Thomas W. Myers

The ‘anatomy trains’

Abstract Myofascial continuities are key to global pattern assessment in bodywork and movement treatments. Five major lines are traced and their clinical implications discussed.

The ‘anatomy trains’: part 2

Abstract Myofascial continuities are key to global pattern assessment in bodywork and movement treatments. Five major lines are traced and their clinical implications discussed.

Kinesthetic dystonia: the contribution of bodywork to somatic education

Summary The author welcomes comment on this initial attempt to set an agenda on applying manual therapeutic principles to Physical Education. New skills, tools, and insights (as well as revived ancient techniques) have developed within this field that have wide educational application. Furthermore, these tools are particularly adapted to the needs of the coming century. Opportunities abound for applying these insights educationally to more general populations than have been reached so far by individual practitioners doing one-on-one work in middle-to-upper class venues. As ‘Kinesthetic Dystonia’ comes to be recognized as a societal misapplication of education, a synthesis of diverse bodywork and movement approaches will be applied to combat it. All the work we have done to date is valuable empirical research; may we make the most of this opportunity for its wider application.

Spatial medicine--a call to 'arms'.

A comprehensive and coherent approach to spatial patterning in human posture and movement is visible on the horizon. Advances in the study of fascia, neural plasticity, and epigenetics allow an overarching theory to unite all who work in human movement from osteopaths to personal trainers. Trainers, rehab specialists, manual therapists and physical educators are joining to embrace and develop this unifying construct to help our growing children meet the demands of the 21st century electronic environment.

Extensor coxae brevis: Treatment strategies for the deep lateral rotators in pelvic tilt

The group of myofascial units known as the deep lateral rotators are considered in light of their role as postural hip extensors, resulting functional and palpatory assessments of pelvic neutral are presented, and treatment strategies for anterior and posterior pelvic tilt are discussed.

Myers' response to Tozzi's editorial

Paolo Tozzi’s brave and interesting Editorial (Does fascia hold memories? (2014) covers a subject close to my heart, so the following critique comes from a place of enthusiastic support for the inquiry. In my opinion, the choice of the word ‘memory’ is unfortunate and misleading. Like many clinicians, my forty years of practice is replete with examples when my touch has seemingly elicited memories of traumatic events (and occasionally simply pleasant ones, but we manual therapists are often rooting around where trauma has resulted in long-term tissue adaptation). These memories are not always of consciously remembered events, and the exposure and resolution of these ‘issues in the tissues’ e suppressed or unsuppressed e can often involve dramatic emotional and physiological responses, followed by lasting relief from pain or somato-emotional ‘weight’, and occasionally a total change of course in life. The fact that touching tissue can bring up memories is not at all controversial in my world. Despite the obvious temptation, I have resisted using the terms ‘tissue memory’ or ‘muscle memory’ to describe these phenomena, and for the same reason that Tozzi outlines: no one yet knows what is the substrate for any kind of memory. Ever since Penfield stimulated memories in the temporal lobe while doing brain surgery, we have presumed that memory traces itself in ‘engrams’ in the brain e but we have yet to find one (Penfield, 1975). The Pribram family of holographic theories held sway for a while with therapists, but to my knowledge have gone no further than a general description of the maths e the Fourier transformations (Pribram, 1977). The outlandish and attractive theories of Sheldrake and ‘morphic resonance’ to work at all, require a highly active