Massage & Bodywork

January | February 2014

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Your postural habits do have an impact on the quality of your body mechanics as a massage therapist. • Are your hands in your pockets, or are you holding them on your hips? • Are you tilting your head to one side? • Is the quality of your breathing deep or shallow, fast or slow, easy or labored? Are you holding your breath? Walk around and shake yourself out. At Your Table Stand beside your therapy table, as if you were going to work with a client. While standing, ask yourself the questions listed above. Then, give yourself some feedback. on both legs equally would serve you better, but everyone has a preferred standing leg, so it's nothing to feel odd about. Your everyday postural habit has slipped into your work environment. SELF-OBSERVATION Becoming aware of your everyday postural habits is the fi rst step toward understanding how you integrate them into your body mechanics during manual therapy. The following practice will help begin this exploration. Casual Stance Stand as if talking to a friend you just happened to meet. While standing, answer the following questions: • Are you standing primarily on your standing leg? • Are you bearing more weight on one hip? • Are you bearing more weight through one foot? • Are your shoulders relaxed, held up, held down, backward, or forward? • Are you crossing your arms in front of your chest or abdomen? • Which of your postural habits transferred from the conversational stance to your stance as a manual therapist? • Were you aware of these habits and the fact that you transfer them from one role to another, or did you discover something new? • Which habits did you fi nd comfortable, and which would you choose to change? Repeat aspects of this exercise, as appropriate, during other activities throughout your everyday life. With practice, you will come to recognize which postural habits you are transferring to your body mechanics. Barb Frye has been a massage educator and therapist since 1990. She coordinated IBM's body mechanics program and authored Body Mechanics for Manual Therapists: A Functional Approach to Self-Care (Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2010), now in its third edition. She has a massage and Feldenkrais practice at the Pluspunkt Center for Therapy and Advanced Studies near Zurich, Switzerland. Contact her at barbfrye@hotmail.com. It pays to be ABMP Certified: www.abmp.com/go/certifiedcentral 49

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