Homemtnstudio2024-05-08T09:05:17-07:00

Empowering you to actively participate in

your own healing process through:

Conceptual Understanding

Movement Exploration with Awareness

Exercise with Intention

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Self Care Workshops

Back, Joint & Foot Therapy

Pelvic Floor Issues

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Anatomy in Motion Instructor, Rehabilitative Movement Specialist, Wilderness Junky. Un-IG AF. Geeky content, grandkid pics, and beautiful skies.

Becoming acquainted with my new iPhone camera...I

Becoming acquainted with my new iPhone camera...I think we're going to be great friends.

When assigning homework to my clients, I use the w

When assigning homework to my clients, I use the word “exercise” in the spirit of meeting people where they’re at. But I explain: I am using the word “exercise” because that is what you are used to. Eventually, I want you to substitute in your mind with the words ‘exploration’, ‘experiment’ and ‘experience’, because that is what we are really working on together.   Every Anatomy in Motion exercise has a set of:
✅Observations – What do we want to see? Things we, the practitioners, can observe, as well as things the client can observe in a mirror when on their own.
✅Palpations – Is the cuboid tilting? Do I feel the medial border of the foot closing?
✅Manual cueing – Notice how I am using my hand to encourage the pelvis and tibia to rotate more (this exercise is driven by rotation!!!).
✅Verbal cuing – e.g. rotate your pelvis…
✅Awareness of felt sense – do you feel your…????
✅Recommended AiM wedge positioning.

The above is part of what we teach you in our courses. In Phase 1 you will learn the above list for foot motion – specifically pronation and supination; as well as the spine and primary structures of the upper body: pelvis, ribcage, and skull. I will be teaching Phase 1 in the Los Angeles area August 2-3. My amazing colleagues are teaching this course in other countries. Registration in bio.

The “exploration/experiment” aspect – “What happens if I move my non-working foot forward?” “What happens if I move the wedge under my heel further under a bit?”
 The experience aspect – every time we move we are conversing with the nervous system via afferent input – a fancy way of saying, whenever our joints move, a signal having to do with position and speed, are sent to the brain. Think of this as radar information (positional and speed information) sent to an air traffic controller (your brain). With novel input to the brain, comes novel movement possibilities! We are also honing our “felt sense” awareness!  Every “exercise” is both an assessment and an intervention…it’s a very blurry line between the two! What happens if…that is the question.  #garywardsanatomyinmotion

I like my clients to understand the “why” behi

I like my clients to understand the “why” behind every exercise, rather than just the “what“ and “how.” Here is a recap video I made for a client post-session. NOTE: the client in question has a background in anatomy (she is a yoga teacher), so I am using anatomical terminology.

Typically, when there is excessive motion at one joint, in one particular plane of motion, we look for where there might be insufficient motion elsewhere. One possibility, is that some coupled joint motion is missing. That is, a partner joint is not doing its job in a full body movement. Another possibility, has to do with what @garyward_aim refers to as “the 3 cups of tea.” We move in three dimensions: sagittal, frontal, and transverse — in layperson’s terms: front-back, side-to-side, and rotation. Ideally, we would like to see appropriate motion in all three planes, or all of our cups of tea equally full. If we lack motion in one plane, typically we get excessive motion in one or more of the other planes.

The client, for whom I made this video, has little or no rear foot motion in the sagittal and transverse planes, and really struggles to get out of excessive inversion, which is a frontal plain motion.

This video is explaining to her the “why“ behind the program that I gave her.

#garywardsanatomyinmotion

Some days Mono Lake says: "oh, so you think you're

Some days Mono Lake says: "oh, so you think you're going to just drive on by...think again!" A few days ago before the storm...

Wahoo! Winter’s been a bit of a dud up till now.

Wahoo! Winter’s been a bit of a dud up till now.

Some badly needed playtime in the backyard. And so

Some badly needed playtime in the backyard. And so fun to run into a neighbor/friend -- she and Jack were ranger colleagues going back to the mid-80s!

Incoming weather makes for great sunrise skies! An

Incoming weather makes for great sunrise skies! And yay for incoming precipitation -- we so need the water!

In case you’ve ever wondered what a zoom Anatomy

In case you’ve ever wondered what a zoom Anatomy in Motion (AiM) session looks like with me…  Meet K (footage used with permission, name abbreviated for privacy).   She was recently referred to me by a local physician, who is herself a past client. She has some foot and hip issues on the left side. My practice is based in a mountain community, and like many of my mountain athletes (hiking, snowboarding, etc.) K has a somewhat extensive injury history (ankle, hips, and shoulder) leading to reluctance to actually load her left lower extremity.  The videos: 1) Cueing her in the zoom session to get her mass onto her left side. Initially, we are focusing on her lower extremity and the general form of the AiM Suspension Phase Exercise (you’ll have to take the training for the nitty gritty details😉).  2) A clip from a recap video I send my clients post-session.  If you would like to learn more about the AiM Method, I will be teaching Phases 1-3 in Corte Madera, CA. Please feel free to DM me with questions. Schedule and registration link in bio.
@garyward_aim #garywardsanatomyinmotion

@kzpreese thanks for having us!

@kzpreese thanks for having us!

A rare Chrismukkah! Happy merry <whatever you choo

A rare Chrismukkah! Happy merry <whatever you choose to celebrate>!

Instagram post 17951684282883528

Instagram post 17951684282883528

We worked on optimizing his pronation and supinati

We worked on optimizing his pronation and supination mechanics, and he felt the change immediately! I know he will do his homework — he is very motivated.

In case you are wondering why we pulse at Anatomy in Motion🤷‍♀️

We want to load the joints (in this case we are targeting the joints of the foot), lengthening the tissues around the joints enough to trigger a reaction from the brain to contract the muscles that supinate the foot! Each pulse triggers that reaction. 
In case you are wondering why we want to teach a foot that appears so pronated to pronate🤷‍♀️

Almost all of your foot muscles are set up to supinate the foot — you don’t need muscles to pronate, gravity does a fine job for you! So, by pronating the foot more, we are triggering the muscles that supinate the foot.  One of the AiM rules: “joints act, muscles react.”  We have several flavors of Pronation Exercises at AiM, with different emphases. In this case, I am emphasizing talus rotation. The bunion you can see on his foot is a transverse plane (or rotational plane) issue.  If you want to learn more, I will be teaching the AiM suite of courses in California in 2025, and other instructors will be teaching all over the globe! Link in bio.
@garyward_aim

This is sooooooooo my house except I get even bigg

This is sooooooooo my house except I get even bigger “are you for real” looks🤔

Old growth Jack and old growth Jeffrey (pine that

Old growth Jack and old growth Jeffrey (pine that is, in case you are not familiar with our iconic Eastern Sierra conifer).
We especially love our local trails this time of year. Normally, this trail gets a lot of use; yesterday, we saw no one else the whole hike.

Nothing beats a hike in the woods with old friends

Nothing beats a hike in the woods with old friends. I've been friends with both these women since long before we were all grey haired. My guess is, somewhere there's a photo of the three of us hiking in the woods where we are two blondes and a brunette.

Fall in the Eastern Sierra… more specifically, F

Fall in the Eastern Sierra… more specifically, Fall in the hood.

Leaf peeping from the deck...

Leaf peeping from the deck...

I just love “then and now” photos…me with on

I just love “then and now” photos…me with one of my very BFFs Wumby.

Confession: the “now” photo is taken from our “groover” location😂. River runners will know what I mean, but for the rest of you a hint: 💩💩💩.

Here's to the next 17 years of adventures together!

Why I teach for AiM (Anatomy in Motion)… Total

Why I teach for AiM (Anatomy in Motion)…

Total rookie mistake this morning. I was in such a rush to get to the trailhead, I forgot to pack socks🤦‍♀️. So, I decided to take a chance and do this steep rocky hike in my flip flops  !

Well, it turned out to be just fine — neither foot/ankle pain nor instability while actually hiking, nor after the hike!! Honestly, I credit the AiM exercises I have been doing since 2014. So many conversations about what shoes we should wear, and this morning proved to me once again, as @garyward_aim always says, it’s not about the shoes, it’s about your foot mechanics. Thanks to AiM, my feet have both strength and mobility. And equally importantly, their joint motions are well integrated with the rest of my joints (knees, hips, spine, shoulders, etc.).

There is an intricate dance between all the joints in every footstep, including the 33 joints in each foot — timing and coordination: which joints move when, where (what direction are the joints moving in all three dimensions?), and how much. The Flow Motion Model, upon which the AiM Method is based, answers all these questions, for all joints, in each phase of gait. The exercises I have been practicing since 2014, have trained my joints, including the joints in my feet, to perform this intricate choreography.  

Please understand, I am not saying my mechanics are perfect – far from it! Simply, compared to where I was pre-AiM when I would never even have considered attempting this, my biomechanics are so improved, that I could in fact do this steep hike in flip flops no problem!  

And lest I sound like I am in a cult, you can ask Gary…I am probably his most annoying student as I question everything…it’s my nature. So, thank you Gary, and apologies for being such an annoying student, and now staff member😂.

Look for our in-person 2025 course schedule coming up soon! And if you are in Toronto (or want to travel to Toronto), you’re in luck – a couple of courses in 2024 with my fabulous colleague @monvolkmar ! @garyward_aim

#garywardsanatomyinmotion

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