Key Point

• Rather than enforce physical symmetry, Aston Kinetics (which trains people in movement, bodywork, fitness, and ergonomics) seeks to recognize the asymmetries natural to a person’s body.

With the spirit of a dancer, the vision of an artist, the intuition of a healer, and the curiosity of a lifelong learner, Judith Aston has been a mighty force in the world of movement for more than six decades. She’s worked and studied with legends like Moshe Feldenkrais and Ida Rolf, and she’s trained many of today’s biggest names in the profession. Yet her sparkle shines brightest when she talks about the unique complexity of movement within each individual and how that has fueled her journey in the field of movement and movement therapies.

Movement Is Life

As the founder of the movement training known as Aston Kinetics, Aston’s system “aims to treat a person’s physical body as something that is unique to them. Rather than enforce physical symmetry, Aston Kinetics seeks to recognize the asymmetries that are natural to a person’s body . . . and ensure that the entire body is in sync with itself”¹—a concept Aston describes as achieving neutrality.

“I see all movement as the opportunity to dance through life,” she says, “whether it is the dance of doing Rolfing moves or the opportunity to coach athletes to run faster. This is not ‘dance’ in a stylized way, but the ability to use the forces of gravity and ground reaction for efficiency, ease, and strength.”

Part of what makes Aston such an insightful movement educator is her ability to interpret, identify, mimic, and rethink the movements she sees in front of her. It’s a skill she remembers having as early as when she was 5, recalling an interaction with her mother. “One day, my mother asked, ‘What is this envelope? Who brought this?’ I said, ‘A woman dropped that by. I don’t know who she was, but she walks like this.’” Aston proceeded to imitate how the woman walked and moved and her mother immediately knew who her daughter was talking about. 

The ability to break down movement into this kind of detail has helped Aston see things most can’t—points of weakness or conflict, and areas of strain and pain buried in the motions. It’s something she brings into her workshops to help others develop their abilities to see within the movement. “It has to do with the energy, the strength, the tone, the lack of tone, the speed; it’s something that’s always been easy for me to read,” she says. And it’s something profound when she teaches it to others.

The Dancer’s Spirit

If movement is Aston’s poetry, then dance is certainly her language. Ask Aston about dance or her dance background, and she lights up. She can’t help but “dance” when she teaches; when she speaks, her body moves lyrically to explain a point, share an emotion, paint a picture. It can be hypnotizing to watch. 

“I begged from probably age 5 until I was 7 . . . ‘Could I please study dance?’ But it wasn’t in the budget, and it wasn’t in the time frame.” Finally, after two years of persistence, Aston started lessons at the local dance studio down the street from her home. There, she learned a variety of dance techniques: tap, ballet, tarantella, modern, Broadway, etc. She loved them all—the rules of each, the somatic mantra of each, and the movement of each captivated her imagination. By high school, Aston was advancing her own as-yet-to-be-realized “experiment” in movement when she melded her interest in modern dance with water ballet. “I don’t even like to have my head under water very much, but that was interesting,” she says.

Dance followed Aston to college, when she was encouraged by others to transfer to UCLA and study modern dance. Aston completed her undergraduate degree in dance at UCLA in 1963 and her graduate degree in 1965.

Today, Aston’s dance history is obvious in both her posture and stance. But it’s not only how she carries her body in space—dance also carries a history that is woven within all that Aston teaches. When she teaches, it’s obvious that dance is an important “partner” for her in the classroom.

Out of the Box 

Aston has always seen the world differently from others. While still in college, Aston was hired by the president of Long Beach Community College to create and teach classes for the physical education and theater departments. Working with the theater department was easy; working with the athletes was a little trickier. 

“The athletes were required to take one class with me, which meant they learned ballroom dance, folk dance, etc. They hated all of that. But then I would go out and watch their sport—I watched the golf team, I watched the track team, I watched the baseball team. And I would ask them questions. I’d ask the runners, ‘What do you do to neutralize yourself from always rotating to the left around the track? The oval you run in, you’re always leaning around the curve to the left, meaning your right leg is crossing more over your left at that point. And I think I see that in your walk.’” She asked the right-handed tennis players what they did to neutralize their repetitive movement patterns. Baffled responses were the norm. It didn’t take long, however, for the athletes (and their coaches and trainers) to quickly see Aston’s abilities to further their proficiencies and neutralize the impact of their sport. So, they accepted a little ballroom dance instruction along the way.

It was early epiphanies like this that laid a foundation for Aston’s thinking. “I explained to them why you need to neutralize, because that pattern will age you quickly and take you out of the competition sooner than you would need to. So, the things that came later from all those early, early days, I still work with,” she says.

Creative Space

It was the mid ’60s, and with her master’s degree in hand, Aston was ready for new adventures. She was referred by one of her professors to Kairos, a growth center in Southern California born out of the human potential movement. Similar to the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, thinkers of the time would come and visit these locations in workshop-style.

Aston describes the Esalen and Kairos experiences in the 1960s as fluid, thriving environments. “You had very famous people in their fields move to be close to these gurus who were coming in, or the gurus who were there full time. You had people who were retired specialists coming for their own selves to take the workshops and have these experiences. It was so fascinating. There were true traditional massage trainings there, but there were so many other things happening with the maharishi coming and Fritz Perls [the founder of Gestalt therapy] . . . It was a new experience for me.” 

At Kairos, Aston was invited to come teach movement. “They invited me to come be the ‘movement lady’on the weekends, maybe once or twice a month.” When an early Gestalt therapist was so taken with Aston’s abilities that he asked her to attend every one of his workshops at Kairos, she agreed. “OK, but obviously I’m not a psychiatrist or a psychologist,” she told him. “I know, you’re a dancer. But your creativity and intuition for what you just did is pretty astounding,” he said. 

A Path Born from Pain

It was during this time that Aston unwittingly found her segue into the world of bodywork, after two auto accidents left her with debilitating pain. The first accident was in 1966. “The light turned, I stopped, but the car behind me did not.” She managed to avoid colliding with an oncoming 18-wheeler, but the resulting impact left her with no feeling or movement in her legs. “They took me to the hospital, and for 24 hours, I couldn’t move. It was so frightening.”

Eventually sensation returned, and then movement followed, but Aston describes her health during that time as “terribly compromised.” She worked hard on her recovery but was impacted by a second accident a year later. With it came a new layer of pain and eventually frustration with a medical team that dismissed it.

“I was in excruciating pain for most of every day; it would wake me up at night. I told the [doctors] this was not something I could do for the rest of my career,” Aston recalls. A battery of tests was administered, and the doctors said they couldn’t find any reason for her pain. Their theory? “We believe it’s in your mind.”

A psychiatrist friend whose classes Aston assisted with reassured her that her pain was real. “He said, ‘They don’t understand soft-tissue injuries, but Ida Rolf does. And she is coming to Esalen . . . You should see her. She could help you.’” Aston was not familiar with the bodywork community, but she was willing to try anything for relief. Aston called her friends at Esalen to see if she could get in to see Dr. Rolf during her visit. “Don’t bother coming” was their advice; the grande dame’s schedule was already full. “Well, I’m coming anyway,” she told them. Without an appointment or an invitation, Aston was determined to see this woman with the magic hands. “So, I sat on Dr. Rolf’s doorstep at the [Esalen] baths for two days, and every time she would open the door, she would give me a stink eye.” But tenacity was something Aston was quite adept at.

‘I Have to Train You’

The story of the meeting between Ida Rolf and Judith Aston is part of bodywork history. On day two of sitting on that doorstep, Dr. Rolf finally acknowledged Aston.

“What are you doing on my doorstep?” Rolf asked. “I’m waiting for a cancellation,” Aston said. “Oh,” Dr. Rolf replied, as she closed the door and left for lunch. Fate prevailed, and Aston finally got her chance to get on Dr. Rolf’s table the following day. The experience, Aston says, was life-changing. At the end of the hour, Aston stood up and immediately felt a difference. “I knew this was hope on the horizon.”

Even being completely unfamiliar with the work just administered to her, Aston believed in the giver. “Dr. Rolf was very sure of the success of her work. She was a biochemist; she knew physics; she knew the arts. She had unbelievable skill sets.” Deep down, Aston knew she was right where she was supposed to be. And Dr. Rolf did too.

“At the end of that session, I picked up my things to leave, and [Dr. Rolf] said, ‘Wait a minute. I understand you create movement programs for leaders? Could you create a movement program for my work?’” Aston was excited about the offer; this was something she had done for many others, but she didn’t fully understand the request being made. After Dr. Rolf said, “I have to train you in this work so you will know what to create,” Aston began to see the path ahead. The timing was not ideal, but what Aston refers to as Dr. Rolf’s “triple Taurus look” prompted Aston to cancel a long-awaited (and nonrefundable) trip to Europe so she could return to Big Sur in six weeks and start training with Dr. Rolf in anticipation of the project ahead. 

“Massage and bodywork was not something I was familiar with. But I was familiar with problem-solving and movement, and that’s what she was asking for. And she was asking for my expertise.” Assured she was making the right decision, Aston stopped on her way home from Esalen and signed up to be a student at the Pomona School of Massage, a requirement if she was going to undertake the six-week training with Dr. Rolf.

And when the six weeks of training were complete, Aston knew she had something to offer. “I knew from both directions, looking from her view and my view. I knew I could teach her students how to see bodies. I could teach her students how to use their body mechanics. And I could teach the practitioners and the clients how to do certain movements so they would sustain the work. I had those three gifts in mind when I watched what happened those first six weeks.” 

Aston went on to create three courses for Dr. Rolf that became required training for Rolfing students starting in 1971. Aston remembers this time with great fondness, both in the relationship with Dr. Rolf and the creativity that was being spawned. Aston delivered these classes until 1977, when a parting of philosophies brought the relationship to an end. And while the history is tangled by some, and not clear in the memory of others, Aston remembers like it was yesterday. It was a painful parting of the ways, she says, but she will always treasure her time working with Dr. Rolf. From pain came renewed purpose. 

Chosen to Do Something Different

“I just had to let happen what happened; I had to let that go,” she says of the dissolution of the Rolf partnership. “But it was amazing, because in all the pain that happened, it became very clear that I was chosen to do something different with all this knowledge that had come to me from all these years I’d helped people create their own programs. I was supposed to clearly take this to the next step.” 

Her inspiration drove her to a frenetic pace, and she soon began designing products—most notably, ergonomic devices for sitting and laying. She had over 200 product designs and five patents by the time it was all said and done. Call it guides or inner intelligence, Aston says everywhere she looked she saw ways she could help people find their “best available neutral,” so she started creating products that would help them sit better, work better, and live better. “I couldn’t stop creating products.”

The Aston paradigm continued to evolve in this new creative space, and she began expanding her thinking around stillness and motion. Her following grew, the demand for her work grew, and her legacy began to take shape. In addition to her work with athletes, she continued to develop movement programs for seniors and infants, yoga and Pilates instructors, and anyone who wanted more personalized instruction for healthy aging. She ventures to guess that she’s taught tens of thousands of students since the early 1960s and has hopes of teaching many more. (See “Teaching Massage Therapists and Bodyworkers.”)

Now 82, Aston continues to teach year-round along with her husband, Brian Linderoth. And it’s safe to say that she is far from done.

A Legacy of Movement

Aston has worked with Olympic athletes, professional dancers, and leaders from massage, bodywork, yoga, and Pilates communities. She helped create foundational movement instruction that has impacted thousands, and she was part of the human potential movement in its most exciting and pivotal time. With all that history, what is it that she’s most proud of in her journey? Helping people get to an “easier, less stressed, more aligned” way of being. Using bodywork, movement, and ergonomic principles to help others find their somatic neutrality has been most meaningful for Aston. Helping people find their own dance is the gift she receives in return. 

“You Have to Teach”

Others recognized something special in Judith Aston through each part of her journey, including Moshe Feldenkrais, who encouraged her to pursue her work early on. But it was a high school teacher who originally inspired this journey.

“Mrs. Marti Walker set me on my path,” Aston says. In high school, Walker needed a student aide to help with her blind students, and Aston was invited to assist one class period a day, from her sophomore to senior years. 

When Walker later asked Aston what she wanted to do in her career, the then-16-year-old said, “Oh, that’s easy. I want to travel all around the world,” Aston told her. It was a life-changing moment when Walker explained to the young Aston that she could do that, but she also had a higher calling. What did Walker have in mind for her young mentee? “You were born to teach. You have to teach.” And so, at 16, the path had prophetically been set. “She was my guide,” Aston says.

Teaching Massage Therapists and Bodyworkers

How can a massage therapist benefit from Aston’s work? Three courses are specifically designed for massage and bodywork practitioners. 

• Aston Postural Assessment: The Art of Seeing the Fascial Body
  See and understand the body’s relationship to all its segments and how to problem solve the sequencing of the session to the client’s pattern.
• Aston Movement: The Art of Moving the Fascial Body
  Build skills from seeing alignment in stance to improving overall body alignment and function.
• Aston Fascial Integration: The Art of Feeling the Fascial Body
  Learn how deep and superficial patterns are connected and how to match the details of the postural assessment with palpation assessment in order to design a specific session for the client’s pattern.

Learn more at astonkinetics.com.

Note

1. Aston Kinetics, Judith Aston-Linderoth. www.astonkinetics.com/judith-aston.