Chronic pain is a problem that many of us deal with, whether from injury, disease, or from factors unknown. Sometimes this pain lasts for months, even years and sometimes it just disappears suddenly or fades away over time. Although pain can feel as immediate and real as our hand in front of our face, science has begun to put the experience of pain as an objective phenomena in a doubtful view. Coincidentally, this is similar to the Eastern perspectives held by Buddhism and many forms of Hinduism, the idea that all phenomena is a subjective illusion, even pain. This might be a hard pill to swallow, because it is a very convincing illusion, to say the least.
Pain Occurs in the Brain
Anyone whose life is affected by chronic pain, which can be debilitating, does not want to hear the phrase "it's all in your head". Also various trends in pop psychology and pop spirituality will try to say that if you change your mind or the way you think, the pain will stop and your life will change , but the reality is we don't have much control over our minds, this perspective does not really help much. Pain mostly serves the purpose of telling us something is wrong. Our whole body is composed of innervated tissue and nerve endings that tell us where we are in space (proprioception), what is going on inside of us (interoception) and warns us if something is dangerous or something is wrong. We are covered with nerve endings that take in all this information, and some of these nerve endings are especially devoted to sensing pain, but the difference between sensing a feather stroke across your arm or the sharp point of a nail is interpreted in the brain, not in the arm.
How Rolfing Can Help
The term myofascial, and or myofascial release is coming up a lot on the internet today. Myo= muscle and fascia= connective tissue. Rolfers and osteopaths were the first people to develop myofascial manipulation in the west, at least with greater precision than a Swedish massage. Dr. Ida Rolf, who had a P.H.D. in biochemistry, placed an importance on the nature of fascia as the primary organ of structure back when most scientists and anatomists thought of it as practically useless packing material. In the body fascia basically wraps around everything, so trying to help a person change their structure is difficult to impossible without addressing the fascia along with the Muscle tissue.
Rolfers will ideally want to address posture and movement, to align the individual's structure in gravity. This really means addressing the individual from head to toe and from toe to head, from the outside in, and from the inside out. As Rolfers we are dealing with relationships. If you have shoulder pain, the problem is not your shoulder, it's the relation ship of your shoulder to your neck, or your chest, or your arm. Really, it's YOUR relationship with your shoulder that is a problem, as in reality, every problem is a full body problem to a Rolfer. What's the solution? First we begin with differentiating structures that are stuck together, and lengthening structure that are held tight and in flexion. We work with structures that will support other structures later, so for example, serious neck work happens later, everything underneath the neck must be supported first. We then work to get smooth movement through the joints when walking and moving around, and eventually help the deeper core muscles to become more active so we can do ordinary things without excessive force and expenditure of energy.
The body is a self regulating/self correcting organism. It may have a hard time finding balance when there is injury or repetitive stress, but the Rolfer can help the self correcting ability, the adaptability, of the body to work better by addressing restrictions, developing support, and aligning the posture in gravity. With better support and alignment comes a greater ease of (standing, sitting, and movement) and this allows for less strain. With less strain muscle and joint injuries may have a chance to heal and the body may develop a better sense of balance, and pain may then subside. Although the subjective nature of pain is still somewhat mysterious, one thing is for sure, sometimes chronic pain begins to subside when a person starts to feel better overall, physically and emotionally, and this can be facilitated by having a sense of better physical freedom and support, which can be achieved by Rolfing.