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Sitting in the comfort of my new desk at the College, I'm pretty much over the tiredness of traveling and will be digesting all that I heard and saw in my trip (including bumping into Paris Hilton at LAX airport!) and relaying the main points to staff and students in due course. I have audio recordings of the sessions and lots of notes but see that NZCM will be running a replay of the Congress by DVD in the near future and that Unitec will do the same as part of the Australia and New Zealand Osteopathic Research Conference in December to be held at Unitec. So there are plenty of opportunities to get all the information if you're interested.

Boston

Wow! First time I've had a chance to get online since getting to Boston. It really has been a full schedule of events. 6am starts for registrations and 12-1am finally getting back from post conference dinners.
After a few days in New York, I headed back up to Boston to get settled into the hotel and meet Mark Finch, classmate from NZCM from the Panmure days, and have a chance for a catch up. I switched on the tv and every channel had coverage of the Red Soxs v LA Angels playoff for the east coast baseball series. I thought I'd go for a walk and check out the ground - Fenway Park - across the river. When i got to the bridge and saw 4 fighter planes fly in formation over the ground with afterburners firing i figured it was a big deal. (I just checked the result of the AB's vs France. Was pretty difficult to find anywhere to watch the game with the baseball on! I know the result however and like see a replay at some stage, what happened?!)
Not really being a big baseball fan i passed up the kind offer of the scalpers to buy a ticket for $75 and soaked up the atmosphere with the crowd outside the park.
I found the venue for the Fascia Research Congress and pre -registered and headed back to the hotel. Having not seen Mark for 18 months we didn't get the earlier of bedtimes from all the story swapping and generally catching up.

Up early for breakfast and then headed over to Harvard Medical School conference centre for a 8am start.
What an amazing venue, big crowd and great organisation. It was quite something. Tom Findley opened the conference by saying he'd been dreaming about have an event like this for 30 years. That got a rousing response.
First speaker was by Donald Ingber who, in 30 minutes covered 20 years of cellular mechanotransduction. Wow! He set the standard so high and the information was so great, that the continued applause that followed was justly deserved.

As is usual at these kinds of confernces, strict time limits apply, so on the podium is a small box with 3 'traffic' lights on it. Green for go, yellow goes on for 5 minutes to go and red flashes with 10 seconds to wind up before the crook comes out and you get hauled off!!
I'll write more later but food and sleep are what I need right now. I'm now at the end of the first day of the IASI symposium so my head is swimming with knowledge and new thoughts from the past 3 days so I'll post more entries once I've had a chance to reflect.

IASI

So onto talking about the second conference that I am attending, the second International Association of Structural Intergrators (IASI) Symposium. This event follows on from the first symposium held in Seattle last year. The theme of this Symposium is "Moving Forward" and it seems that this conference marks a major step for the structural integrators as they launch a standardised exam for the profession and start to link in with fascia researchers by having the symposium right after the Fascia Research Congress.

I've had an introduction to one viewpoint in the SI world through Mark Finch who has brought Tom Myers 'Anatomy Trains' material to New Zealand in the past couple of years. Those of you who have have attended one of Mark's workshops will have some idea of what SI - or Rolfing - entails. I understand that students cover the Anatomy Trains model in Clinical Therapeutics too. I'll be rooming with Mark during both conferences so I'll be picking his brain a bit further and no doubt we'll have a few debates.

I'm looking forward to listeing to a number of the speakers and seeing the practical demonstrations that follow. In particular
Judith Aston (Aston Patterning) who was an early associate of Dr. Rolf, who created the original "Structural Patterning" movement work; Emilie Conrad (the creator of Continuum movement meditation; Joseph Heller (the leader and source of the Hellerwork school of SI, author of several books on SI and the body, and creator of movement work in the Hellerwork tradition; and Dr. Peter Schwind, Ph.D ( Rolfing® instructor, mentor for the "Munich-Group", and author of Fascial and Membrane Technique which is in the NZCM library - well actually I have it out at moment :-).

I'm also really looking forward to seeing the presentation by Gil Hedley (Anatomist), who produced the Integral Anatomy DVDs which are the library also. Well worth looking at for a bodywide viewpoint on msculoskeletal anatomy and the importance of acknowledging the fascia in oragning that system.

Well that's it for now. I have a another day and night in New York so I'm off to make the most of it before heading to Boston and getting all fascial.

Still point

New York City
I have finally stopped moving and come to rest in NYC. Auckland - Los Angeles - Boston - New York. Sounds glamorous but i can tell you I am thoroughly pooped. All I can say at the moment is that if it weren't for pumpkin ice cream and a good italian restaurant and friends to stay with i would be a basket case.
I am hoping to add a post about the second conference and will do once my head catches up with my body.
All I can say about my travels at this stage is that noise-cancelling headphones saved my sanity.
I also have a tale about Homeland Security.

Stay tuned.

A few sleeps to go

Plane tickets? Check.

Travel insurance? check.

Conference registration? check.

All student assignments marked? Check.

With only a couple of days to go before departure, I figure its time to get this blog off the blocks.

So, perhaps a bit of background.

What am I going half way round the world for? What are these two gatherings of people all about? What might it mean for somatic therapists in day-to-day practice?

I hope to be able to answer these questions as I work my way closer to Boston through this blog.

So, onto the first question - what are these two events and why are they of interest to us?

Well the first meeting is the 1^st international Fascia Research Congress at Harvard Medical School.

It will be the first international conference dedicated to fascia in all its forms and functions and, as the long title of the Congress states, includes “Basic science and implications for conventional and complementary health care”.

If we break that down a bit more, we can see a few important aspects about this meeting already. First, it’s great to have the conference at the Harvard Medical School. I mean, that a prestigious address, right? Plum, right in the heartland of allopathy’s birthplace on the East Coast of the U.S., clinicians, therapists and scientists will be talking fascia and it relevance to somatic therapies in a venue that is arguably pretty attached to the biomedical model, is a nice juxtaposition. In addition, by what I see on the Web, it's a pretty fancy place!

Second, the basic researchers are there to present their findings and clinicians and practitioners are there to present their research and experience. The sessions are set up for dialogue and interaction so that both parties can answer each other questions and learn from each other. This is so important, as for once those on the front-line can seek answers and have access to those researching what they feel in their hands and what patient describe. Many practitioners will be happy to work and get results – and this is fine. However, in a climate of increasing pressure on health dollars, all health professions are feeling the pressure to show that what they do works and that its cost effective. Hence the research focus.

One of the co-originators of the conference will be familiar to those who went to the Massage New Zealand conference in Wellington a few weeks back- Robert Schleip. You can hear him talk about the Fascia research congress here on audio.
This site- Inside SI - has a wealth of information for the fascially inclined from a structural integration point of view.

That all for now. In the next post I'll background the other event: The International Association of Structural Integration's 2nd Symposium which follows hot on the heels of the Fascia Research Congress.