1. When and
how did you decide to become a bodyworker?
In my twenties I was
studying psychology at Heidelberg University, being fascinated
by the way how mind, body and emotions interact. At that time
Gestalt Therapy, Primal Scream, Transactional Analysis, Reichian
Therapy and Encounter Groups were very popular. However, I
became more and more impressed with the great impact of
therapeutic approaches like Rolfing or Feldenkrais which
addressed the body directly. Finally I received my first Rolfing
series at the age of 23. It had such deep effects on my posture
as well as my mental and emotional makeup, that I wanted to
learn about that profound therapy as much as possible.
2. What do
you find most exciting about bodywork therapy?
The exploration of the
dynamics of the bodywide fascial network. Approximately 7 years
ago, after over a decade of teaching Rolfing, I entered the
field of academic science. First as an avid spectator and
interrogator. However soon I immersed myself like ‘Alice in
Wonderland’ with total awe and wonder, even experimenting some
laboratory tests with animal’s fascia in my home kitchen. Little
did I know that this would lead to a fascinating and dynamic
development, that now I only have 1 day left per week for my
clinical bodywork practice, and being busy with laboratory and
academic science developments during the remaining week. The
scientific exploration of fascia as the ‘Cinderella tissue of
orthopaedics’, coming from a bodyworker’s perspective, has
proven to be such a goldmine, that it is immensely exciting to
be part of the current scene of international ‘fascianados’
which are hunting and collaborating in this new field of fascia
research.
3. What is
your favourite bodywork book?
Sandra Blakeslee’s ‘The
Body has a Mind of Its Own’ , being pretty equal in my esteem to
Dean Juhan’s ‘Job’s body’.
4. What is
the most challenging part of your work?
Having to learn to say ‘no’
. The increasing popularity of fascia research and our little
group at Ulm university has resulted in much more collaboration
requests than I can possibly handle.
5. What
advise you can give to fresh massage therapists who wish to make
a career out of it?
Don’t limit your curiosity.
Join or start a collaborative study group in your area. Or start
a Journal Club, where you discuss one or two important
scientific papers per month. Invite other experts in your field
to speak in your town, thereby learning a lot from them and also
establishing yourself or your little group as an exchange knob
for collaboration and new developments. At least once a year, go
to an international conference in your field or a related field,
best together with one or two colleagues, and afterwards
dedicate a time to summarize your most important insights from
that event to a group of local colleagues.
6. How do
you see the future of massage therapy?
It is time we step forward
from the current landscape of bodywork ‘schools’, which are
oriented around a charismatic founder, and each has a vested
interest in training students only the basic (and necessarily
limited) viewpoints of that school, moreover attempt to
selectively find scientific ‘evidence’ to support their
theoretical assumptions as well as self confirming the relative
superiority of their modality. While resembling the early
developmental stages of many sciences several hundred years ago,
this social and economic situation does not foster critical
questioning and collaborative developments of new theoretical
questions as well as practical approaches. Therefore more and
more professional practitioners are currently taking on a more
‘rational’ attitude, and focusing less on (semi) spiritual
concepts. They take on clinical reasoning and a more scientific
approach of diagnosis and treatment. This is of course a very
valuable and also necessary development. However, in my
observation, it is often the less intellectual oriented
practitioners that have the most refined touch skills, mindful
presence, empathic intuition and therefore frequently deliver
the most profound effects in their works. It would be a pity, if
the increasing intellectualization of massage therapy results in
massage practitioners that are more mechanistic, having similar
personality like the typical white coat medical doctors who are
full of knowledge, yet lack the ability to listen and to connect
with their patients.
