I was fortunate to attend the class by Luann Overmyer, a
well-known instructor and practitioner of Ortho-Bionomy®. I heard of the approach and her name
when I was still at massage school, but I didn’t know anything about it.
Her biography was pretty intense as she had a near-death
experience from a motorcycle accident.
It sounded like a miracle that her body coped with such damage without permanent
impairment. Ortho-Bionomy is what
she learned to care, correct, and re-educate her body and mind. She believes it is the most whole modality.
Her class was short, but hands-on from the beginning. Since I didn’t have any prior
knowledge, I couldn’t digest what we were doing at that time, but I at least
knew the approach was completely different from what I knew and
intriguing. It is an indirect
method, so you don’t manipulate soft tissue directly. Instead, you touch lightly
and hold or position parts of the body very gently.
To understand more about what we did in the class, I bought
her book “Ortho-Bionomy A Path to Self Care.” I like
anything “self-care” as my first book about massage therapy was “The Trigger Point Therapy Workbook,”
and I’ve been writing many posts labeled “self-care.” I want you to be in charge of your own body and health,
what’s going on and what will be good for you. Her book has a lot of information and self-care exercises. Unlike The Trigger Point Therapy Workbook,
you focus on the most comfortable
position where pain subsides, not the pain itself.
If you try to find pain, you will almost always find
it. We are anticipating pain in a
sense, and making it almost like a habit.
Ortho-Bionomy shows you the opposite is true. “Comfort can be learned as well” said she. If
you try to find comfort, you will find it. Make the comfort a
habit.
If you want to learn more about Ortho-Bionomy®,
go to the official site.