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Founder, Aston Paradigm Corporation
 I
extend my thanks to Judith Aston for sharing her progressive vision
of the body and acknowledge her significant contributions to the
field of bodywork. I am grateful for the opportunity to have studied
with her.
It seems that many factors led me in her direction early in my
physical therapy career. In 1975 I was a research assistant in the
Orthopedic Gait Laboratory at the University of Iowa. In one study,
we were measuring 50 variables of walking, from waist to foot, in
people with total knee replacements. One afternoon as I watched
one of our subjects walk across our laboratory I asked myself, "How
does his chest relate to his knees?" We had no data to help
answer that question.
From then on I wanted to understand the complexities of human motion.
I began searching for a teacher who could expand my knowledge of
movement. Had I ever heard of Judith Aston someone asked.
Four years later, Judith Aston of Aston-Patterning® became
my teacher. Under her tutelage, I began to see the body and movement
in a revolutionary way. For instance, where before the human body
seemed somehow flat, I now saw it become three-dimensional. I found
that balance was dynamic and saw that movement occurred in curves;
before I thought balance was static and looked for movement to be
linear. I learned to see a complex order in the relationships between
the segments of the body; before these relationships seemed random
and chaotic. Among other things, I discovered that touch can be
effective when gentle.
During my years with Aston-Patterning® I also learned to sense
my own body and movement with greater acuity. I attended to my own
experience of space, weight and effort. For instance, I began to
appreciate the volume of my breath, the impact of my feet hitting
the ground, the ease in my muscles as I balanced my skeleton bone
over bone. I could sense movement result from an intricate interplay
of forces, some internal, some external, but always influenced by
Gravity. To my surprise, I was getting to know Gravity. Gravity
felt good!
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