Newsletter June 2023

We are calling his workshop “the Magic Moment: How I Get the Recipe to Work for Me”. I am really looking forward to this workshop. I have read both of Ritchie’s books and have been talking to him about the idea of the “Magic Moment” and it has revolutionized my practice. We are talking about truly leveling up my skills as a practitioner, every client I’ve worked with before now needs a do over. Ha Ha!!! I have become both more efficient and effective with my clients while deepening my view of SI and its potential. In this workshop Ritchie will address the idea of using boney margins and deep structures to facilitate the idea of working the clients body from the inside out which is different than our normal outside in view. He will be sharing a way to work that allows deep change and powerful transformation. All I can say is things are really different for me now!!!! Ritchie has spent a lifetime as a student of SI. He trained in 1978 with Peter Melchior. This work is the culmination of a lifetime of pursuing SI.

August 4-6 David Davis is teaching in Salt Lake City, UT.

We are calling this workshop “Scoliosis – Unraveling the Confusion”. David has been studying and working with scoliosis for over 40 years. I took my first scoliosis workshop with him in 2002 and have done a number of them with him since. These workshops have changed my view of our work. First, it’s important to point out that understanding a scoliosis pattern clarifies all of the patterns that we see in our daily clientele. A scoliosis pattern is just a more radical example of the rotation and deviation patterns that we see every day. Second, I thought scoliosis was really mysterious. Working with David has helped me see how we can break down the seemingly complex pattern we are working with into manageable bites. We, as SI practitioners, can be helpful in ways practitioners of other modalities of work cannot be. A long time ago I asked a client with scoliosis for a testimony about SI. Her reply was “Structural Integration is God’s gift for people with Scoliosis.” This is a workshop that should not be missed.

September 15-17 Norma Bell Bandy is teaching in Austin, TX.

We are calling this workshop “Newborns, Toddlers and Early childhood patterns in Adults”. This is a workshop that I am really excited about. I have been working with Norma as she collects a careers worth of learning into an awesome workshop. Norma trained with Dr. Rolf in 1973 and has had a practice working with children and adults ever since. I am constantly impressed with her ability to recognize physical and behavioral patterns in adults based on childhood development. The format of the workshop will be to work kids in the morning and adults in the afternoon. This will be a jam packed learning experience. In Austin, Norma will have access to a number of families willing for their children to be models. She will do demo sessions and then the students will have the opportunity to work with models as well. Sessions with small children are typically very short so there is ample time in the morning. In the afternoon students will trade sessions with each other. Norma will guide the group in assessing patterns in the students structures and developing strategies to address them. This work will be profound and transformational.

 

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Plano think tank

The C’s of Success

I have been playing with some ideas, The 10 C’s of Success, that I think help people have successful practices and lives. In my experience sustained success comes from the inside out just like our work. In our work of Structural Integration, we create a base of support, open up the sleeve and then open up the core. Integration could then be said is the connection of the inside and the outside. This is a great model for our lives and practice. We can develop our inner selves and then integrate that into our daily lives. Here are some words that I have come up with that facilitate this model of living.

Confidence
Competence
Conviction
Creativity
Consistent
Community
Commitment
Curiosity
Centered
Communication

Confidence: a feeling of self-assurance arising from one’s appreciation of one’s own abilities or qualities.
There is a difference between telling myself that I am a good practitioner and believing that I am a good practitioner. Confidence comes from experience, learning and positive results and feedback. When we are confident our clients feel it and they can grow their trust and their confidence in our ability to help them meet their goals. This is part of the foundation of an awesome therapeutic environment.

Competence: the ability to do something successfully or efficiently
Practice makes perfect. By now everyone has heard of the 10,000 hour rule that Malcom Gladwell popularized. Put in 10,000 hours of practice and you will achieve mastery of a skill. That is a lot of SI sessions! Competency comes long before mastery. Competence is when I am no longer thinking about the basic skills as I work with a client and I have a solid vision of what and how I am going to approach and plan a session. Our clients feel our competence through our touch and they can feel the questions in our hands. Developing competence allows our clients to relax.

Conviction: a firmly held belief or opinion
A convicted practitioner believes in their work. I believe deeply that SI changes bodies and people in a way that nothing else does. For almost any chronic symptom a client comes in with I can look at a their structure and make up a story as to why they are having challenges. I can also come with a strategy based on what I see that is usually helpful. SI is my go to wellness tool. I can look people in the eye with total conviction and say I think I can help you or you are in the right place. Having conviction in our work draws clients to us and gives them hope.

Creativity: the use of the imagination or original ideas
All of my teachers have referred to the idea of practitioners being artists and that SI is our craft. When we work with the Basic 10 Series and the Recipe it is tempting to think that we just do the same thing to every client. The Recipe is not intended to be a paint by numbers affair, it is based on principles and goals that are artfully used with each unique client. Creativity is the result of hard work combined with listening to the client and your inner self. When this energy is part of our work our clients are inspired to trust us and our work resulting in a strong therapeutic relationship.

Consistent: acting or done in the same way over time
Dr. Rolf talked about “the compound essence of time” being a key ingredient for SI. We don’t become excellent practitioners overnight. I was at a yoga workshop with renown Ashtanga yoga teacher Richard Freeman when he said “ you can dig 10 wells 6 feet deep or one well 60 feet deep to hit water”. Peter Melchior told us in class to just put Structural Integration Practitioner on our cards and avoid having a hundred different titles. When I reflect back on both of these comments I think about doing one thing and doing it really well, get really, really good at Structural Integration. Hard work and consistency do not go unnoticed, they are an unspoken element in trust.

Community: a group of people with a common characteristic
The community of Structural Integration Practitioners is not very big and is more like a family. It is from our community that we gain our security and draw our inspiration. We get sessions, go to workshops, have dinner or coffee and talk on the phone to remember that we are all in this together. Competition is a story that I make up in my head. Real community is heartfelt and everyone in the room can feel it. I have spent a bunch of my life fighting for a piece of the pie and the real truth is that there is no pie.

Commitment: the state or quality of being dedicated to a cause, activity
My first commitment needs to be to myself. Caregiver and compassion burn out are very real and need to be avoided at all costs. I have to look at my life and see how I am expending my energy and resources. Am I working to much or working with the wrong motives? Am I taking care of myself physically by eating healthy and getting exercise? Am I balancing my life physically, mentally and emotionally? These are all ingredients to a successful work life where I can regularly make myself available to help others and show up as my best self in my fullest potential.

Curiosity: a strong desire to know or learn something
So who has ever nerded out on something SI related. I used to get lost in reading anatomy books and now I can get lost in my anatomy app just following the map checking things out. When I ride my bike I think about being on my Line and feel how that impacts my abilities. When I am working in my office I find my line, center in my heart, relax my pelvis or find my feet all while seeing how it improves or effects my touch and the clients response. I am always curious about what I am doing in the world and how it relates to SI. We are very lucky to have work that is not completely explainable because it allows room for us to evolve and grow. I heard a long time ago that I will not be able to help anyone go where I haven’t gone before them. I think it is my responsibility as a practitioner to play Star Trek and “Go where no one has gone before” so I can help my clients to continue to pursue their potential.

Centered: mentally and emotionally confident, focused, and well-balanced
We often hear about living on your line or working from your line, this is our place of connection, strength, listening and knowing. When we work from our line we are present and engaged with our client and at our most effective. We don’t get to live from here all of the time but we do get to visit and sometimes we get to visit often. When we do this our work blossoms and we have those benchmark sessions that we remember. This is our most powerful point of connection to other people and has a direct impact on the quality of our work. Our clients ‘know’ when we are centered and it blows them away.

Communication: a process by which information is exchanged between individuals
We are in continuous communication with our clients. It begins with our greeting, continues with our touch and finishes with closing the session, payment and rescheduling. Studies have found that only 7% of this communication is from verbal words. That leaves 93% of the communication unspoken in the form of tone of speaking at 38% and body language at 55%. In my experience there is also communication at the level of our thoughts. If we are in a bad mood or angry when we enter a room that screams louder than anything we say. If we lack congruency between the thoughts in our head and those in our hearts it causes disruption and insecurity in those around us. Peter Melchior said “70% of what clients get out of a session is from who you are, the rest is from Structural Integration.” I think this speaks strongly of our unspoken communication. We are representing ourselves on all levels all of the time making it extremely important that we are always professional and act with integrity.

These 10 words , The C’s of Success form the background of my belief system and are at the heart of my practice. I can’t help but bring them to AGSI and they will sneak their way into a lot of what I talk about