OPPORTUNITIES for Advanced Psycho*-Neuro-Musculo-Fascial Therapists. ...

And What Led ME to Develop My Method of Therapy ...?

• Psycho: As I've pointed out in other places on this website, the term "Psycho" does NOT necessarily refer to someone unstable, aggressive, or crazy. ... Psycho more generally refers to the "breath, mind, soul" and "psychology" because the MIND & EMOTIONS can cause, or participate in, or can greatly influence, MOST of what muscles DO or WON'T do ... but they SHOULD Do.
• Engaging the Client's MIND can give them FAR better results than if they are just treated at the physical level. ... That is a very important aspect of the DSL Edgework.

Today, increasing numbers of potential Clients are looking more toward "alternative," "wholistic," or "natural" therapies to resolve issues orthodox medical methods or more common muscle therapy techniques have not been able to resolve. Or they don't last long.

• Years ago, one of the "complaints" I got from Therapists who learned and were using my Method of Therapy said Clients who used to come in every week or two for therapy were getting a LOT better and did not need to come in as often, or at all! My Student's main complaint was now, they needed MORE New Clients! So we developed a Marketing Program to help them get more Clients!

And I Started Noticing Something ...

NOW, it IS true that many Clients or Patients respond very well to traditional NMT, MFR, Deep Tissue, Acupressure, Rolfing® (Structural Integration), Tui Na, Shiatsu, and so on. Those methods work Very Well for MANY problems of Many Clients. Such (or most) Clients do NOT necessarily NEED DSL EdgeWork.

Yet there IS a percentage of people who do NOT respond well to such more commonly available therapies. Some Client's Soft Tissue Issues are more complex, more difficult to treat, they've been in chronic pain for years or decades, and need a much different, more specific approach to their therapy. 

• Trigger Point Therapy, for example, appears very "specific," and can FEEL that way too. Yet it is not nearly specific enough for some Clients' problems. For other people, they need far LESS specific, more generalied treatment. The trick is in knowing which and when.

When I first got into massage practice in 1981, I almost immediately started attracting Clients that had not gotten the results they wanted from their therapists or doctors. I was developing a reputation for helping people get results they had not yet found anywhere.

• (I'll discuss why I think that was later in this Story.)

And Clients started telling me things that kind of surprised me at first.

For instance, I've had Clients whose DOCTORS told them that a particular SUPER-HARD tissue in their body was a BONE! And their therapists or doctors complained about how difficult they were to treat. But since it was a "bone," the musculo-fascial therapist or the doctor did not even try to treat it. I mean, how do you RELAX a bone? (Assuming, of course, that it really WAS a bone!)

When the Client persisted in their complaints, the practitioner tried to talk them out of it. Some of the Clients eventually BELIEVED it, and stopped talking about it. So when they went to a new therapist, they would not mention it.

This is one reason building trust with a Client and not being afraid to encourage them to make sure they are giving you their whole health history is SO important.

Yet for some reason, I could tell in those people the alleged "bone" was NOT a bone, and though it sometimes took quite a while, that "bone" started to relax and they ended up pain-free! It might have taken some time, but it finally let-go substantially.

So it was obviously NOT a bone, but an extremely tight muscle.

This perplexed me, as I was at first thinking that if a DOCTOR told their Client it was a bone, then it MUST be true, RIGHT? But in Reality, the Doctor or Therapist just did NOT really know!

Other Clients had reported to their physician that a particular muscle seemed to be causing their pain. But the doctor would respond with something like "That's JUST a tight muscle!"

As if "tight muscles" are not a BIG problem for many people. ( !!! )

Some of those Clients had been in pain for MANY YEARS, even DECADES, and had nearly given up on EVER getting better. But we got them better!

Another thing that happened several times is Clients telling me about a pain they were experiencing from a long-ago injury, but their doctor told them the injury was so LONG ago it could NOT still be causing their pain!

One Client had been in a car accident, and her head went though the windshield. She asked her doctor if her significant neck pain could be related to the accident. He said NO, it was her HEAD that went trough the windshield, NOT her neck!

Now, in case you are one of those strange people who believe the neck and head are closely related to each other, YOU must be mistaken, right? Because the doctor is highly trained in such things, right?

I would hear about therapists who would tell the Client the reason they were not getting better was because of psychological or spiritual blocks.

Some Clients felt like they were being blamed for their problems! (Which unfortunately happens more than you might think in the therapy world.)

BUT, in all those cases, getting that muscle to Relax, Release, & Lengthen DID resolve their pain!

So I was really wondering what the heck was going on here?

I had not yet even been to massage school, let alone medical school, so how was it I, the ex-Structural Steel Ironworker (heavy construction) from the South Suburbs of Chicago, with NO college education, figuring it out?

• Well, I did try to go to Community College for Civil Engineering because I had already been an ironworker foreman at age 18. So I thought I would be good at designing the buildings I had been constructing. But ironically, I could not get through the math courses. So I quit after a few months.

Anyway, I was having a lot of realizations about therapy that surprised me, and my Dad, and later my Primary Yoga Teacher, had taught me to trust myself and my observations. So rather than question whether I could, or could not, know more than a docotra about certain things, well, I just went with trusting myself. It worked out pretty good.

Speaking of Doctors, here is a Quote from Dr. John Bordiuk, one of THE BEST Whole Health Physicians in the Greater Boston area:

"There are levels of healing David achieves I’ve never seen before. This is clearly a result of a vast knowledge of anatomy and physiology combined with decades of hands-on experience."

~ Dr. John Bordiuk — Nutritionally Oriented, Whole Health M.D. & Yoga Teacher • Wellesley, MA

One thing I'm hoping to do With and FOR YOU is help you gain the knowledge and find the confidence you need that YOU can "talk to a doctor" and impress them with your knowledge & insghts.

HOWEVER, in my first year of practice starting in the Spring of 1981, even though I was getting a LOT of things right, I was also getting more clear on what my limitations were, and what I did NOT know, and I "kinda sorta" knew what I had to learn to go to the Next Level for ME and my Clients at that time.

I will tell you more about that further down this page.

Yet As It Turned Out ...

Over the last 44 years (as of 2025), I've treated hundreds of Clients, quite a few of them from other states and countries, and most of them got results they had not been able to achieve with other forms of therapy or medical care. And some of them had tried a LOT of things.

Is my track record 100%?

NO. More like 80+% or so. But with Clients with that much pain or trauma, some of them are pretty difficult. And there are quite a few who could not afford the money to get much therapy.

And I HAVE made significant errors in judgment with a few Clients. A few people I evaluated incorrectly.

More importantly, NOW, I can put my ego aside and TELL YOU what I did wrong so YOU can learn from MY errors in judgment. You learning from MY errors is FAR more important than me protecting my ego! And it might save YOU some time!

And as some wise people say, failure are NOT a failure if you treat them as Stepping Stones To Success!

Anyway, it is working with highly complex, long-term chronic, difficult-to-treat Clients that I seem to do very well with. And if you want to learn my methods, well, HERE I AM!

DSL EdgeWork was designed for those Human Beings who need a more specific, tailor-made approach, and with a technique that goes beyond what most techniques can achieve. If YOU want to become more Highly Specialized in Your Practice, THIS work might be for You!

On the other hand, since most of everything I teach is applicable to any therapy method you use, DSL Edgework can enhance your understanding and results no matter what technique or modality you use.

OR, if you just want the perspectives and technique for the occasional Client who has more extreme issues, that's okay too.

Yet with everything happening in the massage industry and the economy in general, THIS is The Time to Get Ahead of the Neuro-Myo-Fascial Power Curve, to set yourself apart as being a Leading Edge Expert & Innovator in BodyMind Therapies. If You are so Motivated, this can open doors to many possibilities in the field of Psycho-Neuro-Musculo-Fascial & Joint Therapy.

If you are wondering what I am talking about regarding "everything happening in the massage industry and the economy in general," you might want to check out my Specal Report #1 on Challenges & Opportunities for Musculo-Fascial Therapists.

Here is the LINK to the page on this website:

Special Report #1

In the Process, I Am Inviting YOU to Join ME in taking Mindful Soft Tissue Therapeutics to the NEXT LEVEL in Your Practice and Our Society.

AND, because this work is based on Solid, Scientific & Medical Research Principles,  what you learn with DSL can be applied to ANY Method of Therapy you prefer to use.

You are not, of course, required to use my Methods the same way I do. I'm interested in moving YOU and the Profession ahead and beyond ME. I'm NOT trying to create a bunch of DSL Clones!

Yet if you DO want to work like I do, that can be arranged as well.

During the COVID-19 Lockdowns, many of us in Arizona were put on the NON-Essential list based on the kind of work we did . . .

We were not supposed to work with our Clients.

OBVIOUSLY, the State Bureaucrats had never talked to any of MY Clients. Clients who I saved from going to hip surgery, or shoulder surgery, or other kinds of surgery, or gotten off of drugs, or saved them from the DECADES of debilitating pain they had been in. And so on.

I recently told a group of Massage Therapy Students to NEVER let anyone tell them what they were doing was NOT very important, or was non-essential. In many cases, what WE do for a Client is THE most important thing they need in their Health & Medical Care.

WE Are NOT Just A Luxury Accessory!

Just because "medical studies" have (supposedly) not "conclusively shown" that massage, bodywork, yoga, or whatever is WITHOUT DOUBT good for health care issues, does NOT mean that there are not thousands of human beings out there who have gotten excellent results from neuro-musculo-fascial related therapies.

Just because I am "not a doctor" does NOT mean I cannot do as much, or in many cases FAR MORE than a doctor does for his Patients in CERTAIN situations.

(I am NOT advocating you do anything illegal. However, very often you'll find that staying "within the law" VIOLATES Common Sense and Morality. What I DO advocate is the laws of any state should accommodate what is MORAL and MAKES SENSE, and NOT punish people who are acting in Good Faith. THAT requires more citizens get more active and work to fix the faulty laws.)

When I started getting "clinically successful," *I* certainly did NOT have the "right credentials." In fact, there were none. Massage in Chicago was under the jurisdiction of the Vice Squad! (If you are too young to know what that is, that was the section of the Police Department that kept an eye on things like prostitution!)

I did not even attend a massage therapy school until I had been successfully practicing and TEACHING for more than 30 YEARS!

Yet from the mid-1980s to mid-1990s, I was considered by many in the Massage Therapy Field to be an innovator of some very important concepts & practices.

I was among the first of only a few therapists at the time to present ideas that were quite controversial way back then, but not any longer. For Example:

• The Abdominal Wall and  PSOAS muscles are major contributors to postural imbalances and many other problems, such as poor breathing.
• You CAN work with AB Muscles & Psoas without harming the internal organs or causing any pain.
• People's problems are more about muscles being Too Short or Too Long rather than Too Weak or Too Strong.
• Much alleged "weakness" is really Pseudo-Weakness, where over-shortened or over-lengthened muscle fibers have lost their mechanical advantage, so they "feel" or "test" or "show up" as "weak" but are NOT really weak.
• Why I have NEVER "strengthened" anyone out of a pain, posture, or dysfunction problem. It was always about the Client learning to Focus, FEEL, Relax, & Release, Leting-Go of Tension, Stress & Negative Habit Patterns.
• The BIG difference between TONE & TONUS. Tone means "healthy state." Tonus means the motor nerve charge to a muscle. Get too much Muscle TONUS & your Muscle TONE goes DOWN!
• More Clients in modern society have a posterior-tilted pelvis, rather than anterior tilted.
• More people in pain / bad posture have a LOSS of Lordosis, NOT EXCESS lordosis. But there IS a "pseudo-lordosis illusion" that fools may people.
• MUCH of Forward Head Posture is from an Over-Shortened Abdominal Wall, Posterior Pelvic Tilt, and LOSS of Lordosis. It's NOT anteriorly tilted pelvis & excess lordosis as shown on some Trigger Point Therapy charts and "described" (incorrectly) in many publications.
• NO Pain Means MORE Gain (Therapy does NOT need to hurt, and pain, or even "discomfort," is very often counterproductive.)
• Very Stubborn Muscles very often need LESS manual pressure to Relax & Release, not MORE pressure. They need FINESSE*, not Force! (* Finesse: Intricate, refined, subtle)
• Chronically Over-Tight Muscle Cells are a bigger problem than "Tight Fascia," because tight muscles are a primary cause of "tight fascia." 
• There is a LOT more, but you get the idea ...

My Clients & Students included Presidents & Executive Board Members of the American Massage Therapy Association (AMTA) and some of the biggest massage schools in the country.

The Main Event that Put Me On The Massage Therapy Map!

In 1989, Heartwood Institute, a Residential Healing Arts & Massage Therapy School way up in the Mountains of Northern California (east of Garberville if you know the area), with Students from around the Country and World, was in desperate need of a new Deep Tissue teacher. They had a group of already successfully practicing Therapists who had closed their practices to come there for TEN WEEKS (with a week in the middle off) of advanced, intensive, residential training. Several had come from other countries!

But the Deep Tissue Instructor never showed up!

Heartwood had a woman on staff who had taken training from the missing Deep Tissue Guru, so she was teaching the program. But she was too close to a Beginner! ... The Students were VERY UPSET and wanted their money back!

So the Heartwood Staff was desperate for a teacher who could make up for the failure.

The owners of Heartwood called (the now late) Robert K. King, Co-founder of the iconic & prestigious Chicago School of Massage Therapy and 2-term President of the AMTA. They asked him who he recommended to teach their full-time, 5-week, Deep Tissue Training Program?

• It was actually a ten week program, but they had already lost the first five weeks before they found me. Somehow, all the Students stayed for the rest of the program. One of the Co-Owners was apparently selling me pretty hard! And each tuition was thousands of dollars!)

Yet I, DSL, was Mr. King's #1 Recommendation for the job. And he knew MOST of the top therapists around Chicago and the Country.

And NO ONE, except Mr. King, knew I had NEVER taught my complete therapy system before! ...

Talk about PRESSURE!

• Here's what Bob King had to say about me: "David has become my favorite wandering troubadour carrying with him a wonderful assortment of wisdom, philosophy, insight, bodywork skill, impeccable manners, and should your paths cross, try a few sessions with him for a bold and profound hands-on experience!"
• (I was known for traveling a lot, therefore calling me a "wandering troubadour.")

When on a Monday Winter Morning in November of 1989 I walked into that training room (a thin canvas walled yurt with a very good fire stove!) of Very Skeptical Therapists, it was a "bit challenging" to say the least. With NO significant Direct Experience in training therapists, I KNEW I was on the SPOT. ...

But by the end of that very first day, I HAD THEM!

I got the job DONE with VERY high ratings and satisfaction from the Students!

As one student at Heartwood, a man who had just graduated from 4-years of Medical School, but wanted to experience alternative healing methods first-hand (literally) before going into private medical practice, said:

• "I learned more anatomy from David in Five WEEKS than I learned in Four YEARS of medical school." ... ~ Dr. Todd Mangum
• In another Review from the Heartwood Institute Staff: "The students in Heartwood's approved Massage Therapy program felt that The DSL Method [now known as DSL EdgeWork] was the most valuable work in Heartwood's massage curriculum. Many students felt that David's work instilled a sense of competence in their ability to do massage & bodywork. It is an open-ended system allowing and encouraging students to continually improve their work through active practitioner / client exchange. I have personally found that, based on feedback from clients, The DSL Method is on par with, if not superior to, the other major bodywork systems available today." ~ Rex Dippre, Massage Therapist, Arcata, California, Director of Admissions, Heartwood Institute, 1989-1992

OH, BTW, "DSL" is my initials. But DSL also stands for a booklet I wrote in 1995 titled: "The Dynamics of bio-Structural Laws, Learning & Listening." ... 

(That eBook is being rewritten and updated soon. And I have a number of eBooks getting ready to publish very soon too. And a few [ seven at the moment ] are already available on this website on the eBook page.)

Some DSL History: HOW It All Happened . . .

Here are some of the highlights & critical factors of My Path from a middle-class, south suburban Chicagoan, heavy construction worker with NO college degree, to Founder of a Mindful Medical Massage, Myo-Structural Balancing & Yoga Therapy System ...

I'll skip the pre-teen stuff as it would take forever to finish this History. But there WERE some interesting formative events!

Martial Arts, Meditation & Motocross

I got my start in Wholistic Health & Healing in Martial Arts & ZEN Meditation in 1967 when I was 13 years old. Learning Zen Meditation & Martial Arts is an important story in itself, especially in the little town of Dolton, Illinois in 1967!

The Short Story is in Martial Arts at 13 years old, during Practice Fighting, I "accidentally" stumbled onto meditation. When I first experienced it, I had NO IDEA what it was. But my Mom bought me a book on Martial Arts, and there was a section in it on Buddhism, Zen & Meditation. When I read about it, I immediately KNEW what had happened in that "accident" into The Zone!

I'll tell you more about that story when we have more time, but ...

THAT was One of the MAJOR Turning Points of MY Life!

I then raced motocross (dirt bikes in very rough terrain) most weekends (except winter time) from age 14 to 17 (and I had a LOT of Spectacular Crashes!), and had a LOT of trauma to my muscle structure from crashing so spectacularly! ... But I guess I provided some entertainment value to the spectators! ...

Yet I was attempting to apply many things I learned in Martial Arts, including meditation, to racing motocross! I'm sure I was riding too fast for my own good though.

Beginning to Think Structurally & SEE Wholistically

Also, my Dad was a Structural Steel Ironworker (heavy construction) Foreman and when I was 13 he started taking me out on the job sites. Raised & trained by the Best In The Business (my Dad), I was a Structural Steel Ironworker Foreman by the time I was 18, putting up steel structures of various kinds all around Greater Chicagoland for about 8 years. It was also VERY stressful and traumatic to my muscles & joints. Yet I learned a LOT about building & balancing structures (which would later on come into play when I started doing Strutural Bodywork!).

AND I read a LOT of books on various aspects of Whole Health Healing, Meditation, Yoga, Philosophy, Spirituality, and so on. All this set me up for a more Philosophical & Meditative View & Practice Of Life.

I pretty successfully applied what I learned in martial arts & meditation to motocross & ironworking. But by 19 years old, the damage was already done, and I was already set up for a Life of Muscle Pain. I just didn't yet know how bad.

Yet you might be surprised how much my time as a Structural Steel Ironworker prepared me to become a Myo-Structural Bodywork & Yoga Therapist. Because of working with my Father, John A. Lynn — who was a Master Of The Ironwork & Building Trades, and of working with Physical Reality in general (of all kinds) — my Dad taught me how to "Think & Work Structurally."

Something YOU Will Learn to do if you get involved with my Myo-Structural Balancing & Bodywork Programs (without having to become a construction worker!).

One TRICK is to learn how to SEE what is REALLY in front of You instead of what you EXPECT to be in front of You, or what some "expert" or book TOLD you was supposed to BE in front of You. By my Dad's Examples (which you will learn about elsewhere) I learned, by the time I was 13 years old, to NOT blindly trust the opinions of "experts," even if they have Professional Degrees & Licenses.

I DO Listen to "The Experts," and I DO Learn from them. But I do NOT assume they are correct unless my own observations & experiences confirm what they say, to the best of my abilities.

Even the Buddha said to Not Believe anything you cannot confirm by your own observation & experience. He taught us to Prove Everything to Ourselves.

YOGA As A Foundation for DSL Edgework

At a suggestion of my Mother, Linda, I had in 1973 attended a seminar by the now late Joel Kramer, a Yoga Teacher & Philosopher who some people called the Father of American Yoga.

NOT because he was a first Yoga Teacher, but he was first to come up with a Unique, Western Approach to merging Psychological Yoga with Physical Yoga. And Yoga at it's base, means Quality of Attention and Bringing two or more Things Together in an Integral Unity. Something that was NOT being taught by the Yogis from India.

That seminar, at 19 years old, was my first exposure to what Joel called "Hatha (Physical) & Jnana (Mental) Yoga." Those were among the VERY few Sanskrit words he used.

Aside from applying Zen-style meditation, I was not into Hinduism or Eastern Religions, and was far more interested in Joel's more Western Approach to Yoga.

But in that seminar, he sort of wrapped up many or most of my Thoughts & Feelings of my first 18 years of my life and called it "YOGA." ... I was pretty well hooked. Mostly from the Philosophical point of view at first.

I then started doing physical yoga postures and it started helping some of my muscle problems; my aches, pains, & restrictions from motocross & ironworking.

I also found and started working with Sri Nerode, a full-blooded Hindu Brahmin who migrated from India to South Side Chicago 45 years earlier. I was mostly learning meditation from him, and he offered me a job teaching yoga at the university near by. I did NOT take the job, however. He was a little too "Hindu" for me.

I also studied some with Swami Rama, another Hindu from India, but he was too authoritarian for me, and he thought tolerating pain was a VERY good and admirable thing.

But Goswami Kriyananda in Near North Chicago was the most interesting of the "Guru Types." I went to a number of his lectures, and he was VERY informative and entertaining.

Another MAJOR Life-Changing Event ...

Do You NEED The Approval Of Your Teachers?

I then attended a 1-month, Residential Intensive Joel Kramer taught on Physical, Mental & Relational Yoga in British Columbia with his Awesome Life Partner, Diana Alstad. I have an entire article on that wide-ranging and DEEP Experience on my Main Website.

HERE IS THE "KICKER" . . .

An important element of that experience was that on the last day of the program, Joel Kramer had suggested in front of the entire group, that I "reconsider my desire to be a Yoga Teacher." ... His explanation as to why was a little thin.

Fortunately, a few of the other participants pushed back on his assertion, and they thought I would be a VERY inspiring Yoga Teacher. ... I will get to the Important Significance of that event in a little while.

After that month-long intensive, I quit ironworking and I soon began Teaching Yoga in Chicago and at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Illinois, in 1976.

Joel's approach to yoga was a very NON-Hindu, NON-Guru, NON-Mystical, NON-Religious, ANTI-Authoritarian approach to Physical, Mental, & Relational Yoga ... yet in MY view, it was no less "conscious" than other methods of yoga or meditation, maybe more so.

Probably the Biggest Thing I learned from Joel was a NO Pain, MORE Gain approach to Life, Yoga, and Therapy.

Playing the Edge of Pain, Fear & Resistance, going UP TO but NOT INTO Pain & Fear, became a Central Aspect of my own Yoga / Bodywork Therapy system.

The meditative aspect of yoga Joel taught was very similar to the mental yoga teachings of  Jiddhu Krishnamurti, who was also from India, but he was a "Spiritual Rebel." He was big on describing the Nature of Thought and how it relates to Consciousness, and whether stilling the thoughts was a valuable thing, or not. (YES IT IS!)

The Approach I use to Meditation includes some of what Ken Wilber — a famous, modern philosopher in Transpersonal Psychology & Spirituality — calls the Descenders.

As Ken describes it, Ascenders are people who prefer meditation techniques that help them escape from physical reality and merge with "Universal Consciousness."  Descenders are more about using meditation to get in touch with the day-to-day processes and events of Life right here on Earth.

In case you were wondering, I, DSL, am Definitely a Descender!

Joel's physical yoga includes a mildly aggressive approach for building strength & endurance, somewhat like Iyengar Yoga, but much less rigid or authoritarian in his methods. He had some unique methods for getting muscles to relax & release and get deeper into postures. He was moea bout integrating ihis mind into is body and, reducing tension, and becoming more flexible than he was about building strength.

Yet his Primary Way of getting a muscle to release was by sinking his MIND into the sensations generated by the physical stretching.

The word Yoga means To Yoke or To Bring Together, implying bringing two or more different things together into a synergistic, harmonious UNITY — meaning United or Joined as a Whole.

Yoga is also about one's Quality of Attention in and to the present moment.

As I like to say, Physical / Mental Yoga is about "Moving your Mind into your Musculature such that the Distinctions between them Dissolve."

So in a Physical / Mental Yoga Practice, we are joining the Brain & Body, the Mind & Muscles, into Synergistic Unity in which any separation or distinctions between them dissolve into one Meditative, Unified, whole BodyMind Experience.

Of course, as I have mentioned, Joel did NOT believe in going into pain while doing postures. At other times, on the other extreme, his yoga was a lot like a combination of Yin Yoga & Restorative Yoga.

All of this suited me very well, especially since for myself, I needed a LOT more therapy, flexibility, and resilience and did not need to "build strength."

When you're an ironworker, you get about as strong as anyone needs to be!

One of Joel Kramer's & Krishnamurti's Big Premises — and to a degree Ken Wilber's — was in helping people learn to trust themselves rather than submit to an Authoritarian Power or perspective. Although I have never been a "follower" of any teacher or ideology, I was very interested in their points of view on that.

What I learned about Physical Yoga from Joel was, For Example:

• Playing THE EDGE of Pain, Fear & Resistance
• NO Pain, MORE Gain and Minimum to Maximum Edges
• Staying in Postures FAR longer than most yoga teachers were saying or doing
• What makes a muscle REALLY Relax, Release, & Let-Go
• How to Integrate the Breath into Yoga Postures to dissolve tension & stress
• How to have a Mindful or Meditative Focus, deeply  exploring one's own tension patterns while doing Postures
• Differences between Concentration and Meditation
• How to DE-Compress the Joints & overall musculature of the BodyMind
• Stretching the Nerves
• The Value of Micro-Movements (supporting parasympathetic nerve system activation)
• Integrating a Jnana Yoga Perspective into My Life, rather than integrating my life into yoga.

All of these elements became, at the time (1970s & early 80s) unusual features of my hands-on, manual bodywork system.

Getting Into Bodywork & Massage Therapy

After traveling & studying on the West Coast some, in Summer of 1977 I left Chicago and became Yogi-in-Residence at the Inner Garden, the very first Whole Health Center in Aspen, Colorado. There, I learned Jin Shin Do, an Oriental style of bodywork. Then I got my extensive introduction to hands-on, Therapeutic Bodywork by way of Eugene Donaldson, who went on to Co-Found Educating Hands, a prominent massage therapy school in Miami, Florida.

Eugene was my first experience with bodywork, and he had already become a Great Therapist. We did many very long therapy trades and I learned a LOT. (Our therapy sessions were 3 or 4 hours EACH. So doing one trade took most of a day!) So did HE learn stuff because I was doing things very differently than he had so far been exposed to.

For one thing, his therapy method was VERY painful, and mine was the opposite. Yet he began realizing the “Less is More,” NO Pain, MORE Gain approach worked very well.

I also learned from Eugene about holding steady pressure on one location of one muscle for extended periods of time, with very little lateral movement, getting the most release from the muscle as a function of TIME.

(We both ended up, without any real discussion, moving from Aspen to South Florida, at different times, to get out of the Colorado Cold! I had no idea he was coming, but he did VERY well at his Educating Hands Massage School.)

I also had the Great Fortune to study and work informally with several other top Bodywork / Massage Therapists & Yoga Teachers around the country and be introduced to several different styles of therapy. I had a Natural Knack for doing bodywork, so they liked doing trades with me. I developed a good amount of experience doing hands-on therapy this way.

• I'm skipping a LOT here, including a few years working in the financial industry. I had a business doing Technical Charting for Commodity Traders on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Working with some of the smartest & wealthiest people in the world teaches you a LOT about the markets ... and Human Nature in general!
• I also did some tax shelter work. We had a Ginseng production farm in Wisconsin that produced some of THE best Ginseng in the World. Some Chinese would come over, buy a bunch of our Ginseng, ship it to China, process it, then ship it back to the U.S. and sell it as Chinese Ginseng!
• I once raised $100,000 from a couple of commodity traders for the Ginseng operation!
• One reason I left the financial industry is I started discovering just how CORRUPT the money system was in the United States. And that was way back in 1980/81!

Then, in 1981, and with NO formal training, I opened a massage therapy practice in the Near North of Downtown Chicago. A year later, I quickly became a Myo-Structural Bodywork & Yoga Therapist in 1982 by way of Daniel Blake, who was trained by Ida Rolf in Structural Integration (Rolfing).

Not happy or satisfied with some basic principles of Rolfing®, Daniel went beyond Rolfing to develop an advanced hybrid of Structural Balancing, Osteopathy, and other elements. He called it, simply enough, Structural Bodywork. Even though I thought it might bankrupt me, I took his extensive, 250-hour training in the early summer of 1982 in Chicago at CSMT (Chicago School of Massage Therapy).

Another Life-Changing Moment:

I remember the Monday morning I was walking down the steps of the red stone apartment I was renting on West Erie Street. As I descended to street level, heading to the bus stop to go to Daniel's Blake's Structural Bodywork training program ...

I Made Another Life-Changing Decision:

Even if it DID bankrupt me, what I wanted was to create a method or process of therapy that would help that small percentage of Clients who were NOT responding well, or at all, to more common therapies. I thought it might be a Great Service to Human Beings.

And because he cleared up some of my concerns about Rolffing, I thought Daniel's  Structural Bodywork training program would give me the last major element of my therapy program I had been looking for ... and MISSING.

And his training saved me from having to move to Boulder, Colorado, and pay many thousands of dollars to the Rolf Institute, which I was thinking of doing until I met Daniel. And even though Rolfing® seemed at the time to be THE leader in structural approaches to bodywork, I had several well-founded concerns about whether Rolfing would or could teach me what I wanted to learn. And Daniel had had the same concerns.

Deja Vu All Over Again . . . !!!

Ironically, on the very last day of the training program, Daniel said (approximately), right in front of the whole group of students, that I should "Reconsider my desire to be a bodyworker." ( !!! Shades of Joel Kramer saying a similar thing to me 6 years earlier! !!! )

But I did not pay much attention to his comment. Because I had a sense that I WAS on the right track, even though I had some BIG disagreements with Daniel. Primarily regarding was it necessary for the treatment to be painful? He thought it was unavoidable. I thought the opposite.

Yet I'm VERY glad I went with Daniel's program. It was Robert K. King who introduced me to Daniel (seven years before he recommended me to teach at Heartwood Institute), and it was EXACTLY what I needed & wanted to learn. That being:

A Process or Formula on how to effectively & more precisely evaluate the positional & postural status of the muscle & bone structures of the human bodymind. I needed more extensive education in Structural Anatomy & Functional / Postural Kinesiology. ...

But it had eluded me till Daniels' program. I did not even know what kinesiology WAS! But I DID learn it and also confirmed over the next few years that I would NOT have gotten what I wanted from the Rolf Institute.

Why I Did Not Become A Rolfer® (Structural Integration)

FIRST, let me say that Ida Rolf made GREAT, invaluable contributions to the fields of Bodywork & Alternate Therapies. She did a LOT to further legitimize them. And she helped expand medical ideas about human "structure" beyond just the bones & joints, and to include the musculo-fascial structures in our concepts OF structure.

And she stimulated a LOT of research into fascia and other aspects of therapy that has been VERY valuable, but rare up till then.

And without Ida Rolf and Structural Integration, there might not have been a Daniel Blake and Structural Bodywork. And without Daniel I might STILL be wondering how to straighten out a human musculoskeletal structure!

SO ... I owe a DEEP DEBT OF GRATITUDE for Ida's work.  Rolfing was a "Grandparent" to MY work. ... So Thank You Ida!

On With The Story ...

For a couple of years, before I met Daniel Blake, I assumed I would have to go to Boulder and study Rolfing to learn what I wanted to know about structural approaches to bodywork.

At the time, Rolfers were the main group talking about structure and more aggressively about “changing bodies” rather than just helping people relax their muscles and improve circulation such as with massage.

A book, The Protean Body by Don Johnson, had convinced me that “changing a body,” even substantially, was certainly possible. And Don had done it by becoming a Rolfer. And Rolfing DOES in many cases solve a Client's problems and DOES balance their posture.

It did not appear to me that Physical Therapy (PT) would or could provide the kind of information about the human musculoskeletal system I wanted, either. And there were other problems with going that route. But from what numerous Clients, and a few PTs who took my training programs told me, PT does not work at the level I want(ed) to work. That was true in the early 1980s, and appears to still be the case. Although a few PTs have gone off and embraced other modalities beyond classical PT Training.

Even with only a few years of experience, I already knew I could already make people's bodies change significantly, very often to very positive effect. But I could not with any great specificity predict, or know ahead of time, what specific changes would happen when I released a specific muscle.

So I was kind of shooting blind, what some therapists used to call Poke & Hope or Hopium. Yet I believed that if I knew enough about the human muscular system, I would be able to evaluate & predetermine what changes I could predictably make, rather than poke and hope that it worked.

Yet several experiences led me to have my doubts about Rolfing.

1.) One was that I tried to work with FIVE different Rolfers in the Chicago area. Every one of them caused so much pain from the very beginning of the sessions I could not take it. (It's hard to say I was a WIMP because if you knew what ironworkers go through every day ... But there was NO WAY I could relax into this Rolfing thing as it was being done on ME!) ... 

This, of course, flew in the face of what I had learned and applied with the NO Pain, MORE Gain approach. I did not believe pain was necessary. And Ida and her Son had a reputation for being VERY aggressive in their bodywork and at least "discomfort" was inevitable. And a LOT of Rolfers at that time believed they needed to do it "Ida's Way"!

And even though I had not yet gone Next Level with my own practice, I had worked with enough people to KNOW that NO Pain, MORE Gain was a much better approach for several reasons.

So I never got past the 2nd out of the 10 "Official" sessions with any of the five Rolfers due to the pain!

2.) Another issue was I did not want to learn a "Standard Recipe" or a "Routine" to perform mostly the same moves with all my Clients. Rolfing has their Standard 10-Session Recipe that most Rolfers do as a matter of routine.

I think they used to say something like "We will take you apart in 7 sessions, and put you back together in 3 sessions."

Yet *I* wanted to be able to create, from Session #1, unique, tailored sessions for each Client with each session based on what they presented with at that moment in time.

I already knew the Slogan "One Size Fits NO One!" And I knew how DIFFERENT each Client's body and situation was. ... So learning Rolfing's Standard, 10-Session Recipe was NOT my idea of what I wanted to learn.

My approach was to assume I would only see a Client ONE TIME, and I needed to give them as complete an Experience as possible. So that was the level of knowledge I was looking for, NOT just a "To Do List" of One Size Fits All.

3.) Another and even Bigger thing was a married couple, of whom both were Rolfers, came to Chicago to teach a weekend workshop on Structural Integration (Rolfing®) at the Chicago School Of Massage Therapy. I attended their workshop, very much hoping I would learn how to better evaluate where to work, on what muscles, and when.

The workshop was nearing its end on Sunday late afternoon, and I was getting VERY frustrated. They did NOT provide ANY insight into my main question. Their techniques did not interest me much, as MY technique was already serving me VERY well as far as getting a muscle to relax, release & let-go.

So I asked, "How do you KNOW where to work & when?" The woman Rolfer was demonstrating an elbow technique on the back of someone on the table at the time. She hesitated, then said, "Well, you just sort of know."

I was VERY disappointed, almost shocked. THAT was a wholly inadequate answer to my question, as far as I was concerned. It was like the Poke & Hope Principle many therapists worked under in those days, and many STILL do. Just POKE in the muscles and HOPE something improves. But they did it with no real certainty about what a correct strategy would be.

So from that point on, I figured that if I went to Boulder and the Rolf Institute, it was VERY unlikely I would get the knowledge and insight I was looking for.

4.) As I have discussed more in-depth elsewhere on the website and my eBooks, I also did not believe in the idea that FASCIA, BY ITSELF, was anywhere NEAR a Prime Mover of the joints & bones.

Yet I believed I should be able to know enough about the anatomy & kinesiology of the muscles & bones to determine WHAT would happen when I released the tension in a specific muscle. I figured I should be able to design each session for the Client based on their unique needs at THAT moment ... NOT just "deliver a standard, 10-Session Recipe."

(To be fair, if you go to Advanced Rolfing Training, we are told you develop a wider range of skills beyond the 10-session recipe. Yet a LOT of Rolfer's don't do that.)

When I was an ironworker foreman, we used plumb cables to pull steel structures around until every column was vertical, every beam was horizontal, and every corner was square. I assumed that in the human body, the bones were like the columns & beams, and the muscles & tendons were like the plumb cables.

This was not exactly true, but it was a close enough analogy.

But at that point, I did NOT know the medical sciences enough to adjust things and predict what would happen. Heck, I didn't even know what "kinesiology" really was!

I was also learning, and understanding, that (in my opinion) the Rolfer's excessively high focus on fascia, and FAR less on muscle cells, was leading them to make very incorrect assessments about structural misalignments and distortions in a Client's body. They were getting overly focused on fascia, and almost ignoring muscles.

• I have a few stories on that, but I'll save them for another time.

5.) As a result, they were rarely able, for example, to straighten a scoliosis because focusing on fascia often caused them to release the WRONG musculo-Fascial Units!

6.) And this is probably the Biggest One. ...

I learned enough to know that the fascia was MOSTLY SENSORY in nature. Fascia has a very small percentage of MOTOR nerves, IF ANY. What motor nerves there ARE go to smooth muscle cells, which do not have much capacity to contact in a way that could significantly affect posture and movement AT ALL.

If there are very few motor nerves, that means the Client does not have the capacity to turn the tissues ON or OFF with their mind, like they can a skeletal, striated muscle, with some practice.

In a mindful yoga practice, you are in great part learning to turn your muscles ON & OFF AT WILL with your mind and nervous system. But there is little to nothing in the way of a mechanism to DO that with the fascia.

THAT means the Client is dependent on external means for getting their fascia to DO what the Client WANTS it to do. That would be things like self-massage, foam rolling, or going to the Rolfer or other fascia-focused practitioner.

*I* was ALL about getting the Client first-body, first-person control over their own body as fast as possible. It was about helping the Client discover and develop their own, independent, internal self-control.

TODAY I know that we CAN control our own fascia, but only indirectly by relaxing & contracting our muscle cells, which have a very big impact on the fascia.

7.) Earlier in her Life, Ida P. Rolf had been an advocate of Yoga. But later on, she decided yoga compresses the joints and decided to stop recommending it. This, of course, bothered ME.

I had personally been using yoga to successfully DE-compress joints, including MY joints! So in MY mind, YES, there WERE people who were compressing their joints with yoga. I even have an eBook I wrote about Yoga Injury Prevention including joint decompression that I should have installed on this website in the near future.

So in my mind, if Ida could not figure out how to teach or advocate for a form of yoga that did NOT compress the joints, there was something missing from her understanding of the whole process, and how the human body worked.

Therefore, after all of that, I did not see how I could ever BE a Rolfer if I could not embrace some of its main, foundational principles.

Below is a description of my views on scoliosis in the context of what is the primary force causing scoliotic curves: is it primarily over-shortened muscles? Or over-shortened fascia?

I have a Section on this topic detailing the Fascia vs. Muscle Cells in Scoliosis Question at:

7 Secrets eBook <<< CLICK HERE for eBook

After the Structural Bodywork Training with Daniel Blake this proved to me, for example, that Rolfer's general assessments of scoliosis were exactly the opposite of the Real Situation. This is why most of their attempts to straighten a scoliosis were not working very well at all, or occasionally made the Client WORSE.

Yet very early in my career, I was able to provide substantial straightening of a scoliosis because of the precise, customized method of evaluation I earned from Daniel Blake. (BTW, Daniel left the therapy field many years ago and I heard he had become an attorney!)

Daniel Blake's Postural Assessment Method was FAR more precise, and realistic, and I have found it to be FAR more effective in restoring better postural balance & alignment than Rolfers, and many others, were achieving.

(I just NOW looked at their online catalog and it appears they are still using the 10-Session Recipe until you get to Advanced Training.)

Yet over the subsequent few years, I came to conclude that even some of Daniel's assumptions about posture and structural evaluation were NOT FULLY correct, either, and I had to reconsider some of those!

One more thing about Ida Rolf is she believed Yoga compressed the joints, and was not good for people. While it is true that if you do yoga improperly, it CAN or DOES compress the joints. But there is a way to NOT compress the joints, which we teach in DSL EdgeWork and Let-Go Yoga, and is part of what I learned from Joel Kramer.

And HERE is a Basic Principle & Philosophy of DSL EdgeWork:

We are NOT here to just "recreate the Good Ideas" of those who came before us. Our job, as Self-Actualizing Human Beings, and as Time-Binders*, is to take the Knowledge & Experiences of our parents & teachers and GO BEYOND WHAT THEY'VE DISCOVERED. Even if "going beyond" contradicts what they saw or did.

• Time-Binding, a term coined by Alfred Korzybski, is one of Korzybski's Theories about the Nature of Being a Human Being that we incorporate into DSL EdgeWork.

As a TimeBinder, MY JOB is to condense my knowledge, skills, insights & wisdom in Massage, Bodywork & Yoga Therapy into a "package" I can deliver to YOU — or whoever is interested — such that YOU are Prepared to do Bigger & Better Things in the near or distant future than I can.

This is one of the Objectives of the School Of Hard Knots, to provide YOU with that package in the field of Bodywork & Yoga Therapy. And if everyone was doing "Time-Binding" in ALL walks of life, including how parents raise their children, civilization would be moving ahead into ascension.

When people do NOT "Time-Bind," civilization goes into DECLINE.

Korzybski is one of the philosophers DSL Edgework  bases its Philosophical & Operational Principles on. He is also one of the people who pointed out the deep implications of the Colloidal Tissues on human health and well-being. And Colloidal Tissues is another, older, now little used name for ...

Ready For It? ... The Fascia!

Korzybski was deep into an integrative approach to language (linguistics), psychology, anthropology, mathematics, engineering & philosophy. He went into Great Depth on how much psycho-physiological events in the mind, brain & nervous system end up embedding in the colloidal tissues (FASCIA).

And Ida Rolf was a student of Korzybski! Yet to my knowledge, Ida never went as openly deep into the psychological or philosophical implications of "colloidal tissue" or "fascia" as Korzybski did. ...

Yet WE Will!

We will go into Korzybski's DEEP insights into colloidal tissues (fascia) in the DSL Education & Mentoring Program. But suffice it to say there is a major contribution into human mental & physical well-being from his teachings. So NO, we do NOT ignore nor downplay the fascia.

Finding Problems in Assumptions About Therapy

As I focused 100% on Structural Bodywork in my practice (intentionally NOT doing ANY "regular" massage), I was developing my own Method of Therapy. But I kept running into "things" that just did not fit what I had been taught by many "expert" therapists and stuff I read in many books or articles. Much of what they said did NOT match up with the Reality I saw and experienced with many of my Clients. (Such as I mentioned up above.)

As I was working with Clients, I noticed the generalizations & assertions by many of The Experts VERY often did NOT seem to fit the Reality many or most of my Clients presented with.

This is illustrated by the First Time I came to grips with the question of Excess Lordosis (forward lumbar curve) & Anterior (forward) Tilted Pelvis versus the opposite, LOSS of Lordosis with a Posterior Tilted Pelvis.

A Client had what APPEARED to be an OBVIOUS excess lordosis and anterior tilted pelvis. But Nothing I Tried Worked!

Now, Daniel always did his Postural Evaluation from a few feet away sitting in a chair, and got a visual reading of the Client ... from a distance. So that's what I always did!

One day, as I was doing a standing postural evaluation with her, and was really frustrated, I got down on my knees and close-up palpated into her lower back and the upper rim of her pelvis.

But now that I was up close and was actually contacting her spinal curves, I made a realization. She had NO excess lordosis AT ALL. It just LOOKED like it because of the contours of the flesh & muscles overlying her bones gave the superficial APPEARANCE of a big arch in her lower back. Yet it was the Exact Opposite Picture!

After several months of this kind of thing, I had to realize that much of the time, the fleshy contours give the Exact Opposite Picture of what is ACTUALLY going on in the underlying bone structures. Soon, I was down on my knees behind them with EVERY Client, palpating everything I used to look at from a distance.

Accounting for this is one reason I had to modify & refine the Basic Postural Evaluation Formula I learned from Daniel. The underlying principle was correct. But the principles were being unintentionally MISS-applied.

What I have NOT told you is Daniel had done some therapy on ME. Then, after a few sessions, one day, I had a SEVERE blast of PAIN that INSTANTLY dropped me to the floor. I could not remember EVER having anything that bad.

Digging into what REALLY happened there is part of a Primary Case Study — with ME as the Client! — we will examine this in great detail. It is a GREAT teaching tool because I had one of THE most complex cases I have EVER been involved with.

So I had to REASSESS what I had been taught, and learn to TRUST what MY Eyes & Mind & Hands told me instead of what I had been "taught" or what some "expert" was trying to tell me, NO MATTER how well-intentioned they might be.

(They are NOT always "wrong," of course. But we can NOT assume they are always RIGHT, despite their experience, degrees, & licenses!)

That, in great part, is what  Phenomenological Mindfulness is all about. (That is, as much as possible, using one's own mind & nervous system to study the nature of current phenomena, of direct experience of REALITY, & of Consciousness.)

And mindfulness is a major aspect of the DSL EdgeWork system of therapy. Fortunately, the Zen-style Meditation I learned and began practicing at age 13 got me off to a great start on all of that.

A Few Other Events

(This section is not complete as of yet.)

In the MId-1980s, I was getting more interested in the Psychological & Social Implications of Bodywork & Yoga. I was also getting more interested in the metabolic implications, diet, nutrition, detox, and related topics.

My Acute Care Training

We are often told massage & bodywork are good for longer-term, chronic tension, and stress. But it's not, supposedly, good for recent, acute care injuries.

I Beg To Differ!

One thing that happened to me was meeting Michael Butler. He's the man who produced the Broadway Musical HAIR. He took it from an off, off, Broadway play to a Mega-Successful Production of international fame & fortune.

Michael also had an Internationally known Polo Team in Oakbrook, Illinois, about half an hour west of downtown Chicago in good traffic. After having GREAT success in resolving several of his long-standing NMF issues, I became the Team Bodyworker for his Polo Team.

I was on the Polo Fields most weekends from Spring to Fall and I think Wednesday afternoons for a couple of years.

Polo, often called the Sport of Kings (because it is SO expensive to have a Polo Team), is a ROUGH Sport. Players are getting injured ALL the time. Very often. Many times they came off the field with an injury they thought was putting them OUT of the game for the day, or worse. But I was MOST of the time able to get them back in play by the next Chukker (an equivalent to an Inning in baseball).

So I was often busy.

I knew the Paramedics, and one of their Dads was an MD who played Polo. The Paramedic told me the physicians on the field were always amazed I could get people healed sufficiently to get back in play without any drugs. Funny thing was, they NEVER came over and asked me about what I was doing!

But the pain & reduced range of motion was almost always from a spasmed muscle, and that was something I had learned to relieve quite well. So the idea that massage & bodywork is not useful in acute care situations is NOT cut & dry. There are a LOT of instances where it IS relevant.

Anyway, working with so many of those short-term injuries gave me an excellent education on such things.

One Side Note is Prince (now King) Charles, who was a Great Friend of Michael's, came to Oakbrook to play Polo once. He was accompanied by his Homeopathic Physician. I was supposed to meet them and possibly do some bodywork with them.

But I was in Acapulco, working with my Clients down there, and I did not return to Chicago soon enough to meet them.

Korzybski, Maturana, & Logonet

• I have mentioned Alfred Korzybski, the Engineer, Biologist, Linguist & Philosopher who was one of Ida P. Rolfs teachers. He made a BIG deal about Colloidal Tissues which are what we call FASCIA today.

• Humberto Maturana was a Chilean Biologist & Philosopher who, along with Francesco Varela, developed a Serious Science of Mind, Brain & Cognition.

We use some of their most important and often mind-blowing concepts in developing our ideas & models about how therapy works best.

I had the privilege of providing a therapy session for Maturana on one of his visits to America.

• The Founder of Logonet, Fernando Flores, was an internationally known educator well-known for Business Management Communications & Management.

Working With Whole Health, Metabolic Physicians

Learning about Metabolic, Alternative Medicine from some of The Best in the Country!

Dr. Bob Waters

Dr. Bil Mauer

Dr. Ray Baldwin

Dr. Robert Mendelsohn

Dr. John Bordiuk

Dr. Steven Weil

Hakomi Body-Centered Psychotherapy

Deja Vu a THIRD Time . . . !!!

Hakomi Body-Centered Psychotherapy is a Method of Psychotherapy that supports the Client in staying focused in their physical body throughout their therapy session. The idea is the body is always in the moment and does not lie.

Properly stimulating, or probing, the physical body can stimulate sensations, emotions, memories, and such that can help reveal more of what is really going on with a Client.

A version of Hakomi was developed and taught by Pat Ogen, who developed Hakomi Bodywork.

DSL Edgework Comes Together

As importantly, based on what I learned doing my personal yoga practice 3 to 4 hours per day many days per week for many months over several years, and doing many bodywork trades with some great bodyworkers, I developed my unique & effective therapeutic system of DSL Edgework. (Way back then, I called it Psycho*-Muscular Release & Structural Balancing. But in Chicago, people were not too keen on the "psycho" part of the name. I bet it would have gone over MUCH better in Southern California!)

• To review, Psycho-: Refers to "breath, mind, soul" and "psychology." ... It does NOT necessarily mean you are a Crazy Person for using it!

As I was using my method of Structural Yoga Therapy to successfully heal my OWN severe problems with pain & dysfunction from my Motocross & Ironworker days, everything came together in the mid-1980s. One day in 1985, when my back pain stopped for a few hours for the first time in 3.5 YEARS of non-stop, "throw me on the floor" pain, I knew my method was working. And I had many Clients that were getting Great Results, too.

(I tell that story in greater detail up somewhere on the website: Physical, Mental & Relational Yoga as the Foundation for DSL EdgeWork)

And Most Importantly, it was those many hours of doing my own physical / mental yoga that taught me what REALLY makes a muscle "relax" & "let go" & "release" its tension & stress. THAT is a Major Element of what I teach in my therapy programs. And Yes, Hands-On Bodywork CAN be done with the same YOGIC intent & focus too.

I Start Teaching & Practicing Around The Country

After teaching at Heartwood for a year (described above) in 1989-90, I began teaching my Method of Therapy around the county with excellent feedback from students. (Please See the Testimonial Pages on my main website.)

https://davidscottlynn.com/testimonials [ <<< CLICK LINK ]

I've had several Private Practices in several cities around America, and even in Acapulco, Mexico (in 1985, until the Mexican earthquake put me out of business!). I've worked with Clients from all over the World, and most of them say, No One Does What I Do.

Actually, there ARE a FEW therapists who do SOME similar things as I do. But they are Far Too Few & Too Far Between and Too Hard to Find.

According to my Clients, we need a LOT more Therapists trained to do such things.

If You would like to be involved in fulfilling that need, I'd love to have you On Board! Please use the Big White Button at the top of the page to Get In Touch.

OR, if you want to see the details of my Online Education & Mentoring Program, The School of Hard Knots, go to the below link and Read ALL About The Details of the Program:

School of Hard Knots [ <<< CLICK HERE]

And if YOU are looking for ideas on starting a New Practice, I've started about EIGHT of them now over the last nearly 50 years (I got started in 1976 when I became a Yoga Teacher), all under very different circumstances, so I might be able to help YOU!

THAT is ONE of the Reasons I'm incorporating the 1-on-1 Mentoring / Coaching Call every week. To help YOU learn The DSL Method as thoroughly as possible, AND, if you need or want it, help you with Designing Your Practice, Communications & Marketing to accommodate and make the most out of your new-found Knowledge, Skills, & WISDOM!

HOWEVER, this very first program is a PILOT PROGRAM. I'll need your help & feedback to make sure the program is as relevant & useful to You and Your Interests & Needs as possible.

In Exchange, You will be getting a VERY Low Price for the Program. The Pilot Program will be for the First 12 People who sign on.

After that, either the price will go back up to something more reasonable, OR, I will remove the 1-on-1 Mentoring Calls and use Group Coaching to keep the personal Interaction as high as possible.

In that case, the 1-on-1 Calls will be available as a separate offering & cost. And right now, the national average for Life Coaching average more than $200 per hour, and Business Coaching averages around $500 per hour.

To Finish Up My Story ...

In the 1990s, I teamed up with Linda J. Calandro. When I met her in 1992, I would say she was one of THE TOP Neuromuscular (NMT) Therapists & Educators in the country. With a chemistry background, she had a BIG focus on the sciences behind NMT, and so I started working with her and expanding my knowledge even deeper into the medical & physical sciences behind neuromuscular, myofascial, & structural therapies. 

This expanded my own insights & perspectives greatly. I even spent quite a few days at the Harvard Medical Library in the Boston area and CDC in Atlanta reading the big, expensive medical textbooks.

One Great Lesson was that MOST of the Physical Principals & Medical Sciences behind BOTH bodywork and yoga are almost identical. I "knew" that at the Experiential Level. But I did not yet know enough physiology & neurology to know for sure from a more scientific perspective. ...

I DO KNOW NOW! ... And SO WILL YOU!

But one thing Joel Kramer tried to impart to us: Do not underestimate your ability to "Know" The Truth at the Experiential level, even if you do not know the sciences behind it.

Yet one of my Mottos is the more You KNOW about how the Psycho-Neuro-Musculo-Fascial & Joint System WORKS at a deeper level, the more you KNOW about how to WORK with it.

As Joel Kramer used to say, the ANSWER to most Questions is usually contained within the Question ... IF you can Observe and Ask the RIGHT Questions.

And one of MY JOBS is to Help YOU In learning how to ask the right questions and dig deeper into the Problems we face as Therapists.

If I do my job right, if I can BE a positively focused Time-Binder, then more of Your MOST Chronically Complex Clients WILL get better. If THAT happens, your Practice and Your LIFE will get better.

Then, the Massage, Bodywork & Yoga Professions will get better.

And THEN? ... All of that has Good Chance of our Results Trickling UP to a Better Life for more Americans in America and maybe even the People of the World.

SO ... I'm now working to get back to my long "on-hold" programs to Educate & Mentor Therapists who want to have access to my now 44+ years of Insights, Strategies, & Skills to Evaluate & Treat long-term chronic, complex, difficult-to-treat soft tissue issues of their Clients.

I'm also, for those who want it, going to be working with my Students on developing their Communications & Marketing so they can become more well-known as the Leading Edge Expert in their Community. 

If any of that is something YOU want, Please Get In Touch!

Thank You Very Much for Reading!

• David Scott Lynn ( DSL )
• DSL: Your High-Touch Uplink to the Inner-Net
• Inner-Net: Your Psycho-Neuro-Musculo-Fascial System

AGAIN, the School of Hard Knots is here ...

School of Hard Knots [ <<< CLICK HERE]

My Primary Website is at:

DavidScottLynn.com

Thank You Very Much For Reading This Far

It is VERY MUCH Appreciated!

I hope you found the information interesting and useful!

What Can You Do NOW? . . .

SEE DSL's Special Report #1: Challenges & Opportunities for Musculo-Fascial Therapists: CLICK HERE >>> SPECIAL REPORT #1

View a Page VERY similar to this one, with a LOT More Detail: CLICK HERE >>> DSL INTRO DETAILS