Structural Integration THE JOURNAL OF THE ROLF INSTITUTE DECEMBER 2009

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1 Structural Integration THE JOURNAL OF THE ROLF INSTITUTE DECEMBER 2009

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3 TABLE OF CONTENTS STRUCTURAL INTEGRATION: THE JOURNAL OF THE ROLF INSTITUTE December 2009 Vol. 37, No. 4 PUBLISHER The Rolf Institute of Structural Integration 5055 Chaparral Ct., Ste. 103 Boulder, CO USA (303) (303) Fax (800) EDITORIAL BOARD Sara Bayer Eva Bucher Craig Ellis Szaja Gottlieb Anne F. Hoff, Editor-in-Chief Linda Loggins Heidi Massa Robert McWilliams, Managing Editor Deanna Melchynuk John Schewe Dave Sheldon LAYOUT AND GRAPHIC DESIGN Susan Winter Articles in Structural Integration: The Journal of The Rolf Institute represent the views and opinions of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official positions or teachings of the Rolf Institute of Structural Integration. The Rolf Institute reserves the right, in its sole and absolute discretion, to accept or reject any article for publication in Structural Integration: The Journal of The Rolf Institute. Structural Integration: The Journal of The Rolf Institute (USPS , ISSN ) is published quarterly by the Rolf Institute, 5055 Chaparral Ct., Ste. 103, Boulder, CO Periodicals Postage Paid at Boulder, Colorado. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Structural Integration: The Journal of The Rolf Institute, 5055 Chaparral Ct., Ste. 103, Boulder, CO Copyright 2009 Rolf Institute. All rights reserved. Duplication in whole or in part in any form is prohibited without written permission from the publisher. COLUMNS Ask the Faculty: Working with an Over-Activated 2 Nervous System Ask the Movement Faculty: Tension in the Jaw 7 Practice Building: So You Want a Full Practice? 8 In My Practice: Libby Eason and Russell Stolzoff 9 EXPANDING OUR PARADIGM A Polarized Conversation About, Amongst Other Things, 13 The Line Will Johnson SourcePoint Therapy and Its Implications for 17 Rolfing Structural Integration Soken Paul Graf Dimensional Touch 22 Carol Agneessens Embodiment and Grace 27 Lael Katharine Keen PERSPECTIVES A Rolfer s Response to Gracovetsky 31 Gael Ohlgren and David Clark More About Focal Dystonia 38 and Rolfing SI for Professional Musicians Elmar Abram A Dialogue Between Two Rolfers 40 A Father and a Daughter Tom West and Julia West REVIEWS The Rolf Institute Membership Conference 43 Carole LaRochelle Highlights from the Second International 45 Fascia Research Congress Valerie Berg INSTITUTE NEWS Announcements & Graduates Class Schedule 47 Contacts 48 Rolfing is a service mark of the Rolf Institute of Structural Integration.

4 COLUMNS Ask the Faculty Working with an Over-Activated Nervous System QI have noticed that some of my clients seem to have a primary pattern involving an overactivated nervous system. Their problem seems to be systemic rather than local. There is a high level of tone throughout the body, with all their muscles tight and holding. We have lots of techniques for releasing restricted fascia and joints, but what is the best approach to help relax an amped-up nervous system? the newborn is not thinking about core stabilization but about expressing and receiving impressions. This is what initiates the Line. That means that the Line is about expansion, about reaching, about space. And for the core to expand, I need a periphery. I need skin that reaches to the other and to things, through space. But we see the space according to what we think we can do with it or within it. Another way of expressing this is that we do not see space the way it is but the way we expect it to be. So, the space between me and the other is a representation that is connected to my way of seeing. But perception (seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, tasting) depends on orientation. We then conclude that my boundaries depend on my orientation, not so much on the thickness of the wall. A There are different reasons for people expressing an activation of the sympathetic nervous system: either their nature is more inclined to that, or they are going through some kind of a temporary, challenging situation, or they are suffering from posttraumatic stress syndrome. The way you treat the over-activated nervous system in each of these situations may vary, and here I will write about how to deal with the first two conditions, as the way you treat the third one is better learned in a specific training. The best approach to help any condition, from an amped-up nervous system to a depressive state, starts in the therapist s attitude. As a therapist, I want to evoke both a new expressivity and a new receptivity from my client; that is, a new way of perceiving and of relating to the world, to things, and to others. This means that I want to evoke a new possibility of expression for my client. But for this I need to help him connect in a different way with things and others. And to do this means that I need to learn to first receive my client and to truly listen to him at all possible levels: the animal, the cognitive, and the affective in me. But to listen properly means that I need to empty myself, so that I can really meet another. Otherwise, if I am so sure of myself, I will be listening only to myself and will feel what I already feel. If I don t empty myself, I don t make room for the new to happen. How many times has someone barely started telling us his problems, and we already have a ready answer? Or how many times do we start preaching about what the client should do even before he is done expressing himself? For me, this reveals our own anxiety, and then it becomes harder to help the client to calm down. So step number one is to quietly listen, with an open attitude, without missing the opportunity to say nothing, at least at this point. Together with the attitude of emptying myself in order to listen to the other comes the attitude of receiving the client s being in my own being. This means receiving the client s shape. How does his shape feel in my own body? How does my own kinesphere change as I do this? How, then, can I integrate the client in my own space? To receive the client also means to be empty of preconceived ideas, or else I will not be truly receiving him, and will be only perceiving myself. And, when I meet the client, I want to look at him, and in the context he is in, and where he comes from. I learned a lot about this during the multinational Rolfing Structural Integration trainings what is of value in one culture is sometimes considered inadequate in another culture, or the meaning/value that I attribute to something may be totally different than someone else s. Just like the mosquito for the frog and the man for the frog it means food, for the man it means a nuisance. What about the issue of boundaries? Hubert Godard said it well: Boundary is not a wall question. It is a center question. To understand this we must realize that The question then becomes How can I orient myself through touch in a way that I can integrate the other person s body in my own body? This is a serious question because the way we have been touched is the way that we will allow the client to touch us. Which means that the way we have been touched when in an overactivated nervous system will be the way we will touch a client in that same state unless I do personal work, and learn to touch the client while relating through my lumbricals and the interosseus muscles in my hands and feet. However, if I am not present in my own back with its potential for full extension, or if I don t even have such a back, I can t really include the other. Hubert Godard coined the word backing to refer to this way of being in/with your back. Backing, then, is a huge issue for me, and in relation to the other, especially in emotional/ psychological terms. It is my backing that gives support for my front, through which I express myself. When I have my backing, my spine is free to move; I do not lock my spine, and between me and the other there is no a wall. Thus, the conclusion is that for you to relax an amped-up nervous system you must first be in your backing, find in yourself the state you want to evoke in the other, and then touch the client from the intrinsics in your hands while touching the ground from the intrinsics in your feet. This evokes your core. There will be no wall and there will be no confusion either. 2 Structural Integration / December

5 Then I proceed to help the client feel the support that the table offers and to invite his body to surrender its weight into the table, and then to invite his spine to let go of its weight towards the table. And only then do I start to talk about breathing in and out, opening to space and surrendering to the support. And every now and then during the session I go back to that, reminding the client to let go of his weight into the table, etc. And because I see many ampedup people, I always remind them that life pulsates in expansion and contraction and that resting is part of the art of working. Monica Caspari Rolfing Instructor, Rolf Movement Instructor A It is very difficult to answer this question briefly, as it concerns some fundamental and complicated aspects of good Rolfing Structural Integration. So, I won t be brief. Techniques for releasing restricted fascia are truly integrative only if they are accompanied by an ability to touch our clients in a way that connects to the expressiveness of their bodies or, we could say, their inner somatic experience. A primary pattern involving an over-activated nervous system is a specific example of the body s expressiveness, communicating something about the inner state of the client. Always, when we touch, we touch in a way that connects us to the client s inner state. Working with an over-activated nervous system will involve specific pacing, depth, duration and intensity of touch in such a way that we can perceive and respond to this expressive quality of the body of our client. At the heart of the over-activated nervous system is an inability to discharge. This phenomenon of discharge is, I believe, one of the most important and least understood of the physiological events we see in our clients. Wilhelm Reich wrote extensively about this in his book The Function of the Orgasm. While he may have slightly mythologized the energetic basis of his metaphors, he was the first in the West to discuss discharge and the role it played in the psychological economy of his patients. I believe we are dealing with a similar phenomenon. Peter Levine takes a slightly more concrete, neurological approach in his book Waking the Tiger. He connects inappropriate charge and incapacity to discharge with the consequences of trauma, which has been an immensely useful insight. However, inappropriate charge is not always the result of trauma. The classic Type A personality (who resembles the client you describe) has a high level of charge and tends to have trouble letting go, but there is often no trauma. In fact, these people are often high achievers. The result, of course, is excessive output from certain endocrine organs and accumulated fatigue, which is overridden by effort and will. So, how to induce discharge, which is necessary to come down from the overcharged endocrine and nervous system? First is the need of the practitioner to configure him or herself in such a way that his/her own nervous system is alert, responsive and quiescent. The important issue here is matching the client. It is crucial to be able to perceive the client accurately and then match him/her in such a way that the practitioner s input literally responds to the client s response, as the practitioner s input is occurring. This is often referred to as tuning, and it is at the heart of all hypnosis. By tuning to the client we create conditions that induce trust and confidence on the client s part that he/ she will be treated appropriately, and this reduces guarding, which is, of course, mostly subliminal. It is the practitioner s state that sets the stage for the client s response. This effect is so powerful that I often see my clients falling asleep or in a deep trance state while I am working in many instances quite deeply in their tissue. How is it that my client seems to be in a state of deep relaxation while I am working deeply in tissue that one would expect to be painful? We should explore this question in depth (so to speak). On a practical level, we modulate our touch to induce conditions in our client that are conducive to discharge or, more commonly stated, letting go. The classical teaching here is to modulate depth, duration, speed, intensity and frequency of touch according to the client s state and ability to respond. I find that it is also crucial to be working in the right place, meaning in the place COLUMNS where there is access to deeper responses in the client. This may not always be the structurally obvious place. I will often start a session with a charged client by simply holding the sacrum and tuning to the inherent motion of the craniosacral pulse. This often drops the client right in and I can then go to work. We say in the advanced Rolfing training that issues regarding the nervous system override structural concerns. You cannot proceed on your structural course ignoring the fact that the client s response to your input is not conducive to letting go. Finally, it is very much about letting go to the inherent, spontaneous expressive and organizing forces at work in us, which is why the capacity to discharge is important. Most of the time, it is a problem of overcontrol and an inability to open to what is emerging in oneself. Standing up straight, or being balanced in gravity, is part of what we are working to achieve in our clients, but it is not everything. We seek to get to balance in gravity by opening, by letting go of restrictions, preoccupations and inhibitions such that we are expanded in the gravity field and free to orient to our environment in ways that serve our expressive nature. Michael Salveson Advanced Rolfing Instructor A In my practice, as well, I have observed that a lot of people show up with apparent sympathetic nervous system activation. I liken it to having the idle of a car set too high when sitting still, the car s motor is still running as though it were traveling at a speed of fifty miles per hour. This is the way that I (over)simplify it for my clients. It seems to help take the potential charge out of the situation, as some people can easily feel like they are doing something wrong if you call attention to this. I always spend an hour with a new client in consultation. I take a complete history, show them anatomy-book pictures of fascia, and give a general overview of how the sessions of the Ten Series work together, cumulatively, to effect whole-body balance. Usually by the end of that time, a good relationship has been established, and the Structural Integration / December

6 COLUMNS client is more comfortable coming the next time for the first session. I also approach slowly, and listen carefully, for autonomic response. Many people have had some kind of trauma and are easily triggered into that response in uncertain situations. And no one knows what to expect from Rolfing Structural Integration until he has had the experience. I also watch for signs of activation throughout each session. I explain to the client that it is like dropping a pebble in a pond. The ripple goes out, and eventually quiets. If we don t drop too many rocks too fast, each wave has time to complete its transit, and the system can return to calm. This engages the client in the process, treats it neutrally, and allows the person to observe and participate. I believe this is more empowering to the client, as he then may notice when the activation is occurring, and take similar measures to come back to quiet. That said, as Antonio Damasio has pointed out, the intellect can move much faster than the emotional system. What happens in a culture of visual, intellectual, auditory and kinesthetic stimulation is an increasing inability to keep up with what one feels. It is impossible to ground without feeling one s own sensation, and allowing its normal transit through the system. This is something our work contributes, not only to individual clients, but also to the culture as a whole: it is a call to center, ground, and notice what one is actually doing. Libby Eason Rolfing Instructor A The client with a high sympathetic tone in his nervous system presents a specific and often delicate challenge to the Rolfer. In the first place, many clients who have amped up nervous systems are quite attached to experiencing themselves in this way. They may gravitate towards high-stress jobs and delight in intensity. Although the muscle tension that these clients feel may be a bother to them, they may be so identified with themselves in high gear that they will not be very available to a proposal that will cause them to let down. So the first step is to converse with the client, to discover if he really is interested in de-amping his nervous system. If the answer is yes, then there are some windows of availability for lowering overall nervous system tonus that the body customarily presents in the course of a Rolfing process. They will be mentioned below. Stimulating the parasympathetic nervous system is one answer, but often it is not enough. When the parasympathetics come online, the client tends to go to sleep and then, at the end of the session, he flips the on switch and goes his merry way. In my experience, the way to begin to stimulate a longer-term change is to help the client make a conscious bridge into a more relaxed functioning. Thus, any time that you see a release breath that long spontaneous sigh that the client gives when something lets go you may want to stop and allow the client a long moment to feel that sense of letting go and letting down that has just occurred. Ask him what it feels like; ask him where he feels it in his body. Help him to begin to develop a language and an awareness of what it is like to relax in small ways. Pay attention to the signs that the body may be discharging trembling, shaking, sighing, yawning, and twitching, to name just a few. When you see signs of discharge, take your hands off the body and allow time for the wave of discharge to complete itself, for the body to settle and reorganize. Often, if you pay attention to the discharge and allow it time to finish its work, the client s body will spontaneously readjust and reorganize and you will see the goals of your Rolfing session fall into place without you having to do nearly as much work. As Rolfers, we often overload our clients nervous systems with our input. Information overload on top of a high sympathetic tone tends to increase sympathetic tone. Feeling into the sighs and moments of repose and giving the body organic time to respond to your touch will tend to lower the tone. These seem like little cues, but taken over time they can add up. For further information I would recommend reading Peter Levine s book Waking the Tiger. Lael Katharine Keen Rolfing Instructor, Rolf Movement Instructor A I have found the best approach to address an amped up nervous system to be craniosacral work. I know this is not Rolfing Structural Integration, but it is still the best way I have found to let a client s nervous system discharge and wind down. I do at least ten minutes of craniosacral work at the end of every structural integration session. The gentle techniques stimulate the cranial and sacral nerves that are responsible for innervation of the parasympathetic nervous system (the socalled relaxation response ). New Rolfers are now guided to take at least three hours of craniosacral training as part of their continuing education before advanced Rolfing training. Fortunately, craniosacral workshops abound around the country and the world. John Schewe Fascial Anatomy Instructor A When I notice a hypertonic client, the approach starts at the interview where I ask questions about his/her daily life. Usually the hypertonic client speaks firmly and fast, to which I respond with a softer voice and less speedy delivery, which induces the client to another rhythm. During the session I like to tune myself to the hypertonicity with receiving and listening hands and proceed with firm but slow and longer strokes, being very attentive to my breathing and my personal tonus. I make sure to leave enough time so that the client can have those natural deep breaths (sighs). The pelvic lift should be firm and slow, assuring a soft rest for the sacrum. Prior to doing the back work, I insure that the sacrum is in a resting position and that the spine has a soft and easy connection between the legs and head. Cornelia Rossi Rolfing Instructor, Fascial Anatomy Instructor 4 Structural Integration / December

7 A An individual with an over-active nervous system has a predominance of sympathetic tone. Learn to sense the expressed quality of the nervous system. This pattern is systemic; consequently, you want to hold all of the client in your perceptual field. Direct manipulation will only drive the activation deeper. This pattern necessitates perceptually oriented and biodynamic approaches. Remember, the nervous system is not just deep within the body. It is contacted at the surface of the skin as well as in the space around the body known as the peri-personal space or kinesphere. The body and its autonomic tone resonate beyond the boundary of the skin. The manner in which a practitioner comes into relationship and maintains a quality of contact and presence throughout the session sets the tone for the session. In working with this client, a practitioner needs to maintain an awareness of his own body weight, as well as an awareness of ground and back support. This systemic pattern also requires a slower tempo from the practitioner. If you are hurried in your approach, it will only amp-up an already activated system. The rhythm in which you work needs to be slower and more patient, as you maintain a wider perceptual field. Remember the mantra of low, slow and wide. In working with these individuals it is important for you as the practitioner to cultivate the felt experience of your own calming presence as you wait for your client s system to begin to settle. Your system creates the resonant field for the session. Client-practitioner resonance is part of the therapeutic relationship. Just to review, the sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) functions in fight, flight and freeze mode. It evolved later, providing the mobility needed to run from predatory threat. When this action is thwarted, the prey reverts to a freeze state, either feigning death, secreting substances that anesthetize pain, or dissociating as a survival action. The more primitive nervous system, the parasympathetic branch, has everything to do with vegetative, digestive, meditative states. Ideally, we are looking for balance between the two. You might imagine the sympathetic nervous system to be the gas pedal and the parasympathetic nervous system to be the brake. You need both to drive your car. In application, it is imperative that the practitioner maintain a sense of presence within himself. To repeat: in order to establish a therapeutic shift with this individual it is imperative that the practitioner continually sense himself throughout the session. The practitioner s orientation can be through the feeling sense of his own weight, perception of backing, sense of ground, or sense of field. If you match the client s vigilance, it will be difficult to drop in and create a field that supports any intervention. Remember, over time you are literally helping the client s nervous system reset and rebalance. I pose these questions at the beginning of a session: Can you sense your back on the table? Do you have the experience of your back sinking into the table, resting on top of the table, or hovering (holding) above it? Usually an individual with an over-active nervous system either cannot feel his back, cannot sense the support of the table, or notices a familiar sensation of hovering above the support of the table. Clarifying a client s experience at this basic level gives a baseline for later comparison. Individuals who have a keen orientation to the space around them tend toward hypervigilance, and more often than not are missing the perception of weight in their kinesthetic vocabulary. I work with these clients to cultivating a sense of weight through the movement of yield. Yield is the first developmental movement and is often lost in our movement vocabulary because push carries a more direct experience. However, the movement of push is based on the prior movement of yield and the kinesthetic way this motion sequences through the body. Yield is not passive. It is an aware and active coming-into-contact. I might use my hands beneath the client s back and take over the holding of a particularly tight and lifted area of the body (for example, the back of the respiratory diaphragm). Yield engenders a sense of weight but not of dead weight. There is a dynamic and relational experience with yield whether it is in relationship to ground, the support of my hands, or a sense of dropping into COLUMNS the table. In order to come into a state of rest, the state where the parasympathetic nervous system can emerge, you have to cultivate the felt experience of yield and weight. Facilitate the client s experiential discovery of his back and back-space. This perceptual space includes not only the anatomical musculature, but also the experienced support of his kinesphere and the field around, behind, and beyond him. With this backing, the viscera (which is full of nervous-system webbing) can release. This will serve all future sessions that you do. If you happen to be more sympathetically tuned, notice when you lose your own sense of ground and weight, or the sense of yourself in relation to your client. Transitioning from lying to sitting to standing provides an abundance of information about how your client organizes his system in order to move. It is not the gross movement but the pre-movement that provides the information. This foundational strategy informs all the client s patterns. It can be a key to uncovering how he sets his nervous system for daily living. Perhaps he initiates movement by grabbing his jaw or lifting away from his sense of back support, or raising his rib cage/diaphragm, etc. While the client is sitting you can key him into the weight of his body dropping into his pelvis and being supported by the triangle of the pelvic bones, legs and feet, and the core support moving through the pelvic diaphragm. Or, perhaps, help him notice a sense of opening behind the respiratory diaphragm or the weight of the back of his head. These take time to explore. They also provide a felt experience that your client can revisit through the week. As you move to standing, reinforce the sensory-based education with attention to contact with the floor and the weight of the body supported by his legs and feet and space around him. We are educating people to the possibility of dynamic embodiment, cultivating an individual s experience of aliveness through the flesh. An orientation to both the flow of ground as well as the palpable sense of support and connection to the spacious field around the body becomes a daily meditation. Attention to sensation ignites the neural connections of body, brain and mind. Sensation is worth a Structural Integration / December

8 COLUMNS thousand pictures and, as Rosemary Feitis so beautifully says, what you feel you can keep. Carol Agneessens, M.S. Rolfing Instructor, Rolf Movement Instructor A What you are calling an amped up nervous system is becoming more and more common, I believe, in our culture. Many times it has been there from early in life, and for some it has become a way of being later in life. In our work, education and bringing a person s awareness to patterns of holding, restrictions, or inhibitions (as Hubert Godard calls them) are always in the forefront of the session. I would still do the fascial work and the Ten Series, and I would bring awareness to the client s anticipatory response, which is most likely there on the table as well as standing before you. By that I mean that if you ask for a movement, most likely the client responds quickly and with large muscles and quick contractions. His system lives in a state of readiness. Most people aren t even aware that they do that. Peter Levine s Somatic Experiencing work is a great training to understand how to work with an activated sympathetic or parasympathetic system. Keeping the person present to body sensations is key. It is important to slow down the work in terms of the movements you ask for, the movement of your own hands, and the client s responses. For example, if you ask an over-activated client to let the knee bend, he usually pops it up at 100 miles per hour! Back up; break the movement down and have him do it very slowly, piece by piece, so he can actually feel what is happening in the body rather than making an automated response to a request. I see our work as being much like putting a wedge between the person s automatic patterns of response and a new option with awareness and choice. If the person s system is so amped up that your touch sends him jumping and flying, then again you must slow down. Have him first notice his weight on the table, where he has contact and good support. This gets the client out of his head and into the body s sensations. You can even announce that you are going to move very slowly so he can keep tracking and noticing his responses. Sometimes just putting both hands on the area to be worked and waiting as you sink in is profound letting his nervous system feel the lack of pressure to respond or do anything. Hypervigilance in our bodies doesn t allow much being. I do not avoid the important fascial layer work, but as always it is done at the layer that has significance and can be integrated for that person. Slow your own system down so the client can mirror it, and create a non-expecting allowing space with your hands and your words. That, in itself, is probably helping to create a huge change in the person s life. Valerie Berg Rolfing Instructor SAVE THE DATE Upcoming Events sponsored by the European Rolfing Association 2010 Annual Meeting & European Rolfing Conference and Workshops May 1-2, 2010 ~ Munich Munich European Rolfing Week 2010 March 13-21, Structural Integration / December

9 COLUMNS two or three times a day, but especially before sleeping. Ask the Movement Faculty Tension in the Jaw and How to Release It with Specific Movement Exercises Q Can By Monica Caspari, Rolf Movement Instructor you give me advice on how to educate clients about the jaw? I understand working with perception and coordination, but how can I do that with the jaw? A When we talk about the jaw we must include the temperomandibular joint (TMJ) and the rest of the mouth: the teeth and tongue. Actually, your question is so important that it deserves a more elaborate answer than the one I can give in the space for this column. But for now, let s play a little with self-help for the jaw. Research shows that nowadays we are chewing ten times less than a hundred years ago (our food has become too soft), so our jaws are not exercising as much as they were designed by nature to do. On top of that, we are sitting too much, instead of walking an average of twelve kilometers per day as our ancestors used to do, and then we slouch, thus projecting the head forward with consequences for the cervicals and TMJ. I don t know that we can tell clients to eat more raw food and exercise more, but we can educate them to sit properly, not on the ischial tuberosities but slightly in front of them. To understand the relationship between poor sitting and added stress to the TMJ, try this: sit as slouched as you can and close your mouth, locking the teeth. Then, while keeping them locked, change your position and sit slightly in front of the ischial tuberosities. Now notice how the relationship between the jaw and the maxillae changes, and how the slouched position was putting extra stress on the temporalis/masseter complex. It is also very important that you educate clients about correct positioning of the whole mouth: lips should be closed, upper and lower teeth slightly separated, the tip of the tongue lightly touching the hard palate right behind the incisors, and breathing through the nose. If the person is not used to this correct positioning of the tongue, he will at first feel very awkward and not be able to relax at all to do it. This is a learning process that sometimes requires the expertise of a speech therapist. It is not correct to let the tongue spread and occupy the whole mouth that is one reason for the collapse of the core. Neither is it correct to place the tip of the tongue against the teeth, which will force them out and affect the bite. There are many self-help techniques to help release accumulated tension in the TMJ area. Here are my favorite ones. 1. With the client sitting properly, have him place his thumbs on his mastoid processes so that the thenar eminences are slightly under the jaw, cradling it, index and middle fingers right above the TMJs, and the fourth and fifth fingers away from the face. The client s lips should be closed, upper and lower teeth slightly separated, with the tip of tongue lightly touching the hard palate right behind the incisors. All the client has to do now is to think that his head is being suspended from the ceiling while the weight of his elbows, through the thumbs, puts a light traction on the posterior aspect of temporalis muscle (behind the ears) and the index and middle fingers put a light traction on the distal attachment of the temporalis and the proximal attachment of the masseters. Hold this position for two to three minutes. Have him do this 2. Teach the client to gently but firmly massage the temporalis, about two inches above the uppermost tip of the ears, moving the scalp (and superficial fascia of the head) in small circles. 3. With the client sitting properly, teach him where the distal attachment of the masseters is in the jaw and teach him to massage it, doing small circles with the proper pressure. Too little pressure will not release the masseters and too much pressure will make them react with more pain. Have him do this three times a day, for about three minutes each time. 4. With the client sitting properly, have him place the fingers of his left hand just below the right TMJ, sticking to the local fascia and weighing it down, thus putting some pressure over the masseter while telling it to let go. Meanwhile, have him use the tips of the fingers of his right hand to work in an upward direction starting on top of the right cheek bone and going towards the right temporal bone, thus opening the TMJ. Have him do this three times a day, for about three minutes each time. Structural Integration / December

10 COLUMNS Practice Building So You Want a Full Practice? By Owen Marcus, M.A., Certified Advance Rolfer o you want to increase your practice? D Do you want more clients? More income to show for the time and effort you put into it a greater return on investment? More fun? I can t guarantee I can give you all that, but I can share my mistakes, successes, and lessons from thirty-three years of private practice in three different states. Starting out as a reluctant businessman, I initially avoided marketing and selfpromotion. But, needing to eat, I quickly taught myself how to generate business. I didn t have any Rolfing mentors for developing a Rolfing practice, so I sought out successful business people from other fields as models. I figured if they did it, I could. My Intent Let s start the discussion of how to create a successful practice easily, quickly and most importantly with joy. Compared to thirty years ago, there is a wealth of knowledge and skill in our community now. I want to tap that resource, and help you tap it. One of my secrets was to adapt what others do to my needs. Usually these other people were not Rolfers. My goal is to be one of those sources for you, and bring in others for you to learn from. My objective is to serve you, not serve a tradition. Over the years I have received calls from new Rolfers asking what to do when an established Rolfer in their community told them what not to do (i.e., don t do any marketing, it doesn t work ). In every case, I told the new Rolfer: Do what you need to do. Do what is right for you: what excites you. If an older Rolfer has a problem with that, they can call me. No one ever called. What is Wrong? Let s slay some sacred cows: You should run your business like the first-generation Rolfers did. Pleasing those old-timers is more important than your success. Marketing is not professional; just do good work and you will have clients. Use the old models of marketing or no model at all. Don t advertise. Don t use testimonials. Don t promote. Marketing will take valuable time away from your actual practice. Any of those beliefs will prevent you from creating the practice you want. As Rolfers, we are not alone. For years, my clients and friends in every profession from medicine to architecture told me they didn t have any useful training in how to create a successful practice. The Rolf Institute taught us the science and art of Rolfing Structural Integration, but not the science and art of creating a Rolfing practice. To solve that dilemma, first connect to what got you to be a Rolfer. It is your passion for Rolfing that will be the fuel for your success. What You Need Passion To make it easier, faster, and a lot more fun, you will need to connect with your passion for Rolfing Structural Integration. Why did you get Rolfing sessions? What inspired you to become something as strange as a Rolfer? What drives you to get your friends and family to get and receive Rolfing sessions? A Simple Plan Once you have the fuel, you need a plan. How will you apply your passion in your community so it generates success? This plan will change as you progress, but you need a basic outline that guides you. Create a Position In business, a position is a stance you take. Also called branding, it s what makes you unique. So you need to find a way to stand out. It should be a genuine mode of expression. For example, one of the positions I took while I had my clinic in Scottsdale, Arizona was practicing Rolfing Structural Integration with elite athletes. One reason I succeed at that was that I enjoyed marketing to them as well as working with them. Begin feeling what might be your initial position. It can expand, but it is easier to start communicating to a clientele whom you understand and appreciate. That will give you innate confidence and momentum. Create a Marketing Plan First of all, don t get overwhelmed. A marketing plan can be easy and fun. I will spend time in future columns exploring how to do this. For now, look at places where you can speak, so you can share your enthusiasm about Rolfing. If you don t know any groups to speak to, call service organizations. They all need speakers. When I moved to Phoenix in 1980, I knew no one. Because I needed to eat, I needed to do something. In spite of my old speech impediment and my huge fear of public speaking, I spoke at a few of these organizations. Taking that risk, putting myself out there, was the seed for my first set of clients. Get Support You don t need to do this alone. Matt Hsu and I created as a resource for clients as well as Rolfers. This site is still in beta, which means it is still being developed as we invite people to use it. There is a wealth of other free Internet resources, which I will explore in the future. 8 Structural Integration / December

11 COLUMNS Use local entrepreneur support groups to assist you in the skills you need to develop a successful practice. These groups can be a good networking source. You Can Do It Most Rolfers don t fail because of their skills; they fail because of their lack of business acumen. If you can learn to practice Rolfing, you can learn to succeed as a Rolfer. If I could move to a city where no full-time Rolfer had seriously practiced, not knowing anyone, with no money, with my Asperger s syndrome and dyslexia, and then develop a holistic medical clinic where I was seeing thirty clients per week then you can certainly prosper with the help this column will provide. All you will need to do is take risks and learn. Then it will happen. Owen Marcus practices in Sandpoint, Idaho. For more information see In My Practice A Journey, Not a Destination By Libby Eason, Certified Advanced Rolfer, Rolf Movement Practitioner, Rolfing Instructor Editor s Note: In this issue, we profile two U.S. Rolfers who are also instructors for the Rolf Institute of Structural Integration. M y practice is a constant source of inspiration. I was first drawn to this work in 1971, hearing about it from a therapist. Then, in 1975, I received the Ten Series from a Rolfer who was traveling to Columbia, South Carolina to work. My boyfriend at the time and I also traveled to Atlanta for some sessions. That same year, we embarked on a wild adventure a cross-country trip with that Rolfer and her client Roberta, whose five-hundred-fiftypound iron lung was bolted into the back of a Dodge Maxi Van for the trip. Roberta had polio as a child, and had to sleep in the iron lung every night. She wanted to see the country on her way to be a class model for Dr. Rolf in San Francisco in the summer of I saw Dr. Rolf across a hotel lobby. Even in my thoroughly unenlightened state at the age of twenty-one, I saw ten feet of white light around her. Jump ahead a decade and I found myself leaving a corporate job to follow what had previously been an unacknowledged dream. I attended the Atlanta School of Massage in 1986, and began my career. In a few years, I was eager to have more tools to address what I saw in people s structures. I was accepted and trained at The Rolf Institute, and graduated in March In those early days, balancing my practice meant keeping up my massage practice while beginning to develop a Rolfing practice. After six years I went full-time as a Rolfer. I ve now been doing this work for seventeen years. It s hard to believe it s been that long. I still passionately love this work. I am amazed by the endless opportunities to learn that surface every day. Now for the nitty gritty: how I maintain some semblance of balance while teaching, being fifteen hundred miles from home for two months at a time, being on a faculty committee the past four years, and being on the board of the International Association of Structural Integrators (IASI). In addition to tracking legislative matters that affect the field of structural integration, I was recently elected to be president of the IASI Board of Directors. Of course, there is even some time for a personal life. I am, of necessity, protective of that. Besides, the cats get ornery if I don t pay them enough attention. My typical workweek includes five clients on Monday and Wednesday, and three clients Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. That schedule allows me to recharge so that I can give the first and last client of the week the same kind of attention. For me, the soul of the work is realized in present time. Being present requires adequate rest and self-care. All the techniques of structural integration (SI), while potentially powerful, do not convey the depth of the work. Gifting Structural Integration / December

12 COLUMNS another with recognition of their being is healing by itself, and calls to the self-healing capacity of the person. The techniques are in support of that. This is what I have learned from my teachers, along with some fantastic tools. I began the process of learning to teach this work in 1998, assisting classes. If you have ever considered assisting a class, do it! I learned so much! I also learned that I knew more than I thought I did and became able to better articulate that knowledge. I taught my first class as lead instructor in Each class, just like each client, presents new opportunities to learn. It is an honor to help future colleagues get grounded in the work and prepare to start a practice. I ve seen many of those students later and it is a delight. I am touched by all of them. As it nears time to teach again each year, I begin to think constantly (perhaps obsess would be a better term) about how I will teach what I am doing and how to put it in the context of the principles of Rolfing Structural Integration. Having two months away from home every year is somewhat challenging, but these last few years, my practice has remained fairly steady even with those absences. I do miss seeing clients during that time. I let clients know a few months ahead of time that I will be leaving and try to schedule their sessions so that the pause falls after session three or after session seven. I offer them referrals to other practitioners, in case they would like to continue while I am gone. Most of the time clients prefer to stay with the same practitioner, but sometimes they will go to another. I attend workshops as regularly as I can, usually at least once or twice a year. I took two workshops with Tessy Brungardt last year that covered the same material as classes I took with her and Carol Agneessens over twelve years ago. This time, I absorbed new layers of understanding, not just anatomy and techniques, but ways of being with clients, with myself, and with students. It was very instructive to see so directly that there continue to be more and more layers to this work; that the depth and breadth of possible understanding is virtually limitless. Our Atlanta SI community has grown. Having those local connections is fantastic. We have been fortunate to have several teachers visit in the past few years including Jan Sultan, Tessy Brungardt, Tom Wing, Sharon Hancoff, Monica Caspari, Robert Schleip, and Jim Asher. In my practice, I am curious about structurefunction-energy. I see them as part of a continuum, rather than separate events. I wonder, what is in the field of the session or series of sessions with a particular client? What perceptual structure does that person bring to the sessions and how can I interface in a way that facilitates the person s process, without imposing an outside agenda? What is present energetically in me as I approach the client? Can I acknowledge and set it aside in order to be more fully present for the client s process? Can I forgive my own imperfections and not stand in judgment of others? I have heard it said that you don t learn to do Rolfing Structural Integration you become a Rolfer. And according to Ida Rolf, you also have more instantaneous karma. On some level, I believe this is true. Not out of some kind of magic but because it becomes more imperative to be true to oneself, and more difficult to tolerate internal dissonance when you become more attuned to your self. This doesn t make the road smoother but it does make life more satisfying and real. I hope it makes us all better practitioners. Libby Eason has a Rolfing practice in Atlanta, Georgia. Besides her teaching work for the Rolf Institute, she is Board President for the International Association of Structural Integrators. 10 Structural Integration / December

13 COLUMNS It Keeps Unfolding... I By Russell Stolzhoff, Certified Advanced Rolfer, Rolf Movement Practitioner, Rolfing Instructor t is well-known that Ida Rolf said that with Rolfing Structural Integration we go around and around the problem, one layer at a time. In other words, we challenge the body only to the extent it can accept and adapt to the request of touch or verbal instruction. The process of becoming a Rolfer and eventually a teacher of Rolfing Structural Integration has this quality as well. I keep going around and around the same territory that is never really the same. Over time the impact of the work deepens, realizations occur, I learn, and people change in ways that are both predictable and unique. I now know that people will become more balanced, but I never know how it s going to seem to them, or what the work will entail. I began teaching because of an eagerness to share what I have learned. After my advanced Rolfing training I began to feel that I had something to offer, and if nothing else, I was excited to share what I had discovered. A few Rolfers in my community would call me for support. I always loved, and still do love, listening and offering whatever I can that could be helpful. Naturally, when I was invited to assist in a Rolfing class, I jumped at the opportunity. At that time I never intended to actually become a part of the faculty. Over the next few years, with each assisting experience, I became more interested in the process of helping students along their path toward becoming Rolfers. Similar to the practice of Rolfing Structural Integration, I found teaching improved my ability as a Rolfer. Having to find ways of demonstrating, explaining, and containing the students process drove me to become better at our work. No longer could I be satisfied with vague results and judge the success of my practice by the clients willingness to return. The responsibility to preserve and transmit Rolfing Structural Integration forced me to become more certain about the effect of the work. Developing ways of communicating this to students, in turn, helped me to do the same with clients. Eventually, I made a decision to become a lead teacher and now consider myself just a bit past a beginninglevel instructor. With each successive class I look forward to the opportunity to refine my presentation of the material. Since I change and my work changes in between classes I never really know what I will express when I get back to the classroom again. The combination of fear and excitement is palpable for months leading up to a class and I know it will take me months afterwards to completely digest the experience. I loved my Rolfing training and I think the love of that experience of learning is what keeps bringing me back to the classroom. Teaching the basic skills that will form the foundation for the growth and the development of a Rolfer is what I like most. I like the opportunity to emphasize what I think is important, and it makes me feel like I am passing on the benefit of my experience. In my practice, over the past few years I have become obsessed with how difficult and exciting it is to realize the concept of holism. In a world that is obsessed with parts and their mechanical relationships, holism demands that our mechanistic ways of learning transform from understanding parts to perceiving, feeling and working with a person s body as a whole. After about eighteen years of practice I began to have a more direct perception of wholeness in my body and my clients bodies. These realizations were in keeping with the way previous awareness had developed: something that seemed vague and unreal begins to come into focus, and with sustained attention becomes more refined, validated, and real. I had always nodded my head knowingly whenever the subject of holism was raised. Then it dawned on me that an intellectual understanding of the concept differs hugely from the experience of holism. Being able to feel wholeness with our hands and our awareness is for me the gold at the end of the Rolfing rainbow: elusive and real at the same time. Resisting the temptation to dismiss the elusive experiences as unreal has been a crucial part of deepening my perceptive ability. Rather than having to prove whether each dawning subtle awareness is real before we can accept it, it seems useful and valid to initially accept perceptions as real and, over time, work toward validating or invalidating them. After all, there is not anyone other than one s self who can actually validate experience as real one has to find a way to do it for one s self. As I practice this rich, subjective, experimental process it leads me toward confidence in my perception, and it seems to lead clients toward having more whole experiences. This is what captivates me and keeps me going: the interplay between my personal development and how I am able to help others. Through following the process described above, I have developed a stronger ability to feel through the body from wherever I happen to be touching a person. This feels to be a more direct and often spectacular contact with wholeness. Sometimes it seems an entire session could be done from contacting one place in the body and just witnessing the response throughout the body. After all, since the body is an endless web we ought to be able to refine our ability to feel it as one! Inevitably, I become insecure with my theoretical insistence, and trust in my perception waivers. Are my perceptions real or am I making them up? Even if these spectacular patterns of connectedness are real, does that mean the body is changing and becoming more integrated? In response to these questions and insecurities I do my best to keep myself honest and head back to my original assessment. Was a positive change initiated by hanging on to one place and observing the whole body s response? Structural Integration / December

14 COLUMNS Or, do I need to become more narrowly focused? I must be completely honest with myself, just as willing to be wrong as right. Over time this experimental process and the willingness to be wrong have led me to trust my perception more and given me permission to transition between narrow and wide fields of perception and focused and global techniques. Lately, in classes and in Rolfing-related discussions I end up talking about the role time plays in the development of a Rolfer. Two years ago when I passed my eighteenth year in practice I had the cute idea of writing an article based on becoming an adult Rolfer. It seemed to me that although there had been phases along the way a gradual progression of realizations, setbacks, and increasing abilities reaching my eighteenth anniversary was like reaching the threshold of adulthood. I was excited about this milestone and it seemed I was beginning to reap the rewards of diligent time devoted to becoming good at what I do. Now I can say I am in my early twenties, and in keeping with the age-related analogy, I am probably solidly into a period of self-obsession and idealism. All kidding aside, it does seem nothing replaces time and experience. For me the cycles of practice and teaching synergize each other and help to mark time. Each time I teach I have the opportunity to recognize where I am compared to where I was the last time. After every class I return home and go back to the work of doing sessions in my room alone with my clients and I feel changed from having had to articulate what our work is. Rolfing Structural Integration is my first chosen work. Before I received Rolfing sessions, I had no career aspirations, no idea of how I was going to spend my working years. Immediately upon experiencing the work at age twenty-two I knew I had to find a way to become a Rolfer. In my application I wrote that I knew Rolfing practice would never become old, that I would never have it licked once and for all, that I would never run out of rope. So far I haven t. Russell Stolzoff practices Rolfing Structural Integration in Bellingham, Washington. The International Association of Structural Integrators IASI Symposium 2010 One World, One Work Creating the Future May 7-9, 2010, Denver, CO, USA Featured Presenters: Rosemary Feitis, Michael Salveson, Serge Gracovetsky, Robert Schleip & Monica Caspari Three full days fi lled with cutting-edge educational forums, networking opportunities, and time for insight, sharing & fun. Including 15 breakout sessions presented by leaders from the international community of structural integrators and important reports from the Second International Fascia Research Congress. Mark your calendars Register TODAY for IASI Symposium 2010 in Denver Full details and a schedule of events at theiasi.org For a Symposium brochure, info@theiasi.org or call Structural Integration / December

15 EXPANDING OUR PARADIGM A Polarized Conversation About, Amongst Other Things, The Line By Will Johnson, Certified Rolfer wo Rolfers meet for supper in a T pub and, after sharing a hearty and convivial meal (and downing a number of beers, which always helps to loosen the tongue), remove their gloves as they begin to propose very different views of The Line, whose certainties depend at least partly on refuting the validity of the other s position: Rolfer 1: The Line is, at best, an elegant concept, an image that can perhaps guide us as we view a client s body but nothing more. And to view it as some kind of Holy Grail experience, awaiting us at the end of the Rolfing rainbow, is a rather ridiculous stretch and, furthermore, reeks of what Don Johnson so accurately described as somatic platonism. As such, it is more hindrance than help and really has no more than the most cursory application (we all want to stand up straighter) in our clients lives; hence, it would be just as well if we would just jettison the whole thing from the teaching and put it (and us) out of some misery. Even sacred cows eventually need to be done away with if they re consistently getting in the way. Rolfer 2: The Line is indeed an elegant image, but it is not mere concept. Somehow Ida Rolf clairvoyantly or intuitively understood that some kind of real and profound evolutionary growth would occur in a human being who was working to embody real and profound balance through performing two ordinarily opposite actions at the same time: totally relaxing the body (relaxation is nothing more or less than the complete surrendering of the weight of the body to gravity) while managing to remain as tall and upright as possible in a standing or sitting position. The Line, then, suggests a path of practices, or an attitude toward embodiment, that can reveal dimensions of consciousness and embodied experience that simply aren t all that available if most of the time we re still caught up in tensing our bodies, however subtly, just to keep from falling over or to defend ourselves from feeling the potency of embodied experience.... to which Rolfer 1 naturally responds: R1: Look here, Number 2, get a grip, and give me a break; you re talking gobbledygook! And, besides which, not a single one of my clients in something like the last seven years has ever come to me saying that what they really want out of Rolfing is an initiation into a mystical path. So what if what you re saying is profoundly true anyway? Is anybody listening? Is anybody even interested? IT DOESN T APPLY! R2: Oh, my dear Number 1, now you go and get a grip! I m a someone, and I m both listening and VERY interested. In fact, that s what Rolfing Structural Integration always was for me. And I get that that s what it can also be for anyone who s grappling big time with this nagging, altogether icky, and way-too-pervasive a sense of existential angst and dissatisfaction that, scratch the surface, can be found sitting right smack dab in the middle of the body-mind of most everyone on this planet. Rolfing work is about creating happier bodies, isn t it? And something starts happening to the body-mind, something very wonderful and happy-making indeed, when someone is able to find one s Line. RI: You ignorant imbecile, you! You could make me just scream! First of all, you re presupposing that something like The Line actually exists as an experience, not just as a kind of sexy concept (and a particularly pernicious and tawdry one at that because it decks itself out in such haute importance and presents itself as describing an embodied experience available to anyone when, in fact, because it s just a flipping concept, whatever it pretends to represent is available to exactly no one)! Talk about a mind fuck! Your intellectual slovenliness is going to drive me to drink (even more)! Haven t you ever heard that wishful thinking is not a cure for existential angst? R2: Dear, dear, Number 1, you are having a bad day aren t you?! But now that you ve mentioned it, it seems to me that wishful thinking has been exactly the favored remedy that most people have historically turned to as a balm for what the Buddha so accurately (and uncomfortably) described in his First Noble Truth: namely, that life is fraught with pain and unsatisfactoriness (most people finding themselves as either striving for what they don t currently have or hoping, if they find it, that it won t get lost, taken away, or destroyed, and besides which we haven t a clue where we ve come from, what we re doing here, and where we re headed, if anywhere). And, as far as remedies go, you gotta admit that wishful thinking has a whole lot of adherents really, really believing in it (and happily going to war over their particular slant on it), but frankly, when you really examine it critically... R1: (As if you ve ever examined anything critically in your life!) R2:...you come to the inescapable conclusion that it ain t all that effective to say the least. So, I agree heartily with you. Wishful thinking, once referred to as the opiate of the masses, ain t gonna get us out of this pickle that we ve been born into. And that s where playing with balance just may have a significant and very important function. Only doing something about oneself stands a prayer of helping handle the pain, or as my homeboy Rumi said (in reference to religious scriptures): You can t untie this knot by listening to fairy tales. You have to do something inside yourself. The smallest fountain inside of you Is better than a raging river outside. R1: Yeah, yeah, pretty words all right, but so what? And don t try to distract me! If I m hearing you correctly, you re actually claiming that playing with balance, Structural Integration / December

16 EXPANDING OUR PARADIGM which you evidently equate with the active embodiment of what Dr. Rolf spoke of as The Line (God! I always hated that they went and capitalized it!), can serve as a remedy or a path of practices that will have a profound effect on healing the intrinsic pain of the body-mind. Of all the ridiculous things I ve ever heard in my life, that takes the cake! I d be better off just doing drugs. R2: Well now, Number 1, that might not be such a bad idea! It worked for Shiva legend has it that Shiva would ingest a marijuana concoction called bhang and that his body would start making spontaneous movements, and that out of this surrendered activity, the bodyoriented practices of dance and yoga were brought to the planet; incidentally, share this story with any of the twenty- or thirtysomethings who ve gone into ecstatic states at raves, and their response will generally be something like: Yeah, sounds about right. And you gotta admit he s not exactly the worst role model for someone who s wanting to explore and explode open the energies and sensations of the body, and furthermore.... R1: Can we get back to the point... PUH-LEASE?! R2: Yes, of course, and thank you, friend. You know how the mind sometimes just wanders. OK. Here re the real goods: It s really all about emancipating the (literally sensation/al) feeling presence of every cell in the body. On every part of the body, down to the smallest cell, sensations can be felt to exist, and even though these sensations are unimaginably small in size and are oscillating at almost unimaginably rapid rates of vibratory frequency, they can still be distinctly felt. As a shimmer that pervades the entire body. Sometimes as ecstatic bliss. And yes, sometimes as pain that makes you want to scream out and cry. However, most of the time most of us are completely oblivious to the full range of sensations that could be felt filling the body. Now, doesn t this forfeiting of awareness strike you as truly bizarre and weird? Why don t we feel what s here to be felt? Well, when we actually start feeling sensations, it becomes apparent rather quickly why we ve blocked them out. Sure, there are lots of shimmers like soft falling rain that are nice to feel. But there s also a whole heck of a lot of pain that comes to the surface to reveal itself as well, sensation we haven t wanted to feel but, by not feeling it, we ve just gone and enshrined it instead and then covered it over under a blanket of numbness. The more we re able to feel the body, the more we re able to allow deep residues of pain (the direct result of consistent reactions be they physical, emotional, or mental) to come out of hiding. If we can continue then to just feel them and surrender to their very organic dance of unfolding, they can gradually release their intense charge, eventually settling out as sensations of spaciousness and shimmer. And this is the healing process. When we re able to feel the whole body from head to foot as a unified field phenomenon of shimmering, pulsating, vibratory, tingly tactile sensations, consciousness is radically affected. It s not just a shift in tactile presence. It dramatically alters our sense of who and what we are. Directly engaging the feeling life of our bodies, we become more fluid and gelatinous and less dry and brittle in all areas of our life. And wet s good in my book. Speaking of which excuse me, ma am, could you bring another round to the table please? R1: Yawwwwwwnnnnnnnnnn. How, pray tell, does what you ve just said have anything at all to do with your drippy infatuation with what always was and always will be a very brittle concept, the uncapitalized-thank-you-very much line? Talk about wet dreams! R2: But it s not a concept, and it has everything to do with the emancipation and liberation of sensations, dear Number 1. The alteration in consciousness that an embodiment of The Line creates is simply not available to a body that has lost touch with itself and can t experience its sensation/al, feelingful presence. Hence, such an out-of-touch body will naturally hear as bogus and make-believe the effusive reports of someone who is in touch with this feeling presence! But sensations ARE available to everyone, and here s the punch line if you ll just follow me a little further. Introducing actions of tensing and patterns of holding into the musculature of the body is the best way we know to muffle and block out the feeling awareness of the body s sensations. We hold our breath (and block our sensations). We withhold feeling certain emotions (and block our sensations). We hold back on sharing the truth and fullness of ourselves (and block our sensations). We hold onto beliefs and concepts regardless of whether they reflect what s actually going on or not (and block our sensations). We hold and brace ourselves against the pull of gravity that, in an imbalanced body, just messes with us continually and will pull us to the ground in a second flat should we ever lessen our vigilant bracing for even a single moment by actually relaxing (etcetera, etcetera, you get the idea). Relaxation is critical because only through relaxation do the underlying sensations of the part of the body being relaxed come out of hiding and make their way to our awareness as palpable, feeling sensation. Brace and hold, and we create a numbing blanket that snuffs the life out of our sensations and keeps them unfelt and suppressed. Relax, and they start popping up everywhere in our body like fireflies on a Louisiana night. By playing with The Line, by opening to the dance subtle or not of balancing, we re able to remain standing AND relax at the very same time. And once we initiate this single gesture of surrender (a real somatic puzzle if there ever was one!), a whole organic process of tactile unfolding starts to kick in. Sensations start emerging. Energies can be felt to be activated now here, now there. The body may begin to start making spontaneous movements. And sensations beget more sensations, and energetic rush reveals deeper energies, so the process is kind of like going on an archaeological dig of our body-mind down through the layers of our life. Once initiated, how does it continue? Well, if we could get out of our own way (which means not to resist anything that s happening to us, but also not to heroically try to manufacture some kind of trumped-up state that our minds, in a fit of aggrandizement, might mistakenly think is spiritual or noble or Lined or whatever), in other words, if we can continue to truly accept ourselves exactly as we are in this moment, to really feel this moment s version of embodied truth, if we can continue just to play with balance, if we can keep surrendering to every new wave of sensations which we realize is nothing but the current of the life force that flows through us and is us, if we can continue to surrender to the breath itself that wants to liberate itself from deep inside the body, then things start slowly shifting and changing and dissolving and unwinding on their own, and ever more 14 Structural Integration / December

17 EXPANDING OUR PARADIGM sensations can come flooding to the surface, and this flood is the kind that brings much needed nutrients to the flooded plain, like the land around the Nile, because the more sensations keep revealing themselves, the more we feel ourselves healed of our bodily and mental woes, and.... R1: Whoa, whoa, and did I say whoah?! So now you re suggesting (and in a sentence, no less, whose length violates all the rules of considerate conversation) that exploring the line is akin to a path of spiritual practice?! R2: Yes, exactly that. This can easily be seen in the practice of sitting meditation which, regardless of whatever technique you re focusing on as you sit, is fundamentally about exploring The Line in a seated posture. And if you can keep working with balance, breath by breath, so that your body increasingly moves into a more aligned, relaxed, and resilient condition, then the depths of the dharma teachings MUCH more easily reveal themselves. If you re sitting with a lot of tension, the breath hardly moving through the body, the body bracing itself against gravity, the awareness of your intrinsic buddha nature is going to be pretty darned clouded over. And, in fact, what you will be manifesting through this kind of bodily confusion is the consciousness that passes as normal in the world at large, which is essentially a disembodied consciousness typified by, one, very little awareness of bodily sensation and, two, a whole heck of a lot of involuntary mind chatter. And living life with a numbed-out body and a mind that is out of control just ain t my idea of a good time. Better to feel what s real, to ride the knife edge of sensations as they continue to reveal themselves (sometimes wildly pleasant, sometimes horrifically painful), to surrender to the deeply organic nature of bodily presence, to surrender to the current of the life force and the healing process of dissolving and unwinding that ever more revelation of sensations naturally initiates, to play with balance because that s how the sensations deeply, madly, and truly come out of hiding. Better to probe the goings on of the mind rather than just submit to and identify with its drivel, thinking that the yatter-yatteryatter of the mind is our true voice (it is, at the least, disconcerting that we identify ourselves so closely with this level of the mind that itself can be traced to holding in the body. How do I know that we identify with this aspect of the mind? Well, by way of explanation you don t have to go much further than realizing that we all call the speaker of this inner voice I ). Just as we turn our attention to the awareness of sensations and more and more of them come flooding forward (Just hold out your hand for a moment, palm up, Number 1. No, you idiot! Not the hand that you re holding your beer mug in! Just let yourself feel what s there to be felt. There you go.... Holy Heineken! Where did all those sensations come from?! And they re just keepin on comin!), so too can we probe the mind, to stick a virtual knuckle of intention right in the middle of the mind and make our way gently down through its many different layers and twisty corridors and familiarize ourselves with levels of mind and self that we may have never even known existed had we not probed in this way. Whether you like it or not, playing with balance has the profound ability to expose and explode open powerful energies and sensations that ordinarily are kept contained and that cannot be otherwise felt. And it can also open us to levels of consciousness that cannot be otherwise so easily accessed. I sure don t blame you for maybe not wanting to go anywhere near this stuff. The potency of the energies can be daunting. The dissolving of the consciousness that passes as normal in the world at large can be hairy. But like it or not, this is exactly the world that an exploration of The Line reveals. Furthermore, surrendering to these energies and awarenesses feels completely natural (what could be more natural than surrendering to the current of the life force?). They exist, albeit dormantly, in each and every one of us. And remember: this isn t about pumping up some kind of exotic state. It s about accepting ourselves as we are, shedding some not insignificant pain and burden in the process, and finding out who and what we are at our core. That to me seems to be a task worth pursuing. R1: Well, hoop-de-doo. I ll go broke as a Rolfer if this is how I present the work. Get real, Number 2; what you re going on and on about simply has no application to the simple increase of functionality in the world. And no one wants this great dissolve that you re waxing so effusively about. Yeah, right. I ll go and pay this Rolfer a hundred and fifty clams a session to do what? To disappear? To dissolve into nothing? I don t think so. R2: Yes, yes, Number 1! Finally, I agree with you completely. You re absolutely right: The Line is NOT about creating greater functionality in the world. The Line is about transforming embodied consciousness onto a whole different playing field. In fact, it simply isn t possible to embody The Line and hold onto the consciousness that passes as normal in the world at large at the same time. It just can t be done; and, if you do attempt to do this, you re just going to create misery for yourself and a very inauthentic sense of presence. So, if you just want the rough edges of your life smoothed out a bit, but don t want to go anywhere near this oh-so-natural and oh-so-deeply-organic process of surrendering to the sensations and forces and breath that lead to a real and profound transformation of consciousness, better stay far away from The Line. And, hey, that s pretty understandable; the entire somataphobic bias of our culture doesn t want you to go anywhere near such a transformation (I guess they d rather just have you suffer along). However, if you truly take up the practices of The Line, you just might find yourself surfing on waves of transformation that are going to start cleaning out the cobwebs in your mind while activating the tingling feeling presence of every cell in your body. But it s true: while most of us like the idea of a shimmering body, not so many of us are all that keen on dissolving our minds or, as the Sufis are so fond of saying, dying before we die. But, let me ask you this, dear Number 1: what if this notion of dying before you die is what s necessary to really live while you re alive, to really release the deep holding, pain, and suffering that you carry in your body-mind? Wouldn t you as a Rolfer want to explore that? Listen to what my homey Rumi has to say about that one: You ve suffered through so much pain But still your pain endures Because dying to your self is the master key And you haven t taken it to heart. Not until you ve passed through this death Can your suffering come to an end. And it s not just the Sufis. The Mahayana Buddhists speak about sunyata, this very open dimension of being, this feeling of very full emptiness. Dzogchen practitioners talk about it as rigpa, the natural state. Theravadin Buddhists talk about it Structural Integration / December

18 EXPANDING OUR PARADIGM as bangha, totally dissolved. The Sufis call it fana, melting away. Furthermore, we needn t be worried about our source of income drying up. People are coming to us for relief of pain of some kind or another. So, as Rolfers, our job and what a noble one it is is to simply help people come out of the pain and confusion that they re aware of at this moment. All this stuff about The Line, this dredging expedition for the really deep pains and suffering of the body-mind, is best left for people to explore on their own (which is what a path of practice is all about anyway; it s not a process of therapy whereby someone else does something to us; it s a process of personal discovery wherein we adopt certain attitudes, explore specific practices, and discover things on our own). Viewed from a more purely physiotherapeutic perspective, the individual sessions of Rolfing are ends in themselves, but viewed from the perspective of the teachings about The Line, the actual sessions of Rolfing function more as a kind of initiation process for anyone wanting to seriously explore the embodied experience of The Line through intentional practices. It would be nice, of course, if we could let interested clients know what these practices were! R1: Oh, Number 2, you just make my brain ache. R2: Good, good, Number 1, because if we can get the thinking mind out of the way, we just might stand a chance of opening to the realm of embodied experience that The Line ushers us into. Look. I honestly don t know what these very powerful energies and sensations that The Line so dramatically opens up are all about. And I certainly don t understand yet what this shift in consciousness that also so naturally starts occurring is really all about. All that I do know is that they exist and that by exploring The Line as conscious, intentional-yetsurrendered practice through things like sitting meditation and spontaneous dance (marrying impeccable mindfulness to a complete surrender to the energies and sensations of the body) anyone can tap into these energies and sensations and the shift in consciousness that comes with them. Dr. Rolf clearly predicted that something altogether evolutionary and transformational would occur for someone who was truly able to embody relatively effortless balance as they stood upright, sat down, or moved through life. Now, are you suggesting that the old girl was off her rocker?! I don t think so. Hey, she loved that rocking chair of hers! It was her favorite pulpit from which to espouse the gospel of gravity and the notion of The Line. In that heightened states of balance can affect bodies and consciousness in this altogether radical and dramatic way, doesn t it make sense for us Rolfers to pursue this, to explore it, to experiment with how playing with the next breath s possibility of balance directly affects our sensations and consciousness, to turn our bodies into our own personal laboratory experiment? R1: (Grumble, grumble; I am so not gruntled by all this.) R2: Now look, I can appreciate your disgruntlement. But, hey, it s really quite good news. Think of it: finally, a spiritual practice that embraces the sensual rather than walls it off and relegates it (our very life!) to the dumpster. I kinda like to think of this as the path of spiritual hedonism in the best sense of both those words. When you open to the senses, something magical starts happening. Add in the play of relatively effortless balance, and you ve got a practice worth writing home about. What I m suggesting here is a path of exploration for anyone who truly wants to take to heart Dr. Rolf s suggestion that somethin magical s lyin buried over in them thar hills of balance. And know that it s not about attaining some kind of perfected state of balance that you work so hard to establish and then have to maintain. Or some kind of perfected condition of consciousness or some other such nonsense. This is not about becoming perfect; it s just about becoming human. Balance and our condition of embodiment are changing every single moment of our lives, so there s nothing to attain and then maintain. What seems important to me is to just do the practices, to get out there and play with balance and surrender to whatever happens. And to do them, as much as possible, every day, as a celebration of the life force. Some days the practice can be so sweet. Other days it s confusion city. Some days the body just naturally drifts into moments of effortless upright balance. Other days the energies start jerking us around, taking us into personas and postures that don t look like they have anything at all to do with balance! So you can t impose The Line from without. You can only surrender to the energies that a moment of real letting go (and this is what playing with balance allows you to do: to truly let go) can explosively release. Playing with balance through surrendering to these energies doesn t mean that you re always gonna look balanced! Get it? These energies and sensations have an organic life of their own, and like a river with a strong current, your best bet is to just go along for the ride. That place where we can truly let go and go along for the ride is where The Line reveals itself. Hey, there, Number 1, I love you a lot. R1: I love u 2. Excuse me, ma am? Another round please? My friend and I are just getting started. Note: The first Rumi poem is from The Rubais of Rumi: Insane with Love, translations and commentary by Nevit O. Ergin and Will Johnson (Inner Traditions, 2007); the second is an unpublished translation by Will Johnson. 16 Structural Integration / December

19 EXPANDING OUR PARADIGM SourcePoint Therapy and Its Implications for Rolfing Structural Integration By Soken Paul Graf, Certified Rolfer This article draws on material presented in the May 2009 workshop An Energetic Foundation for Rolfing: A Bridge Between Dr. Rolf s Recipe and the Wisdom of Each Individual s Body, taught by Bob Schrei, Certified Advanced Rolfer, and Ray McCall, Advanced Rolfing instructor. The stated goal of the workshop was to teach SourcePoint Therapy (which was developed by Bob Schrei and his wife Donna Thomson) and to explore it as a means to accomplish the goals of Rolfing Structural Integration. The claim is that SourcePoint Therapy aligns and relates a person s physical body to the energetic blueprint that Dr. Rolf refers to in her book Structural Integration (quoted from class description in Fascial Flashes Vol. 17, No. 2). We were also promised a body-scanning technique that would enable us to locate blockages [and] discontinuities which result in global patterns of dysfunction and compensation, and which informs the questions: Where do we start [an intervention]?, Where do we go next? and When are we done? Answering these questions would enable a practitioner to effectively strategize a session or a Rolfing series, be it basic or advanced. My purpose in writing this article is to present a clinically effective way of working in the energetic taxonomy. The SourcePoint Blueprint and The Line SourcePoint Therapy theory brings with it the powerful implication that the vertical line, Dr. Rolf s line of gravity, is an actual energetic structure an energetic organ with a function as vital to our being as breathing. Rolfers talk about the Line as an indicator of order; but it is imperative to see that it is not just a concept or ideal that we superimpose in our assessment of the body. Rather, the Line is an actual energetic event with two profoundly important functions. The first is to receive information from the blueprint. The second is to distribute this information in order to right dysfunction in all of the taxonomies: structural, functional, geometric, energetic, and psychobiological. The fundamental experience upon which SourcePoint Therapy is based is that there is an energetic template or blueprint of health for the human body, a storehouse of information that guides the development of the individual. 1 Furthermore, SourcePoint Therapy works with the understanding that the physical body is not a fixed entity, and can therefore be altered even to the extent of being able to attain the highest potential for a human being when it is reconnected with its source. 2 It works with repairing the energetic boundary structure of the individual being to contain, direct and facilitate the healthy flow of energy and information, and bring structure back into alignment with the flow that is its source. 3 I propose that the Line we refer to, as Rolfers, is actually a manifestation of the blueprint in the physical realm an energetic structure with power to both integrate and organize the human being. The extent to which the Line is freed from obstacles is the extent to which it is able to transmit energy and information that connects the body with its source. This connection enables the body to manifest a higher level of order, which allows it to function better, ideally attaining to ever-higher levels of order and function. This concept is not unique to structural integrators; for example, in visceral manipulation, if liver mobility is restored and the organ is freed to traverse its axis of movement, then the whole person approaches a higher level of order in gravity, and is likely to manifest more functionally. In SourcePoint Therapy, there is not just one singular Line responsible for ordering the entire body. Rather, there are a number of geometric structures in the energetic field, including palintonic lines, each of which has a different function and contributes to the health of the body as a whole. Some of the palintonic lines that we are most familiar with are those that run through the arms and legs, down the hands and feet, through the tips of the fingers and toes. Other geometric structures that Rolfers are familiar with are the triangular shape of the sacrum and the axis around which the sacrum flexes and extends. SourcePoint Therapy takes these structures as energetic configurations with a function: for example, it regards the structure of the sacrum as that which connects the physical body to the vital life force energy of the earth plane, and the history of evolution, thereby assisting the human being in its next evolutionary step to move beyond survival issues as [the] primary focus [of life]. 4 It is beyond the scope of this paper to explain all of the geometric structures that are addressed by SourcePoint Therapy. Nevertheless, serious consideration of such structures, their functions and possible anatomical correlates add a rich dimension to what we call the geometric taxonomy. SourcePoint Therapy s ability to explain energetic structures in the body and how to treat them allows us to address specific obstacles in the energy field as clearly as we address structural issues in bones, muscles, ligaments, organs, and joints. By virtue of its central tenet that the body is an energetic expression of the blueprint in the physical realm SourcePoint Therapy puts us in a better position to understand how the body aligns itself in gravity, how this change in patterns can happen, and why it happens as a result of Rolfing Structural Integration. The attempt to differentiate energetic palintonic lines and structures from disorganized flesh is also why a SourcePoint session can look like typical structural integration. To free these lines can require deep contact with Structural Integration / December

20 EXPANDING OUR PARADIGM the structure. As Jan Sultan recently stated in a workshop, Rolfing is an organized stressor, and as such it can activate latent potentials that allow a person to break out of old patterns and establish new ones. 5 What is striking to note, as a Rolfer, is that if we work with a structure to invoke its axis or the Line, the structure begins to align itself. This phenomenon suggests that as energetic lines are differentiated from disorganized structure the blueprint can more clearly transmit information to the body. By receiving blueprint information, the body attains higher order, not just structurally, but throughout all of the taxonomies. Because they function to transmit blueprint information to the body, and because blueprint information addresses the organism s complete health, as palintonic lines become unencumbered, so too does the person. With the idea of palintonic lines as manifestations of the blueprint in the body, and the understanding that these lines function to transmit information that benefits the whole person, SourcePoint Therapy explains why Rolfing Structural Integration as structural work is also a radical path for personal transformation. Integration Comes from Connecting to the Blueprint From the standpoint of SourcePoint Therapy, working with the body is working with energy even if we are working deep in the tissue to mobilize the interosseous membrane. Rolfing Structural Integration as we know it is energy work. It is contact with energy that has taken the form of flesh that is organized by information that it receives from the blueprint. The extent to which the flow of information from the blueprint to the body is hampered is the extent to which we fall away from order. Perhaps this was Dr. Rolf s understanding when she wrote that a joyous radiance of health is attained only as the body conforms more nearly to its inherent pattern. This pattern, this form, this Platonic Idea, is the blueprint for structure. 6 The therapeutic vision of Dr. Rolf and SourcePoint Therapy is extremely optimistic. Both hold that we are profoundly resilient and capable of enormous growth. Dr. Rolf humbly stated this vision when she wrote: Is balancing actually the placing of the body of flesh upon an energy pattern that activates it? The pattern of this fine energy would not be as easily disrupted and might well survive, relatively intact, traumatic episodes that distort the flesh. 7 My claim is that as Rolfers whether through deep manipulation at the level of the ligaments, hands-off energy work, craniosacral, neural, or visceral work, movement work or Somatic Experiencing we are bringing order through all the taxonomies by connecting them to the blueprint. To understand how the blueprint is capable of such profound integration, it is important to remember that the blueprint transmits both energy and information from the source of life to the living organism. Blueprint information is transmitted through chi, the breath of life, the long tide, mid-tide, or any number of phenomena depending on the modality. To underscore the importance of this information and its relevance to how and why SourcePoint Therapy works in the way that it does, we can refer to this quote from Science and the Akashic Field by Ervin Laszlo: The Diamond Points courtesy of Robert Schrei 18 Structural Integration / December

21 EXPANDING OUR PARADIGM It is information information as a real and effective factor setting the parameters of the universe at its birth, and thereafter governing the evolution of its basic elements into complex systems.... Most of us think of information as data or what a person knows. But... the great physicist David Bohm called it information, meaning a process that actually forms the recipient. This is the concept we shall adopt here.... Information is not a human artifact, not something we produce by writing, calculating, speaking, and messaging. As ancient sages knew, and as scientists are now rediscovering, information is present in the world independent of human volition and action and is a decisive factor in the evolution of the things that furnish the real world.8 Laszlo s statement suggests that Rolfing Structural Integration is effective because as Rolfers we are restoring the body s access to information that it needs for health. Three Basic Methods in SourcePoint Therapy SourcePoint Therapy contains simple and effective assessment tools and treatment techniques that help to diagnose a body s current state of health or order while bringing about a greater flow of information between the body and its blueprint. I will provide a sketch of three basic methods: Setting the Diamond Points, Scanning for Blockages, and Finding the Entry Point. Setting the Diamond Points In SourcePoint Therapy there is a focus on ten primary points in the human energy field. The first four points, which are sometimes referred to as the Diamond Points, are the most commonly used for connecting the blueprint to the client s body. The first point is located approximately one to two feet from the right lateral surface of the body at the level of the navel. It connects the organism to the information of the unaltered human body, the blueprint of health. It is called the Source Point. The second point is located on the midline, below the feet. It grounds the information contained in the blueprint in the physical body, and also grounds the client s consciousness in that information. It is called the Grounding Point. The third point is located directly opposite to the first point, off the left side of the body at the level of the navel. It activates the information of health that the first two points connect to and ground in the body. It is called the Activation Point. The fourth point is located on the midline above the crown of the head, at the polar opposite of the Grounding Point. Activating this point assists the physical body and its energy system to realign more deeply with the information contained in the blueprint. It is called the Transformation Point. Setting these four points clears the energetic and informational fields and allows for a more clear transmission of information from the client s body to the practitioner. For example, the craniosacral rhythm might track more clearly, fascial strains The Diamond Points courtesy of Robert Schrei Structural Integration / December

22 EXPANDING OUR PARADIGM and vectors become more pronounced, and energetic blockages show up more distinctly for assessment. Setting the Diamond Points also helps the client feel that he is being held within a clear, safe, therapeutic field. It was noted in our workshop that asking permission before treating a client can have profound therapeutic effects, particularly with clients who have been physically or sexually violated. Setting the Diamond Points at the beginning and the end of each intervention not only initiates communication between the body and its source, it also establishes a clear therapeutic framework that fosters enough trust that a client s issues present themselves more acutely. Scanning for Blockages Once the Diamond Points are set, we can proceed to scan for blockages. This scan is carried out with the intention of locating the primary blockage in the energy field that inhibits communication with the blueprint. The scan simply involves running your hand over the client s energy field at a gentle pace until a density is encountered. Sometimes a density is so pronounced that it will be impossible to move your hand through it. This is the primary blockage, and working to relieve or eliminate it, as learned in class, has profound positive effects on the body s health and order. Finding the Entry Point Once the primary blockage is located, but not addressed, we move to the third technique finding the entry point. This is also accomplished by running the hand over the energy field at a gentle pace, but here we use a slightly different hand position. Also, the intention of the scan is to determine where the body would like us to make initial contact. One feels the Entry Point as an intense tingling in the fingers, which lessens as your hand moves away. Once you have found this point, you make your initial contact. My experience with this method is that the client s body finds this contact profoundly reassuring. Lately, I have had clients get off of the table to see what, if any, changes have occurred as a result of just this contact. So far, in every case, the change has been profound. From this point, we proceed as we would in a typical Rolfing session, using all of the technical skill and anatomical knowledge that we can muster, with the intention of reconnecting the body with the blueprint. Thus, the question What do I do first? is answered by our scan for the entry point. And our second question, What do I do next?, is answered in much the same way as we have always answered it by assessing the body through the taxonomies, assessing movement and anatomical symmetry, and determining where and how the body is compensating for not being able to find vertical in gravity. But now, at the very least, the answer is strongly informed by knowing where the primary blockage resides. The last question, When am I done?, is answered when the practitioner perceives that the body has had enough, which is a perception that one learns in the workshop. In my experience, any work that takes place to achieve a goal that I have set for the session is not effective if it is performed after the body has said, Thank you, I m done now. Experiences with SourcePoint Therapy What follows are two accounts of SourcePoint Therapy, both from the abovementioned workshop. The first is my own experience as a model for the teacher, the second that of a woman I will call Ms. Y. Case Report 1 While in class, I volunteered to receive work from instructor Bob Schrei so that he could demonstrate how to use information gathered through basic SourcePoint Therapy diagnostics during a Rolfing session. Bob immediately found a block in my energetic field above the upper attachment of my left biceps. This was not surprising, as I had been suffering from chronic elbow tendonitis for three months. As treatment, Schrei placed his elbow onto the attachment and proceeded to shift most of his 190 pounds onto my arm. Just when I could bear it no longer, he stopped. My elbow immediately felt better and the energetic block in my upper biceps was gone. Schrei then shifted his attention to a block in my energetic field over my diaphragm. I knew he had discovered something associated with my emotional body. The content felt related to recent work with my somatic physiotherapist and was also connected to an extremely physically disruptive event I had been exposed to six months prior. Schrei acknowledged the finding and its emotional component. He pulled up a chair, sat down and lightly placed one hand over my diaphragm. After becoming comfortable with this new style of touch, I spent the next few minutes discharging with large breaths and the occasional full-body shake. However, what made the intervention transformational was that as my system vented, Bob s contact within the context of SourcePoint Therapy gave me the information I needed to reorganize around my Line. The sensation was that of more fully integrating the recent therapy while also healing from the physical disruption that I had experienced months ago. When the mini-session was over, I stood taller and walked with more ease and softness. But more importantly, I had expanded into my field and experienced a heightened sense of coherence both physically and emotionally. This sense of wholeness was something that I had never felt before and I continue to embody to this day. Case Report 2 (This report is in the participant s own words.) I entered the Spring 2009 SourcePoint Therapy training with a deviated septum from an eight-year-old snowmobile accident and a traumatized left leg from a ski crash the previous spring. One session during the SourcePoint training unraveled much of the residue from these injuries and invited me to experience my body with a new sense of congruence. In this particular session my practitioner spent the majority of our time (about twenty-five minutes) doing off-the-body SourcePoint assessment work. He discovered the entry point at my left shoulder and settled in to holding the shoulder joint with what I can best describe as a cranial touch. After a few minutes, my entire being connected to the input. What I remember most is the radiant quality of my breath, the length of my breath, and the diffusion of my breath gradually up my cervical spine leading to a cascade of spatial awareness up the posterior line of my cranium and up the sagittal suture. The pair of receptive hands remained on my left shoulder as they kindly 20 Structural Integration / December

23 EXPANDING OUR PARADIGM witnessed the progression to its completion. Once off the table, I saw through new eyes and immediately noticed that a pattern of holding around T1-T2 had softened. The next day, the hours passed and I watched a brilliant evolution. First, I noticed that the thawing of my thoracic spine permitted my lumbar spine to settle as well. As I stood, I experienced a new sense of depth in my visceral space as opposed to a feeling of dumping forward after twenty-eight years living in an anteriorly shifted pelvis. The next shift occurred an hour later when I was driving. In the driver s seat, an anterior pinning of my sacrum gave way and the length of the inner line of my left leg unraveled from my lesser trochanter to my medial malleolus, across my medial arch. Towards the end of the day, I experienced the liberation of my right nostril as my deviated septum gave way and I resided in the luminosity of my breath for the first time in almost a decade. Conclusion One of my goals in writing this article has been to describe SourcePoint Therapy as a clinically effective way of working in the energetic taxonomy. To this end I have introduced assessments and techniques that enable one to identify and address fixations on an energetic level. I had also hoped to explore concepts that allow for a coherent discussion about what it means to work in the energetic taxonomy; in particular, that the Line that we speak of in assessments as an indicator of order is an actual energetic organ that functions to provide the body with blueprint information. Hopefully I have disarmed the mistaken notion that so called energy work is necessarily light and superficial. On the contrary, energy work involves the full spectrum of touch. In conclusion, I believe that SourcePoint Therapy finally puts Rolfers in a position to embrace the energetic taxonomy for what it has always been a fundamental part of structural integration. With SourcePoint Therapy we can begin to map out large parts of previously obscure territory, and employ a generous range of techniques that profoundly increase the effectiveness of our work. Endnotes 1. Schrei, Bob, SourcePoint Therapy Workshop Manual, Module , pg Ibid., pg Ibid., pg Schrei, Bob, SourcePoint Therapy Workshop Manual, Module , pg Notes from Jan Sultan workshop How the Cranium and the Pelvis Are Unified through the Axial Complex and the Pre- Vertebral Visceral Tube, June 18-21, 2009, Herndon, VA. 6. Rolf, Ida P., Rolfing: The Integration of Human Structures. Santa Monica, CA: Dennis-Landman, 1977, pg Ibid., pg Laszlo, Ervin, Science and the Akashic Field: An Integral Theory of Everything, 2nd edition. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 2007, pg Structural Integration / December

24 EXPANDING OUR PARADIGM Dimensional Touch Engaging the Fabric of Wholeness By Carol Agneessens, M.S., Certified Advanced Rolfer The greatest sense in our body is our touch sense. It is probably the chief sense in the processes of sleeping and waking; it gives us our knowledge of depth or thickness and form; we feel, we love and hate, are touchy and are touched, through the touch corpuscles of our skin. J. Lionel Tayler 1 The Alchemy of Touch: An Introduction Touch the miracle elixir since the beginning of time! Touch engages the essence of human potential. Over the centuries, compassionate touch has been used as a poultice for the ailing, as the silent bridge between living and dying, for birthing and heartbreak, for warfare and peace. Through physical touch, we come into relationship and contact with another, with our environment, and with the possibility of a transformational exchange. I imagine the goddesses imparting their wisdom of the twinning of heart and hand through the dreams of Asclepius, one of the earliest Greek healers renowned for his often mystical abilities. Even as we hold an awareness of coming into contact with another, touch is happening across the expanse of space. The beneficial effects of touch have been confirmed through observation and research. Given consistent, kind and soothing contact, infants flourish. These studies highlight the findings of Harry Harlow and his work with rhesus monkeys at his University of Wisconsin lab. Consistent and gentle contact promotes social and cognitive development. A failure to thrive observed among isolation-reared monkeys, as well as adults exhibiting pathological violence, can be traced to sparsely given or non-existent contact. Amazingly, Harlow s monkeys survived even if their nurturing other was in the form of a rug-covered, wire mannequin. Ashely Montague, author of the groundbreaking book Touching: The Human Significance of the Skin, enlightened Western culture about the essential life-sustaining and nourishing physiology of touch. Asclepius, Harlow, Montague, and others realized the fundamental need to touch and be touched. Groundbreaking research in neuroscience is radically shifting our understanding of the dynamics of the therapeutic relationship. All of this vitally novel information expands the fundamentals of therapeutic touch. Touch is a perceptual gestalt. It is an invitation to experience a two-way relationship. The practitioner cultivates an awareness of self as he comes into relationship with a client. This subjective exchange between the practitioner and the client challenges the belief that the practitioner is the doer or fixer who remains untouched in the process, and the feedback loop created between them is a form of communication. This two-way exchange requires that the therapist stay connected with himself even as he opens to the client s system. Perceptual acuity is heightened by a receptive state of mind. The intertwining of the senses (synesthesia) allows the practitioner to see-feel and be guided to the quality and depth of contact necessary for this individual at this particular time. The diversity of my sensory systems, and their spontaneous convergence in the things that I encounter, ensures this inter-penetration or interweaving between my body and other bodies this magical participation that permits me, at times to feel what others feel. The gestures of another being, the rhythm of its voice, and the stiffness or bounce in its spine, all gradually draw my senses into a unique relation with one another, into a coherent, if shifting, organization. And the more I linger with this other entity, the more coherent the relation becomes, and hence the more completely I find myself face-toface with another intelligence, another center of experience. David Abram 2 The aware practitioner opens to contact as a two-way sensory exchange which is not a merging. This potential for exchange offers a nonverbal yet profound way of coming into relationship with another in a transformational and therapeutic context. This article explores the perceptual and neurobiological underpinnings of a receptive, listening, and omnidimensional touch and offers somatic explorations designed to deepen this inquiry. There is but one temple in the universe, and that is the Body of Man. Nothing is holier than that high form. Bending before man is a reverence done to this Revelation in the Flesh. We touch heaven when we lay our hands on a human body. Novalis 3 To Touch and Be Touched Touch is called the mother of all senses. 4 Before the eyes see or ears hear, touch stirs the embryo. Implantation nestles the fertilized egg into a receptive uterine wall continuing its process of growth and differentiation. From the very beginning, the uterine lacunae nourish the embryonic seed. Within three weeks time, the primitive node ignites a midline through vibrating protoplasm traversing toward the future brain. Three embryonic 5 germ layers (ectoderm, endoderm, and mesoderm) unfold carrying the informative mapping, out of which all function and form arises. The outermost layer of the embryo is the skin, which is the largest sensory organ. This tactile system is the earliest function in all living things. Our skin, as the caparison of flesh, is intimately connected to the brain and its nervous system trailings. In fact, the 22 Structural Integration / December

25 EXPANDING OUR PARADIGM nervous system, brain, and skin arise from the same germ layer: the ectoderm. The ectoderm covers the general surface of the embryonic body and is the seeding ground for hair, teeth, nails, and the sense organs of smell, taste, hearing, vision and touch. The earlier a function develops, the more fundamental it is likely to be within the organism. As the science of embryology and preand perinatal psychology integrate with neuroscience, an understanding of the practitioner-client dynamic emerges as key in the therapeutic relationship. Central to this relationship dynamic is the kinesthetic awareness that as we touch another, we are also touched by the other. Through the complex neural circuitry inherent in a therapeutic context, transformation of both practitioner and client is possible. In other words, my subjective state as practitioner guides my work. In an empathic exchange, the feeling-sense that flows through me informs me of the state of the individual I am working with. It is literally impossible to keep the other out. I am touched as I touch. Daniel Siegel, M.D., author and neuroscience researcher, describes the importance of contingent communication. Contingent communication between infant and primary caregiver fulfills the universal need to have our signals perceived by another and responded to in a meaningful way. 6 However, our need for meaningful contact does not stop at infancy or childhood. Take a moment to consider that in order to make contact that is meaningful to a client s system, a practitioner opens herself to receiving the nonverbal somatic signals from her client. As the practitioner listens through her hands and heart to this somatic communication, her touch informs the client s system that he/she is truly being listened to. Historically, touch is considered to be one directional I touch you and you feel better. Contacting with awareness is a two-way communication whether it is through words or through the receptive hearing of the heart within our hands. We are well enough aware that some skill, some ability, usually predominates in the character of each human being. This leads necessarily to one-sided thinking. Since man knows the world only through himself, and thus has the naïve arrogance to believe that the world is constructed by him and for his sake, it follows that he puts his special skills in the foreground, while seeking to reject those he lacks, to banish them from his totality. As a correction, he needs to develop all the manifestations of human character sensuality and reason, imagination and common sense into a coherent whole, no matter which quality predominates in him. If he fails to do so, he will labor under painful limitations, without ever understanding why he has so many stubborn enemies, why even he meets himself as an enemy. Goethe 7 The Embryonic Connection: Heart, Hands, and Brain Through the mysterious unfolding of the embryo, arm buds emerge by day twentyfour. 8 The flippers initially surround the developing embryonic heart, like guardian protectors of a temple. The limb buds emerge from a primordial and fertile ground just lateral to the developing heart. Curiously, the developing brain is also growing and expanding nearby. (Keep in mind that we are speaking of the dynamic growth of something roughly the size of a garden pea.) Ectoderm, the precursor of nerve tissue, and mesoderm, the precursor of heart, blood, and bone, grow the embryonic limb buds. Eventually these buds differentiate into fingers, hands, arm bones, tissues, Perceptual Inquiry: The Heart Within Your Hand and joints with remarkable sensory potential and nervous tissue refinement. The circulatory system, with its miles of vessels, weaves through the arms like nourishing roots transporting blood-rich oxygen or removing waste. As these vessels flow through embryonic arms, a bridling effect occurs. The rapidly enlarging brain pulls on the vessels below. Consequently, the reigning-in of the slower growing circulatory system forms the elbow joint within the embryonic arm. Together, heart, hand, and brain form a collaborative potential capable of perceiving the subtleties of the intelligence we touch. As these portals of communication open, listening to and receiving the informational flow of the body, the edges of perceptual knowing expand. By cultivating the sensory experience of the heart within my hand or the vision within my touch, one broadens the vocabulary that is spoken between oneself and another. The informational flow transmitted by patterns, images, textures, stillness, and movement inform and expand this nonverbal conversation between self and other. The science of embryology and the neurobiology of relationship inform our ability to listen and respond to the information streaming from the intelligent systems of our clients. With this embryological development in mind, try Perceptual Inquiry: The Heart Within Your Hand. Try this exercise. With a partner, sit comfortably side by side. Take a baseline read by contacting your partner s thigh in a familiar way, perhaps with the mindset of a one-way exchange or in preparation to do work. Now, take your hand away and spend a moment sensing your heart within the cellular makeup of your hand before once again placing your hand on your partner s thigh. Next, invite the huge electromagnetic fi eld of your heart 9 to become a feeling-sense within your own kinesphere. Enjoy the body sense of this fi eld expanding through the room, allow a feeling sense of your hands to be the intelligent antennae of your expansive heart fi eld. Take time to share with your partner sensations, perceptions, images, intuitions, etc. that may have been catalyzed by this exploration. Structural Integration / December

26 EXPANDING OUR PARADIGM The Art of Dialogue Perceptual Inquiry: The Art of Coming into Relationship Have your partner stand across from you, at least ten to fi fteen feet away. Then, hold a thought about her as you walk toward her. When does your partner sense you entering into her system? Have your partner describe her response. Now begin again and take a moment to settle within yourself and sense your back and the space behind you. Settle into a felt sensation of your own back support. Notice any judgments that arise; just notice them and, without attempting to eliminate the judgment, name that impulse. Now begin to move toward your friend. What is your experience? What is her experience? Recall a time when you felt listened to by a friend. What were the qualities of that conversation? Did the feeling-sense of yourself, your situation, or your friend shift as you experienced yourself being heard? Neuroscience research informs us that infants thrive when their communication is understood and responded to in an appropriate manner. 10 Unfortunately, it is rare that we experience being heard by someone who is not judging, interpreting, intending, wanting to change something, or busy doing any number of activities while listening to us. It is rare that our words, the tonal quality of our voice, and the feeling sense of our expression are received in their fullest. When we come into touch-contact with the intention of hearing an individual, our hands transmit a different quality of engagement. This is communication. It is dialogue as real, contact-full and receptive as any verbal exchange. Touch is dialogue between Perceptual Inquiry: Cultivating a Receptive Touch With a partner, sit comfortably side by side. There are four parts to this inquiry. Feel free to share your experiences after each part. 1. Place one hand on your partner s thigh with a fi rm and directive contact. Evaluate the texture or quality of your partner s thigh muscle. After a minute or two, take your hand away. 2. With the intention of not doing or evaluating, but just making contact, place the palmer surface of your hand again on your partner s thigh. Give yourself the time to settle and notice the felt-sense of coming into contact with your partner, sense the all of her and not just the site you are touching. Allow more of your attention to be with the back of your hand, not only with the palmar contact. Take time to settle into the sensation of this contact. Each time you feel yourself pulled to the palmer surface of your hand, sense the back of your hand. 3. Perceive the back of your hand extending toward the walls of your room, while sensing your feet on the fl oor; expand a sense of your kinesphere to include your back and/or the space behind you. Establish a connection with a tree, animal, or something alive in nature outside of the room. Let the back surface of your hand be in contact with that place, element, plant, or animal. Cultivating a feeling-sense of this connection is essential. Be sure to cultivate a body sense of this connection to nature around you. You are embedded in the space. This is not a concept but an alive and dynamic reality. 4. Notice if it s easier to register feedback from your partner s system when the palm surface of your intention is not crowding her and when there is literally more space for her to move or express into. Let your hand be imprinted by her system. What anatomical structures, images, physical sensations, or information from the client s system inform your hand and your knowing? 24 Structural Integration / December

27 EXPANDING OUR PARADIGM practitioner and client in which the feltsense of welcoming receptivity is the baseline of communication. Between , David Bohm, a leading quantum physicist and thinker, wrote about the impact of true dialogue. With a little modification, we can take his description of suspension and apply it to a practitioner s awareness of coming into contact, even before physical touch is made. Even the movement toward making contact is a form of touch and elicits responsiveness in both practitioner and client. This is touch and stirs the neuroreceptors below conscious awareness. Suspension is a pause from thought, impulses, judgments, etc. and lies at the heart of Bohm s discourses on the dynamic of dialogue. He writes that suspension is not easily grasped because it is both unfamiliar and subtle. 11 Our brains are designed to make judgment, discernments, discriminating choices, etc. It is not that this activity ceases; it is just that we begin to be mindful of that neurological tendency and suspend engagement with it in a moment(s) in time. Now explore relationship through Perceptual Inquiry: The Art of Coming into Relationship. Reciprocal Touch How does the client-practitioner dynamic shift if I allow myself to be touched by the individual I am touching? What happens to your sense-abilities if you open to the inherent intelligence of a living dynamic system? Habitual patterns of working, thinking, and perceiving chain us to familiar guideposts. Sense-uality dulls and your perceiving kinesphere shrinks. Suddenly a dynamic system becomes one that is thick, dense and seemingly unresponsive. If you are able to suspend your agenda (even for ten minutes) and allow yourself the time to settle with the intention of coming into a reciprocal contact with another, a doorway of potential opens. Taking the necessary time to come into relationship with another through touch delivers a qualitatively different contact and relational dynamic. Explore this through Perceptual Inquiry: Cultivating a Receptive Touch. Perceptual Inquiry: Omnidimensional Touch Sit beside your partner as he lies supine on a comfortable table. Take the time you need to settle into relationship with your partner, waiting for a horizontal-like stillness to arise. You might imagine the ocean on a calm day. When you are moved to make contact, place one hand beneath your partner s knee, and the other beneath the shoulder. Relax the backs of your hands into the table and let them sense the sheet they are resting into. You are not looking or palpating for anything. You are waiting for your contact to be received. It may take a little time for your partner s system to begin to respond. Allow the back of your hand to yield into the support of the table and energetically extend toward the fl oor or even beneath the fl oor. Allow your hand to be more than bones and tissues. Expand the dimension of your hand beyond your skin. Your hand is more than anatomy. It is a sensing, dynamic, and integrated organ of perception. You might notice that your fi ngers begin to extend beyond their tips. The kinesthetic sense may be that your hands are contacting surfaces and spaces far from where you could physically touch. Just notice this happening without trying to control, change, enlarge or alter in anyway what is beginning to move through your hands. When this touch dynamic appears, it arises of its own volition. It cannot be willed or directed. You might notice that your hands automatically begin to perceive the whole of the individual. It is as if the client s entire system is being held in the expanse of your hands. Notice the quality of contact. You might begin to notice a quality of stillness permeating the room as the spaciousness within your hands touches not only your partner but an expanse of the matrix you are both held within. Touching the Matrix: Automatic Shifting What does it take to be shaken out of the ruts of ordinary perception? 12 How do we open to a spacious contact, touching the whole rather than a part? How can we cultivate our touch to perceive the whole and simultaneously listen to the specific? How do we cultivate our touch to receive contact rather than only give input? See what answers come through doing the exercise Perceptual Inquiry: Omnidimensional Touch. A Summary Sensing the dimensionality and complexity of living systems requires that the practitioner get out of her own way. Our hands and our bodies interface with complex, self-organizing and intelligent systems in every session. We glimpse this inherent intelligence when we invite receptive and responsive touch. Think of your body as an activity of perceiving. As I cultivate a perceptual attitude of receptivity, I am touched by the world and individuals I come into relationship with. If I can learn to patiently listen first, instead of imposing an idea (true or not) about what I might Structural Integration / December

28 EXPANDING OUR PARADIGM imagine the other s system needs, I might be able to hear-see-feel the nonverbal communications his body intelligence speaks. My perceptual body can begin to understand the subtle voice of the world and individuals around me. If I can offer the spaciousness of my touch and the stillness of presence, the health and wholeness of a client s system begins to arise. It is then that I touch the implicit drive in all living nature to actualize. This quality of listening cannot be willed; it can only be welcomed when a shift into dialogue arises in the session. A guiding parameter would be that you meet your client with receptivity and openness, allowing for this kind of connection to emerge. Another guiding kinesthetic parameter is that of settling deeply into the support of your body, pelvis, legs, and feet, thereby inviting the sensate experience of ground to meet you. Sit with the supporting attitude of your perceptual body a soft and wide vision, an orientation through your hearing or smell to the space of your room, and your breath easy and relaxed. The potential is to sense, touch, and perceive the depth of the interconnecting continuum of life emerging from absolute nothingness to the arising animation in the density of matter. This is a transformational key to healing for both practitioner and client. We are embedded in a matrix of wholeness. We are embedded in our environment. We are in relationship to all that surrounds us. Cultivating a receptive perceptual attitude challenges the beliefs that have structured our worldviews about health, wholeness and healing. The finest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. He who does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer feel amazement, is as good as dead. Albert Einstein 13 The multidimensional nature of the human body is ever unfolding before us, with all life forms in intelligent, self-organizing, and self-sustaining patterns of expression. Each life form, ignited at conception, traverses through this continuum in wholeness. Unleashed from the tethered beliefs about what a body is and is not, these portals of perception offer the potential of expanding the dimensions of our own awareness, embodiment, and wisdom every time we touch and allow ourselves to be touched. Endnotes 1. Tayler, J. Lionel, The Stages of Human Life. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1921, pg Abram, David, The Spell of the Sensuous. New York: Vintage Books, 1996, pg Novalis, 1771, quoted in Thomas Carlyle s Miscellaneous Essays, Vol. II. London: Chapman and Hall Limited, Montagu, Ashley, Touching: The Human Significance of the Skin. New York: Harper & Rowe, Embryo refers to the first eight weeks after conception. 6. Seigel, Daniel, M.D., The Neurobiology of We, Disc 1. Sounds True Audio Learning Course, Goethe quoted in Stephen H. Buhner s The Secret Teachings of Plants. Rochester, VT: Bear & Co., 2004, pg Larsen, William J., Human Embryology, 2nd edition. New York: Churchill-Livingstone, 1997, pg Buhner, Stephen H., The Heart as an Organ of Perception. Spirituality and Health, March/April 2006, pp [ The EMF of the heart is 5000 times greater than the brain s and can be detected by sensitive scientific instruments up to 10 away. (pg. 40)] 10. Seigel, op cit. 11. Bohm, David, Why Dialogue?, pg. 5 in David Bohm, Donald Factor, and Peter Garrett s address Dialogue: A Proposal, Bohm Dialogue or Bohmian Dialogue aims to allow participants to examine their preconceptions, prejudices, and patterns of thought. Bohm Dialogue was developed by Bohm, Factor and Garrett starting in 1983, with Bohm publishing a series of papers between 1985 and Huxley, Aldous, The Doors of Perception. New York: Harper and Row, To be shaken out of the ruts of ordinary perception, to be shown for a few timeless hours the outer and inner world, not as they appear to an animal obsessed with survival or to a human being obsessed with words and notions, but as they are apprehended, directly and unconditionally, by Mind at Large this is an experience of inestimable value to everyone and especially to the intellectual. 13. Einstein, Albert, taken from a greeting card entitled Silbury Hill. Phenomenal Card Company, July Structural Integration / December

29 EXPANDING OUR PARADIGM Embodiment and Grace By Lael Katharine Keen, Certified Advanced Rolfer, Rolfing Instructor, Rolf Movement Instructor What is Embodiment? When we think about our work with our Rolfing clients, we think not only about helping them to achieve alignment, but also about helping them to achieve embodiment of the Rolfing process. What is embodiment of Rolfing Structural Integration? What does it look like? What does it feel like? How do we recognize that it has happened? Most Rolfers can define a certain physical sensation that they refer to as the Line. It may include (but is not limited to) such sensations as a quality of lift through the crown of the head and grounding through the feet, and a sense of lightness and connectedness throughout the whole body. Most Rolfers probably also have some particular markers that they look for in their client s movement and expression that tell them that the client not only looks more aligned but is taking home a new quality of movement and being. These indications are what tell us that the client has experienced the work in a way that will truly change her life. Embodiment is what happens when the client owns the work, lives and breathes the change. Embodiment is empowerment. Embodiment is what takes the client the next step forward in her own development and helps her to know that the changes she experienced during her Rolfing process truly belong to her and are not some magic owned by her Rolfer. What are some of the hallmarks that we Rolfers look for to tell us that our client is bringing the the Line into her movement and her life? The list that follows contains some elements of common sense and others that are more technical. It speaks of embodiment in a general way, and it speaks of embodiment in ways that are more specific to a Rolfer s vision. It is far from a complete list, but hopefully it articulates some of the indicators that help us to see what may be happening with our client. Presence One of the simplest ways to think of embodiment is that it has to do with presence, and presence has to do with being at home in the body. The person who is at home in her body is able to register and sense the continuously changing pattern of body sensations and respond appropriately to the information that these sensations give. Tight shoulders from spending too long at the computer cue her to stop and rest before she gives herself a repetitive stress injury. A funny, strained feeling in the back may let her know that she is lifting that heavy potted plant in a way that may injure her, and allows her to find another way that may be more secure for her back. Sensation in the viscera fuels her intuition, her gut feeling about someone in her life, or is responsible for a sense of well-being that comes from being coherent [this is used as in physics] with the deepest layer of herself. Some of our clients come to us with an already well-developed sense of their bodies, while others may live high in the control tower of the head and notice their bodies only rarely. Wherever the client is when she comes to us for Rolfing sessions, we are in an excellent position to help her take the next step towards becoming more present and alive in her body. Palintonicity Embodiment has an equal sense of lift and ground: most people have a preference for orienting to space and what is around them, or to ground in their own internal world. The practitioner may see this in the client s posture and movement, or by asking oneself the simple question, Is this a person who has difficulty finding the ground, or difficulty getting up out of the ground? Rolfing work usually doesn t change the client s first preference, but it does help the client achieve more balance. In the best of all worlds, we see that the client has both a sense of reaching the ground through her feet and a sense of lightness through the top of her head. In her movement she carries the potential for both the gestures of pushing (for which you need grounding) and reaching (for which you need to orient to space and the other). Two-wayLengthening in Pre-Movement In the moment when the client s body adjusts to prepare for the movement that she will make, we hope to see lengthening in the axial complex (spine and cranium). Thus, movement initiates with a quality of lengthening instead of a quality of shortening. We see this bi-directionality in all segments of the body as the client prepares to move. We see the soles of the Structural Integration / December

30 EXPANDING OUR PARADIGM feet sink into the floor at the same time that the trunk lifts off the hip joint, and we see the palms of the hands open to the object that they reach out to touch at the same time that there is stability in the shoulder girdle. 1 Contralateral Movement Contralateral movement is something that emerges when both the client s capacity for orientation and her physical structure are balanced. Contralateral movement that arises spontaneously is very different than contralateral movement that is produced by a neocortical idea of what good movement looks like. When contralaterality arises spontaneously, we see it manifesting at different levels: in the spine, the lordotic and kyphotic curves counter-rotate to each other, and each vertebra shows its own individual, differentiated movement; in the shoulder girdle, it shows up in the sliding of the scapulae over the ribs and the responsive capacity of the whole shoulder girdle as it sits on the rib cage; in the pelvis, we see that each side of the pelvis has its own movement, differentiated from the other side; and in the limbs, we see contralateral swinging of the arms and legs. 2 Responsiveness, Lightness, and Fluidity throughout the Body The fascial web has the consistency and coherency of a spider s web. It responds as a whole to all our movements. Quiet spots places movement is not able to flow through often indicate areas of trauma and holding. 3 Dynamic Balance Balance, in a truly balanced body, is not a static event but a constant, fluid dance in which the client does not hold herself up against gravity, but rather flirts with it, first to one side, then to the other. Holding appears where balance has been lost. 4 Grace Grace is a subjective value. It can t be measured on an EMG or translated into anatomy and numbers. It shows itself by a sense of pleasure and harmony that is experienced in the body when graceful movement occurs. It is revealed when we watch another person in motion and are touched by the beauty in her movement in a way that we may not quite be able to name. For all its ineffability, grace is one of the surest indicators of embodiment. Optimal Relationship with Gravity Gravity is the ever-present field in which we live. The concept that it is possible for the human structure to find an alignment, balance and quality of movement in which gravity becomes a supportive and enlivening force instead of one that must be resisted is the keystone of Ida Rolf s vision. When movement comes into harmony with gravity, what was tiring becomes effortless and fluid. Grace emerges. Impediments to Embodiment Given that embodiment is pleasurable, graceful, beautiful and empowering, why is it that so many people live so far outside their bodies? This is a complex question that probably has as many answers as there are people to answer it. In this article several possible causes will be addressed. The first is the omnipresent, modern civilized culture. Socialization in a global and ever-speedier culture teaches one, from the most tender age, to disregard the signals that the body sends. Judeo-Christian religions teach that sin and temptation come from the flesh a holy life is one that is lived by learning to distance oneself from the body and its longings, especially sexual longings. Wilhelm Reich cites repression of sexuality as one of the most effective ways of keeping a group of people subjugated to the will of an organized entity such as a government or a church. 5 The medical profession schools its patients to be passive and give the authority for their bodies and health into the hands of those who know the doctors. The enormous money-making machine that is the medical industry runs on the disempowerment of patients. The military-industrial complex requires men to not feel, harden their hearts, stand up straight, and obey orders. One has only to look at the military posture to see what values lay beneath it locked knees prevent grounding and resting on one s own authority; pushed out chests and rock-hard abdominals prevent contact with softer emotions; tucked-in chins and straight cervicals create an atmosphere in which flexibility and the speaking of one s own opinion are not favored. Disembodiment is a socio-economic-religious question. In a culture where the body is not felt and its wisdom is systematically disregarded, many different schools of thought have emerged teaching what the body should be like. Each school has its own definition of what good posture and good breathing are. Many yoga teachers instruct their students to carry the chest forward and the arms in external rotation. In t ai chi, students often learn to tuck the pelvis under and to keep a constant slight bend in the knees, all in the name of grounding. Some lines of thought teach that the breath should be abdominal, others that breath should come into the upper ribs. When our clients are not at home in their bodies, they allow other people (including their Rolfers) to tell them how their bodies should be. As long as they are attempting to conform to an externally imposed idea, no matter how intelligent it may be, they are caught in trying to dominate their bodies and their movement. Fluidity and grace can only emerge when movement arises spontaneously from an inner sense of what is right. As Rolfers, it is very important to remember this. Ida Rolf s vision of how a balanced body relates to the gravity field is the guiding star of our work, but even such an advanced understanding of the body is subject to failure if we try to impose it or hold it in place instead of allowing it to emerge. Another significant factor that impedes embodiment is trauma, and most people have passed through some form of trauma in their lives. In a moment when death appears to be imminent (be it from surgery, a car accident or a neardrowning experience), the body mobilizes an enormous amount of energy to insure survival. If this activation is not used up in fight or flight, or if its attempts at activating defense are thwarted, this high energy freezes in the nervous system. One of the side effects of this freezing (which, at a physiological level, is a co-activation of both the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems) is a loss of presence and feeling in the body. 6 Some people lose presence and feeling by rigidifying their bodies: muscles lock, tighten, and fibrose, and no matter how many times they are massaged or get Rolfing sessions they do not let go. Their holding is part of a deep, central control, a sense of being scared stiff that only releases when the individual s overall sense 28 Structural Integration / December

31 EXPANDING OUR PARADIGM of safety in the world is able to shift. Other people, often the ones who have been the most severely traumatized, manifest this freezing in the opposite way they become hypotonic. Their tissue seems wooden or lifeless, and they often relate having little or no feeling in the body parts where this flaccid quality is present. Whatever prevents embodiment, the path back to feeling and owning one s body is a dialogue with oneself, a discovery, and a discipline. The role of the Rolfer is to help the client undertake this dialogue by releasing structural restrictions that may be causing pain and limitation, by aiding the client in perceiving her habitual way of living in her body, and by working with her to explore new options to these habitual patterns. The Way Home Finding a New Paradigm Many clients think of going to a Rolfer like they think of taking their car to the mechanic drop it off in the morning, come back in the afternoon, pay and drive away. Moving from expecting to be passive and having the Rolfer fix it to being an active part of her own process is a paradigm shift that our client may need some help to make. Other clients the type with great self discipline that impose an ideal on their bodies may, by contrast, need to learn to feel the difference between willfulness and allowing. Often, a part of the discomfort that our clients report in their bodies has its root in the way that they relate to their bodies, and our work as Rolfers may also call us to help them examine this relationship and evaluate whether it serves them well or not. We do this, in the first place, by listening and watching with an eye for the overall pattern, then by asking gentle questions that help to plant a seed of doubt about that which we observe, and lastly by offering other possibilities and helping the client to feel the contrast between one way of being and the other. Our own embodiment as Rolfers is vital to this process. If we are comfortable in our bodies, if we have the habit of being aware of the subtle shifts and clues that they give us during the course of the day, and altering the course of our actions according to this information, we will be in a much better position to sense the places where our clients have lost connection and help them reestablish a link. If we are kind to ourselves and nonjudgmental of the way that emotion, sensation, and movement combine to create our lived experience, we can model this way of being for our clients one of the most effective ways to help them make a significant shift. There is a resonance that occurs between the tonic function of one body and another when they are in close proximity or linked by touch. Thus, one very effective way to help your client to fill into a place in her body that she does not inhabit, or to experience a new quality of movement that you want to help her find, is to connect with that quality of movement in your own body as you touch her. If I want to help my client feel how the spine can lengthen in both directions, I allow my own spine to lengthen as I begin to touch her, and she may spontaneously feel that deep letting go in her own spine. Acts of Attention vs. Acts of Tension One of the most difficult qualities of relationship that our clients bring to the work is an idea that they must somehow master their bodies. In this worldview the body is subject to the commands of the will. The client gives the orders, the body obeys, and if it does not, a fight ensues, a fight whose price is rigidity, pain and dysfunction. As we all know, a monologue is not a conversation and does not stimulate harmonious relationship. By the same token, a one-way flow of commands from will to flesh effectively kills dialogue and the possibility of a life that breathes with the wisdom not only of the mind, but of the body. Grace-full movement is a quality that emerges when we remove the impediments to that grace. All the qualities listed above as hallmarks of embodiment are part of the body s innate, natural resources, and when not overrun by our internal inhibitions, will be the body s first choice for movement. What are these inhibitions to movement? They are deep, unconscious history and learning. Like the burned hand that learns to withdraw when it feels the heat of the stove, these inhibitions create shortening and retraction when triggered. Each time that the child was hurt or frightened she pulled back, and in the presence of a similar stimulus, she responds in the same fashion. On the other hand, in the presence of a pleasurable stimulus, her body lengthens and opens, and situations in her life that remind her of this initial pleasurable stimulus will produce a similar quality of movement. Thus, in the unconscious way that our clients organize movement, we can observe the history of all that has happened to them. Some inhibitions are the better part of wisdom it is true that the burned hand teaches best, and when the child first learns that flame can burn, she learns the self-preservation of pulling back from fire. Other inhibitions may have served her well in her younger years but are now no longer in keeping with the level of resource that she may have developed in her life in present time. Thus, a woman who learned as a little girl to please her parents by not asserting herself may no longer depend on her parents, but may still have difficulty saying no to authority figures. She may carry her chin tucked tightly down towards the front of her neck and have difficulty looking directly at the person to whom she is talking. When dealing with the shortness, tightness and pain that these habitual movement inhibitions may create in our client s structure, it is wise to remember that one tensional pattern does not get conquered by imposing another. If my client s rib cage is held in expiration and her shoulders are internally rotated, I do not help her to find good posture by following the cultural dictate shoulders back, chest out, chin in. Should she manage, by force of will, to pull her shoulder blades together and pick up her expiration-fixed rib cage from the lumbodorsal hinge and hold it there, she will now have double the tension than she did before. That which is held needs permission to let go. The permission comes from awareness, presence, and gentle invitation. Once the need met by the short, tight movement pattern has been felt and identified, it is possible to choose a new option, one that may be more in keeping with the client s present moment in life and level of resources. New options for movement and ways of being in the world can and do emerge spontaneously when, by an act of attention, the client ceases to do that which is habitual, if only for a moment, so that something new can happen. Structural Integration / December

32 EXPANDING OUR PARADIGM Creating this window of opportunity for the client to move a step forward towards integration and towards a new option is not a difficult thing to do, but certain conditions must be met. Each inhibition, each shortening, and each holding has a reason for being, and that reason is rooted in early survival strategies. The organism knows that the way it developed to cope works for a very simple reason it is still alive, and for this reason the survival mechanism, as dysfunctional as it may be in some ways, has high value for the system. Convincing this (successful) strategy not to engage so that something new and possibly more pleasurable may arise does not happen by force or by will. It happens in a moment of safety where the habitual defenses can be let down for a moment. It happens when we, as Rolfers, can help the client have a new experience, in her body, in the way that she moves or breathes or carries herself. She may feel this in a moment when her structure shifts and suddenly she has the support and openness that she has desired for a long time. She may also feel this when her Rolfer helps her find a new way of moving, or of standing, that gives her the ground to say no, or to look people in the eye. When she feels the power of the new possibility, the client will return to it again and again, for the simple reason that it feels good and she likes it. In sum, the choice to move into a pattern that brings a deeper level of ease comes from an act of attention, not an act of tension. The act of attention has three phases: 1) identification of the habitual pattern; 2) the choice to not move automatically into the habitual pattern; and 3) the emergence of the new possibility. The body/being is wise beyond our imagination. Given the respite that a moment of mindfulness can bring, grace flows to the fore. The flesh desires fluidity, lengthening, and ease and knows, intrinsically, how to coordinate those qualities. When we can work with our clients, not only to release the restrictions that hold them structurally, but also to help them learn to undertake this act of attention on a daily basis, then we have helped them step forward into a quality of aliveness that will unfold for the rest of their lives. We have stimulated a new quality of relationship between Rolfer and client where we are truly partners with our clients on their deepening journey into embodiment. Endnotes 1. Frank, Kevin, Tonic Function A Gravity Response Model for Rolfing Structural and Movement Integration. Rolf Lines, March Author s notes from a class with Hubert Godard. 3. Wing, Heather, Rolfing Movement Integration An Introduction. Private Publication. 4. Ibid. 5. Reich, Wilhelm, The Function of the Orgasm. New York: Simon and Schuster, Levine, Peter, Waking the Tiger. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, Structural Integration / December

33 PERSPECTIVES A Rolfer s Response to Gracovetsky Natural Walking Revisited By Gael Ohlgren, Certified Advanced Rolfer, and David Clark, Certified Advanced Rolfer This article is a response to Dr. Serge Gracovetsky s presentation to the Rolf Institute Annual Meeting in 2008 in Boulder, Colorado. Because it is the job of Rolfers to understand healthy function of the muscular/skeletal system, as well as to observe the impediments to it, we are interested in a comprehensive model of walking that explains what that is. We, the authors, believe that maps and models influence our perceptions and our behaviors. In the interest of finding a model of understanding the complex coordination of human ambulation that could serve our profession, we wish to raise some points in which Gracovetsky s model and our model seem to differ. We cannot presume to assess the full breadth and depth of Gracovetsky s knowledge on this subject, and there are many places of agreement that we will not be elucidating. In a nutshell, we believe that the body will not reveal the full elegance of its design if we continue to see its movement from a lever/pulley muscular model. Just as Dr. Rolf needed to view the body from the vantage point of connective tissue in order to share her perceptions, we are offering a vision of walking that need not be either linear or segmented. Within this model, which we call Natural Walking, 1 movement is non-hierarchical with each aspect of the body and the design of joints and tissue participating in equal measure. As much as we agree with and appreciate the clarity and specificity that Gracovetsky has brought to spinal function in walking, we are seeking a view that integrates the elegance of spinal mechanics with the pelvis and legs. Natural Walking is more than just our theory about walking. It is an understanding of human movement that can lead a principledriven Rolfer s diagnosis of structure and function, and assist in directing the Rolfer s intervention. We are presenting much of this material in our classes. The technical details are important, but mostly we wish to emphasize that there is something here that is useful, practical, and true. Three points are being raised for the benefit of creating further distinctions in a model of walking as we envision it and to stimulate further inquiry within our community. We then present theoretical and practical aspects of our Natural Walking model. Questions About Gracovetsky s Model First, while Gracovetsky proved that the spine is essential to walking, we are not in agreement with his proof that walking can be accomplished without legs. His book The Spinal Engine 2 presents arguments and data that challenge that belief. It proposes that the spine is the primary engine that makes us move. His proof involves a video of a man who moves across the floor on his ischial tuberosities, as he was born without legs. This video is edifying in that it shows the great importance of the spine in ambulation and also shows an exaggeration of the spinal movements that accompany walking. However, it does not serve to switch the hierarchy of importance from the legs, as in previous physiological models, to the spine. The ischial tuberosities of the pelvis have never been classified as part of the spine. The fact that this man could walk was dependent on the first anatomical bifurcation that becomes the structure of two legs, the tuberosities. It is this structure that allowed that man to alternate weight bearing from one side to the next, just as we do from one leg to the next. So, while he was able to walk without the musculature of legs, he was dependent on the support of the vestige of a leg structure. Some paraplegics in leg braces also demonstrate a form of perambulation that depends almost solely on the movement of the spine, but this is in no way demonstrating a normal gait pattern. So, while we appreciate the new emphasis on the importance of the spine, we are no closer to a comprehensive understanding of this complex coordination that produces a normal biped gait. Second, Gracovetsky went on, in his presentation, to describe the evolutionary development of the coordination between the spine and the girdles of a quadruped. His example was a lizard-like creature and its need to lift a leg up over a pebble. This action stimulates the rotational aspect of the spine that ultimately leads to our contralateral gait pattern. This is an elegant description for the development of this coordination pattern, but it does not address the particular problem for an upright mammal with only two legs to stand on. In order to take the first step, a human or any animal in that position must figure out how to shift from a two-legged support to a single-legged support. This has to be the first initiation of movement into walking. For this to happen, there must be not a muscular lifting of the limb but a lateral movement that frees a limb from weightbearing. Typically, this lateral movement is not initiated by the spine. The lateral movement of the spine is a response to a combination of a slight push off of one leg and a lateral movement of the opposite hip. This movement then frees the unweighted leg to lift up over that pebble or to take the first step. But an examination of the anatomical structure of the hip indicates that when the full weight is given into one hip and leg, the movement into that hip has to be not only lateral but rotational as well, unless muscularly inhibited. It is the offset of the head of the femur, which is not set in a directly lateral position, that engineers this combination of lateral and rotational response. We are contending that it is the anatomical structure of the hip and the proximity of the sacrum to this that draws the spine into a participatory sidebend and Structural Integration / December

34 PERSPECTIVES rotational action not that... heel strike causes the side-bend of the spine which then rotates the pelvis. 3 While Gracovetsky s model of the evolution of the coordination between the girdles and the spine makes complete sense, it does not address the particular challenge of a vertical stance to gravity and a support structure of two legs, not four. Again, the initiation of walking does not come from the lifting of a limb but from the shifting of weight that frees a limb to lift. And once the belly is off the ground, four-legged animals, such as horses, can be observed to do the same. Third, we believe, after many years of observation, that unimpaired walking enlists full-body participation of the spine, shoulder and pelvic girdles, legs, arms and feet. Any inhibition against this participation results in muscular and/or skeletal strain, and over time, dysfunction. We further believe that we were designed to walk. By studying normal joint function, the clues to this full-body model of walking are clearly indicated. It is not only the spine that demonstrates the rotation, counter-rotation in concert with lateral movement as shown in Gracovetsky s video. The Spiral Design of Nature and Man Spirals are shown both in the shapes of the leg and arm bones and in the interaction between them at the joints. Even the fiber of muscles indicates spirals that interact in a double helix pattern to create springy tubes, set in a basket-weave pattern that offers a form of stored kinetic potential when released from weight-bearing. Rather than seeing distinct and isolated pulley action of muscles to move bones as levers, we see that walking is an orchestration of this kineticpotential pattern in action. Simultaneously the body is in lateral, rotational, and a gathering, push/reach fluctuation along the vertical and sagittal plane. Gracovetsky s model of the spring between two sticks that represented the spine between the two girdles demonstrated the lateral and rotational coordination but did not demonstrate the gathering and push/ reach actions. These actions require the cooperation of the spine with the pelvis and legs, and are facilitated by the function of the psoas connection between them. This coordination, which acknowledges the full-body spiral in action, is crucial if we are to see the potential for grace and balance during every phase of walking. This spiral, which is dictated by normal joint function, allows the torso to find balance first over one leg and then over the other. Without this principle, walking is precarious, as Gracovetsky said, and has moments that require extra exertion in order to rebalance or avoid falling. In order to create a comprehensive, coherent, and efficient model for walking that also allows for variations in orientation and intent as well as personal proportions and styles, we need to look beyond the human being at a bigger picture. Just as Gracovetsky considered the evolution of locomotion and looked to the animal kingdom, we believe that nature provides insight both into the design of the body and the movements that indicate a model for walking. Consider that all of life depends on water and that our very tissue and bone were formed in the oceanic medium of the uterus. The current study of embryology clearly states that our form develops in response to the movement that comes first. What movement? Form follows the function of fluids as they meet the barrier of the container of the uterine wall and the force of gravity. This dynamic creates a spiral, a universal principal that can be observed within a glass of water as easily as in a flowing river. The tendency of free water to move in spirals is reflected over and over, from hurricanes to waterfalls to pictures of the galaxy. 4 And the shaping of matter as it is in interaction with fluid is seen from the shapes of seashells, throughout the plant kingdom, and into the details of human anatomy from the cochlea of the inner ear to the fibers of the heart muscle to the structure of DNA. 5 It seems almost hubris to ignore this universal pattern and to think that we are cut from a different cloth. The lever/pulley model of machines seems to have a hold still on Gracovetsky s muscular model (the stick/ spring imagery). We feel that it is safe to assume that the spiraled shape of bones and tissue lends itself to a model of walking that follows this design. Especially since physics has indicated the efficiency of this design for storing kinetic potential as well as changing planes of action and responding to outside forces. 6 But the question remains: how do we see these spirals come together in natural, unencumbered walking? For the answer to that question we go to our collective experiences of observation coupled with a close look at the design inherent in our joint function. Through our studies at the Rolf Institute of Structural Integration, we have come to appreciate the perfection of the design of the human structure for bipedal walking. Just as we are perfectly programmed and designed to breathe, so we are perfectly programmed instinctually and structurally to walk. At almost every developmental movement stage from rocking, to creeping, to crawling a baby practices an essential element of walking. As we examine function 32 Structural Integration / December

35 of the arches of the foot, the knees, hips, spine, and pelvic and shoulder girdles, we find that each segment is designed to do its part in the whole body experience called walking. This may not seem like a striking statement, but within the field of kinesiology (and more importantly within our culture), this has been neither the perception nor description. Walking has been viewed as controlled falling, and Gracovetsky has restated that view. The metaphor of action has been a machine of levers and pulleys that cause acceleration and then braking. Or, as in Gracovetsky s presentation, a spring between two cross bars. We will be describing a system that at its most efficient is never out of balance, never has to inhibit the former action, stores angular momentum as efficiently as a Swiss watch spring, and mirrors a design found throughout the animal kingdom and nature. We took efficiency as an operating principle of nature, a convention of physics that underlies all expression of natural law, most succinctly stated in Fermat s Principle of Least Time and Maupertien s Principle of Least Action 7 and thoroughly discussed in Feynman s Lectures on Physics Vol We found that we needed to step out of the traditional box of understanding walking. Our discovery was that human anatomy appears to demand a different pattern of gait than is commonly seen or theoretically understood in our Western culture. We are finding that the linear logic (cause and effect) of the industrial age produces a progressive error as we apply a two-dimensional model to our three-dimensional world. To quote Tom Myers: Information is always lost when mapping from 3-D to 2-D. 9 Therefore, a 2-D explanation of a 3-D event will always be in error. It is time to move our model of walking out of the industrial age! Just as science has moved away from the billiard-ball picture of cause and effect towards a more fluid, interactive universe, we need a more fluid picture of ourselves, one that is a part of nature as a whole, not pitted against it. In order to do this it is helpful to view our anatomy differently, much as Tom Myers has presented in his Anatomy Trains. 10 The Basket-Weave/ Helix Theory Let s blur the distinction of individual muscles in isolated action, and see another design in the fibers. The individual fibers that make up all musculature lay along diagonals. Most of the discreet muscles also lay along diagonals. What begins to appear, if one gives up the idea of isolated muscle groups and allows muscles to transit boney structures is a pattern of diagonal lines. 11 Crossing spirals of muscular fiber become apparent. For example, a left pectoral muscle blends with a right intercostal that joins an oblique muscle that blends into a gluteal muscle. 12 This is exactly countered by a matching helix (a spiral in threedimensions) from the right pectoral on down. Start at another point and the same type of helix emerges. An iliacus leads to a quadratus lumborum that wraps into the lattissimus on the other side of the body and so forth. While tracking these patterns may defy our more linear, neat packaging desires, the overall picture of a double-helix pattern emerges; and in motion, counter-rotating helices. In other words, we are made up of muscular tubes of diagonal fibers that span superficial to deep and back out again. These transitions in depth are generally mediated through bones. Bones then assume a structural dimension that is in addition to levers and to spacers inherently more in tune with a tensegrity view of the body s mechanics. With the use of a couple of analogies, this new model can be appreciated. A machine that is designed for a consistent relationship to gravity is liable to sustain serious damage when forces outside its design-frame are applied to it. If this were indeed our design, few of us would survive our childhood in working order. Try putting a computer through the innumerable crashes of a typical youth and imagine what working order it might be in, to say nothing of its appearance. To what do we owe our remarkable resilience? From football, to skiing, to tumbling we are able to sustain a tremendous array of reckless experiments and live to tell about it. Although our muscular tube design is not precisely an interweaving of diagonal fibers, as in a basket, the basket-weave analogy is helpful. PERSPECTIVES For a certain generation this might bring to mind the straw Chinese handcuffs. These were tubes of woven straw that expanded when compressed and contracted when elongated, allowing one s fingers to enter the tube from both ends but preventing the withdrawal of the fingers when they were pulled away. After either compression or elongation or twisting, the spiral double helix weave pattern will always return to its original shape by its own momentum. This model is closer to a spring than a lever/ pulley model and reflects our spring-like resiliency. Mathematics and the laws of physics define the efficiency of the helical model: 13,14 1. A helix is the simplest form that requires three-dimensional space in order to be expressed. 2. A helix is the most efficient form to transition from one plane of action to another. 3. A helix has the most efficient kinetic storage potential. It can integrate both angular and linear momentum separately or simultaneously. A coil spring is the most obvious example of this property. 4. A helix is the most efficient form for storing sequential information. It is the form from which sequential data is most easily retrieved, i.e., DNA. The instantaneous correction and regulation of relationship depends on this efficiency. In our view it is the model for homeostasis. The implications of a helical model are profound. Returning now to the physical design of the body, many things make much more sense. It becomes easier to picture walking as a spiraling, counter-spiraling action of the whole body rather than seeing it as powered by a sequential series of lever/ pulley actions. Although isolated muscular action is still very possible, the coordination of a whole body action becomes much more self-evident. Walking becomes a milder form of the vast number of other actions we employ. Running, throwing, kicking, swinging objects such as baseball bats or golf clubs, skiing all are exaggerations of the overall coiling, spiraling, uncoiling, counterspiraling action of walking. In other words, walking is the warm-up practice and the Structural Integration / December

36 PERSPECTIVES mild maintenance of the body s capacity for these larger actions. How perfect! Taking the First Step Given this new way of perceiving the body, what happens with the initiation of a step? From a two-legged stance, the first movement is not to flex a leg at the hip, but to shift weight bearing from two legs to one. This weight loads and compresses the joints of the support leg while the stride leg is released. As the pelvis shifts laterally to center over the support leg, the structural geometry of the offset head of the femur (the neck of the trochanter) causes the femur to medially rotate as it is weighted. This rotation is passively resisted by the stretching of the six lateral rotators of the femur on that side. This stretching protects the hip joint from over-rotating and damaging the joint, and initiates the sidebending and rotating of the lumbar spine. This is another difference that we have with Gracovetsky regarding the primary action of the pelvis and legs. Meanwhile, at the knee, the close-packed position of the support leg allows the tibia to counter the medial rotation of the femur with a lateral rotation or, more precisely, a torque. So in only the preparation to take a step, a spiral pattern is already in evidence in the boney structure and tissue response of pelvis and leg. Its continuation is assured in the upper body by the biomechanical design of the spine. This is where our model of walking is in agreement with Gracovetsky s work. As the masses decelerate, their kinetic energy becomes available for storage and later use during the next re-acceleration cycle of the masses. Elastic storage is possible not only in the muscles themselves but also in the spinal ligaments And, we would add, the entire fascial web. The upshot of the above anatomical description is this: the spine will naturally respond to the compression of the support side and the release of the stride side according to these spinal mechanics. It will sidebend and rotate. For example, if one were to stand into the left leg, the lumbar vertebrae will sidebend left and rotate right. This facilitates the pelvis in the rotation that responds to the right leg swinging forward. Meanwhile, the thoracic spine will counterrotate to the left. This happens to assist the torso in centering its mass over the support leg and the pelvic and shoulder girdle in coordinating a balanced counter-spiral. In other words the spiral action of the leg and pelvis is met and continued by the spine. It is possible to muscularly resist these responses but it takes extra effort to do so and the result is a more precarious balance. We also see that the movement of the upper body is part of ongoing balance, rather than playing catch-up in response to the loss of it. All this just to prepare to take a step! And yet, the principles and mechanics of action remain the same. With the body well balanced over the support leg, the stride leg is free to swing forward. Its freedom from weight-bearing already initiates action, like a spring being released. The elastic recoil of muscular tubes already has momentum towards the new support leg, if not resisted. The coordination of hip flexors and the psoas muscle takes the femur forward. This begins a new sidebend and counter-rotation of the spine, and the torso is in concert with shifting towards the new support leg. As one leg makes the transition from supporting to swinging, the release from weight-bearing compression, the elastic recoil of soft-tissue, and the mechanics of the hip joint all assist in the lateral shift that takes the body s gravitational center from one hip to the other. Because the knee, not the foot, has led the way into the next step, heel contact with the ground occurs before the leg is fully weight bearing. Should the footing turn out to be unstable, many self-correcting movements may be taken. By the time the body is balanced over this leg, the weight of the body is centered over the apex of the arch, which behaves like a shock-absorbing spring. The mobility of the twenty-six bones of the foot, plus the tibia and fibula of the lower leg, mediate the uneven surfaces of the earth to further enhance balance and protection against injury. This is quite different picture from... heel strike cause the side-bend of the spine which then rotates the pelvis Structural Integration / December

37 PERSPECTIVES This picture demonstrates the spirals within the action of walking though it fails to show the hallmark of order, the Line, which would be present with better organization. The Elements Necessary for Good Coordination, Natural Walking Many things can inhibit this design from operating smoothly. Footwear such as high heels, clogs, and flip-flops alter joint function and create certain holding patterns, while shoulder bags and backpacks inhibit the torso s participation. Tight skirts dictate a short stride. Tight pants can inhibit pelvic response. From place to place and time to time cultural mores of what is cool, feminine, masculine, or modest will determine a style that is often learned completely unconsciously. In order to see Natural Walking manifest there are certain elements that must be present. These are as follows: 1. The torso must be balanced over and supported by the leg(s). If the torso aligns itself either behind or ahead of the center of the pelvis, length, balance, and responsiveness are necessarily inhibited, whether standing or walking. Culturally, in the developed world, there is a predominant pattern of leading with the foot while holding back in the torso. 2. We are bipedal, which means we alternate our base of support from one foot to the other. If we allow our center of gravity to adjust helically from one support leg to the other, we gain support, balance, and fluidity of movement. Military marching and some other models of walking ask the center of the torso to be carried straight forward, like a flagpole, thereby inhibiting the response of the spine and overall torso. To hold against helical response actually requires more effort and impairs support, balance, and fluidity. 3. The counter-rotational coordination of pelvic and shoulder girdle must be evident. This contralateral action that is first practiced in our developmental phase of crawling, brings the arm swing into the overall coordination. However, unlike military marching, this arm swing is initiated by the spinal rotation response of the thorax as it finds center with the support leg. The arm swing is a follow-through of that action (as Gracovetsky also indicated in his presentation.) 4. Optimally, there is differentiation of function between the spine and the pelvic and shoulder girdles. This means that the spine is free to have its own coordinated participation in walking, distinct from the cross-crawl coordination of the girdles. During relaxed, slower ambulation a subtle forward/back undulate travels through the spine. This is the coiling/ uncoiling mechanism carried through, and it mirrors the more easily remarked grace of the animal kingdom. If one watches the slow-motion replays of a satisfied athlete as he/she walks away from scoring, this undulate will show itself to be not dissimilar to that which a giraffe, leopard, horse, or many other four-legged creatures demonstrate in action. This was the psoas walk that Ida Rolf made paramount to a successful Rolfing series. However, this action is the first to be sacrificed to efficiency if we want to travel faster than a leisurely (most economic) pace. Structural Integration / December

38 PERSPECTIVES 5. The pelvis must find dynamic balance on top of the legs. Functionally, a horizontal pelvis must be able to rock with equal ease both forward and backward, like a chair suspended at the top of a Ferris wheel. If locked either anterior, shortening the low back, or posterior, holding the torso behind the legs, the psoas can not fully function and once again length, balance, and mobility will be impaired. 6. Responsiveness! When the whole body participates evenly and responsively, the attributes are grace, continuity of motion, subtlety, and unimpeded momentum. Holding against whole body participation in walking is always possible. This can occur anywhere the neck, the diaphragm, the ankles, etc. Fluidity of motion is always lost, not just locally, causing the whole body to look segmented with still points in the action. It is a strange concept, but true, that still points require effort to be maintained in the middle of action. 7. Finally, in order for there to be optimum length in motion, which allows appropriate responsiveness, the impulse to move must be two-directional. To get off the ground, one must be able to simultaneously let down and lift off. Even a bird cannot fly unless it is able to push down on the wind with its wings while stretching upwards through its structure. When a person has a tendency to either rest down or hold up too much, length or responsiveness or both will be lost. Most people have a preference to initiate action either by reaching into space or pushing against the ground. In motion, integrated walking demonstrates the bi-directional impulse to simultaneously ground and lift. This means simultaneously pushing into the ground and reaching towards the sky. 17 Developmental Preparation for Walking During the stages of infant development, the separate components of this concertin-motion are rehearsed individually revealing further the functional logic of this model of walking. It is as if these separate components get taken apart and practiced individually. Interestingly, these main stages of development mirror the evolution of the animal kingdom, from reptilian through amphibian and mammalian. Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, a respected authority on the developmental movement of infants, has devoted a career to the study of these instinctually programmed patterns. Each one plays a role in organizing the nervous system and orienting a child spatially to the field of gravity and the surrounding environment. And each pattern, once mastered, leads the child to the next, more complex movement exploration, culminating in the ability to stand and walk on one s own. 18 Verticals and Horizontals Within This Model As Rolfers we have observed that the more balanced and efficient a human body becomes, the closer the movement pattern demonstrates clear horizontal hinge action and vertical integrity through the segments. The center of hip, thigh, knee, calf and foot are in alignment and track straight ahead rather than at divergent angles. This has always been the cornerstone of Ida Rolf s vision and theory. Therefore, the concept of helical actions seemed paradoxical. Rolf s language of horizontal and verticals, however, does not deny helical structure and action. The basket weave analogy answers this seeming paradox. When one sees clearly cross-woven, balanced diagonal fibers forming an X, the verticals and horizontals become apparent. The degree of overall balance, seen in terms of the horizontal and vertical, is dictated by the relative balance of intersecting helices. Review The helical orchestration of human gait is composed of the following elements. First there is the compression and decompression of joints during the alternation of weight bearing and extension in movement. Second, there is the wringing, torquing, coiling and uncoiling of the muscular tubes. And third, humans mimic, but transcribe to the vertical, an aspect that all quadrupeds share, in the way that the limbs alternately gather towards center and then extend into forward motion. Picture a racing horse or a leaping cat. There is a gathering toward center that shortens the anterior (front of) spine as the limbs flex, followed by extension. In oriental martial arts this is sometimes called the coordinated closing and opening of joints. This mechanism, for lack of a better word, in a forward/ back direction, combined with a whip like rotation, is the secret to great force and power that is derived from chi energy and stored angular momentum rather than muscular strength. When all of the above come together during walking what appears is a subtle undulate, the combination of yield, push, and reach, which combines forward/back, sidebending, and contralateral movement. This wave motion travels through the spine in the sagittal plane without interfering with rotational or lateral responses. This coordinated spinal response that is also differentiated from the girdles is the hallmark of successful Rolfing Structural Integration. But at a faster pace, the spine and girdles will knit into a tighter unit of coordination for economy during speed. If we refer again to the laws of spinal mechanics, we see that the spine is designed to cooperate, even assist, the diagonal coordination of sidebending and rotating. The lumbar vertebrae of the low back will naturally work with the pelvis and legs, while the thoracic spine assists the action of the shoulder girdle. This causes a minimum of movement at the upper pole of the body and the cervical vertebrae of the neck are free to do whatever the sensing mechanisms of the head dictate turning to look, listen, smell or speak while allowing the vestibular system of the inner ear to do its job with balance. The Benefits of the Natural Walking Model Natural Walking, as efficient as a ticking watch, is practically a perpetual motion design, which uses the musculature of the body evenly and completely in cooperation with the gravitational field. Although it is only conjecture on our part, it makes sense, since there is no overt pumping mechanism for the lymph, venous, and micro-tubular systems, that this ordinary action should play a vital part in circulation. The compression-decompression wringing motion that we have described is perfect for allowing tissues and organs to be passively squeezed and refilled with new liquid. Other benefits are as follows: the spine stays supple and resilient, its whip-like action able to defer shock and compression. With a functioning psoas and oblique muscles, toning and spanning of the midsection are maintained more easily than is currently imagined in the fitness world of core strengthening. This is vital for 36 Structural Integration / December

39 the health of our visceral organs and lower back. With good alignment and use, joints remain strong and lubricated rather than breaking down under the wear and tear of uneven use. Walking becomes a perfect blend of exercise and relaxation, adjustable to various paces and intensities. Done well, it promotes balance to the system as one goes. Furthermore, since practically all other forms of exercise are simply exaggerations of the same physical mechanics, warm up and coordination is included, ready to be applied to other activities. All of this contributes to a more graceful, vital aging process. When this model is consciously experienced, one is less prone to chronic over-use type injury and often more able to vary movement patterns if fatigue or discomfort is starting to be felt. Simultaneous attunement to self and environment, increased stamina, and enhanced enjoyment of activity are all predictable outcomes. As Rolf said, This is the gospel of Rolfing: When the body gets working appropriately, the force of gravity can flow through. Then spontaneously, the body heals itself. Endnotes 1. Ohlgren, Gael and David Clark, Natural Walking. Rolf Lines Vol. XXIII (Mar. 1995), pp Gracovetsky, Serge, The Spinal Engine. New York: Springer Verlag, 1988, back jacket. 3. Ibid., pg Schwenk, Theodore, Sensitive Chaos. East Sussex: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1996, pp Gintis, Bonnie, Engaging the Movement of Life. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic, Saxena, A.K., Principles of Modern Physics. New York: Alpha Science Int l., 1996, pg Clark, Adam, Lectures on Physics, Allentown, PA: Muhlenburg College, Feynman, R.P., R. Leighton and M. Sands, Feynman Lectures on Physics, Vol. 2. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, Myers, Thomas, Anatomy Trains, 2nd ed. New York: Churchill-Livingstone, Ibid. 11. Schwenk, op. cit., pg Ibid. 13. Willson, Frederick, Descriptive Geometry Pure & Applied. New York: MacMillan, 1898, pp , , Vinogradoved, I.M., ed., Encyclopedia of Mathematics. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluver Academic Publishers, 1989, pp Gracovetsky, op cit., Ibid., pg Notes from a lecture on movement by Hubert Godard, Boulder, CO, Notes from a class with Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, Boulder, CO., Bibliography Alexander, R. McNeil, The Human Machine. New York: Columbia University Press, Bainbridge Cohen, Bonnie, author s notes from a class lecture, Boulder, CO, Clark, Adam, Lectures on Physics. Allentown, PA: Muhlenburg College, Feitis, Rosemary, ed., Ida Rolf Talks About Rolfing and Physical Reality. Boulder, CO: The Rolf Institute, Feynman, R.P., R. Leighton, and M. Sands, Feynman Lectures on Physics, Vol. 2. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, Gintis, Bonnie, Engaging the Movement of Life. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic, Godard, Hubert, author s notes from a lecture on movement, Boulder, CO, Gracovetsky, Serge, The Spinal Engine. New York: Springer Verlag, Graves, Richard and David N. Camaione eds., Concepts in Kinesiology. Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders Co., Hall, Brian K., Evolutionary Developmental Biology. New York: Chapman & Hall, PERSPECTIVES Inman, V.T., H.J. Ralston and F. Todd, and J.C. Lieberman, eds., Human Walking. Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins, Myers, Thomas, Anatomy Trains, 2nd ed. New York: Churchill-Livingstone, Ohlgren, Gael and David Clark, Natural Walking. Rolf Lines Vol. XXIII, Mar Saxena, A.K., Principles of Modern Physics. New York: Alpha Science Int l., Schwenk, Theodore, Sensitive Chaos. East Sussex: Rudolf Steiner Press, Suzuki, Ryohei, ed., Human Adult Walking Primate Morpho-physiology. Tokyo: University of Toyko Press, Vinogradov, I.M., ed., Encyclopedia of Mathematics. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluver Academic Publishers, Wainwright, Stephen, Axis and Circumference: The Cylindrical Shape of Plants and Animals. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, Wells, Katherine, Kinesiology: The Mechanical and Anatomic Fundamentals of Human Motion. Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders Co., Wilson, Frederick, Descriptive Geometry Pure and Applied. New York: MacMillan, Structural Integration / December

40 PERSPECTIVES More About Focal Dystonia and Rolfing SI for Professional Musicians By Elmar Abram, Certified Advanced Rolfer, Rolf Movement Practitioner hile reading the very interesting W conversation between Tessy Brungardt and Carolyn Pike entitled Rolfing for Professional Musicians (Structural Integration, September 2008), and specifically the material about pianist Leon Fleischer and focal dystonia, I found a sentence that motivated me to write something about my own experience with focal dystonia. The sentence that got my attention is: It is important to remember that dystonia is a brain disorder and there is no cure for it. 1 Now, that is exactly what one will find in any description of focal Dystonia. Medical texts, as well as research on the Internet, show focal dystonia to be the result of neurological damage in the part of the brain that is responsible for the control of voluntary and automatic body movements. First of all, I have to acknowledge that I initially came to Rolfing Structural Integration (SI) because of very severe inflammation in the left forearm caused by playing guitar for many hours a day, as I was aspiring to become a professional guitarist. For years I could not find anyone who could help me, neither among medical doctors nor music teachers. I experienced first-hand the feeling that there is nobody around who understands the real problem. Fortunately, five years later I found an old pianist who used to manipulate only the hand, and especially the metacarpalphalangeal joints, to free the knuckles up as he said. That, and his teaching, completely changed the way I was used to playing. He knew about Rolfing SI through a student of his from the United States, and gave me Ida Rolf s book. That was in Now, after almost twenty years of working with quite a few musicians (professionals, teachers, and students) with a variety of problems, I have come to the conclusion that with most musicians who have been diagnosed with focal dystonia, the real problem has not been the malady itself, but the fact that they have been diagnosed and labelled as having a brain disorder with no real cure. That diagnosis, along with its associated stigma, is normally given out by famous doctors at specialized clinics for musicians. Those clinics are very good in diagnosis, but unfortunately not at therapy. The problem is that the focal dystonia diagnosis means that the concern is a central (nervous system) one, which comes up centrally in the brain and has little if anything to do with what happens in the periphery. For me, this is simply not true and, at least for musicians, not logical at all! To me, focal dystonia appears to be a consequence of a peripheral disorder, in the form of a fight between highly overworked, and therefore crazy, flexors and extensors. In fact the most common symptom in focal dystonia is that the fourth and fifth finger do not properly execute the commands coming from the brain: when they should extend they flex, and vice versa. It is difficult to understand why the outcome of an overwork syndrome is sometimes inflammation and sometimes results in focal dystonia. I imagine that it depends on from where the movement is blocked. In cases of inflammation, there is less disorder, the disorder is less complex, and the cause is limited mainly to one muscle group in the extensors or flexors of the fingers and hand. If the problem is more complex and much of the effort ends up in the hand and fingers because of a lack of movement through the wrist, it may result in focal dystonia. Perhaps an affected pianist spends hours a day attempting to perfect a Liszt sonata with acrobatic finger spreads. What happens is that when a musician recognizes a passage in a piece of music as difficult, as he comes close to that critical point, he instinctively contracts the involved body parts hand, fingers, arm in order to overcome the difficulty. As a result, he loses a sense of weight and therefore of easiness, and he has less range of movement. Although he cannot win by fighting, he is not aware of this and goes on for hours trying to succeed by contracting even more. And if he does not succeed, his teacher will tell him to practice more, but generally without guiding him in how to do the exercises properly! The result, unfortunately, can be focal dystonia. The fact is that we can win against those difficult places only by doing exactly the opposite: letting go, renouncing control, not fighting to win, and risking failure. In this way we stay with the sense of weight, with easiness, a sense of effortlessness, and a bigger range of movement becomes available. Last but not least, we gain a nice broad sound. Now the crucial point is: how do I teach all that to a musician? He or she heard those words over and over again from teachers, but does not know how to put them into practice. As most musicians play some piano, I conduct sessions, if possible, at the piano for all types of instrumentalists and for almost all kinds of problems. Because one can sit symmetrically, and the arms and hands are in a vertical position in respect to the keyboard, letting go into the weight is much easier. In the beginning I use very simple and slow exercises for the fingers. During the finger movements the wrist has to stay open and free, the forearm heavy and suspended, the arm heavy and relaxed in the shoulder, etc. When the client can do this, I use a few arpeggio exercises from Brahms, which I have found to be incredibly efficient if done properly. In those exercises one finger of each hand always stays on the key, supporting the hand-arm unity. Our goal is that other fingers play, with wrist, forearm, and arm staying open, heavy, suspended, as noted above. With this background, it is easy to transfer the new 38 Structural Integration / December

41 PERSPECTIVES felt sense from work with the piano to the client s own instrument. This work, done properly and in an increasingly sophisticated manner, in combination with Rolfing SI and refined Rolf Movement work is, in my experience, the most potent practical cure in existence for the types of severe inflammations and focal dystonia mentioned above. For the rest, Tessy Brungardt herself proves it with her work on Leon Fleischer, and explains it more comprehensively and better than I could ever do. If a musician with focal dystonia does not find help and yet does not want to give up playing, and tries for a long time to go on in other words, tries to fight in order to win the problem obviously becomes more severe. The disorder may spread out from muscles and tissues to the whole complex movement transmitting process, in this way involving somehow also the brain. To a doctor with a scientific/theoretical background and approach, it will seem hopeless and of course a central problem. I do not believe that even if I do not have the necessary scientific background to challenge it formally. In my opinion, we would be poorly constructed if any stupid behavior at the periphery could damage the central play station! Why is it that the official diagnosis of focal dystonia is, in my experience, so deleterious for many musicians? I want to answer with two examples. The first is that of a thirty-two-year-old pianist whose career was interrupted by dystonia. In his first session with me, after a Rolfing session on the table, with an additional two hours of accurate work at the piano, he could experience that the fourth and fifth fingers of his right hand did what he wanted them to do if he played very slowly and in a way quite different from his habitual pattern. He did not want to believe it, but following my advice he could repeat the experiment. However, the result was not exultation, but silence and depression. The second example is a young harpist with a promising international career who received the diagnosis of focal dystonia for her right hand. After three sessions on the table and two at the piano we began to work with her playing her instrument. We chose a passage where the problem usually showed up. Applying to the harp what she had learned from the Rolfing SI and our work at the piano, and moving very slowly and without effort, she could again experience that her fingers worked correctly. She could also experience that as soon as she fell back just a little into her old pattern, the fingers did what they wanted to do instead. Again, the result of this awareness was not at all exultation. In her case it was anger and aggression: Who do you think you are?, she said. I have been among the most famous doctors in Europe and the U.S.A., and you want to tell me that it is just nothing! The problem, it seems to me, is that they were told the problem came from outside into the brain and was not connected to what they did and the way they did. As they believed it, they preferred to quit their careers rather than have a diagnosis of nothing. Nothing, in this case, meant a need to revise their way of playing, and taking responsibility. That was, to their understanding, an almost insurmountable difficulty. The issue thus has to do with the client s past, his history and psychology, and it is complex. Of course it could also be perceived as an absolute positive discovery that the work we do goes towards doing less, towards greater ease, towards less effort and less feeling of music as exercise. By the way, I never saw either one of those clients again. She stopped playing, married the director of a conservatory, and teaches harp. He most probably teaches piano. And so the story goes on. Endnotes 1. Pike, Carolyn, Rolfing for Professional Musicians: A Conversation with Tessy Brungardt. Structural Integration, September 2008, p. 15. Elmar Abram practices in Altrei, Italy. Structural Integration / December

42 PERSPECTIVES A Dialogue Between Two Rolfers A Father and a Daughter By Tom West, Certified Advanced Rolfer, and Julia West, B.A., Certified Rolfer Note: The authors with to thank Wendi West for transcribing this dialogue. Tom West: The good folks of the Rolf Institute have asked us to dialogue concerning a father and daughter both becoming Rolfers. I can say at the very beginning how proud I was when my daughter decided to move in this direction. But first of all, let me say a few words about my getting involved in Rolfing Structural Integration. I have spent fifty years of my life working at Florida Presbyterian College Eckerd College. On a sabbatical from the college in 1970, I went out to California to study the counterculture. Julia West: And came back with long hair and beads around your neck. TW: This put me at Esalen Institute many times. Just before I was leaving to head home, I was at Esalen, and out on the back deck was a wonderful older lady, sitting with a rose in her hair. People were walking around her in a respectful way. I asked someone who she was and the person said, You don t know Ida P. Rolf? I got up enough courage to go up to her and ask if I could have a Rolfing session. She said, I am so sorry, my dear, I have no openings but I can recommend you to a Rolfer at Nepenthe [ed. note: a community near Esalen]. I immediately phoned and found I could get in immediately because of a cancellation. That turned my life around. I was in awe of Ida and thrilled with the Rolfing process. Later that year, I found she was coming to Florida to teach a class and through the first Rolfer in Florida, Bill Williams, I was accepted as a model and also as an auditor in the class held at Pigeon Key. Soon after I completed the Rolfing training program at a class in Esalen in I remember so well that she would never compliment anyone, but if you heard her say, Well, it s better, you felt like you were on top of the mountain. When the seven of us graduated in that class, we were celebrating at the Nepenthe restaurant in Big Sur. We were as cocky as can be. Ida looked at us and said, You really won t know what you re doing for five years, but your [clients] will get their money s worth because you will do good work, even though you don t know what you re doing. That really grounded us. It confirmed what the auditors had said about the practitioners in that class. The auditors were asked, since they had been observing the practitioners the whole time, which practitioner they would prefer as their Rolfer. I won over the other practitioners, but when I asked why, the consensus was, He doesn t know what he s doing, but he won t hurt you. JW: I remember, Dad, that it was around that time that you wanted to [do Rolfing sessions on] all of your kids. I was eleven, and I remember you telling me that if it became to uncomfortable to just say, A, B, C, 1, 2, 3, which proved to be impossible with an elbow in my ribs! I also remember that at home you would yell out, Rolfing [session] time! and my sister, two brothers, and I would all run and hide. TW: Well, I was certainly sold on the process and wanted to share it with my family. In those days, the counterculture was at its height, and when I got back to Florida, Bill Williams was still the only Rolfer in Florida. He had a waiting list of around 300 people. He sent out a letter to them stating that Jan Davis and I were now Rolfers and ready to take clients. Within a month, I had about 100 people. JW: Now there are a good number of Rolfers in the state, but at the time when you first began, there was very little competition in bodywork. TW: And we also had a different culture back then. We had the counterculture, and people were looking for excitement, freedom, and new adventures. Rolfing [Structural Integration] was certainly something that most people wanted to try. I remember inviting Bill Williams to come to one of my classes at the college and do a Rolfing demonstration. At the end, over half of the class of sixty signed up for Rolfing [sessions]. JW: I sense that the counterculture, as you knew it, is over. People are much more cautious and maybe even less confident in the world in which they live. The field of bodywork has exploded, also, and there is 40 Structural Integration / December

43 far more competition than in your days. It s a different paradigm. TW: You told us how you felt about it when you were eleven years old, but somehow or another it became how you wanted your career to go. How did this come about? JW: Well clearly, there has been a large influence coming from you. Your career in psychology and your career in Rolfing [Structural Integration], the mind-body connection, just simply made sense to me. I didn t truly realize the importance of this until I was working on my B.A. in human development, and then it just all started coming together. In retrospect, the sessions I had at an early age had a greater impact on me than I realized at the time. Shortly before I completed my B.A., I decided to go ahead and begin the process towards training in bodywork by attending massage school. TW: You chose the best massage school in the area the Humanities Center, and the owner of it and her children had all [received Rolfing sessions]. JW: Several years later, I made the decision and commitment to go through Rolfing training. TW: In my day, to be accepted for training, all I had to do was go up to Ida Rolf, and say, I want to be a Rolfer. What was the process like with you? JW: The application process is much more formal now. I found the instructors to be highly supportive and encouraging throughout the process, which was very important after uprooting from my home and making a new home in Boulder throughout the training. The camaraderie that develops between students was amazing and made the whole experience even more valuable. One of the most enjoyable things about the training was the location in Boulder, Colorado. TW: In your classes, did Ida Rolf get mentioned often? JW: Ida s presence was always felt, although the instructors probably referred more to the second generation of Rolfers, as many did not have the pleasure of meeting her. TW: Yes, the essential part of my training was with Ida, her son, Dick, Emmett Hutchins, and Peter Melchior. That would be the first generation. I am sure the training and the philosophy has changed to some degree through the years, but I do feel that the genius of Rolfing [Structural Integration] was Ida, and that we should never lose her profound insights and understandings. I hope this is passed down from generation to generation. JW: Absolutely. TW: Do you still feel that it does take some time to actually know what you are doing, like what Ida said about five years? It takes that long to get it out of your head and into your hands? JW: I do agree, although I feel like I am in transition and moving more into intuitive work. I am becoming more and more aware that intention is a large part of this work. TW: Intention is a very important concept nowadays. Can you explain a bit how you use it in Rolfing [sessions]? JW: It s a mind-set, and when you re working with someone, and you see change that needs to happen, the mind-set focuses through your hands into the tissue. Even before you touch the body your hands have the message to give. TW: That reminds me of Ida and how she taught her classes. She once caught me sketching how her hands moved in doing some work, and she looked at me and said, Don t copy me. Because this is me and you are you. Let your hands do what is best, not sketching what my hands do. She on several occasions also said to me, since she knew I was a psychologist, that there is no such thing as psychology, everything is in the body. Now when you say intention is important and you want to translate a term into an experience, how would you do this the way that Ida Rolf would say, get into your hands? JW: That question reminds me of the many times we questioned the instructors about the definition of Rolfing [Structural Integration], and were told that it s very difficult to explain, but something to experience. TW: I, too, believe in intention, and what I sense in how it works is that you in your mind first have a goal that you want to reach. You actually have that intention before you put your hands upon a person. PERSPECTIVES Then you let your hands take over to turn the concept into an experience. Would you agree with that? JW: I would absolutely agree with that. TW: I also found that Rolfing [work] in the early days was more painful than it is now. And yet I can remember Ida saying over and over again that pain comes from the intention of leaving, of getting out of a situation. So if you have the intention of opening an area up, and you move with that intention, and your [client] is there with you, the pain factor is minimal. So, my dear daughter, what I like sharing with you from the first generation of Rolfing and the wisdom of Ida Rolf is, that to work with the tissue, to become a friend of the tissue, and have the full support of the [client] in doing so, leads to very wonderful work. JW: Recently, I had the privilege of working with someone who welcomed Rolfing as a means to address severe back pain that he had been experiencing for quite some time. With his attitude toward the process and my intention we were able to get some good work done. I was expecting a better result at the end of the session, and explained to him that it might take a day or two for his body to integrate the work. I was very pleased to hear from him two days later, and he was able to say that he was pain-free at that point. This is music to the ears of a Rolfer. TW: That reminds me that when Ida said that there is no such thing as psychology (and I consider intentionality very much psychology), I considered her to be one of the best psychologists I had ever met. An example of that is when she was working on one of the practitioners in the class who was a very kind, gentle, warm man and as she was working on his hip, he let out a scream and began cursing like a drunken sailor. She immediately stopped what she was doing and said, Dick, share with us what s going on. He said that all of a sudden he flashed back to when he was eight years old, and his brother, who was eleven, had pushed him down the stairs in the home, hurting his hip. The brother said, if you tell our parents, I ll kill you. So he never did. And he covered up the hip pain whenever he walked. When Ida worked in that area, the whole memory came back, and she said after he related this, What Structural Integration / December

44 PERSPECTIVES do you think you should do? And he said, I m going to call my parents. And that same day he told them, and then he called his brother and said, I told. He came back into the class almost like a different person. Now that s the mind-body interface in its dramatic form. Have you had any other experiences that have been very meaningful with your [clients]? JW: I am currently working with a troubled young woman who has scoliosis, with whom I ve connected on a rather deep level. She is away from home with no family in the area and struggling with maintaining relationships with others. I feel like I ve developed a relationship with her where she can trust me a great deal and my ability to listen is very helpful. Because of the nature of the relationship we ve developed, she is greatly benefiting from bodywork. TW: So you then see that as a Rolfer it is very important to be a good listener? JW: I believe that is vital to the work. TW: What I see as very important in your following in my footsteps is that I am following in Ida Rolf footsteps. I am serving as a channel of her wisdom in keeping that going through me and through you. I like that you went to an excellent massage school and that you thoroughly enjoyed and profited from the Rolfing training, and that you are well on your way to knowing what you re doing. I can attest to that by work that you have done with me. You have had remarkable success in working on a pinched nerve in the left side of my neck. You are now working with a little bit of arthritis I have in my lower back. I m also pleased that you want to go through the sessions again with me, and we ve already started them, so you can continue to learn how I have approached Rolfing [work] through all these years. JW: I truly look forward to being in the same place as you are with Rolfing [Structural Integration] in terms of becoming an intuitive healer, and I feel that I am approaching that and beginning to experience that. TW: And now that I m approaching retirement, I know that my practice will be in wonderful hands, connected with a beautiful heart and a deep sense of intentionality to heal. And that is you, my daughter. JW: I treasure your blessings. Statement of Ownership, Management, and Circulation Publication Title: Structural Integration: The Journal of The Rolf Institute Publication Number: Filing Date: Issue Frequency: Quarterly Number of Issues Published Annually: 4 Annual Subscription Price: $24.99 Mailing Address of Office of Publication: 5055 Chaparral Ct, Ste. 103, Boulder, CO Contact person: Heidi Hauge, Phone: x103 Publisher: The Rolf Institute of Structural Integration, 5055 Chaparral Ct, Ste. 103, Boulder, CO Editor: Anne Hoff, The Rolf Institute of Structural Integration, 5055 Chaparral Ct, Ste. 103, Boulder, CO Managing Editor: Robert McWilliams, The Rolf Institute of Structural Integration, 5055 Chaparral Ct, Ste. 103, Boulder, CO Owner: The Rolf Institute of Structural Integration, 5055 Chaparral Ct, Ste. 103, Boulder, CO Average No. No. Copies of Copies Each Issue Single Issue During Preceding Published Nearest 12 Month to Filing Date Total Number of Copies Paid/Requested Outside-County Mail Subscription Paid In-County Subscriptions Total Paid and/or Requested Circulation Structural Integration / December

45 REVIEWS The Rolf Institute Membership Conference 2009 Was Divine: Wish You d Been There? By Carole LaRochelle, Certified Advanced Rolfer The official theme for the newly renamed 2009 Rolf Institute Membership Conference was The Shifting Sands of Rolfing : Body Maps, Perception, Gravity. The event was formerly known as the annual meeting, but membership conference seems a more fitting name given the emphasis on presentations and the sharing of information, as well as the social and community building aspects of the event. Headlining the Body Maps category was Sandra Blakeslee, award-winning science writer for The New York Times. She presented the opening keynote Friday evening on her newest book, The Body Has a Mind of Its Own. Blakeslee received the Rolfing Ten Series for a knee injury she sustained that left her unable to fully flex or extend her knee. She believes that one of the explanations for why Rolfing Structural Integration works is that when we as practitioners touch people, we are helping to alter their body maps. The concept of body maps originated in the 1930s with neuroscientist Wilder Penfield. He created the first-ever maps of a human being s somato-sensory and motor cortexes, creating what we know today as the homunculi. In addition to the origins of the body maps concept Blakeslee s book also includes cutting-edge research on out-of-body experiences, mirror neurons, and phantom limb phenomena. 1 Kudos to Sandra Blakeslee for inspiring us in the structural integration community and providing us with such valuable and timely information. Under the category of Perception, Hubert Godard presented the Saturday morning keynote (with Blakeslee in attendance), From Biomechanics to Body Image: How Perception Shapes The Body. It had been twenty years since Godard presented at an annual conference, and understandably there was much excitement about his presentation. He started by explaining the difference between body image and body schema. He defines body schema as a physiological construct that is mostly unconscious. Body image, on the other hand, is the more conscious perception of the body. It is about one s emotional response to how one experiences one s body; how one feels about one s physical traits, and how one believes others view oneself. (Blakeslee goes into quite a bit of detail about this in Dueling Body Maps, Chapter 3 of her book.) Godard sees the body schema as a space of action. People can have part of their space missing, which can have profound implications for things like scoliosis. One of the ways Godard works with this is by playing with focal and peripheral vision. For Godard, focal vision is a way of perceiving where vision goes to and seeks out the object, whereas peripheral vision allows the space or object to come into our vision. Losing peripheral vision on one side apparently affects the vestibular system on the same side, setting up a cascade of concentric contraction down the muscular chain starting with the scalenes. Godard seeks to disrupt this pattern by hiding the focal vision on the affected side using a sticker applied to the central part of the lens of a pair of eyeglasses. In so doing, he seeks to enhance the vestibular function on the affected side, by emphasizing its peripheral vision use, and achieving a functional improvement in that side. Many of those in attendance had our own perception challenge with Godard s lovely French accent. For myself, I heard Godard speak about a stick that he put in a glass. How relieved I was when we received the sticker and eyeglasses clarification. I had literally imagined a water glass held up to the eye with a pencil inside it! Recently certifi ed Rolfers, Alexi Boshart and Brett Linder, enjoy dancing at their fi rst Membership Conference. Structural Integration / December

46 REVIEWS On the social side of things I found myself a bit nervous about Friday evening s meet and greet event. Would anyone I know be there? Would people be friendly and want to talk with me? Would I feel included? It turned out I had nothing to worry about. I hadn t actually realized until this event how many colleagues and friends I ve come to know over the fifteen years I ve been practicing Rolfing Structural Integration. I could barely make it to the food tables without running into someone I knew who I hadn t seen in a long time and who I really wanted to catch up with. For give-aways at registration this year, instead of t-shirts, we were given stainless steel water bottles with the Rolf Institute logo on them. How cool is that? My coattendee commented to me that she d been intending to purchase exactly such a bottle and now she wouldn t need to. Another highly coveted give-away were the temporary tattoos of the little boy logo. We were limited to one upon registration but I wanted more! By Saturday morning s presentations I spotted many fellow attendees sporting tattoos on various body parts. Saturday morning s breakout sessions were with Tessy Brungardt, Lael Keen, and Robert Schleip. I attended Brungardt s presentation, Another View of Neck Work Techniques for the Visceral Compartment of the Neck. She began with a nice review of the anatomy starting with the superficial layer, dropping into the mid-cervical fascial layer, the visceral compartment itself, and finally the deep cervical layer. Brungardt said she views the hyoid as the key to the entire visceral compartment of the neck. She tends to hold the hyoid and motion test/feel to assess what the strain pattern she s working with is organized around. I discovered and made a mental note that I need to review the pharyngeal muscles. Happening at the same time as Brungardt s lecture were Lael Keen s Re-mapping the Feet and Robert Schleip s Fascia as Sensory Organ. Saturday afternoon s breakout sessions were with Steve Evanko, William Smythe, and Don Hazen. I split my time between Evanko s Extracellular Matrix and the Manipulation of Cells and Tissues and Smythe s Working on the Edge. Hazen offered us Neurology of Posture A Synopsis. Saturday evening was the famous Rolf Institute dance party, a typical and notso- typical barefoot affair. Brett Linder and Alexi Boshart saw fit to come in costume and entertain us all. Have you ever seen a dancing Rolfer in a bunny suit? Sunday morning was back to business with a Q & A session for the advanced faculty panel. Morning breakouts were Hubert Godard s Endogenous and Exogenous Origins of Spinal Dysfunction, where I was fortunate enough to see him demonstrate a little bit of how he works with an eager volunteer from the audience. Liz Gaggini presented Natural Alignment: How to Recognize and Facilitate Different Fundamental Alignment Patterns and Nicholas French shared some Rolfing Odds and Ends. Saturday afternoon was the actual membership meeting. To entice attendees to stay, a raffle was held with some cool prizes donated by local businesses and Rolfers alike. Proceeds were to benefit the Rolf Institute student library. Sunday afternoon s closing ceremony was officiated by Barbara Dilley, former soloist with Merce Cunningham Dance Company, who has taught dance and embodiment studies at Naropa University since She led us through a simple yet elegant movement ritual to close the conference. Sound like fun? Come to the 2010 Membership Conference! Connect with community, learn something new, and keep up to date with Institute happenings. Endnotes 1. For more on Blakeslee s book please see: Kevin Frank s The Body Has a Mind of Its Own book review in Structural Integration: The Journal of The Rolf Institute, Vol. 36, No.2 (June 2008), pp , and his The Confluence of Neuroscience and Structural Integration, Structural Integration: The Journal of The Rolf Institute, Vol. 37, No.2 (June 2009), pp Structural Integration / December

47 Highlights from the Second International Fascia Research Congress A Meeting of Hands and Minds, Clinicians and Scientists By Valerie Berg, Certified Advanced Rolfer, Rolfing Faculty Member, and Laura Barnes, Certified Advanced Rolfer First of all, don t miss the next Fascia Research Congress (FRC) in Vancouver in 2012! This congress, a unique environment that brings together clinicians and scientists, should be a requirement for anyone who speaks about fascia, works with fascia, or teaches work connected with it or for anyone interested in learning the language of science and research about our work. Around thirty of us from the Rolf Institute of Structural Integration, out of 550 attendees from 40 countries, were fortunate to to attend the Second International FRC in Amsterdam in October 2009, and to listen to four days of top scientists speaking on topics like: What happens, and at which layer of connective tissue (CT), with injury or immobility? What are the effects of load and remodeling on viscous components in the loose CT? How different are the forces of tension at proximal and distal tendons? How much force is really needed to change and affect different layers of fascia? Looking at surgical implications of the fascial surroundings to muscle surgeries Fascia and cancer surgery Compromised fascial continuity and its contributions to problems elsewhere Architectural anatomy as opposed to dissection anatomy The relationship of fascia and proprioception Fascia as a sensory organ The effect of the crural fascia on promoting action such as propulsion and medial/lateral stability Effect of inflammation on CT Dr. Rolf always spoke of the need to verbalize the science behind our work in operational language and often quoted Korzybski in this context. Many Rolfers may not want to be scientists, but this ongoing congress gives us a chance to become educated in the language and thinking of science. Robert Schleip Certified Advanced Rolfer, Rolfing faculty member, and scientist represented structural integration in one presentation, showing photos of Dr. Rolf and speaking of her work with fascia and its relationship to gravity. Tom Findley Certified Advanced Rolfer, chair and organizer of the FRC gave a great talk on why we should care about research and writing research grants. One would find it hard to leave this packed conference not understanding the essential role science plays for our practices: it validates our work; it improves our treatments, our efficiency and our effectiveness; it improves our teaching; it improves our ability to think and speak clearly with meaningful language about what we do; it changes our touch when what we think we are doing is clarified and validated by gorgeous REVIEWS visuals of the fascial sleeve, its connections and its response to life s imprinting. Detailed state of the art ultrasounds, MRIs and spectacular electronic microscopic photos of fascia were abundant to underscore the important roles fascia plays in all systems of the human body. We saw the sarcomeres, fascial fibers, tendons, aponeuroses, and tubules that we feel under our hands. We already knew they were there; however, to see the reality of what we say we do validated, discussed, criticized, and spoken of in a language that is precise and operational would make Dr. Rolf and Korzybski quite happy. Another validation of Dr. Rolf s thinking was when we heard a plastic surgeon call for all surgeons to begin to respectfully address the continuity of the CT in surgical procedures. The FRC also offered important dialogue between clinicians and scientists. Clinicians presented to scientists about what we do and what we need them to study for us. The scientists listened to the practitioners and spoke to what they thought about the work we all do and how we might think differently about what we think we are doing. Chiropractors, osteopaths, research scientists, physical therapists, plastic surgeons, orthopedic doctors, physiologists, anatomists, structural integrators, massage therapists, Bowenwork practitioners, homeopaths, and acupuncturists all came together on breaks to discuss every aspect of their work with fascia. We came from Poland, Finland, Norway, Turkey, Scotland, Israel, Italy Ireland, Portugal, England, China, Korea, Australia, Canada, Germany, France, Japan, Russia, Spain, the Czech Republic, the Kingdom of Bahrain, and the Netherlands. The congress challenged all of us to begin to think and speak clearly, question our work, and excite our minds to study and propose our hypotheses on why it works the way it works. Returning to our practices, our hands have new realizations, and our ability to speak and think about our work is clearer and stronger. Hopefully in 2012 some of our members will present their studies or papers on structural integration. The research articles and abstracts from the Congress have been published as Fascia Research II (ISBN ), available from org/2009/dvd-book-purchase.htm. DVDs are scheduled for release in December These would be valuable additions to the library of any CT specialist. Structural Integration / December

48 INSTITUTE NEWS Announcements Changes to Structural Integration: The Journal of the Rolf Institute Due to budgetary constraints, the Board of Directors of the Rolf Institute of Structural Integration (RISI) has decided to shift publication of Structural Integration: The Journal of the Rolf Institute to a schedule of two issues in We are very glad that the Board of Directors was able to reach this compromise to allow us to continue publishing a print version. This difficult decision was made after giving full consideration to the views of faculty and the Journal s editorial board, and in recognition that Structural Integration is our flagship intellectual vehicle. Please watch for an online survey about how Structural Integration might best meet RISI membership needs and reach other subscription-paying audiences. Congratulations to the New Graduates Europe October 2009 Faculty: Christoph Sommer (instructor), Patricia von Weichs (assistant) Students: Bernhard Möstl, Kai Hodeck, Evi Weigl, Christian Schabus, Thomas Sonnleitner, Rolf Rowedder, Hans Sappel, Michael Smith, Matthias König, Sabine Kowalski, Stefani Kling, Carina Trippelsdorf Brazil October 2009 Faculty: Monica Caspari (instructor) Students: Rita Maria Terra, Nestor Bressane, Thamara Barbosa, Fernanda Luz, Greice Gobbi Valdinéia Pereira, Luciana Trompowsky, Maialu Garcia, Maria Ayako, Sonia Vieira,Franco Cardinali 46 Structural Integration / December

49 INSTITUTE NEWS 2010 Class Schedule BOULDER, COLORADO Unit I: Foundations of Rolfing Structural Integration/ FORSI January 25 March 8, 2010 Coordinator: Juan David Velez June 7 July 19, 2010 Coordinator: Michael Polon October 4 November 15, 2010 Coordinator: Suzanne Picard Unit I: Advanced Foundations of Rolfing Structural Integration/ AFORSI March 14 March 27, 2010 Instructor: Jon Martine July 18 July 31, 2010 Instructor: John Schewe November 28 December 11, 2010 Instructor: TBA Unit II: Embodiment of Rolfing & Rolf Movement Integration January 11 March 4, 2010 Instructors: Russell Stolzoff (1st half) & Ellen Freed (2nd half) Principles Instructor: Kevin Frank April 5 May 27, 2010 Instructor: TBA Principles Instructor: TBA August 23 October 14, 2010 Instructor: TBA Principles Instructor: TBA Unit III: Clinical Application of Rolfing Theory March 8 April 30, 2010 Instructor: Jim Asher Anatomy Instructor: Michael Murphy June 7 July 30, 2010 Instructor: TBA Anatomy Instructor: TBA October 18 December 17, 2010 Instructor: TBA Anatomy Instructor: TBA HAWAII Advanced Training Phase I: April 12 30, 2010 Instructor: Sally Klemm Assistant: Gael Ohlgren Phase II: September 6 16, 2010 Instructor: Sally Klemm Assistant: Lael Keen CHARLES TOWN, WEST VIRGINIA Unit I: Advanced Foundations of Rolfing Structural Integration/ AFORSI February 28 March 5, 2010 / May 23 29, 2010 Instructor: John Schewe Rolf Movement Certification July / August / October 5 12, 2010 Instructors: Jane Harrington & Rebecca Carli-Mills GERMANY Basic Rolfing Training: Intensive Phase 3: February 1 March 26, 2010 Instructor: Pierpaola Volpones Phase 1: August 2 21, 2010 Instructor: TBA Phase 2: October 4 November 26, 2010 Instructor: TBA Phase 3: January 31 March 24, 2011 Instructor: TBA Basic Rolfing Training: Modular Training begins in September 2010 Advanced Training Part II: February 2010 Location: Berlin, Germany Instructor: Ray McCall BRAZIL Rolf Movement Certification March 5 April 9, 2010 Instructors: Moncca Caspari JAPAN Unit I Date to be determined in 2010 Rolf Movement Certification Date to be determined in 2010 For a full list of class schedules please go to these websites: USA Europe Australia Japan Brazil Structural Integration / December

50 CONTACTS OFFICERS & BOARD OF DIRECTORS Hubert Ritter (Europe/Chairperson) Peter Bolhuis (At-large/CFO) (303) Audrey Chester-McMann (Eastern USA) (443) Kevin McCoy (Faculty/Secretary) (862) Marilyn Miller (Central USA) (858) Maria Helena Orlando (International/CID) Jeff W. Ryder (Western USA) (503) Wanda Silva (At-large) (904) EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE Peter Bolhuis Kevin McCoy Hubert Ritter EDUCATION EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE Ellen Freed, Chairperson Duffy Allen Kevin McCoy Michael Polon Ashuan Seow Russell Stolzoff THE ROLF INSTITUTE 5055 Chaparral Ct., Ste. 103 Boulder, CO (303) (800) (303) fax ROLF INSTITUTE STAFF Diana Yourell, Executive Director Jim Jones, Director of Education Heidi Hauge, Membership Judy Jones, Clinic Coordinator Gena Rauschke, Accountant Trace Scheidt, Admissions Susan Winter, Marketing & PR AUSTRALIAN GROUP Marnie Fitzpatrick, Administrator 5055 Chaparral Ct., Ste. 103 Boulder, CO (303) (800) (303) fax BRAZILIAN ROLFING ASSOCIATION Sybille Cavalcanti, Executive Director R. Cel. Arthur de Godoy, 83 Vila Mariana São Paulo-SP Brazil fax EUROPEAN ROLFING ASSOCIATION E.V. Angelika Simon, Executive Director Martina Berger, Training Coordinator Monika Lambacher, Sales and PR Nymphenburgerstr München Germany fax JAPANESE ROLFING ASSOCIATION Yoshiko Ikejima, Administrator Bunkendo Bldg. 3rd Floor Kyobashi Chuoh-ku Tokyo Japan fax CANADIAN ROLFING ASSOCIATION Kai Devai, Administrator Governor s Rd. Dundas, ONT L9H 5M3 Canada (416) Fax: (905) info@rolfingcanada.org 48 Structural Integration / December

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52 5055 Chaparral Ct., Ste. 103 Boulder, CO Periodicals