Practical details
Date: Thursday 21st August 2025
Time: 19.00 – 20.00 UK time. Check your timezone here
Presenter(s): Steven Goldstein
Title: Fascia as Threshold: The Interface: the Sacred and the Profane
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Webinar Outline:
- Fascia is innervated by a wide array of interoceptive, mechanoreceptive, and nociceptive fibers, but no single proprioceptive organ—as Jaap van der Wal states.
- Rather than discrete sensory organs transmitting information linearly, fascia distributes and receives signals as a living matrix.
- Sensation arises not from the fascia alone but through it, via relational tension, spatial awareness, and lived experience—making fascia a conscious tissue, a portal.
Sacred lens: Fascia is not merely a sheath or a barrier but a veil—thin, translucent, responsive—between outer form and inner awareness.
The Profane Touch: Fascia as Object
When approached with mechanistic intent:
- Fascia is seen as a restrictive barrier to be released or corrected.
- The body is divided into parts and planes (e.g., superficial front line, deep back line) that are acted upon.
- The therapist becomes a technician rather than a listener.
Risks of the profane approach:
- Reduction of the person to biomechanics.
- Overshadowing of client inner process by technique.
- Fascia becomes "it"—something to manipulate—rather than "thou", something to relate with.
The Sacred Touch: Fascia as Field
When approached with presence, reverence, and curiosity:
- Fascia is a tissue of listening, a sounding board of the soul.
- The therapist makes contact not only with physical tension but with the histories, meanings, and memories woven into the tissue.
- Touch becomes dialogic: a two-way exchange rather than a unilateral intervention.
“Sacredness begins when we stop trying to change the tissue and start listening to its language.”
Sacred fascia work involves:
- Slowing down to the speed of tissue responsiveness.
- Recognizing that restrictions may be carriers of emotion, identity, and self-protection.
- Allowing transformation, not imposing correction.
Presenter Bio(s):
Steven Goldstein
Steven Goldstein, with a B.A. Education 1984, B.H.Sc. Musculoskeletal Therapy 2007, is an American émigré to Australia residing in Melbourne, Australia since 1999.
An innovative massage educator since 1992, instructing his unique blend of direct myofascial, indirect osteopathic releasing methods and somatic approaches internationally since 1995, known as Integrative Fascial Release IFR (1995), then Integrative Soft-Tissue Release ISTR (2009), and now known as Fascial Therapy FT (2015) www.fascialrelease.com, Steven is director of the Fascial Therapy Institute Australia.
His origins as an instructor began with Seattle Massage School in Seattle, Washington 1992-1998 along with Andrew Biel (Trail Guide to the Body), Marty Ryan (Love Your Guts) and Diana Thompson (Hands Heal), then moving onto Melbourne, Australia in 1996 and spending 2001-2012 with Endeavour College of Natural Medicine, and Southern School of Natural Therapies SSNT (2012-2017) instructing in higher education and vocational remedial massage.
Steven in the past chaired the Australian Association Massage Therapists AAMT National Education Subcommittee from 2004-2010, continued as a member of the Conference Committee for Massage and Myotherapy Australia until 2017.
Steven has been a frequent presenter at conferences in North America, the United Kingdom (Ireland, Scotland), and two British Fascial Symposiums in 2016 & 2018. Europe (Poland-Warsaw, Krakow & Poznan), South Africa (Cape Town, Johannesburg), Middle East (Dubai), India (Mumbai 2016, Dehli & Bangalore 2018). Invited to present at the MyoPain India in October 2018 in Bangalore, India and for various associations including: NHP Canada 2009, SMTO Scotland 2011, in Australia with AMT 2015, AAMT, ATMS, IRMA 2004, 2006 Myotherapy Association, Olympic Soft-Tissue Injury Forum in Melbourne and the Bowen Federation of Australia BTFA 2008.
A regular contributor to AAMT/MMA Journal 2002-2018, AMT In Good Hands 2015, NHP Canada’s Connections 2009, and Bodywork Professional Development UK SMTO journals 2010-2012.
Dynamic, playful, profound and informative is his trademark as an educator.
Time/Date of Event
Event type
Zoom
Members Webinar
Online
7 pm BST