The Inner Work
I am often asked by clients if they should be doing anything while going through a Rolfing series. I may give them an exercise that they can practice outside the office, usually pertaining to the goals of the session we just completed. These are not like gym exercises but exercises designed to explore movement and sensation. We want to improve posture and movement, but not through control, not how we have been taught. Graceful, efficient and optimized movement comes through expression of the body, not control. Every effort to force ourselves to walk like this, and stand like that, limits the expression of the body, and does not allow us to find better ways of being and doing things. When going through a Rolfing series there are 5 things that may help to develop and integrate the work we are doing.
1. Take a walk
Doing crunches, running, hitting the gym are all great, but one of the most valuable exercises of all to your Rolfing process is taking a walk. Walking is the most basic form of exercise a human can do, and we evolved to do quite a bit of it. Walking helps us regulate our nervous systems as we tap into our parasympathetic nervous system when walking, especially if we are relaxed. Walking is not only good for our nerves, but also good for our minds. This is even better if we can get some barefoot time in while walking, feeling the grass, or soil beneath our feet. We are designed to take in a lot of information through our feet. It is an old Buddhist monk practice to walk barefoot on a path of river polished stones every day. Studies have proven that this not only tones the nervous system and lowers blood pressure, but also improves balance. Even more important, walking helps us to integrate the changes we have achieved during our Rolfing session, and start using those changes in real life, but this is greatly furthered by work with sensation.
2. Sensation
The ways in which we understand what the word sensation means can be problematic. We do some walking assessment in every Rolfing session, and I always ask what the client notices while walking. With this question, I am talking about sensation. People may say that they don't notice anything, but I believe this is just a question of semantics. How could someone who is alive, breathing, and moving around not feel anything? So to clear that up there are some things to point out, most obviously feeling pain or restriction is sensation. Feeling light or heavy is sensation, as is feeling heavy or freer breathing. Feeling upright, or off center, or strain while walking is also a part of the picture that is painted by consciously participating in sensation.
Working with sensation has been a large part of my mind body development over the years, working with G.I. Gurdjieff's ideas, most noticeably, that of Self Remembering. That is bringing one's conscious awareness back to one's self in the moment, the sensation of the body, the feeling of the emotions, and the mind together, the whole of one's self while in life, not just in meditation. Through deep states of meditation one may have a very different perception of sensing the body, but what really matters is working with the sensation of the body in daily life, and a walk is a great way to do it. One of our group leaders in the Gurdjieff Foundation, Jacob Needleman, always encouraged us to come back to a light sensation of the body from head to toe, a global sensation of the body, when trying to sense one's self in life. From there can emerge something deeper, but we must stay close to ourselves to allow this to happen, by trying to stay with a light sensation of the whole body. When out and about, in the gym, or even while cleaning house, bringing attention back to the body is a good practice for allowing the changes we are aiming for to happen, and the next step in this inner work is to relax.
3. Relax
If I have a mantra that encapsulates my view of the process we undergo in Rolfing, it is to just relax! When I become aware of my body, I will probably notice unnecessary muscle tension. This tension does not allow me to take in a deeper sensation of myself. If my arm is tense and I sense my arm, then all I likely feel is tension. How would I experience my arm if it was more relaxed? There could be a finer sensation, especially if my mind becomes more attune to it. Muscle tension burns a lot of energy, for Gurdjieff it is a big culprit along with negative emotions that drain all the energy that we need for inner development. Even if inner development is not your aim, maybe we can all agree that life might be better without excess muscle tension.
When we are tense, we experience constriction, and this takes away from our inner sense of spaciousness. This also limits our movement, and our palate of expression to a smaller range. It is difficult to allow new posture and new ways of movement in when we are tense. It is true that we might not have direct control over tension in some parts of the body, but we can bring a light awareness to it and try to let go. Sometimes it is this awareness that makes the change. The Rolfer has been involved in more overt things like separating muscles that are glued together by bunched up fascia, trying to get more support by aligning the individual to gravity so they don't have to strain so much, but the client needs to learn to relax and let something new in or they are likely to just pick up old habitual ways of standing and moving again. Besides trying to let go of unnecessary muscle tension, another way of breaking old habits is to slow down what you are doing.
4. Slow Down
Any music teacher will probably let you know that if you are practicing a melody and hit a wrong note, you should start over at a slower pace. This is so you don't ingrain your mistakes. The analytical part of the mind moves slower than the body, and when we speed up we usually take up our ingrained unconscious habits again. Slower movement can allow new things to come in, and can allow the mind to take in new impressions. A lot of what we do as Rolfers is to help people gain some freedom from their habitual ways of standing, walking, and experiencing themselves. An important concept that Gurdjieff spoke of was that of postures. He pointed out that we have physical and mental postures, both of which are related. Taking the same physical posture can evoke the same mental posture and that can keep us viewing the world in a mechanical framework. It is hard to see anything new when we are stuck in the same mental postures throughout the day. In addition to slowing down, in order to get some temporary freedom from mechanical mental postures, it can be helpful to take unusual physical postures, even simple ones. One can leave one arm hanging down while sitting in a chair, or uncross one's arms when we are accustomed to cross them. It should feel mildly uncomfortable because it is not habitual, it is a moment of being awake.
5. Listen to the body
Changes in the body, movement, and the mind-body interaction must happen organically in hopes of finding balance and a higher degree of order. This can not occur when I am over controlling, or when I am unaware of myself. A dialog needs to take place in which there is attention to the body in motion, and an allowance for that body to explore. For this we must allow ourselves to come out of habitual ways of moving and standing, and also give up what we think it the "right way" to walk, stand and sit. Education in walking, standing, and sitting is important, and it is what we do, but it should be done without force and without trying to control.
When we take a dog for a walk we hopefully allow the dog to explore, sniffing things, roll in the grass, watch people and animals, we don't micromanage the dog on a walk, we gently guide it and make sure safety is observed. So too should the body be allowed to explore movement, finding subtle new ways to express itself, and being overly controlling of its manifestations can prevent change from happening. I have sometimes seen very disciplined people unconsciously resist change during a series because of their controlling attitudes. They may have gotten something out it, but they probably would have done better to get out of their own way. So a good rule of thumb is to try to get out of our own way, so that something new can come in.