Aston-Patterning®
Aston-Patterning® is the most comprehensive system of Aston Kinetics work that you can do to transform the quality of your life. Your program will include bodywork, movement, fitness coaching and ergonomics in highly personalized sessions calibrated to your body's unique pattern.
Your Aston-Patterning Practitioner is a healthcare professional, who has successfully completed a rigorous program of a 17-weeks of coursework, including written and practical exams before achieving certification.
What can you expect from your Aston-Patterning® Session?
Your session(s) will be individualized to your specific needs, goals and interests. There are many components, including massage, postural evaluation, movement education, fitness training and environmental modification (i.e. work stations). There are also advanced techniques such as Arthro-Kinetics (joint work) and facial fitness toning. Each session will follow a basic five-step outline with many possibilities as described below.
Assessment
History
Your personal history — physical, psychological and emotional — makes you who you are in the present. In assessing your everyday activities such as the work you do, the sports you play and when or where you experience fatigue or pain, the practitioner can help you learn that patterns you use which interfere with your optimal functioning. Some old patterns may be able to be diminished to make your movement easier and more efficient.
Pretesting
This part of the session is a way for both you and your practitioner to experience some aspect of your movement abilities or potential for improvement. The pretest usually includes basic activities such as walking, sitting, standing, reaching, bending or lifting.
In a session designed to work on a particular activity (computer work, household chores, etc.), you may perform some of that activity as a pretest. The testing has two major purposes. First, it allows you to be more aware of your movements during that specific activity. The practitioner may call your attention to some details; such as how your foot is held when hitting the ground or what position your shoulders take as you move. After the bodywork or movement education, this experience will serve as a basis for comparison. The Aston approach gives you a clear understanding of the changes made in the session so that you will have the option to keep the changes as part of your pattern of movement. As you understand the changes taking place you can become your own teacher. Secondly, pretesting allows the practitioner an opportunity to make a chart of your postural alignment and tension holding patterns. A new postural chart is made at each session. This chart can then serve as a reference for both you and your practitioner regarding your patterns and the changes you are making. It also help to reinforce what you have learned.
Movement Education
Using the history and the pretest, you and your practitioner determine what lesson would be most valuable for that session. Movement education and/or bodywork will be included in virtually all sessions. The bodywork includes massage, myo-kinetics (a myofascial release), and arthro-kinetics (a mobilization technique). They all serve to release unnecessary tension and make your new movement easier and more efficient.
Guidance, verbal cues, and visual demonstrations offer the most effective ways to perform a specialized activity or movements after an injury. Applications may include a variety of tasks, from sitting, to athletics, to playing a musical instrument. The movement education processes teaches clients how to use movement to decrease accumulated tension in the body and to use tone in supporting body segments in motion expression.
Therefore, simple movement cues are taught to help apply the new alignment to daily activities, such as sitting, standing, walking, and occupational activities, sports and hobbies.
Bodywork
A system that includes three forms:
1) Aston Massage, a non-compressive type of basic bodywork, utilizing a 'three-dimensional touch' that releases daily and accumulated tension.
2) A specialized form of myofascial release, called Myo-kinetics, releases deeply embedded structural holding patterns within the soft tissue network.
3) To address skeletal holding patterns, Artho-kinetics can provide releases at joints, along body surfaces, and tissue to tissue adhesions.
The purpose of this three-fold bodywork system is to decrease holding and to create new movement options. The evaluated tensions are released through comfortable, soothing techniques using a spiraling of the tissues.
Ergonomics
This is a training that demonstrates to each client how their external environment (i.e. work stations, automobiles, shoes) affects body alignment and dimensional integrity. Ergonomics training may lessen the degree of effort required to perform daily activities. Though the ergonomic industry trends often focus on the "correct" product, Aston ergonomics training highlights the relationship between an individual's body, task and product. Clients learn to negotiate and modify less-than optimal product designs encountered in everyday living.
Measurement and Applications to Your Life
The post-testing is essentially a repetition of the pretesting movements allowing you to see and feel the changes and contrasts that have taken place. The application integrates the movement changes into your daily life. Here again, the work is tailored to you as an individual. If, for example, the session focused on arm and shoulder movements, you may apply the new movements to your tennis strokes, to your keyboarding at the computer, or to the way you drive a car. The lessons of the movement and bodywork can become permanent options available to you with your conscientious awareness and practice. In this way, you can choose to leave old your patterns in the past. Aston-Patterning is a wonderful opportunity for self-discovery and feeling good about yourself.