Learning FMM

The tutors pass on to the students those manual skills which will form part of the tool kit essential for all practitioners of FMM. These are acquired by the straightforward “apprenticeship“ method, aided by the use of video imaging or still photography  to capture, for each student those ways of doing things which are peculiar to the students‘ body geography. We call this LEARNING BY DOING--it is how man has progressed since the beginning.

In order to consider the way of learning , do take a good long look at modern school teaching. See that the model is , still today, based upon the notion that you, the student, need to be filled up by the teacher. You are, thus, immediately considered to be inadequate and to a degree inferior. The way of learning for the most highly motivated people and those who have a good basic talent is through DOING --not from sitting in a classroom and being lectured. We know that the apprenticeship method is highly successful because this is what we have always used--it works because it enables the student to get on with finding out for himself by exploration. The tutors guide the student into the realm of exploration and then move out of the way to allow the student the time and opportunity to FIND OUT. One can find parallels in many aspects of life. Imagine the human body to be a crime scene--if you wish to discover all there is to be discovered about the crime you need forensic evidence, you need deductive thinking, you need to take fingerprints, examine the weapon--you  get the picture. Unfortunately , much therapy and medical intervention is grossly deficient and if the individuals were crime scene investigators , most criminals would remain undetected |!! This is simply because the body detective--the therapist-- applies a convenient and common label thus dispelling all stimulus to FIND OUT the cause,; or the evidence is considered as only that appearing on an MRI scan, for example. The latter is very common amongst doctors and surgeons who consider that if the scan shows nothing wrong then there is nothing wrong with you!! . Equally poor is the opposite situation--there is strong indications on the MRI scann that there is much wrong with the spine--and it is this which is assumed to be the pain producer but we know that for many patients the scan results have little value.

You may protest and state again and again that there is much pain so there MUST be something wrong but if there is no MRI scan evidence then there will be much shoulder shrugging. Aside from the arrogance of this stance, it blinds the patient to what may be possible. It blinds  the patient to the probability that , though the MRI scan shows nothing , this only indicates the absence of PATHOLOGICAL problems. The scan is not the patient--it is only one small piece of the intricate jig-saw puzzle which the fmm practitioner will unravel slowly and methodically , taking into account ALL factors , certainly not just the scan results.Remember that an MRI scan, blood tests and all the whole gamut of medical tests FAIL to discover the most basic problems in the body--no test shows if a joint is not moving! No-one tests it, absurd as it appears.

The physical skills are acquired by constant practise on real patients in workshops and clinic. The student is taught assessment methods which include standard orthopaedic tests but will concentrate on the acquisition of tactile skills so that the student becomes highly sensitive to the presence of contractured tissue wherever it exists in the human frame, as well as the presence of joint immobility, especially in the spine. This process of working on real people with real problems begins within the first couple of workshop day--this is a genuine GET ON WITH IT method!!

The patient is requested to perform a series of yoga postures and from the manner of performance and the range of movement demonstrated by this series , the patient's global condition can readily be assessed both in extent and location.  The patient has thus, access to  the answers to most of his problems inherent in his own visible characteristics. This alone marks fmm out as unique simply by engaging the patient in her own restorative process. It is a strange and incomprehensible facet of most other therapies that the patient has it " done to them" and , we have been told many times, does not feel as though the practitioner really wishes to create INDEPENDENCE of the patient. Indeed, we observe many chiropractic processes positively favour long protracted periods of treatment  ,paid for before commencement of the process. This produces in the patients that we see, the belief that the therapy is for the benefit of the practitioner's bank account rather than for the liberation of the patient. Many patients have made this type of assertion to us.

The process of learning FMM has, by its very nature, to be achieved by DOING IT. FMM is not an intellectual discipline and cannot be learned from books or even the manual which will be issued to all students. It has to evolve in the hands of the student over time and thus the student has to be a very special type of person. What you will be given to study in the first year of the course is only that which will be DIRECTLY USEFUL to you in the commencement of your own private practice. There will be no “ academic padding” to make the course look more than it is and knowledge will be added to the students' collection as and when it is needed. The student will , thus have to be a SELF-MOTIVATED person and will be obliged to direct his own private study. You, as the student, will be required to begin treatment practise on as many bodies as you can in order to accelerate learning. Friends and family will be obliged to offer themselves up to you for practising!!

You will be encouraged to take every possible opportunity to observe humans in action so that you eventually become an accomplished observer. With practice you will acquire a level of observational skill that is far beyond that which the vast majority of practitioners ever acquire in a lifetime of work. Whilst many practitioners of other modalities may acquire skills in manipulation very few have the capability to understand why people are as they are and how they came to be as they are. The FMM practitioner will become a true body detective in much the same way that a very skilful car mechanic develops a sense of what is wrong before knowing anything about a problem. This level of understanding of the human condition develops with a deep compassion for the sufferer, a readiness to delve deeply into an understanding of the sufferer in a manner which sets the FMM practitioner in a place of her own.