In summary…
Darien Pritchard has been a massage trainer since 1982. For 25 years he trained massage professionals (including on a University Degree course) and has taught advanced massage courses since 1988. Darien has written massage articles and textbooks and worked for national organisations helping to raise the status and standards of the massage profession.
For more than 40 years, Darien has been a pioneer in focusing on good bodyuse as an integral part of massage training; protecting your hands and body while using them most effectively to deliver massage, which in turn helps to maintain your massage career. He pioneered Hands Free Massage 25 years ago – the skilful, sensitive use of the forearms and elbows to save the practitioner’s hands. He brings an attitude of supportive encouragement to his teaching and coaching.
Darien Pritchard has been a professional bodyworker since 1977 and a massage trainer since 1982. He founded and ran massage schools in Adelaide, South Australia, and Cardiff , Wales, was a guest trainer at the Royal National College for the Blind for 20 years, and taught on a University degree course. Darien also served on the British Massage Therapy Council and the General Council for Massage Therapy (UK).
Darien has taught advanced massage courses and offered individual coaching for massage practitioners since 1988. He brings an attitude of supportive encouragement to his teaching and coaching.
For over four decades, Darien has been a pioneer in focusing on protecting your hands and body while using them most effectively to deliver massage, which in turn helps to maintain one’s massage career. This includes pioneering Hands Free Massage 25 years ago – the skilful, sensitive use of the forearms and elbows to save the practitioner’s hands.
Simultaneously, he developed RhythmMobility bodywork (Rocking the body, Rolling the limbs). This promotes rhythmical ways of encouraging release, re-energising and rebalancing the body.
Darien has written numerous massage articles and three textbooks aimed at raising the standards of the massage profession:
- Anatomy, Physiology and Pathology for Massage (a reference for students, teachers and practitioners, 2nd ed, 2023) is now available via Darien’s contact page. (This is a rewrite of a textbook co-written with Su Fox over 20 years ago.) The 3rd edition will be availaible on Amazon in early 2025.
- Foundations of Hands Free Massage (the skilful, sensitive use of the forearm and elbow to save the practitioner’s hands) – due to be published in 2025.
- Dynamic Bodyuse for Effective, Strain-Free Massage (2008), a career-maintenance reference book – due out in a totally new edition Delivering Effective Strain-Free Massage in 2025/26.
Alongside his massage career, Darien has run Feldenkrais flexibility classes since training in the 1980s, and more recently, Keep Moving classes – stretch and strengthen (seated exercise classes online for seniors).
Since 1987, he has taught the bodywork element in the Voice Leader’s Training, run by Frankie Armstrong, president of the Natural Voice Network. Darien has nurtured an interest in movement, rhythm and release through dancing and playing music. He has worked with dancers on greater ease and flexibility in performance, run courses on Dancing for the Joy of It (helping people to discover the ‘dancer within’), and designed and taught a programme for actors on the physical embodiment of character (‘I Feel a Character Coming On’).
Massage articles
RhythmMobility article, Darien Pritchard, 2003