BLOG: Anatomy for Touch

The World Health Organization estimates that 90% of LBP is “non-specific,” meaning the pain is not connected to a known disease or structural problem. Perhaps even more concerning, by some estimates, up to 84% of the population will experience low back pain (LBP) within their lifetime. All that adds...

The Massage & Bodywork editors have a lot of favorites from this year’s bevy of articles. Here are their top Massage & Bodywork picks for 2024. 

“For me, this is the star of the show in 2024. Nicole’s conversation about fat is profound and should change how MTs think of this tissue that mak...

We are so honored to have one of our podcasts named among the 🏆 TOP 5 PODCASTS of 2024 for The ABMP Podcast. 

The ABMP podcast is the leading podcast in the massage industry and produces over 72 episodes a year (!!) with over 200,000 downloads. In 2024, AnatomySCAPES contributed by hosting a 3-part...

Learning to recognize anatomy through touch is very different than recognizing it by sight. Nothing is color-coded on your clients’ bodies as they are in your anatomy books. (Wouldn’t that be nice!?) And the boundaries of soft structures are often less obvious in real life than in drawings. Muscles ...

Nicole & Rachelle are helping guest hosting the ABMP podcast in 2024. Our third episode just dropped—Your Practice in 3D: Understanding Tissue Relationships. 🎧Listen here. 🎧

As massage therapists, we spend a lot of time mastering anatomy—learning specialized vocabulary and the locations of muscles,...

For most of us, learning anatomy starts with seeing. We build anatomy maps in our minds with images from atlases and books. We see as much as we can, memorize shapes and locations, systems and regions, and layer in more detail each time we look. Our mental maps guide our touch and shape what we perc...

Our culture’s got a big “fat problem” (and it’s not the global obesity epidemic). Fat is among the body’s most vilified and ignored tissues. Yet, as bodyworkers, it’s one of the tissues we manipulate the most in all our clients, regardless of body size. Whether you use more superficial modalities or...

Our organs slip and slide over each other all the time. As we breathe, digest, and move, the liver and large intestine slide across each other, the stomach and spleen slip around each other, and the bladder and intestines glide over each other to accommodate movements in our everyday lives. A thin m...

Rachelle & Nicole were recent guests on the Thinking Practitioner Podcast with Til Luchau and Whitney Lowe where we discussed our Anatomy for Touch column on the surprising sensitivity and functional significance of the ankle's fascial retinacula. Rachelle also shares some of her work on the Fascial...

Nicole & Rachelle are guest hosting the ABMP podcast in 2024. Our second episode just dropped— FEELING Anatomy: Your Practice in 3D. Listen here. 

Being a skillful feeler is a huge part of what we do in the massage room. And beyond being a good palpator, our touch influences the anatomy our clients...

The word tissue comes up frequently in our work as massage therapists. Deep tissue massage. Soft tissue injury. Scar tissue. But what is a tissue, exactly? Is tissue just another name for the individual structures we’ve studied, like muscles, ligaments, and bones? Or is there more to it? 

Let’s sta...

 Compressing, shearing, and tractioning soft tissues like skin, adipose, and muscle are a big part of our massage sessions, but other parts of our anatomy can benefit from therapeutic touch as well, including the sinewy, boney areas like the wrists and ankles. Keeping these areas healthy may have ev...

AnatomySCAPES is excited to help host The ABMP Podcast in 2024. Rachelle & Nicole join a phenomenal roster of massage educators and industry leaders who will be guest-hosting 🤩 all year. Our first episode is out NOW! It's a fun, conversational 20-minute listen. 🎧 Listen here 🎧

🎙Ep 415 SEEING Anatom...

Skin is the first thing we touch in every massage even if our intentions and pressure run deeper. Though skin is a mere 1-3mm thick in most areas, it is the largest organ in the human body and accounts for a full 15% of our body weight. Richly supplied with lymph and blood networks, it serves as a k...

Coming to a dissection lab is not your everyday experience. And it can be a big investment of time and money. Not surprisingly, we get a lot of questions about what it's like. Here's one of the questions we get a lot:

QUESTION: Do your labs use embalmed tissue? ANSWER: No.

In many dissection labs,...

AnatomySCAPES' Anatomy for Touch column appears in each issue of Massage & Bodywork magazine. We were recognized in 2023 as an Editor's Pick for articles from 2023. Senior Editor Karrie Osborn writes, 

“I’m a little obsessed with fascia. That’s one reason I was so excited when columnists Rachelle

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Why are so many massage therapists heading to the dissection lab? The NY Times had the same question.

In a new article out this week, Danielle Friedman of The NY Times headed to the dissection lab with massage therapists and yoga teachers. What did she learn? 🤔

The same thing that we learn at Anat...

Can you guess which one of these is the REAL Fascia? They've both been labeled fascia, yet are quite different from each other.

They not only LOOK different, but they FEEL different under our hands, FUNCTION differently in the body and RESPOND differently to touch and loading.

What gives? Well, ...