Your client may come to you with shoulder pain, a tight hip, recurring low-back tension, or an area that simply never seems to stay released.
You can do excellent work on that area and still find the same pattern returning.
Why?
When a client presents with tension, understanding that the body may be holding that tension as part of a deeper protective strategy can change the way you approach your work. By recognizing and working with those patterns, rather than simply working against them, you begin working with the body’s remarkable intelligence.
Consider this.
The body is constantly adapting to gravity, movement, injury, habit, and the demands we place upon it. What you feel beneath your hands may be part of a more foundational strategy the body is using to maintain balance, stability, and function. A restriction in one area can influence muscular activity somewhere quite distant from the original complaint.
The class.
The information and techniques presented in this class help you recognize these deeper relationships and give you practical ways to work with them. Whether your focus is corrective bodywork or massage therapy, this understanding can change the way you interpret and respond to what you feel beneath your hands.
The underlying goal.
The goal is not simply to “fix” a problem. It is to work more intelligently with the patterns the body has created. Whether your intention is to address a persistent complaint, improve movement and balance, or simply help your client feel more comfortable and at ease, you are working with the body rather than simply working on it.
When that happens...
Your client may get off the table not only feeling better, but recognizing that something has meaningfully changed.
The Thinking Behind the Work
Corrective bodywork is about recognizing whole-body relationships.
The body adapts. When one region becomes restricted or imbalanced, other regions compensate so that we can continue to stand, move, work, and function.
Over time, those compensations can create tension far from where the original imbalance began. A painful wrist or hand, for example, may be influenced by patterns extending through the arm, shoulder, trunk, pelvis, and core.
Learning to recognize these relationships changes the way we work. Instead of simply treating the place that hurts, we begin asking what the body is adapting to and why.
The human body is continually adjusting to movement, posture, injury, repetitive stress, gravity, and the demands of everyday life. These adaptations help maintain stability, keep you moving, and allow the body to continue functioning.
One adaptation may require another, and then another. Over time, these compensations can accumulate and begin to limit the body’s ability to keep adapting.
As the body approaches or crosses that tipping point, compensation may begin to show up as pain, tension, restriction, or changes in movement.
When Adaptation Reaches a Tipping Point
The body’s core provides an organizing foundation for movement and stability. From the feet to the head, the whole body depends upon its center to balance, adapt, and transfer forces effectively.
The body is remarkably good at adapting. Injury, repetitive stress, posture, and the demands of everyday life can create compensations that allow us to keep moving and functioning.
The problem begins when those adaptations accumulate and the body reaches a tipping point.
As the body’s ability to adapt becomes challenged, patterns of tension and restriction can become increasingly organized through the core. Techniques that normally work well may provide only temporary relief.
This is where understanding the core changes the way you work.
In this class, we explore how to recognize these patterns and how specific muscles and structures of the core can be mobilized and manipulated to help restore mobility, stability, and balance.
This is where the magic begins.
This understanding of the core was an important part of what made Lauren Berry’s work so remarkably effective.
Why does chronic pain keep coming back?
Core imbalance can influence patterns of tension and compensation throughout the body. Those relationships can help explain why pain may persist or appear somewhere other than where the original imbalance began.
Explore chronic pain patternsSeeing the Patterns Behind the Patterns
The body is continually receiving information about position, movement, gravity, balance, and safety. The nervous system uses that information to make constant adjustments, often without conscious awareness.
When one area changes, the effects may not stay there. A shift in the pelvis can influence the lower back, legs, rib cage, shoulders, or neck. What feels like an isolated tight muscle may actually be one part of a much larger pattern of compensation.
For the bodyworker, this changes the question.
Instead of asking only, “Where is it tight?” we begin asking:
- What is that tension?
- What purpose is it serving?
- What is it responding to?
- How does it relate to the whole body?
The Lauren Berry Method® works with the body as a whole.
Why This Work Matters
The muscles explored in this workshop are not simply a collection of individual muscles to locate and treat. They function at a deep, foundational level, influencing posture, stability, breathing, movement, and the body’s ability to organize itself around its center.
When these relationships are understood and addressed together, the effect can extend far beyond the individual muscle being worked. The body may no longer need some of the compensations it has been using to maintain balance.
This is where technique begins to become understanding.
For the practicing therapist, this changes the question from “What muscle should I work on?” to something more useful:
What is preventing this body from finding better balance?
When the therapist can recognize those deeper relationships,
the work becomes more precise, more purposeful, and more meaningful
to the person on the table.
Clients can feel the difference.
Anatomy Moves Into Your Hands
Knowing where a muscle, ligament, or other structure is on an anatomy chart is different from finding it in a living body. Under your hands, anatomy moves, responds, and participates in relationships with the structures around it.
Palpation develops that relationship. With practice, your hands begin to recognize differences in position, tension, movement, and response. Anatomy becomes something you can feel and begin to understand, not simply something you can identify by name.
Your hands begin to recognize what your eyes cannot always see.
I call that
Tactile Vision...
Clients feel the difference.
This focused, 6-hour hands-on workshop is designed to provide you with information you can absorb, retain, and use.
From nearly 50 years of practicing and teaching this work, I have found that learning a manageable group of structures deeply is often more useful than trying to absorb too much information over several days.
This class explores the following structures one at a time, helping you understand their relationship to core balance while learning techniques and protocols to locate, palpate, and work with them.
These structures can play important roles in larger patterns of tension and compensation. They are also readily accessible to the bodyworker’s hands, providing a practical place to begin reducing background noise, supporting the body’s ability to adapt, and helping it return toward a more natural state of balance.
The client feels the difference when educated hands know what they are looking for.
Structures You Will Explore
Find it... Feel it... Fix it.
Understand the Parts. Understand the Whole.
The body works as a whole. Learning individual structures gives your hands the ability to recognize how those structures participate in larger patterns of balance, adaptation, and compensation.
Learn the parts deeply enough, and the whole begins to reveal itself.
Rebalancing the Core
One-Day • 6-Hour Hands-On Workshop
Class location and schedule to be announced.
Registration information and class resources will be available here as workshop dates are scheduled.
Taum Sayers is an NCBTMB Approved
Continuing Education Provider.
To view approved courses, click the NCBTMB image above, enter Taum Sayers under Provider Name, and select Find.
Registration Information
Please review the Class Policies and Medical Disclaimer before registering.
⚓ Class Policies
Live classes are limited to practicing therapists unless otherwise stated in the individual course description.
Course Content and Development
Course content is primarily influenced by Taum Sayers’ apprenticeship with Lauren Berry, which began in 1978, and his later work as an assistant teacher in Berry’s classes. Taum continues to interact and collaborate with other certified Berry Method® Practitioners and Teachers, as well as other health care professionals.
Additional educational resources include materials related to the Berry Method® and other relevant published works, including Myofascial Pain and Dysfunction: The Trigger Point Manual by Janet Travell and the published works of Dr. René Cailliet , who was also Taum’s personal physician during a period of significant physical difficulty.
Class presentations are updated and revised as knowledge evolves and student feedback warrants. Students are encouraged to complete a class evaluation following each course. This feedback helps keep the classes current, practical, and worthwhile for future students.
Instructor
Unless otherwise indicated, Taum Sayers is the instructor for these courses. Taum is a certified Berry Method® Teacher and Practitioner.
Continuing Education
Taum Sayers is approved by the National Certification Board for Therapeutic Massage & Bodywork (NCBTMB) as a continuing education provider. Provider #152386-00.
Tuition, Registration, Discounts, and Refunds
Tuition may vary by workshop depending on the course and expenses associated with presenting it. Current tuition and any available early-registration discounts will be stated on the individual class page.
A deposit may be required to reserve your space. When space remains available, registration may remain open through the first day of class.
When advance-registration discounts are offered, the remaining tuition is due no later than the beginning of the first day of class.
Deposits are generally non-refundable. Emergencies or unusual circumstances may be considered individually. Approved refunds will be issued by check or electronic funds transfer and may be subject to a processing fee of up to $100.
Cancellation and Substitutions
A registered student may request that a qualified substitute attend in their place and have the deposit applied toward the substitute’s tuition. Any early-registration discount originally received does not automatically transfer to the substitute.
Requests for substitutions must be received at least two weeks before the class begins. No substitutions will be made after that date.
When a refund is approved, it will be issued by check or electronic funds transfer within approximately three weeks and may be subject to a processing fee of up to $100.
If a class is canceled because enrollment does not meet the requirements necessary to hold the class, registration payments will be refunded.
Accessibility and Nondiscrimination
Muscle Management® is committed to providing reasonable accommodations for students with disabilities. Students who require accommodations should contact Taum before the class so there is adequate time to discuss their needs and make reasonable arrangements.
Participation is offered without discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, or other status protected by applicable law.
Class Records and Student Transcripts
Class records and student transcripts are maintained by Taum Sayers for at least four years in secure physical or electronic storage.
Student transcripts may be reproduced upon request. A reasonable administrative charge may apply.
Phones in Class
To maintain a focused and distraction-free learning environment, participants are asked to turn off or silence their phones during class.
Photographs and Video
Photography and video recording of class instruction or demonstrations are not permitted except by Taum or a person specifically designated by him.
If you prefer not to appear in photographs or video taken during the class, please notify Taum and the designated photographer before class.
♨ Medical Disclaimer
This class includes practicing, performing, and receiving manual therapy techniques and protocols.
You know your own body and its limits. Please respect those limits.
The information presented on this website and in Taum’s classes is for educational purposes and is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment from your physician or other qualified health care provider.
If you have a medical condition, injury, health concern, or questions about whether participation is appropriate for you, consult your physician or other qualified health care provider before participating.
The intent of this class is not to replace any relationship that exists, or should exist, between you and your physician or other health care professional.
By participating in the class, you acknowledge that you are responsible for monitoring your own comfort and physical limitations and for choosing whether to participate in any technique or activity.
You know your own body and its limits. Respect those limits.
When you register for this class, you indicate that you have read, understood, and agree to the information above:
The Medical Disclaimer and Class Policies.
