In the forward to Job’s Body by Deane Juhan, Dr. Ken Dychtwald articulates six principles of bodywork. His perspective confirms my professional work experiences and observations during the past 17 years of practicing therapeutic bodywork, and especially confirms how powerful and transformational bodywork can be. His words express why I am still so excited about my work.   

 Lengthening Pectoralis Major

• There is no sensation or emotion that is not translated into a muscular response of some kind: These feeling states are the primary bases of our habitual postures and our individual patterns of behavior.
• Various ancient and contemporary forms of bodywork go far beyond temporary pleasure or relief and actually alter conditioned responses, chemical balances, and structural relationships. Bodywork has the potential to deeply change and improve the given state of an individual.
• Bodywork, by using tactile input, can actually re-educate and re-program the organism into becoming more coordinated, more flexible and more appropriately responsive–literally more intelligent. A body-mind system that is integrated in this fashion will be more able to resist depression or disease, and to attend to and repair itself in times of stress or injury.
• Skillful therapeutic bodywork does alter the structure, the chemistry, the feelings and the behavior of a human being, and relieves discomfort, dysfunction, and anxiety.
• Nothing is more essential to lasting positive change than self-awareness; it is the prerequisite for self-control. Bodywork is a direct and effective way to increase this awareness within an individual, releasing tension, freeing energy, and enhancing health through hands-on bodywork.
• The most mysterious and powerful of all human interactions–touch.  
  

  Releasing Upper Trapezius

  
  

A bodyworker’s skilled touch produces physiological changes having structural effects and systemic effects which alters the structure, the chemistry, and the feelings of a client, and those affecting our cellular and our circulatory systems. Current evidence and research support how these changes enhance athletic performance, prevent injury, reduce risk of muscle strain, and improve healing and range of motion.    

Myofascial Spreading the Retinaculum