Welcome to de Grunwald Academy
Advanced Accredited Training in Bodywork, Breathwork & Somatic Coaching
EXPANDING BODYWORK BEYOND THE HANDS
de Grunwald Academy brings together clinical practice and traditional knowledge. East and West alongside advanced understanding of the 5 layers of the body, fascia, the nervous system, and lymphatics.
It extends further into areas rarely taught elsewhere, including Spirit medicine and practical tools that support the bodyworker’s hands, such as scarf work and herbal applications.
What you notice first is the precision. What intrigues you is how the body responds to it, and how much less it costs you physically than the work you were doing before.
THE RESULTS
You are an experienced practitioner. You understand the body. You know what a session can realistically achieve.
Pain reduced from a 10 to a 4 in a single session. That is not unusual here. It is what happens when a different lens and techniques that work with the intelligence of the body, without force, are brought to work you already know how to do.
LONGEVITY & RANGE
The techniques we teach are chosen not only for their efficacy and results, but for their sustainability for you. Methods that are precise & effective without being exhausting, so you can work at depth and breadth for decades, not years.
We proudly teach techniques that translate directly into group settings: retreat facilitation, events, multiple-client clinics. This isn’t incidental. It’s intentional.
THE WORK
At the centre of all training are three core areas, each taught to depth, each unique to our approach.
TOUCH
Skilled, responsive bodywork rooted in fascia and the nervous system. Precision, sensitivity, and genuine depth of contact including approaches drawn from traditional medicine that are rarely found outside their country of origin.
BREATHWORK
Slow release and functional breathwork for regulation, peak performance, healing and integration. Trauma-aware, clinically grounded, and adaptable across 1:1 and group work.
COACHING
Embodied Insight coaching that meets you in the body & your identity, as well as in language. Supporting insight, processing, integration and the kind of change that actually lasts.
What makes our training unlike anything else
Scarf work and spirit medicine alongside contemporary fascia, lymph & nervous system techniques
Procedures to realign TMJ, Pelvis and other key structural areas of the body
Ancient and modern approaches brought into powerful clinical treatments
Techniques that protect your body, extending both longevity and career span
Methods that work across individual sessions, group settings, retreats, and events
36 years of real clinical practice behind every teaching decision
Breathwork for therapeutic sessions, groups and integration
Coaching for the kind of transformation that unlocks another level of Somatic mastery
This is not a curriculum assembled from trends. It is a body of work, shaped by time, by clinical reality, and by a practitioner who has spent decades finding what actually works.
Training PathwaY
ACCREDITED DIPLOMA CERTIFICATIONS
For practitioners ready to work at a different level entirely.
INTEGRATIVE FASCIA THERAPY
& BREATHWORK DIPLOMA
LEVEL 1
The full first level training. Precision touch, targeted fascia, nervous system and lymphatic treatments for the whole body, with procedures to address diaphragm and upper respiratory.
Spinal Nerve treatment protocol with ancient herbal liniment and layered work addressing the pathways of movement.
Therapeutic Slow Release & Functional Breathwork for 1:1 client work and couples.
INTEGRATIVE FASCIA THERAPY
& BREATHWORK DIPLOMA
LEVEL 2 ADVANCED IFT
Precision touch for common problems. Learn to work with procedures for sciatic nerve, ankle, pelvis, TMJ, kidney, coccyx.
Breathwork facilitation for groups – conscious connected breath.
SPIRIT MEDICINE DIPLOMA
Work with ancient tools and healing spirit medicine incantations, along with herbal formulas to address the nervous system, trauma healing, injury, dysregulation. Rooted in animism and shamanic practices. At the intersection where physical therapy and spirit medicine meet.
WORKSHOPS & CPD
Specific skills, directly applicable. For practitioners who want to add depth in a focused area and feel the difference in their next client session.
THE REJUVENATED FACE
Where therapeutic and aesthetic outcomes meet. Lymphatic and fascial technique, acupressure, structured treatment taught as a coherent method, not a toolkit. Clinically effective and visibly impactful in ways clients notice immediately.
SCARVES & WINDGATES
Scarf-based traction, pulse work, fascial release, lymphatic drainage, vagus nerve and brachial plexus techniques. Two days. Techniques that cannot be learned anywhere else, for results clients feel immediately without strain on your own body.
ABOUT THE FOUNDER
Natasha de Grunwald has spent over 30 years with her hands on bodies and her inquisitive mind on the question of what actually works.
She has studied in dissection labs, trained across traditional medicine systems, and spent decades at the intersection of ancient practice and contemporary anatomy. Her book Thai Massage Dissected came out of that work.
What she teaches, she has practised, across thousands of clients and thousands of hours. The spirit medicine, the fascial precision, the breathwork, the coaching. All of it tested in real clinical settings over real time.
She trains practitioners who want to work with greater depth, greater range, and a clearer understanding of why what they’re doing works.
This work is for practitioners who are serious about what they do and serious about how long they can do it.
