About Liz Koch

Liz Koch is an international teacher & author with 30 years experience working with and specializing in the iliopsoas muscle. Educating both lay and professionals around the world, she is recognized by colleagues in the movement, wellness and fitness professions as an authority on the core muscle of the human body.

Her writing is featured in Yoga Journal, Positive Health, Massage & Bodywork, Vegetarian Time, Yoga & Health, Midwifery Today, and Massage Magazine as well as numerous small health & wellness publications. A health correspondent for the Santa Cruz Sentinel Newspaper Liz writes twice a month for the Health & Fitness Section. Articles maybe found by searching Liz Koch in the archives at The Santa Cruz Sentinel.

Liz is the author of The Psoas Book, Core Awareness: Enhancing Yoga, Pilates, Exercise & Dance, Unraveling Scoliosis CD and the creator of Core Awareness™, a somatic approach to deepening the experience of the human core. Beginning with the core muscle, the iliopsoas, Core Awareness™ focuses attention on sensation as a means of maturing and developing the proprioceptive nervous system (responsible for skeletal alignment, balance and orientation).

Liz is recognized by the National Certification Board for Therapeutic Massage & Bodywork (NCBTMB), as an approved continuing education provider. She is a member of the International Movement Educators Association (IMA).

In her own words:

“People often ask me how I got interested in the psoas muscle; such an unknown muscle yet so important and powerful! I first discovered the psoas muscle while attending a human potential class in Boston over 33+ years ago. At that particular moment my teacher, Robert Cooley, was fascinated with the psoas muscle. Having previously been a dancer, he was exploring how injuries and lack of movement might be tracked back to the midline or core issues expressed in the iliopsoas complex. Joining his in depth inquiry and with Bob’s encouragement, I eventually shifted my career from sculpture instructor at the Boston Museum School of Fine Arts to the healing arts.

I discovered working with my psoas released years of back pain and emotional distress and awoke within, a deep sense of pleasure. I felt passionate that people should know how extraordinary a part the psoas plays in health and wholeness. When I moved to California my personal explorations of the psoas catapulted into being my profession, beginning with teaching courses on the iliopsoas muscle for local community colleges, dance departments and within massage school programs and evolving throughout the years into wider circles of influence, which include my books, articles, keynote speaking, international and national workshops and retreats…

What started as a personal journey continues. The psoas is no ordinary muscle but a profound segway into the rich, inner and outer world of awareness and consciousness. My love of the psoas weaves me into a world of continual innovation and as naturalist John Muir so aptly expressed:

“When one tugs at a single thing in nature, one finds it attached to the rest of the world.”

So too, I’ve discovered that the psoas as living vibrating tissue and cells merges with all biological life awakening awe, creativity and compassion”.