BLOG: Anatomy for Touch
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...
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...
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....
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...
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 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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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,...
Visible scars start at the surface, but what we see on the skin may just be the tip of the iceberg. Scars can run deep, affecting multiple tissues at once, influencing their texture, function, and relationship with each other. Scar tissue feels different under our hands. Often more fibrotic...
When you first studied the musculo-skeletal system, you probably learned that most muscles create movement through contraction that pulls on their tendons, which then transmits force to the bones. But what happens in regions like our anterior abdomen where there are no bony...
The trapezius is the broad, superficial, paired muscle of the upper back and a long-time favorite in bodywork. Our clients' frequent request for focus on the upper back and shoulders comes as a result of the daily hit their traps take – whether from their desk jobs and driving their cars or...
The soles of our feet are under a lot of stress — mechanical stress, that is. Consider how much we rely on our plantar foot to quietly manage some pretty impactful tasks, from bearing our body weight as we stand at the massage table to absorbing impact as we walk, run, or jump. Our...
Anatomical drawings and dissection images often depict the IT Band as a two-dimensional "strap" on the lateral thigh, leaving us with an incomplete picture that doesn't exactly match what we feel beneath our hands. Broadening our understanding to include a three-dimensional view of the deep...
The Cutest Little Ligaments
Between the skin-we-touch and the muscles-we-palpate, lies a whole world of tissue and activity that is often under-addressed in our anatomy books, including one extraordinary structure we massage every day called the skin ligaments(Latin: retinacula cutis). They are...
