Preface
I have been working in the holistic health industry since 1989, when I started as a massage therapist. I studied at the International Professional School of Bodywork (IPSB) in San Diego, California, and became a Holistic Health practitioner (HHP) in 1991. I’ve also been regularly working out at fitness centers my entire adult life.
My experience in the holistic health and fitness worlds over the years has given me some unique insights. Both the holistic health industry and the fitness industry purport to benefit your health and overall well-being. But they both miss an opportunity to help you do that effectively.
Holistic health practices typically focus on freeing blocked energy and balancing that energy in the body and mind to enhance your health and well-being. However, they tend to lack vigorous exercise regimens that will build strength and endurance for physical fitness. Although strength building via resistance exercises is part of the holistic health paradigm, I’ve found it’s not practiced or encouraged much.
Meanwhile, the fitness industry emphasizes building strength and endurance through vigorous, regimental training with the goal of maximizing performance. But it lacks a focus on building flexibility, balanced movement, and greater body awareness to enhance your health.
This led me to wonder: Why not combine the best aspects of both industries—the fitness industry’s “regimental exercise for maximizing performance” and the holistic health world’s “balancing mind and body to enhance health and well-being”? Bridging the two paradigms would give us a “regimental holistic program to enhance health and fitness”.
In this book, I attempt to provide that bridge. I’m going to give specific examples of exercise routines—ones I’ve been doing myself for decades—along with explanations of how each exercise contributes to building and maintaining flexibility, balanced movement, and greater body awareness, along with strength and endurance. The outcome?
A higher quality of life.
This book is not just a “how-to” guide for these exercises. Instead, it explains why each exercise is important, what the intent of each exercise is, and how it relates to a holistic approach to health and fitness. It assumes a basic familiarity with the exercises in question, as well as with basic anatomy and the proper use of exercise equipment.
Beyond that, you just need to bring your curiosity and desire to improve your health and fitness for the rest of your life!
About The Author
Brian started out his career path as a massage therapist starting in the late 80’s. After a 10-year stint he switched careers to work as an Engineer for a large defense contractor. Eventually retiring from the defense industry, he now owns a small real estate investment company. Brian has B.A. degrees in physics and astronomy from Northern Arizona University, Masters in Business Administration (MBA) from University of Arizona, and is a Holistic Health Practitioner (HHP) with over 1,000 hours of training in massage and somatic practices from the International Professional School of Bodywork (IPSB) in San Diego, CA.
During the late 80’s Brian studied and practiced a method of bodywork called Structural Integration. Since then, he studied, interned, taught and practiced Structural Integration for many decades. Brian has also been exercising at fitness centers regularly since the age of 18. He has unique insights based on his own personal experiences dealing with the fitness and the holistic health industries. Over the course of decades, he has learned to use the concepts of Structural Integration in his own exercise regimen, which he calls Expansional Balance.
Brian currently lives in Tucson, AZ with his wife Julie.