Hanna Franke was born in Austria and experienced there the respected complementary health traditions of homeopathy, hydropathy, naturopathy, and massage therapy. Following immigrating to the United States, Hanna graduated from The Chicago School of Massage Therapy in 1983. An avid skier, runner, and bodybuilder, she promptly set up her own practice in Sports Massage at Lehman Sports Club in Chicago.
Hanna achieved a satisfying level of success in relieving the soft tissue pain of athletes suffering injuries from swimming, running, aerobics and weight training. Yet, seeing many athletes suffering the same injuries over and over, she began thinking there might be predisposing factors at work that were not taught in her massage training. Consulting her teacher, Jim Hackett, respected massage therapist and co-founder of The Chicago School of Massage Therapy, she learned of the advanced classes in pain management taught by Paul St. John through the St. John Pain Relief Seminars. Using the principles and techniques learned in her very first class with Paul St. John, she began assessing athletes for the postural and biomechanical factors that St. John had discovered to be the overlooked, critical components in causing most injuries and pain conditions. This was the missing link she had been searching for. Over the next two years (and since) Hanna studied with Paul St. John, and in 1987 she became a Certified Neuromuscular Therapist.
With this new orientation to her practice, Hanna founded The Center for Neuromuscular Therapy, employing other neuromuscular therapists, and becoming known as the clinic of choice in Chicago for alternative pain management. In 1992, Hanna and her husband, Dennis, relocated to Madison, Wisconsin and founded the Alternative Pain Clinic, through which she has established a large clientele and an active network with physicians and other health care professionals.
From 1993 to 1998 Hanna worked with University of Wisconsin Professor, and Certified Neuromuscular Therapist, Vlad Thomas as Co-Chair on the American Massage Therapy Association’s Law and Legislation Committee to survey and educate the massage community in Wisconsin on the benefits of licensing the profession. Their five years of hard work paid off in 1998 when Governor Tommy Thompson signed “Wisconsin Act 156: License for Registration of Massage Therapists and Bodyworkers”.
In 1992 Hanna joined Paul St. John’s teaching staff, working as a Teaching Assistant and Facilitator in over sixty seminars. In 2001 she became a Certified Instructor and taught all eight St. John courses in over twenty-five seminars nationwide. Hanna is now a Staff Instructor for Neurosomatic Educators, teaching Paul St. John’s newest discoveries in the science of Posturology. As the only St. John instructor teaching the Bach Flower Seminars, Hanna incorporates into her practice Dr. Edward Bach’s discoveries on mind-states and moods as contributing factors to chronic pain.
In 1997 Hanna began studying Thomas Hanna’s Somatics with his senior student, Carol Welch, and now incorporates this form of somatic movement reeducation into her treatment of chronic pain, while also teaching somatic movement classes frequently to her patients and the community. And also, by educating her patients to the nutritional components of pain as related to the discoveries of Dr. Benjamin Baechler at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, she truly offers the residents of southern Wisconsin an alternative approach to the management and alleviation of soft tissue pain and biomechanical dysfunction.
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