only do the workshops give you a full range of treatment principles but it also gives you an immediate sense of true functional anatomy. The body’s natural tensegrity, its ‘kinetic chain’, or it’s ‘chain reaction’, however you wish to word it, is all felt, assessed, and worked with directly during treatment. We do not make up ‘anatomy stories’, limit you to ‘anatomy models’, or follow one school of thought – in this workshop the client’s system and its movement are the only references.
The workshops can be seen as a pair with the Kneeling one or either can be taken individually.
What is Functional Bodywork?
Functional Bodywork (FB, formerly Active Fascial Release/AFR) has been developed by James Earls, blending his understanding of myofascial and functional movement principles with hands-on manipulation of the soft tissue to create a variety of therapeutic effects.
James trained with Tom Myers, the originator of the Anatomy Trains model, and studied functional movement principles with Gary Gray and David Tiberio of the Gray Institute. Functional Bodywork aims to bring the best of both these models together to give you an immediate and effective treatment tool.
Functional Bodywork combines elements of motor control theory with a neuro-myo-fascial approach to identify, treat and finally re-educate the client’s movement patterns. Blending guided movement with various soft tissue engagement protocols has created a method that addresses the body as a whole and acknowledges the roles of the body’s various tissues and their interrelationships.
Learning Objectives
- Understanding and applying essential principles – touch, layering, movement
- How to select positions that work best for your client.
- How to apply movement drivers to create specific reactions and knowing when to use and how to adapt them.
- Know how to enhance movement range.
- Be able to combine structural and functional assessments and making sense of how they interact
- Build on the principles listed above to develop global and local movement strategies and know when to use each based on the combined structural and functional assessments
- Standing Work – this will include positioning, handling, how to engagement tissues effectively.
- Soft tissue touch skills are explored in movement, creating powerful experience for the client
James Earls is a writer, lecturer and bodyworker, specialising in Myofascial Release and Structural Integration. In recent years he has concentrated on blending movement with manual therapy to create a new functional approach to bodywork.
Increasing the understanding and practice of manual therapy has been a passion of James’ since he first started practicing bodywork over 25 years ago. Throughout his career, James has traveled widely to learn from the best educators in his field, including Thomas Myers, Art Riggs, and Gary Gray. James worked alongside Tom Myers to co-author “Fascial Release for Structural Balance”, a definitive guide to the assessment and manipulation of fascial patterns.
James is now concentrating on finding new approaches to understanding how to apply movement and myofascial principles to bodywork.
Having helped build the reputation of Anatomy Trains for Tom Myers through the UK, Europe, and worldwide, James now teaches a range of his own courses and is a regular lecturer at conferences and workshops around the globe. Renowned for his relaxed and humorous style, James is a popular presenter whose subject is applicable for a wide-ranging audience that includes osteopaths, physiotherapists, massage therapists and movement therapists.
James’ blend of movement and fascial understanding led to the publication of his well-received “Born to Walk”, an introduction to the interconnected mechanics of the body, ‘Understanding the Human Foot’ and the newly released book “Functional Anatomy of Movement”.
Suitable for; This course is applicable to all hands on therapists including Soft Tissue Therapists, Sports therapists as well as Physiotherapists, Chiropractors and Osteopaths
Minimum level required to access the course: Level 3
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