Every time I see, say or hear the word ‘airway’ I think ‘oscillation’, and every time I see, say or hear the word ‘oscillation’ I think ‘airway’.  Therefore, you can probably imagine how excited I am for the upcoming Interdisciplinary Integration Symposium and for the opportunity to engage with all the speakers who have dedicated their professional lives to these two words. 

A recent article in The New Yorker (February 11, 2019), written by Burkhard Bilger describes our orchestration inside of us.  His first two paragraphs of ‘Extreme Range’ sent me over my edge of containment...

“In a throat, a note is forming.  A puff of air, a pulse of the lungs, rushes up the windpipe and through the vocal cords, parting them like a pair of lips.  As the cords begin to vibrate, they’re stretched taut by muscles to either side, raising the pitch.  The diaphragm pumps more air, rocketing the note up the vocal tract, making its walls hum like the barrel of a woodwind.  The sound ricochets back and forth as it rises, gaining resonance with each rebound, till it bursts into the hollow chamber of the mouth, the ringing cavities of the sinuses, and careens off the palate into the open air.

The human voice is the world’s most astonishing instrument, it’s often said.  It’s capable of everything from a trill to a bark to an ear-splitting scream, from growling harmonics to liquid acrobatics, lofted on the breath like a lark on an updraft.  Instrument is the wrong word, really.  The voice is more like a chamber ensemble: winds and strings and blaring horns, strung together end to end.  It’s a pump organ, a viola, an oboe, and the bell of a trumpet, each instrument passing the sound along to the next, adding volume and overtones at every step.  Throw in the percussion of the lips and tongue, and the echoing amphitheater of the skull, and you have a full orchestra playing inside you.”

Over the next few weeks, I will highlight each of our six orchestrated speakers and presenters, and how their ‘Approach to the Production of Voice, Airflow, and Resonance Frequency Breathing’ strengthens our sense of self and self-satisfaction.  Postural satisfaction requires intimate integrated oscillation from our vocal cords, neck musculature, throat or airway and occiputs.  Highlighting is something I do with every article, book or journal I read.  I look forward to every one of our Spring Symposiums, but this year it will be hard to contain my excitement between now and one of the biggest highlights of my year.

What a great way to start off teaching my first course of my 2019 schedule at my own clinic here in Southern Pines! Nothing like sleeping in your own bed and walking your dogs at lunch time! I had the help of Sarah Ratti PTA, PRC! Sarah was a member of the 2018 PRC class and I was lucky enough to get to know her in December and have her help during lab!

 I was so excited to teach Pelvis Restoration following attending Ron's Non-manual technique workshop last weekend in Lincoln, NE. I learned so much and it certainly help energize my teaching and deeper understanding of the Non-manual techniques! I was able to really help my course attendees with choosing techniques and following a frontal plane progress as it relates to the Pelvis.

Every time I teach this course, I learn more and grow not only as a faculty member, but also as a clinician. I am hopeful my course attendees would feel the same. My class was interdisciplinary! We had PT's, PTAs, massage therapist, kinesiologist, strength and conditioning coaches, Yoga Instructors and massage therapists! It was a 50/50 split of newbies and experienced PRI clinicians. Maude and Brenda were my Pure Newbies, meaning they really didn't know what PRI was all about. But they left excited that they had been exposed to the science and couldn't wait to integrate what they learned into their current practice. I was happy to have Malynda Kerksick in my class. Malynda was a former patient of mine and now a PRI enthusiast!

I have had the pleasure of watching her grow as a Yoga instructor and her questions were much appreciated. She also did a great job photographing moments throughout the weekend. She gets photo cred for capturing my pure joy while teaching this weekend. I am so proud to be a part of the growth of Postural Restoration. We get asked all the time which course should I take next? What is the best first course to take? I made sure to emphasize the true nature of feed-forward neurology. You treat a pelvis, you influence the thorax, neck, head and big toe! I hope to see these faces again in a future PRI course! The #PRINation is now stronger than ever before!

Mizzou Therapy Services located at the Missouri Orthopaedic Institute hosted it's first PRI course, Postural Respiration, this past weekend in a beautiful state-of-the-art facility. What made this weekend significant was that nearly two thirds of the attendees were from Mizzou Therapy Services or new to PRI. This holds the promise of a great opportunity for these therapists to collaborate, practice and potentially master the manual and non-manual PRI techniques taught this weekend.

This is the first time this instructor has taught a course with so many participants from the same facility and the energy and enthusiasm from these talented therapists was inspirational! Since most of the class was new to PRI and attending their first course, PRI principles were broken down in detail to provide a solid foundation to a brand new paradigm. Many of the therapists immediately saw the value of Postural Respiration with working with their COPD patients, athletes from the University of Missouri as well as geriatric populations.

Postural Respiration has been updated and revised just this year and Posterior Mediastinum could be another name for this course. Patterns, position and posture of the diaphragm affecting every vital system in the body were defined and explored this weekend. Columbia, MO is a great college town and has tradition at their sports games from their fans. On one side of a group of fans they will shout " M-I-Z" followed by the other group answering "Z-O-U!" for MIZZOU! This weekend the therapists at Mizzou Therapy Services have a new chant which is "M-I-Z" ---"Z-O-A!" for the new awareness of "Zone of Apposition" as described in Postural Respiration!

Many thanks to Joe Pope, PT, PRC for driving in from Eldon, MO to assist. His expertise and skill at describing and expanding on PRI principles and his lab assistance was invaluable. Joe is thoughtful and articulate with his responses and patience. Thank you to all of the staff at MTS including Lindsey, Laura, Mackinzie, Barbie, Katie and all others that helped to organize and clean up at the end of the day. Your energy and assistance with providing such a great facility was much appreciated.

Having the opportunity to discuss the role of the hypothalamus and integrated thalamic function as they relate to autonomic patterned respiration, physiology, posture and central nervous system compensation, was an enduring dream of mine. I could finally, deliver a course that describes how our autonomic and central nervous systems operate with and from  biased cerebral and cerebellum lateralization, hemispheric specialization, and oscillatory compression and decompression.

Over two decades of literature review, clinical application, multi-disciplinary experience and evidence based outcome methodology, built with the help of an Institute I started for these course objectives, fulfilled me in ways that are very difficult to express. I trusted an idiosyncratic educational process that challenged me as a pre-dentistry student. A clairvoyant process that required collegiate patience, faith in humanity and belief in our holistic, biological and neurological system. I appreciated the 41 course ambassadors who also trusted this process. I hope they came away with a sense of how we patterned humans resolve to make sense of what we don’t sense through pattern compensation of air flow, fluid movement, and cavity fluctuation as it relates to ischial and occipital (sacral and cranial) rhythm and thus autonomic processing. 

This course was strengthened by the input and participation from too many people to list here, but I especially appreciated the support from Erin Coomer DPT,OCS, Laurie Gribschaw PT,DPT,ATC,AT/L,PRC,  Janine Peacock DPT,OCS, Paige Raffo MPT,OCS and Kelly Martin PT.  I could not have asked for a better audience and support group.   There were many reasons I wanted to give this first course in Seattle but three of those reasons are Christopher Murphy DPT,OCS,PRC,  Jeremiah Ferguson DPT,OCS,PRC, and Eli Zygmuntowicz DPT,OCS,PRC. These three men are absolutely the embodiment of family. I will always be grateful for their warmth, charismatic charm and pedagogical approach. I had so much fun and look forward to the next opportunity to talk about pendular parasympathetic process.