IASI April 2023
Webinar Registration 

The Puzzle of Muscle Spasms 

The call will come one day if it hasn't already: "My back is out!!!" What to do when someone says, "I'm down on my back!"? A back spasm is one of the most humbling and debilitating conditions a human can experience. It literally ruins your whole day, and it can last for weeks. The first back spasm I ever saw was in a college friend who got carried to the emergency room on a door. I couldn't understand how something seemingly unprovoked could cause such pain... until years later when it happened to me. Now, after 44 years of SI practice, I get it. Join me and we'll talk about what muscle spasms are and what we, as structural integrators, can do about them.

Course Objectives:

• Learn what a muscle spasm is
• Learn to recognize muscle spasms
• Learn to anticipate muscle spasms
• How do muscle spasms display the body's deeper troubles?
• How do other disciplines deal with muscle spasms?
• How do I turn them off?

Let's be clear about what I'm NOT talking about. This isn't about a "Charlie horse" or a "cramp", even though both conditions might be called "spasms". I am talking about an agonizing, fully blown, take-me-to-the-floor, twist-me-into-a-pretzel back spasm that can onset suddenly and seemingly never end. While back spasms are devastating to our clients, they can be highly revealing to us, the structural integrators. Learn how observing back spasms can unveil persistent somatic patterns that probably caused the spasm to begin with. Learn how other modalities deal with back spasms and learn the SI way to deal with them.

Speaker Biography:

I needed Structural Integration from the day I was born. I was a failure-to-thrive child with an imploded core. My parents brought me to doctor after doctor and they all said nothing was wrong. But something was wrong. Ritchie graduated with a BA in 1969 and moved to Boulder, Colorado in 1971 to play music and write his first instructional book: Bluegrass Bass. But Boulder held other riches – it was the epicenter of the Structural Integration world. While living in Boulder, Ritchie got his ten sessions and it changed his whole life. Ritchie taught lessons and repaired instruments at the local music store. One day a man dropped by the shop with a mountain dulcimer that needed repair. His name was Peter Melchior, Dr. Ida P. Rolf’s first appointed Structural Integration instructor. That chance meeting led Ritchie to a lifelong study of the human body and its mysteries and its magic. Ritchie trained to be a Rolfing® Structural Integration practitioner at the Dr. Ida Rolf Institute® in 1978 and did his advanced training in 1981. He is the author of two books on structural integration and has served twice on the DIRI board of directors. (www.RitchieMintz.com) Ritchie now makes his home in Austin, Texas.