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“I have dedicated my life to spirit,
to my family, and to my students.
Being authentic to our limitations
and challenges within our bodies
and minds allows us to expand
beyond these, becoming our
truest selves. Enjoy the dance.”
– Val Guin, Creator,
Forearm Dance
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VAL GUIN'S FOREARM DANCE
Val Guin’s Forearm Dance™ is a NEW practitioner-friendly, instructional massage
program.
Discover an invigorating, groundbreaking massage technique that combines efficient body mechanics with the use of only the Forearm and Olecranon as tools. Val Guin’s Forearm Dance™ is a NEW practitioner-friendly, instructional massage program that focuses on giving a full body circulatory massage combined with the depth and muscular separation found in deep tissue work. Throughout the DVD, Val demonstrates the importance of self-care for massage and bodywork practitioners, and she states, “it is absolutely essential that we enter each day, each session, each moment, with openness, compassion, empathy and freedom for our clients and ourselves.”
WHAT YOU'LL LEARN:
This instructional program offers a variety of techniques in easy-to-access DVD chapters, presented in a captivating coastal setting and accompanied by an inspiring musical score. Val designed the massage techniques in Forearm Dance to benefit therapists with varying degrees of experience in their own massage careers, regardless of their personal health status.
Practitioner benefits include:
Saving your hands by using the forearm and olecranon (the bony prominence of the elbow) as your massage tools.
Supporting your health and well-being through the use of improved body mechanics.
Opening your body and increasing your energy with Val’s step-by-step, ‘Spiral’ exercise.
Client benefits include:
Customized techniques are individualized to meet client needs using the the forearm for broad superficial work and the olecranon for deep work.
Continuity of strokes encourages client to de-stress, relax deeply and enjoy the healthy benefits of massage and bodywork.
Forearm Dance Product Details PDF
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Here’s what some of the attendees thought of Val Guin's FOREARM DANCE – Deep Tissue Techniques workshop:
I loved Val and her presentation. Very professional in her delivery and very thorough!
Val is amazing, very entertaining, and informational.
I wish the class was longer!
This is a wonderful technique that should be implemented into massage schools. Thank you!
High energy, new perspective, great teaching.
I am so glad that I joined this workshop. This will be very useful and save my body.
Excellent, excellent, excellent! I have been looking for a smarter way to work harder versus my harder way of working hard. Thank you so much. I can’t wait to get the DVD and practice, practice, practice!!
Val is a fabulous, dynamic and caring teacher.
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REVIEWS:
SPIRITED AND INSPIRING TEACHER
Forearm Dance is about getting in touch with yourself so you can go deeper into your work by channeling your chi. Val Guin runs a healing center in Santa Monica, California, and teaches at the Institute of Psychostructural Balancing, International School of Bodywork. She began to develop this form out of necessity after a severe injury limited the use of one of her arms. After she healed, she found working this way gives her more freedom of movement, saves her hands, increases her strength, allows her to work on more clients and have more fun every day.
On this beautiful DVD filmed by the ocean, she shows you how to use the concepts of yang action, yin support, elongation and self-awareness with a little Hawaiian hula so you put less strain on your body and work more deeply. She offers a class in “forearm dance,” showing step by step how to work both broadly and with specificity, how to “hook and release” a muscle using forearm and olecranon as your tools. She shows two complete sessions, one with explanation and one with music. And she leads a practice she calls “the spiral,” incorporating the horse pose, the lunge and “hula hands,” that raises chi and makes the “forearm dance” as invigorating for the practitioner as it is healing for the client. Guin is a spirited and inspiring teacher. She generously offers a portion of the proceeds to charity.
LISA MERTZ, PhD, LMT
MTJ Magazine, Summer 2007
HAND-SAVING TECHNIQUE
Val Guin, CMT, developed FOREARM DANCE to combine efficient body mechanics with the use of the forearm and olecranon as tools. This DVD includes instructions for and demonstrations of this hand-saving technique, and also provides a glossary of terms, energy exercises, and more, for a total run time of more than three hours.
Massage & Bodywork Magazine,
February/March 2007
CHOREOGRAPHED TOUCH
The Forearm Dance Technique
by Chelan David
Editor’s Note: A five page feature editorial on Val Guin’s Forearm Dance technique and DVD ran in the August 2007 issue of Massage Magazine. Following are excerpts from this editorial article. Please click here to download a PDF of the complete Massage Magazine editorial. Note: It is a large, 3 MB file.
The technique provides the same results as a general massage, such as flushing the tissue and moving the blood and the lymph but it also adds aspects of a deep-tissue massage, such as separating muscle fibers and releasing tendon attachments. . . A major benefit of the Forearm Dance, says Guin, is that the pain usually associated with deep-tissue work is absent.
“The reason it does not hurt is because the movement comes from your feet, and then you lift up with your pelvis,” she explains. “You are lifting the tissue as opposed to coming up and over and smashing the tissue down.”
“As massage therapists, we tend to create stress injuries in our bodies over time from our work,” Guin says. “[The] Forearm Dance offers a technique to not only stop stress injuries from occurring, but it can also help alleviate strain already in the practitioner’s body.”
Case in point: Guin says she has a better physical structure now at age 47 than she had when she was 20 and that her bone density and spinal alignment have improved significantly.
“After my accident, when I was 19, I had paralysis, low bone density, bulging disks, degeneration, bone loss – it was scary,” she says. “My most recent X-ray compared with the one from my 20s looked like [that of] a completely different person.”
While the Forearm Dance was designed by Guin to lessen the stress on her hands, extremities can be incorporated into the technique. For example, a massage therapist can perform effleurage with her hands, followed by forearm sawing and forearm effleurage. If needed, specific work involving a practitioner’s thumbs can be substituted with the olecranon.
While massages using the forearm and olecranon are typically associated with deep techniques, Forearm Dance is versatile. Depending on the client’s needs, the practitioner can use the technique in a superficial manner or go deeper if needed.
Nai Ishimori, who credits Guin’s training with landing her job as a massage practitioner, says the technique has earned her praise from clients. “I constantly get compliments,” she says.
“Val’s concept of deep tissue is not to smash the muscle, it’s about working through the muscle and helping it move again,” Ishimori adds. “This form allows you to penetrate in between the muscles in a gentle, yet very effective way.” More
Massage Magazine
August 2007
I RECEIVED MY DVD - FOREARM DANCE - WOW
It is everything I hoped -- and I've never said that about an instructional video before. My bodywork has already changed, and my clients so far have been wonderfully complimentary. One client said she couldn't believe how even the pressure was - one client is a cancer survivor, and we are begiining to break up scar tissue ...
All this just from the DVD -- I am already coming away less tired with no more burning pain in my own shoulders and tenderness in the heel of my hands. Again, Bless Val, and all of you for carrying her DVD. I am greatly in her debt, and I have deep gratitude and awe for her that she turned a potential tragedy into such and incredible opportunity for us all.
All I can say is, OH LORD, how I would LOVE to receive this massage!!!
Namaste'
Rebecca A, North Carolina
I TURNED A CORNER
Thank you Val! I really feel that I turned a corner in my bodywork. I feel as if something “clicked” and it all has come together gracefully and easily.
EMILY J., Venice, CA
MORE SOPHISTICATED AND REFINED
Every time I see the FOREARM DANCE video I learn something new. My skills continue to improve, much to the delight of my clients. I feel I am evolving to a more sophisticated and refined level of bodywork.
RICK O., Los Angeles, CA
INVALUABLE TO BODY WORKERS
As a therapist, my body thanks you ! I was amazed at how much energy I had. The energy generating techniques that Val taught us, and the nature of the FOREARM DANCE itself, is tremendous in allowing a massage therapist to work far beyond the usual limitations. I think that this technique will be invaluable to body workers and extremely efficacious* to clients.
MILLY J., Long Beach, CA
* having the power to produce the desired result, especially a cure or an improvement in somebody’s physical condition
CHANGED MY LIFE
After having been told by several orthopedic specialists that I had ‘permanent injuries’ in my neck and shoulder, I began receiving FOREARM DANCE massage from Val Guin. Not only did her FOREARM DANCE alleviate my pain, but it also changed my body so drastically that I became capable of doing massage, including the Forearm Dance techniques. Val Guin’s FOREARM DANCE changed my life.
STUDENT, Val Guin's Forearm Dance workshop
OUTSTANDING
The essence and source of Val Guin’s FOREARM DANCE is what makes this work outstanding compared to that of other techniques. . . it’s not just your technique that changes, it’s your life that changes. Thank you Val, for being you and sharing who you are with all.
NAMI I., Los Angeles, CA
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