Structural Body Alignment and Rebalancing with Mike Tan

Yesterday I attended a Body Assessment and Rebalancing workshop facilitated by Mike Tan, a massage therapist based in Chiang Mai.  You can read more about his profile here.   Mike's approach to long-time healing the body is through assigning specific exercise for release, strengthening and mobility.

At the workshop, we first learned about how to do a body assessment.  We start by trying to find out as much about what is affecting the person's body and if they have any recent injury.   We were given a sheet with anatomy drawing where we can indicate where the pain and misalignment were for the assessment exercise.  

Mike taught us to assess each other bodies by asking some of us to stand in a relaxed position with all the joints stacked (ankle, knee and hips in one straight line) and the insides of the feet aligned in parallel.    We started by looking closely at each portion of the body individually and in more detail; beginning with looking at the lower legs i.e the feet, ankles, shins and calves, followed by the knees and upper legs, pelvis (sacrum, groin, hips and low back), arms and shoulders and lastly, the upper torso (chest, upper back and neck).

Mike went through some of the conditions that could cause pain, movement limitation and what we can see from the each part of the body when the body is aligned vertically. When the body is not structurally aligned, how one part of the body that is impinged caused additional stress on the muscles, tendons and ligaments which can also caused pain in other areas of the body.

Mike taught us how we can rebalanced the body through releasing, stretching, strengthening and increasing the mobility of the muscles in those areas.

We were shown how to use the Lanna Roller for Body Rolling which is sometimes referred as Self MyoFascial Release (SMFR),    Body rolling is an effective way to balance muscle tension in the body.   It is a self-massage technique by placing your body weight upon the roller and applying some pressure on the muscles.  (I had also attended Mike's Body Rolling class on Friday and felt so relaxed after the class).

Mike also showed us how to use the other various tools such as lacrosse balls which can be used to massage different parts of the body and stretch resistance bands for exercises to open the shoulder and back.

Mike is a great facilitator and his vast knowledge of the body made the workshop so fun and interesting.  There are requests for Mike to come back to KL to do the workshop again, so don't miss it when he comes again.