Her clinic offers ScarWork for rehab - post surgery, Neurovascular Structural Integration and the Anatomy Trains 12 series. GIGI MOK
Gigi is a a certified 350 hour yoga teacher who studied and practiced under Gregor Maehle and Dr Monica Gauci for 15 years and has been practising various styles of yoga for 20 years. Over the last 10 years, Mok has worked with Tiffany Cruikshank, Dena Kingsberg, Ma
rk Togni, Santina Giardina-Chard, Matthew Sweeney and Graham Northfield. Gigi's classes are infused with humour and compassion; together with an extensive knowledge of anatomy and fascia with over 2 decades of yoga practice, she is especially attentive with beginners as well as those who are established in ashtanga practice. Gigi is also certified as a Structural Integration practitioner with Anatomy Trains Structural Integration; the work of Tom Myers, author of Anatomy Trains. Looking to expand her knowledge in spatial medicine, Gigi has completed her training under Julie Hammond (Anatomy Trains Australia & NZ) and Lou Benson (Director of Education, Kinesis Inc)
General Goals of STRUCTURAL INTEGRATION work
1. Complete the body image - The client has improved KQ (Kinesthetic Intelligence): Greater access to both the sensory information coming from and motor access to the entire body, with minimal areas of stillness, holding or 'sensory-motor amnesia',
2. The bones are aligned in a way that allows minimal myofascial effort for standing and action.
3. Reduced effort in standing and movement. Decreased 'parasitic' tension or unnecessary compensatory movement involved in any given task.
4. Range of motion, generosity of movement. Decreased restrictions/limitations in chosen activities. Optimal range of movement is (within the limits of overall health, age, history and genetic make-up) better understood and more available.
5. In the trunk and the limbs, muscles and across the joints. The body lives it's full length, rather than being held in shortness and compression
7. Tensegrity/Palintonicity - the myofascial tissues are balanced around the skeletal structure such that there is a general evenness of tone.
8. Reslilence - An improved ability to keep your balance and suffer less negative impact from the inevitable, inescapable, ineffable rolling, pitching seas of stress. What is the ATSI 12 series Structural Integration? ATSI materialised from the pioneering work of Dr Ida Rolf and has been developed by Dr Tom Myers. Myers was teaching students at the Rolf Institute when he developed a game called Anatomy Trains to help his students see the body as a whole and to show the connections by stringing the muscles together. Myers then mapped the Anatomy Trains and based his ATSI 12 session recipes on the coherent myofascially linked complex, termed a 'myofascial meridian' within the unitary & body-wide fascial net. Modern anatomy now recognises the importance of the myofascial network, until recently regarded as ‘the Cinderella of musculoskeletal research.’ This network not only gives our body it’s shape it plays an essential role in transmitting, enhancing and restricting movement. It is the glue and fabric that holds our body together. It surrounds and connects every muscle fibre, every organ, infact almost every structure in our body. When you are born, you are a blank canvas. And through the first world’s life sequence of inefficient movement in poorly designed chairs, desks, working on computers, sitting and watching TV, sitting in cars and being sedentary, we put our bodies through common strain patterns. Our individual strain patterns come from the following
• Imitating our parents from an early age
• Emotional trauma & Stress
• Physical injuries
• Surgery
• And the bodies responses to these traumas
All of these will create a neuromuscular response causing tissue to contract, shift, thicken and glue itself to surrounding structures leading to immobility and pain. ATSI 12 Series
Starting with the 4 superficial planes of the body – Superficial Front Line, Superficial Back Line, Lateral Line and Spiral Line, these are the first 4 sessions of the 12 series. You may choose to pause here and feel the freedom of movement and length and ease. But to truly find long lasting change, we need to delve deeper and that is when your KMI practitioner dives down into the interior landscapes of your body in next 4 sessions – the Deep Front Line Lower Leg, the Central Deep Front Line, The Deep Back Line and then placing your head back on top. The last 4 sessions are all about integration. Integrating the outer sleeve to the inner core. From your waist down – Feet, Legs and Pelvis, from the waist up in the Abdomen, Chest and Breath, integrating the Shoulders and Arms, and then Balancing all the Lines and the Tissues of the Major Joints. This makes SI extremely effective at treating a number of health issues - and very unique, in that no other therapies utilise such a thorough view of the body. What to expect from your STRUCTURAL INTEGRATION Sessions
SI is a wonderful 'tonic' for your posture and movement, but it is no panacea. Do not undertake SI without medical permission if indicated, or if suffering from a 'hot' (inflammatory) disease. SI can be remarkably effective for chronic pain patterns of a structural nature, but is not designed as a 'curative' for any disease, or as a 'first aid' remedy for recent injury. Check with me if you are unsure whether KMI is contraindicated. You can certainly ‘try out’ a session of SI to see if it suits you, but the best, most permanent and progressive results are obtained by undertaking the whole series. You can also do the first 4 sessions which will open up the 'superficial' sleeve of your body, giving you ease and space in your body. Spacing the sessions too close together does not give your body time to absorb the information, whereas drawing the process out too long means you risk losing the momentum essential to the process. Different SI practitioners have different styles, so to be sure I ‘fit’ with you, feel free to bring any issues you have with the work up with me. Typically, the SI process will begin with a fairly extensive interview about your history and current habits. Most SI sessions are done in underwear or a bathing suit, without draping. I will want to observe you standing and walking before the sessions start, in order to assess your current structural patterns. I will take photos in order to give you a visual sense of the ‘before’ and ‘after’, since there can be some fairly dramatic changes in your shape. (And sometimes there will not be dramatic visual changes – judge your SI experience by how you FEEL rather than how it looks.) SI work is done on a massage table, or for certain moves, on a stool or bench. I will use my fingers, hands or arm to contact certain tissues, and then ask you to move in specific ways while I open and reposition those tissues. The process of opening tissues can involve some burning, like a yoga stretch or exercising some long unused muscles. The pain, if the sensation gets that far, should be short and bearable. Please give me feedback to find the right level of depth for you that allows the maximum value for each session consistent with your comfort. The idea is to achieve a balanced body that is pain-free. You may have to feel some of the stored pain as it leaves your body, especially in traumatised areas. Traumatised tissue can also contain emotional pain. Although we are not trained psychologists, as a KMI practitioner, I have been trained to sensitively work with you around these issues as they relate to your body structure. Each SI session deals with a different fascial plane or set of relationships in the body, progressively working around the body, and from superficial to deep and back again. I may not work where you are reporting the symptoms, as the patterns that feel that problem are body-wide. A whip-lash, for instance, is a problem of the neck for some days, a problem of the whole spine within a few weeks, and is linked to a whole body pattern within a few months. It is not unusual to have odd feelings – physical or emotional – between sessions. Please contact me if they are cause for concern. Often, old long forgotten pains will resurface for a time – this is a positive sign that the process of unwinding is well underway. I will send you a short pamphlet, “Getting the Most from your SI Sessions”, which can be helpful. View your ATSI 12 series as a project, with a beginning, middle and an end; not an ongoing and endless therapy. Results will continue to accrue after you have finished your final session. Clients often return once or twice a year for a ‘tune up’/maintenance session, to ease the effects of the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Others simply go on to some other maintenance routine such as yoga, Tai Chi, Feldenkrais, a workout routine – whatever is appropriate to them. Still others return periodically for a shorter series of sessions, advanced work designed to take the process deeper into your body and your experience. Allow for 1.5 hours for a session.
1 week - 2 weeks apart.
