The 12 Core Principles That Guide Our Approach to Bodywork
Moving Mountain Institute’s Foundation for Learning and Practicing
By Michael McMahon
Throughout my 25 years of learning and practicing bodywork, I’ve developed 12 foundational principles that guide my work. This means my work in the clinic here at Moving Mountain Institute, my curriculum development for all of our courses, how we teach, my study of the body and the body in the world. All of it is interwoven and complex beyond measure.
I was presented with the idea of working from principles in my first bodywork training ever, a Craniosacral Therapy seminar through the Upledger Institute, where I learned about the Osteopathic Principles. In the decades that followed, I’ve developed a set of my own principles that offer an ever-evolving clinical context for going deeper into the complexity of the body.
These principles have become guides for my ongoing relationship with bodies and not rules, nor vehicles for maintaining a historical orthodoxy about the work we do. Good principles should support us evolving with our understanding. Nature is intricate and presents us with complexities that are humbling. Human bodies are but one expression of this intricacy and yet bodies follow along with the ways that nature does its work, its magic. If there are any rules, they are nature's rules, not humans’.
When we are engaging in a principled approach to clinical work and ongoing study, we are not rigidly reproducing doctrines from the past but living with ideas in the present; testing them against real world experience. We are guided through inquiry. When grounded in principles we are encouraged to be creative when challenged by the inevitable complexities that show up on our tables. Our best work will often be outside of “technique” and come from unique combinations of applied principles.
These are meant to be seen as interrelating, living ideas. In different instances different principles will rise to the top as a guide for you in your work.
At their core, these principles guide us as we participate in the kinesthetic theory making that is this work in practice. When taken as a whole, the principles have the potential to establish a field of trust for you within your work with bodies. As with any grouping of principles, they are only relevant if they are relevant to the challenges of lived experience. I have tested and continue to test these ideas in all facets of my work. Up to this point, they have proven reliable.
Grounding Ourselves in Bodywork Principles as We Learn and Practice
At Moving Mountain Institute, the body itself is always at the center of our work. It is “the book” that we listen and respond to. It has a story to tell. So in our model, amidst a solar system of interrelated planets, the body is the Sun that they’re perpetually orbiting around.
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Letting the Principles Guide Us in the Clinic and the Classroom
The great thing about these principles is that they aren’t abstractions—they literally inform how you work, even (especially!) in the midst of uncertainty.
Say a patient arrives in the clinic with hip pain. Instead of assuming that’s the source and going in to immediately apply a ton of force, I start by feeling for connection—following tension patterns to see where they actually lead, which often is somewhat unexpected. This is “Follow the Tissues” in action, trusting that the body’s patterns will guide me to what actually needs attention.
In our Myofascial Release Training, instead of talking about the common “how many grams of pressure to apply” question, students learn to calibrate their touch to the specific body they’re working with. Just enough to make connection, and then a little more. This is Calibration: sensing each layer of tissue rather than pushing through to get somewhere faster or more forceful.
This also shows up everywhere in our work with Integrated Visceral Techniques!
The work of Craniosacral Therapy often asks us to sit with what we don’t yet understand. And we can do this in a grounded way, exploring beyond the boundaries of known medical models, because we’re practicing Curiosity: tuning in and staying open to what emerges, instead of rushing to conclude.
Hopefully you’re now starting to understand how these principles are a living, orienting foundation to all of the ways we learn and practice at MMI.
The Principles — Field of Trust
Bodies
The body is intrinsically intelligent and has an inherent self-corrective healing capacity.
Our work can participate with and stimulate the body’s self-intelligent, healing capacities.
The body exists on its own terms beyond scientific, medical, and cultural models. These models exist to help us understand the body but we can’t confuse the model for the body itself.
Bodies are unique and should be assumed to be different.
