Monthly Member Webinar

Ka mua, ka muri (we walk backwards into the future) is a well-known New Zealand Maori proverb (whakatauki), that means we should look to the past to inform the future. From this perspective, what our ancestors knew about the tissue we now know as fascia shapes how we understand it now, and into the future. My research about people’s evolving understanding of fascia, suggests this is good advice and this is the topic for my talk.  

Sue Adstrum, PhD is an integrative anatomist (a transdisciplinary anatomy researcher and writer) who delights in demystifying anatomy so that people can be more constructively involved in the health-related decisions and activities that pertain to them, as well as the people they help care for. She graduated from the New Zealand School of Physiotherapy in 1974, and then, nearly two decades later, became fascinated by the relationship between anatomy, fascia (the body’s soft connective tissue fabric), and the ways people are able to think about healing and healthcare. Wanting to learn more about these things, she enrolled at New Zealand’s University of Otago as a ‘mature’ student and earned a string of useful postgraduate qualifications, ending with a PhD in 2015. Since then, Sue has written several widely-read journal articles, a textbook chapter, and has presented her research internationally at a number of conferences.

Sue’s work uniquely brings together several decades worth of conventional and complementary health practitioner training, clinical experience, and adult teaching experience with an eclectic raft of post-graduate university studies – in anatomy, anthropology, medical history and public health. The Living Wetsuit, her first book, pulls everything she has learned together in a way that she hopes will be accessible and useful for a general audience. To learn more about Sue, please visit: www.sueadstrum.com.