Instructor: Deane Juhan

Location:  Florida School of Massage, Gainesville, FL

Cost: $550 ($500 early registration discount price if registered by March, 13 2024).

Credits: 24 Florida and National CEU credits

To register for the class or to get more information: Contact Frank Merillat directly at fmerillat@mac.com or call 352 371-0743 or 352 213-4603.

Come join the group and experience time with a talented bodyworker, teacher of the Trager Approach and author of Job’s Body: A Bodyworkers Handbook. This is a great opportunity to explore contact with the body-mind and a deeper understanding of the workings of the movement body.

Course Description: Relaxation and stress relief are certainly two main goals of bodywork. But there is an important addition to your clients’ somatic well-being that more directly addresses the patterns of muscular habituation, posture, compensations due to injury and the restoring of freedom of movement and freedom from pain: the re-education of the overall sensory motor patterns that have accumulated over time.

The work that will be presented in this workshop is an innovative approach developed by Deane Juhan, based in large measure upon the rehabilitative techniques of Dr. Milton Trager.

Functionally, we are really one muscle that is divided up by the connective tissue structures into different compartments in order to provide specific vectors of motion and coordinated groups of motor units. We are not robots with hinges, cables and pulleys, but shape-changers, and any gesture involves the participation of widespread muscular supports and motivators.

Resistance/Release work is designed to re-coordinate our musculature as a whole and to train more efficient and effective recruitments of muscular contraction and lengthening involved in any position or movement, from feet to head and from sleeve to core. The result is dramatically improved muscular coordination, adding both ease and strength to all of our activities. This approach fits well with most modalities practiced by massage therapists.

Deane would like to focus on the role of presence as a key aspect necessary for effective results and client contact.  He will also be discussing the neurological underpinnings of habit formation, and the effects of R&R work on breaking up these old patterns and  the cultivation of new more functional habits to facilitate letting go of holding and moving in new, ever more exploratory ways of self-development. Slides, lecture and discussion will be utilized to present a clear understanding of the ways in which habitual pathways—together with sensory and contractile systems—forms the basis of all muscular patterning. This understanding dramatically enhances the intentions and effectiveness of virtually any practice that has to do with muscular habits and movement patterns. It is directly applicable to all bodywork modalities that deal with trauma, pain management, rehabilitation, improved range of motion, enhanced performance, and the development of more effective habits of both muscles and mind. Practitioners of yoga, massage, Trager, Cranio-Sacral, Feldenkrais, Rolfing, Alexander Technique, Pilates, Gyrotonics and Physical Therapy will find this useful and applicable to their practice.

About the instructor: Deane Juhan is the author of Job’s Body: A Handbook for Bodywork and Touched by the Goddess: The Physical, Psychological and Spiritual Power of Bodywork. He has been a professional bodyworker, teacher and lecturer for over 40 years, including 18 years on the Esalen Massage Staff and 30 years as a practitioner and instructor of The Trager Approach. He spent years in direct contact with Dr. Milton Trager and this is reflected in his approach to bodywork. He has taught his seminars in anatomy and physiology for bodyworkers in the US, Canada, Europe and Japan.