The Thinking Practitioner

🎙 Lateral Hip Pain: Stop Blaming the Bursa (with Whitney Lowe & Til Luchau)

Til and Whitney unpack why the old “trochanteric bursitis” diagnosis is almost always wrong—and what that means for your hands-on treatment.

✨ Topics discussed include: • The shift from bursitis to tendinopathy: only about 8% of lateral hip cases involve true bursitis; the majority are gluteus medius/minimus tendinopathies compressed ...

🎙 The Most Skipped Step in Assessment and Why It Matters Most  What if the most important part of your assessment never involves touching your client? In this solo episode, Whitney dives deep into the client history — the most critical yet frequently overlooked component of manual therapy assessment. While many practitioners rush straight into orthopedic testing or treat only where it hurts, the subjective intake holds ...

🎙 Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos, Fascia, and Pain (with Tina Wang) Listener Favorite

Why do people with extra-flexible tissues often hurt more, not less? What does fascia actually look like on ultrasound in someone with hypermobility — and why did the findings surprise even the researchers? Dr. Tina Wang — a board-certified physical medicine and rehabilitation physician whose research uses ultrasound to study fascial dysfu...

Walt Fritz is a physical therapist who has been in practice since 1985 and has spent the last 30 years evolving from a traditional myofascial release (MFR) background into a collaborative, patient-led approach to manual therapy. He returns to The Thinking Practitioner to talk to Whitney about one of the most intimidating regions for manual therapists: the anterior neck.

Walt shares ...

🎙What if the key to resolving your client’s back pain isn’t loosening things up — but “adding” stiffness? Dr. Stuart McGill is one of the preeminent back pain researchers in the world, and in this conversation, he makes his case — passionately and controversially — for why biomechanical factors deserve far more attention than they typically get in back pain assessment and treatment. He arg...

🎙Dr. Joi Edwards is a physical therapist with nearly 20 years of experience specializing in orthopedic injuries and a licensed massage therapist who bridges the gap between clinical assessment and intuitive soft-tissue work.

She joins Whitney on The Thinking Practitioner to dive deep into the world of cupping therapy—exploring the physiological mechanisms, the various...

🎙 Does Massage Research Actually Work? (with Bodhi Haraldsson)

Bodhi Haraldsson is a registered massage therapist, researcher, and self-described “pracademic” who has spent over 25 years bridging the gap between clinical practice and scientific inquiry. He joins Whitney on The Thinking Practitioner to talk about one of the most important — and most misunderstood — questions in our profession: what does the ...

🎙 The Interstate Massage Compact (with Deborah Persinger)

Deborah Persinger is the Executive Director of the Federation of State Massage Therapy Boards (FSMTB), and she joins Whitney on The Thinking Practitioner to break down one of the most significant regulatory developments in our profession’s history: the Interstate Massage Compact.

If you’ve ever moved to a new state and had to navigate a whole new set of licensin...

🎙 Dizziness Roundtable (with Ruth Werner)

Ruth Werner returns to The Thinking Practitioner for a roundtable discussion with Til and Whitney on one of the most overlooked topics in manual therapy: balance challenges. Ruth is the author of A Massage Therapist’s Guide to Pathology (now in its 7th edition), a long-time educator, and host of the podcast I Have a Client Who. In this wide-ranging conversation with Til and Whitney, ...

🎙 A Master in Plain Sight (with Art Riggs)

Art Riggs is a Certified Advanced Rolfer™, massage therapist, and creator of some of the most influential instructional video courses in our field. His recordings were among the first truly comprehensive video trainings available to bodyworkers. Decades later, practitioners still return to them again and again, finding new insights each time. They age well because they’re packed wit...

🎙 AI in Massage: Thinking Partner, Threat, or Crutch?

Is artificial intelligence coming for your massage practice? Not the way you might think. In this episode, Til and Whitney dive into the rapidly evolving world of AI — exploring where it genuinely helps manual therapists, where it falls short, and why the human elements of touch, presence, and clinical reasoning remain irreplaceable.

From AI-generated anatomical images wi...

🎙 Science, Skepticism, & Keeping Heart (with Paul Ingraham)

What happens when a former massage therapist turns a skeptical eye on his own profession and starts asking uncomfortable questions about pain science and manual therapy? You get Paul Ingraham of PainScience.com — a writer whose work has challenged, irritated, and influenced practitioners in equal measure.

In this episode, Til Luchau and Whitney Lowe sit down wit...

🎙 5 Years of The Thinking Practitioner: Our Favorites & Top 5 Most Popular Episodes

It's been 5 years since we launched The Thinking Practitioner — with over half a million downloads and 130,000 unique listeners along the way. In this special retrospective episode, Til and Whitney look back at personal favorites that shaped their own thinking, then count down the top 5 most-listened episodes of all time.

What stands out?...

🎙 Can You Really Palpate the Psoas? MRI Evidence, Clinical Debate & a Bonus Visit from the Researcher

Can manual therapists actually palpate the psoas, or is it anatomically out of reach? In this episode, Til Luchau and Whitney Lowe unpack a new real-time MRI pilot study presented at the 7th International Fascia Research Congress by UCSF physical therapist Christopher DaPrato and colleagues. The study offers rare imaging-based...

🎙 Is Your Work Valuable? The Psychology of Perceived Value in Hands-On Practice

What makes clients value your work — and come back for more? Til Luchau and Whitney Lowe explore the results of a survey of over 2,000 practitioners to uncover the surprising psychology behind perceived value.

Spoiler: it's not just about results or price. Value is created in a reciprocal feedback loop between practitioner and client —...

🎙 What Happens When the Body Lets Go? Werner Klingler on Anesthesia, Altered States & the Physiology of Relaxation

What actually happens when the body "lets go" — in anesthesia, trance, or the deep relaxation familiar to hands-on practitioners? Til Luchau talks with Professor Werner Klingler, anesthesiologist, physiologist, and fascia researcher at Ulm University (Germany), whose work bridges clinical anesthesia, neurosc...

🎙 Celebrating 50 Years of Massage: Benny Vaughn’s Legacy of Professionalism, Perseverance & Touch

Whitney Lowe sits down with legendary massage therapist Benny Vaughn to celebrate his 50 years in the massage and bodywork profession — a career that helped shape modern sports massage, elevate professional standards, and open doors for generations of practitioners.

From his early years breaking racial barriers in spor...

🎙A better understanding of the very human emotion of disgust can help us navigate boundaries, empathy, and connection in our hands-on work—and in the wider world.

This week, Til welcomes back Todd Hargrove—Certified Rolfer™, movement educator, and author of A Guide to Better Movement and Playing With Movement. Together they explore one of the most primal, and often least examined, human emotions: disgust.

Drawing from ...

🎙Til Luchau and Whitney Lowe go deep into the sacroiliac (SI) joints in this listener-favorite rebroadcast of Episode 74, where they unpack anatomy, mechanics, assessment controversies, and treatment strategies. From the relationship between pain, stability, and mobility, to ligamentous support, gait mechanics, and the limits of positional models, they offer both clinical clarity and practical takeaways. Along the way, they share ...