THE SPIRIT OF ANATOMY
Anatomy of the Larger Self
Online Massage CEU courses
Why is scientific anatomy like Ikea furniture? Read on.
A big part of getting and keeping clients is communication. Bodywork can be complex and hard to describe well. Vivid, specific language will help you attract and keep clients.
But there’s more. A more comprehensive awareness of all the dimensions of your work will make your work more interesting and expand your clients’ capacity to heal.
I’ve been an enthusiastic anatomy teacher for 30 years. This scientific approach to the body is useful and practical – but it strips down the luminous multidimensionality of your client to the point where the actual person you’re observing can disappear. Talking that way can leave your client looking at you like a doll with Xs for eyes, and you leaving out the most important benefits of your work.
The language offered to us by scientific anatomy – what we learned in school – does a pretty bad job of describing what really happens in bodywork. We deserve better. That’s what The Spirit of Anatomy is about.
The Spirit of Anatomy classes will help you
- fulfill your massage continuing education online
- expand and clarify your thinking
- make your work more fulfilling
- help clients understand and integrate your work.
- describe your complex work in authentic language.
- connect the many dimensions of your work without putting science first.
These classes will make it possible for you to
- deepen into the fantastic multilayered healing that you already do.
- understand the chakra system and other cross-cultural and traditional ways of knowing.
- think and work in an expanded scope of consciousness and technique.
- put new practices to work that open a universe of healing possibilities.
- transcend the mechanical approach of scientific anatomy.
- Get NCBTMB approved online continuing education that’s fascinating, relevant and interactive.
George’s unique teaching style is intellectually challenging and easily digested, blending observation, discussion and hands-on practice. I’ve learned the fine details of assessment, the intricacies of the human body, and the ways that a patient’s daily life and emotions can impact their health. The relaxed feel of his workshops encourage students to share, query,and test new ideas. His teaching is engaging, challenging, and fun. – Sally Firestein, LMT
Human anatomy tends to treat human beings like IKEA furniture. Science breaks the body into parts and decides what each part does. Then when you want to use it, you have to figure out how to put all the parts together, and the instructions seem like they’re in a foreign language. A couple of parts don’t seem to go anywhere, and then you can’t find the on switch! What’s a bodyworker to do? We need to start – and finish – with the whole person, not with a pile of parts.
The omission of the human spirit from discussions of health and healing leaves a gap that makes it impossible to talk about why holistic bodywork is so successful.
Faced with the big gaps in scientific language, I was forced to develop new ways to think and speak about my work. As I did that, the power of my work – and my client base – expanded exponentially. What you put words to, you empower.
I’ve taken everything I’ve discovered and distilled it into classes that address various parts of the self. Let me show you how to become more powerful and authentic in your work, and transform the way you talk about your work to potential and current clients.
One of the wonderful things about touch or movement therapy is that you start from the whole person who is standing in front of you. From there, you perceive and weave details into a new coherence. To talk about that, you’ll need more than science, and that’s what The Spirit of Anatomy is about.
“I’ve developed wonderful relationships with each of my classmates; we’ve shared bodywork, job opportunities, copy editing help and more. George is also amazing at creating a safe and fertile environment for exchange and creativity. Each class is interactive, playful, improvisatory, empathetic and different every time.” – Kelly Lee
Putting Anatomy In Its Place
Scientific anatomy is tremendously helpful in all kinds of things, especially in repairing the concrete body structure, but it’s limited, too. For example, everyone knows the difference between a dead body and a living person, but science can’t define or explain what it is.
Another omission is the human spirit itself. “Spirit” is defined differently from culture to culture, but a language of the spirit is found in every culture except our science-based one. Science dismisses the spirit because it can’t measure or define it. That omission is unprecedented. In fact, even Descartes, “the father of modern science”, believed in and talked about the soul.
Scientific anatomy is presented as reality, but it isn’t. Medical/scientific descriptions are not equivalent to reality. Even science acknowledges that its information is hypothetical and subject to change. There are many ways of defining the self – many anatomies. Each of them describes a different human being. You are all of those human beings at once, and you can’t get to the living truth of yourself – or the living truth of your client – unless you can talk about all of your selves.
I’m George Russell, and this is my life’s work. I’ve been finding ways to cohere and articulate the many dimensions of human experience that present to me since I was a child. The Spirit Of Anatomy is my way of creating language that illuminates body, spirit, energy, and mind from multiple perspectives. Please take a class!
161 West 22nd St., 3rd floor
New York, NY 10011
646-654-9529