A Personal Message from Jocelyn Olivier

I like to say that everything I learned about bodywork I learned from my clients.  It was my lack of formal training that stimulated a new way of looking that lead to innovation of a new approach to problem solving. It was those moments of coming to the end of everything I’d learned to do to fix a problem and getting no results that forced me to look again and think “What could be creating this problem and what could I do to correct it?”  That is when the further developments of NMR and what I call Conscious BodyWork came about. The NMR approach gave me the means of following a path of inquiry to understanding, to finally figuring out what stored motor relationships were interfering with musculoskeletal function.

NMR has grown over the years. Each practitioner tends to make it their own in response to their view of the body and their preferred way of working. Over the years, all the students of NeuroMuscular Reprogramming made discoveries within their own practices, which we shared freely, excited by the conversation about discoveries.  It is inevitable that the teaching evolved and comprehensive understanding by each successive generation of practitioners informed all of our understandings.

Every generation of knowledge is built on what comes before and I am proud to see the way this work has proliferated and now begins to inform a larger population of practitioners. This was my goal in starting the school so many years ago at which David Weinstock, Gale Ulvang, Dana Arevelo, Boris Vilner, and later Larry Munn helped teach NMR to hundreds of students who have integrated it into the full scope of their unique practice of bodywork.  I know the next generation of bodyworkers will be better than those that came before because they started with a good education and a good brain and will soon develop even further through synthesis of many approaches, techniques that better address the huge need of maintaining our bodies in good function throughout a lifetime so that our older years are not spent in disability and degenerative disease.

NMR works well with all other modalities. Although NMR deals primarily with the biomechanics of the body, the interconnectedness of all systems of the body cannot be denied. Neuromuscular inefficiencies influence all body systems from cognitive to digestive. They are a tremendous source of stress on the life force and energy resources.  At the Healus Neuro Rehab Center, in Mill Valley California, we have discovered that addressing the right system in the right order is paramount to getting results with NMR.  Simply doing the right biomechanical moves will not change a system that is unable to sustain correction. So if you notice you are still limited on results with certain clients this is a factor to consider.

Once you latch on to NeuroMuscular Reprogramming each session is an exciting exploration of discovery as each body is different and its history has evolved through layers of complexification (my word), similar to that of our understanding of the body itself; similar to evolution itself. We have taken the body apart into systems and hierarchies, but it is truly a unified whole that can be addressed from any direction but needs to be addressed from more than one direction at once.

NeuroMuscular Reprogramming is an ESSENTIAL component in re-education and rehabilitation.

It begins with the breath. Fitness Trainers (PTs) are beginning to popularize the understanding that a body cannot be powerful without the proper engagement and use of the diaphragm muscle.  This argues for the need to address the prevalent epidemic of stress before any other corrective work.  We have found this to be true at Healus where my colleagues and I work daily with people who have searched long and wide for a solution to their physical problems, only to find it in the integrated approach available with NeuroMuscular Reprogramming, Brain Function Facilitation, and Emotional Energetic Stress Release, Breathing re-education and CranioSacral Rebalancing and all the other bodywork modalities that are incorporated into each and every treatment.

I have come to appreciate, though more than 40 years of private practice, that we have more control over our bodies that anyone ever taught us was possible.  We are truly involved in promoting Conscious Evolution Through Somatic Education.

See you in the classroom or in the clinic where we will share everything we know to help your body work better and make your life easier…

Jocelyn