Myoskeletal Alignment is a term developed and coined by Erik Dalton, PhD, in the early 80’s after seeing a need for a more integrative perspective on pain science as it applies to the human body.

After spending years working as a certified Rolfer® and studying under legendary figures such as Drs. Vladimir Janda and Phillip Greenman, Erik realized a broader approach was needed to better help his clients in pain. Erik’s fascination with Janda’s upper and lower crossed postural model challenged him to design a way to incorporate and teach this basic, but powerful, discovery to the massage and bodywork community.

In 1998, the Myoskeletal Alignment Techniques book and video set was released. This very popular MAT home-study course included Dalton’s “Dirty-Dozen” routines for assessing and correcting pain problems associated with Janda’s commonly seen “crossed posture” model. It was then that Myoskeletal Alignment — an integrative marriage of the work of Vladimir Janda, Rolfing, and manipulative osteopathy — was born.

The MAT program was developed as a tool to help relieve our nation’s neck/ back pain epidemic. By incorporating muscle-balancing techniques with joint-mobilization maneuvers, manual therapists learn to quickly identify and correct dysfunctional neurologically driven strain patterns before they become pain patterns.