Instructor: Pamela West, LMT, M.Ed.
Date: January 24, 2026
Time: 9am-6pm
Cost: $215 – Price goes up closer to class!
CE Hours: 8
NCBTMB Course 70290125
Some people come into your practice in such a sensitive condition they can barely be touched. The pressure of a “butterfly landing,” even for a moment, is more than enough. These clients want to feel better. Usually they are trying to improve the condition they find themselves in and turn to manual therapy. Hands-on support over time helps builds their tolerance, finds ease within their own skin and can actually help them get stronger.
Since fascial tissue is so highly innervated even the most superficial, gentle touch can communicate to their nervous system. Your touch becomes a source of calm and brings their body back to them.
Communication skills are important in the work with delicate people. This helps build trust and the find a level of touch they can tolerate and relax into. What are the cues their body gives you? How much can they receive? What happens after the session and over a series of sessions? Is there a time when you can deepen your touch? How do you keep your own interest in work that might seem very slow to you?
In the class you will learn skills of gentle touch to reach the different layers of myofascial tissues. Sometimes, deep layers can be effected by gentle touch when your client is ready and there is a need. This work with delicate people at the level they can tolerate, helps them begin to find some comfort and confidence in their bodies. It’s very gratifying.
- Identify types of sensitivities, such as constitutional frailties, illnesses or conditions, injury or surgery, hyper-sensitivity to pain, aging or emotional sensitivities.
- Learn hands-on for simple contact and establishing tactile rapport.
- Learn to identify the range of each person’s tolerance to pressure, depth, session duration, style of hand use, specificity or generality of work.
- Judge what the therapist can set their sights on in working with each person.
- Learn to recognize and sustain the parasympathetic response.
- Learn to address deeper tissue restrictions that may be part of the problem.
- Emphasis is placed on communications with the client and the longer arc of work; what happens over time and how to adjust the work as you go.
About your instructor:
Pamela West, M.Ed. maintains private practices as a body therapist in both Philadelphia, since 1983, and Doylestown, since 1997. She earned a Masters in dance from Temple University. Pamela is certified in Body Education and holds a certificate of Personal Enrichment in the Alexander Technique through The Alexander Foundation. She has over thirty years’ experience in movement studies. This background in movement supports her myofascial practice as she works with clients’ structural, movement and tensional patterns. She has taught structural myofascial work at Lourdes Institute of Holistic Studies in Collingswood, New Jersey for over fifteen years. Workshops taught by Pamela West: Introduction to Structural Myofascial Work, Advanced Myofascial Work, Amazing Psoas, Myofascial for Joint Replacements, Gentle Work for Sensitive People
