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ACTIVE ISOLATED STRETCHING The Mattes Method, Part I The field of massage therapy and bodywork encompasses a wide range of different styles and approaches. Each of us brings a unique combination of skills that we've found to be effective over years of study and practice—in areas ranging from sports medicine and orthopedic massage to relaxation massage, craniosacral therapy, and a variety of ancient healing arts. There are few experiences more exciting than adding to your repertoire a new modality or technique that dramatically improves your ability to help clients. Over the past couple of years, I've been exploring one such modality that has exceeded all my expectations: Active Isolated Stretching (AIS), a system developed over the course of the past 37 years by kinesiologist Aaron Mattes. A SURPRISING DISCOVERY Discovering AIS has been the second major turning point in my professional career. The first came in the late 1970s. At the time, I was working quite successfully (running a small somatic therapy school, as well as a large private practice), using techniques focused almost entirely on muscles. I was operating on the assumption that most pain and injury problems could be traced back to muscular tension and imbalances. It came as a great shock to learn that the majority of chronic pain is actually caused by injuries to fibrous connective tissues (ligaments, joints, tendons, and fascia). When I first heard this, I was highly skeptical. I wasn't convinced of the idea until I'd had it confirmed by direct experience, seeing Dr. James Cyriax's1 therapies give lasting pain relief to people who hadn't responded to any other therapies. Those people included me—receiving treatment for my own injuries eliminated the back and neck pain I'd felt for the previous 22 years (for which massage of the muscles had provided only partial relief ). Learning how to assess and treat connective tissue injuries caused a radical shift in my thinking. I eagerly shared what I'd learned with my clients and students, and saw many pain conditions that I had previously assumed to be permanent or beyond my expertise respond readily to the new types of treatment. Over the past 30 years, I've devoted much of my life to refining, practicing, teaching, and writing about these techniques. Recently, I've again had cause to question my assumptions about which musculoskeletal problems are likely to be permanent and which can be resolved. From my earlier study with Cyriax and my own work with clients, I came to believe that in the majority of cases, a combination of friction treatment, myofascial therapy, massage techniques, and/or exercise therapy could effectively relieve chronic pain, build strength, and improve range of motion. When these were not sufficient, I could usually trust that either injection therapy or surgery would be successful. However, there were still various conditions that I thought of as untreatable, including declines in flexibility due to aging, degenerative arthritis, or serious injury and muscular dysfunction due to progressive degenerative diseases such as multiple sclerosis (MS) or Parkinson's disease. I'm happy to say that AIS has proven me wrong. As in the previous instance, I initially came to AIS with a great deal of skepticism and was convinced only by direct experience. I've seen results in myself that I never thought possible: after receiving the work for just a few months, I achieved greater range of motion than I could ever remember having. Limitations that I'd attributed to the inevitable effects of aging simply disappeared. Moreover, once I received AIS training and began incorporating it into my work with clients, I started seeing remarkable changes—healing times for most soft-tissue injuries were cut in half and some conditions that had been gradually worsening over time (including one individual's MS symptoms) began to reverse course. In this article and the next, I'm going to outline the mechanisms of AIS, explain how and why it works, and discuss the specific ways in which it complements massage therapy and supports healing. In the process, I will highlight a variety connect with your colleagues on massageprofessionals.com 101