Biography
I moved to Northampton in 1987 to attend Leeds Design Workshops, a custom furniture making and design school located in a large brick mill building in Easthampton, MA. I spent the next 11 years making custom furniture and architectural components for the art furniture market, architects and interior designers. Most of the furniture pieces I built were painstakingly made by hand and took many months to complete. Wood is a very responsive, "live" material. Making a piece of custom furniture from concept to completion required excellent manual skills, visual and conceptual problem solving skills along with patience, discipline and hard work. This work gave me skills sets I use everyday in my therapy practice along with a unique understanding of the relationship between form and function. Having worked for so many years performing very demanding manual labor also gave me direct experience with occupational work injuries and functional biomechanics such as proper lifting technique, good ergonomics and posture.
I started Integrated Muscular Therapy in the spring of 2000 after graduating from the Stillpoint/GCC School of Massage Therapy in Greenfield, MA. While attending massage school I was also enrolled in the St. John Neuromuscular Therapy training and was a certified neuromuscular therapist soon after graduating from massage school.
I have always enjoyed exercise and mind-body disciplines such as yoga, cycling, running, weight training, outdoor recreation and fitness. Regular exercise has helped me overcome occupational and sports injuries while providing a disciplined mental environment conducive to personal growth. In June of 2001 I became a certified personal trainer through the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA) so that I could combine my interests in sports and fitness with my therapeutic skills. Exercise is active therapy for the whole person. It mobilizes personal resources and engages one’s will power for self healing. It can also have a profound, positive impact on our outlook about ourselves and life in general. Personal training also reinforces my role as coach, educator and motivator for positive lifestyle changes.
Presently in the exercise and fitness field there is a merging and cross pollination of sport performance training, sports medicine, mind-body disciplines and injury rehabilitation information. Functional exercise, stability balls and balance training devices are available in most gyms now when several years ago they were used only by a handful of physical therapists. This merging of ideas and techniques represents a dramatic shift in health maintenance, injury prevention, rehabilitation and sport performance training.
These ideas and techniques have dramatically changed my approach and scope of practice. Instead of focusing solely on symptom alleviation (which is the primary focus of many therapeutic modalities) I try to see the bigger picture and address why the symptoms are being presented. Healthy joints need healthy muscles capable of maintaining posture and performing appropriately when asked to move the body. Understanding how the body works through functional anatomy, kinesiology and biomechanics plays a central role in my treatment process.
In 2003 my son Jack was born. Beginning with the first moments of his life onward I've witnessed and obseved how a child breathes, grows, moves, reaches, crawls, walks, throws a ball and runs. He became a living experiment in how a child learns to organize their body and psyche in the physical world. As an infant I massaged him, pulling on his legs and arms, while he pushed and pulled back (muscle activation techniques). I would position toys so that he would have to crawl to reach them. When he could sit I would toss him a ball to the front and side, testing eye hand coordination and reaction ability. We played games that included balance and coordination of right/left sides of the body. The same techniques used with adult athletes to improve athletic performance I employed with Jack in a very playful, age appropriate manner. As a result of this "play" Jack has developed a strong connection to his body, becoming a kinesthetic learner - he can watch an athlete or dancer and mimic there posture and movement style. To him thinking, feeling and moving are all one activity.