“The ability of a skilled practitioner to switch from palpation/assessment to treatment and back again, seamlessly, marks out the truly skilled individual.” Leon Chaitow D.O. 

Cultivating palpation skills is a lifelong practice. In this introductory module, participants will study the foundations of a three-dimensional, listening touch that emphasizes presence and perceptual accuracy. Drawing on the Daoist principle of Wu Wei, doing without doing, this training supports mental stillness and refined sensory awareness, allowing palpatory information to emerge clearly from the tissues. Participants will learn to identify and differentiate specific qualities across the body’s layers and systems, including texture, temperature, hydration, hypo and hyper-mobility, density, emptiness, and intrinsic rhythms. This module will develop the capacity to transition skillfully between organs, joints, fascia, lymph, and nerves, following tissue response to support accurate assessment and informed clinical decision-making.

Mastery does not unfold in a single day of training, but as the Daoists remind us, a journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step. Throughout the eight-module training, palpation skills are steadily refined by returning again and again to the body’s varied systems, allowing new sensations and structures to become familiar, reliable points of recognition.