This week we’ve got a bit of a legend on the show: Tom Myers. Manual therapist, body worker, and author of Anatomy Trains, one of the most popular and pioneering books when it comes to making sense of all the connections, patterns and the way that your body actually moves (specifically in regards to the muscles, tendons, and fascia in your body).
I know many of you may be sitting there trying to make heads or tails of the last word: fascia. Fascia is the connective tissue that runs throughout our body that impacts every move you make. It’s become kind of a buzzword lately, and Tom has been teaching and learning about fascia for decades now and we are just starting to see how groundbreaking his early work was and the research he continues to reveal.
Tom Myer’s Background
- Tom Myers is the cartographer of Anatomy Trains(Elsevier, 2001, 2009, 2014), the co-author of Fascial Release for Structural Balance (North Atlantic, 2010, 2017), and the author of numerous chapters and journal articles that have been collected in the books Body3, The Anatomist’s Corner, Structural Integration: Collected Articles, and BodyReading: Visual Assessment and The Anatomy Trains. He has also produced over 16 DVDs and various webinars, with several forthcoming, on BodyReading® visual assessment, Fascial Release Technique®, and the applications of fascial research to body training.
- Tom and his faculty provide continuing education in Anatomy Trainsand holistic myofascial strategies for a variety of movement and manual therapy professionals worldwide, as well as professional certification in Structural Integration based on the Anatomy Trains Myofascial Meridians. Tom studied directly with Drs. Ida Rolf, Moshe Feldenkrais, and Buckminster Fuller.
- He has also studied with movement teachers Judith Aston, Emilie Conrad, and in the martial arts. His Structural Integration programme is influenced by cranial, visceral, and intrinsic movement studies with European schools of osteopathy.
- An inveterate traveler, Tom has practiced integrative manual therapy for 40 years in a variety of clinical and cultural settings. He is a member of the International Association of Structural Integrators (IASI) and a member of the Health Advisory Board for Equinox.
- A certified Touch-in-Parenting instructor, Tom retains a strong interest in perinatal issues relating to movement and lives, writes and sails on the coast of Maine.
Highlights from this Episode
- What fascia is and why it is so important for golfers to know and understand. Being a forgotten system in the body, it is the fabric that holds us together.
- Tom also delves into how by understanding fascia and how it operates, we can figure out which areas of our body aren’t working as efficiently as they should (through densification) and how we can impact this area to reverse the process.
- He talks on writing the groundbreaking book Anatomy Trains, from coming up with its name to seeing the training and body movement patterns that led to the research into fascia.
- How to begin fortifying the weakest parts of your body like holding yoga like stretches to really work out the fascia, and some of the things people are trying to do to help but end up being more of a hindrance like overworking the wrong areas.
- The science behind using the foam roller or the medicine balls to “roll out” our knots, and how our understanding of the fascia has adjusted over time.
- He defines the term “Tensegrity” with his analogy of the sailboat and the brick wall, the difference between compression structures and tension structures, and which category our body falls into.
Parting Questions:
Caddy Shack or Happy Gilmore? Tin Cup
What would be your walk-up song? I Think It’s Gonna Work Out Fine by Tina Turner
18 holes with anyone, who would it be and where would you play?
Buckminster Fuller at St. Andrews in Scotland
Any parting advice for the 18Strong Community?
Keep Playing! You have to go past the boredom to get great at something.
Find out more and follow Tom Myers and Anatomy Trains on:
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