David Koerner
Deep Healing at Home
Massage can provide a physical and mental release from stress and physical pain, whether you are an athelete,
office worker or couch potato, each one of us has kinks that would feel better worked out. David Koerner is a wonderful,
certified massage therapist willing to do housecalls around Hiroshima.
After studying Thai massage in Chiang Mai for a month and taking Yoga courses in India, I have become very fond of
massage indeed.
However, the heightened sense that doing and receiving expert masssage and yoga courses has on body awareness,
has made me more intuitive
to the reactions and feelings of my own body. This has had a particular effect on my experiences when getting
massage treatment.
Some people probably describe me as an arrogant or fussy customer, but once you know a bit about good massage, you know
someone should never step on your spine, make you hurt without warning or reason or work on you senselessly-
just going through the motions...
It's hard to put up with amateurs and novices once you are aware of what good massage should feel like.
David's style is calming and he is very conscious of his movement and hands' effect on painful muscles, joints and
tissue.
I was very impressed with not only his technique, but his knowledge of the possible reasons for certain pains I was
having. I am convinced that he would be a great help to anyone suffering from aches and pains.
David charges a very reasonable flat rate of ¥4000 per hour, plus travel expenses to your house or work where
you want treatment. His goal is to treat you so well that you won't need him anymore after a few visits. Unlike some
massage which is based on the temporary feel-good philosophy, David's treatment goes deep to work on fixing the problems
permanently.
Dave explains a bit about his technique:
"Neuromuscular Therapy, NMT, works with the body's nervous system and fascial structures. The nervous system bit
involves working with proprioceptors.
Proprioceptors are the nerve structures that determine where our body parts are and how much force or stretch is
being generated or placed on a muscle. These are only two of the many functions, but the main ones for my purposes.
Some of the techniques I use are intended to help reset those structures from an abnormal setting to a more normal
setting. A good example is the way people hold their shoulders up. Everyone wants to lower them, but they have been
that way for long enough for their body to think that up is "normal" and down, relaxed, is not. So they have a hard
time maintaining an actual normal position.
The fascial structures are what connects our bodies and give us our shape.
As we develop, over the long term, through repeated stress, or in the short term, through an accident of any sort,
or bad posture our muscles become shortend or lengthend and that can cause pain.
For example, if your quads are tight, too strong, and out of balance with your hamstrings you will probably feel
like your hamstrings are tight because in order for your quads to be short your hamstrings must be longer.
Every skelatal muscle, with very few exceptions, has a counter part(s) that must lengthen in order for it to shorten.
If these imbalances are allowed to develop unchecked then not only will the proprioceptors be reset,
but the muscule fascia, envelope, will change shape accordingly. This leads to problems involving circulation, pain
and/or range of motion.
In Joy's case, her knee and the jogging stroller she uses for her son probably changed the way she walked and ran so her body
compensated by overusing muscles in her hip and butt to keep her moving. Because the muscles doing the compensating
were being asked to do more work that they were used to, and or designed to do, it hurt. The body uses pain to
try to keeps us from moving so it can heal. But we do not have the sense to stay down so the problem keeps building
up, even over short time periods, and we end up with problems relating to fascia and proprioception.
NMT seeks to open the fascial structures and reset the nervous system.
I hope this is clear enough. I am much better at saying this than writing it.
If you are interested, my schools web site is www.catinc.net but the information on it is limited." (David Koerner 2004)
On the net:
jjwalsh 2005
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