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Just as Buddhism states that happiness and clear mindedness is the natural state of a human being, eastern medicine states that health and balance are also our natural state. When this natural balance is disturbed, disease sets in. In the west we are regularly striving to improve health, "to get healthier", to gain health so to speak. This idea seams odd from an eastern perspective, as health can not be accumulated, it can only be restored. In the west we are under the influence of the idea that we must always be striving for something or we are lazy. The saying we have all heard many times before rings out "don't just sit there, do something!" But in eastern traditions that have spent much time and effort in cultivating stillness, silence and clarity of mind, this is something that any untrained animal can do. Even a dog, motivated buy hunger, fear, or even curiosity may run around, motivated by instinct to keep moving, hunting, running from danger. The difference is that a dog will feel no guilt about resting, sitting, and taking in the scenery around it, sleeping, or just sitting still when there is no pressing motivation to do anything. Most motivation toward external goals are ego driven. This is not to say that the ego is bad, without it we might not ever get out of bed, but we must not let the goals of the ego completely control us or will have no room to grow. People come in to see me with all sorts of goals. They want to heal from injuries and chronic pain, they want better posture and more graceful movement. They want to start working out again, or better sports performance. These are all great reasons to come in, but non of these goals should be more important than developing a greater since of balance and ease in life, or more importantly, a great sense of self. When we bring our attention to the sensation of the body, weather sitting or moving about, we develop a fuller experience of ourselves, and a presence that can more fully experience life. To do so I must cultivate an attention that can contain both the impression of the sense of my body here in the moment and the outside world at the same time. With the cultivation of this attention, my sense can become more fine tuned over time and I can experience myself, my body to a more subtle degree. This attention over time can have a transformation effect. As I have said many times before, Rolfing is not about self help, it is about transformation. For some it can be life changing, for other it will at least be helpful. At the end of the day all of the interventions we do in a Rolfing session are primarily to bring new awareness to the body. Separating and lengthening muscle/connective tissue is really just input, and changes we make are really just suggestions to the body. If the individual's nervous system does not think those changes are good, it will revert back to the way it was before, but the important thing we are striving for is an experience of something new. Moments of silence, stillness, and being present to sensation can facilitate that. If you can see the value in this, try to incorporate more of these moments into your daily life. What feeds the being is more important that what feeds the goal of the ego.

Do you have any friends who try to address their ailments through natural medicine? If they are taking a western approach they are likely taking a huge amount of supplements based on what our scientists have discovered about various herbs and minerals. If you know anyone who is exploring eastern medicine you may find that the approach seems to be more concise. This is because eastern medicine, be it Ayurvedic or Traditional Chinese Medicine, is based on methods of balancing the individual's systems and western natural medicine is bases on treating symptoms primarily, just like mainstream western medicine. The jumbled mess of pills, teas, and juices that we wind up using, desperately trying to find some natural way to find balance without any real knowledge of what that balance looks like, is a testament to just how under developed western naturopathy is compared with eastern systems in general. It should come as no surprise that Eastern Medicine is more developed and sophisticated than western approaches. The civilizations that developed them were very old and literate. Such literacy over vast amounts of time allowed people to take an empirical approach and keep track of the results, not really scientific but empirical regardless. In the west we abandoned the development of natural medicine for a more scientific approach. As science tends to favor studying the parts rather than the whole, and trying to understand the whole is a more esoteric view, we come up with fragments of reality without a lot of understanding of how the fragments interrelate, and this is exactly how western natural medicine approaches the world. In my many years as a massage therapist, I continued to study and go back to school to learn more about using massage therapeutically, but I could have done so for the rest of my life and never see the big picture, as we are trained to look for in Rolfing. No fragmented group of methods will give a person the big picture, because we must start developing methods with a big picture in mind. Rolfing is purely western approach to helping people align their posture and movement with gravity. This is done by addressing strain patterns and working with the innate intelligence of the body, just as eastern medicine works with balancing the body's systems so that health can be achieved and disease can be addressed. Rolfing has many methods, and some have been used for deep tissue massage and myofacial release, but the methods alone do not constitute Rolfing, only if they are used to build support in gravity, increase self awareness, and lead to a greater sense of self. This is the big picture we are looking for. #rofling #rolfer #structuralintegration #easternmedicine #ayurveda #medicine #westernmedicine #wholistic #holistic #balance

When we are exploring hyptertonicity, i.e tight muscles, we need to ask how they got that way in the first place. Why does the nervous system need to hold that area of the body tight and in a shortened position? We can dig into short tight muscles and manually lengthen them, but if the nervous system feels the need for that muscle to be hypertonic, it will simply shorten the muscle again the next day, maybe even the next hour. So in order to get results that are adoptable, one must try to gain some support in gravity above or below that area so the body does not feel it necessary to hold on to tension. This is why Rolfers work effectively in a series. But this is not all. Our ability to sense and to perceive where we are in space, our proprioception, also governs our muscle tension There are certain areas of the body that have more proprioceptic ability than others. The feet and hands are designed to take in a lot more information than say the elbow. The nervous system pays particular attention to these areas, but the area that has the most concentration of sensitive receptors, and muscle spindles that govern muscle length, are the small muscles at the back bottom of the head, the suboccipitals. This area allows our head to be adjusted so we can find the horizon and, in general, sense where we are in space. If this area becomes locked up and somehow compromised, it will cause other parts of the body to tighten up and stay closer to the mid line, in order to protect the individual. The safest bet when proprioception is limited is to limit movement. Rolfers pay particular attention to the neck and to the occipital region. Also, if the first cervical vertebra, the atlas, is locked up the Occipital-Atlanto joint will cause all sorts of of areas in the body to tighten up, so hypertonicity can not be properly addressed without freeing up this area. There are chiropractors that focus specifically on the Atlas region, and we can see how this can effect vast regions of the body. We function better when we can sense where we are in space better, otherwise the defense is to limit movement. Typically, people with frozen shoulder will gain full range of motion under anesthetic, and when it wears off their shoulder will be frozen again. The nervous system decides what is best, so we must work with the nervous system. Any manual muscle therapy without this in mind will be less effective, and this is what makes Rolfing different that other forms of manual therapy. As research continues, we will continue to develop our understanding of how things work. #rolfing #rolfer #structuralintegration #hypertonic #proprioception

Rolfing was developed a bit earlier than the human potential movement in the 60's but that is when it really took off. This movement encouraged people to develop their own innate abilities but the whole thing was doomed to be short sighted. In order to develop abilities that are innate, a person must truly know themselves, inside and out, or this development will be artificial. If this occurs, these artificial constructs can limit the natural growth and functioning of an individual, and act as a prison for their inner being. This is what often happens when self help practices have been driven deep into the psyche. The problem with methods of self help is that they do not serve the real individual, they only serve the ego, and therefore only operate in the realm of the personality, the more shallow and less essential aspect of the self. We want to be stronger, healthier, stand taller, have better performance in sports, be calmer, more likable. The problem with all of these things is, they only serve what the ego wants to be, rather than allowing the individual as a whole unfold and grow into it's true potential and therefore limit the real growth and expression of the inner being, due to the ignorance of one's true nature. Where we are now is a fine combination of ego development, conditioning from life events, and compensation patterns. The Rolfer seeks to address restrictions in the muscles and joints, but this is not enough by itself. There must be an exploration of attentive movement to break out of habits and compensation patterns as well as a new feeling of support. Along with this a certain amount of giving up control must be aimed for so we can find better ways of standing and walking. This must begin with the idea that we don't know best. Trying to hold yourself in a good posture, and walk the way you think you should, is probably not very helpful. Good posture and movement are a natural expression of a well organized individual. Trying to use force and strain to hold yourself in good posture, is not good posture. That is simply imitating good posture, from the outside. We need to have experience with embodiment. Trying to operate your body with your mind, like driving a vehicle, is not embodiment. It is only when the mind participates in the movement and posture, taking in sensation, and being present that we are embodied. With this will develop a greater sense of self, not what you want to be, but unfolding into the fullness of what you are. #Rolfing #Rolfer #structuralintegration #humanpotential #embodyment #posture

So you have completed a basic 10 series with a Rolfer, what now? Hopefully you will be feeling more stable, movement will be more graceful, and perhaps you might feel like you don't need any help for a while. If so, that's great! The changes set in motion after a basic series should continue to develop for a year or so after we are done. Many people will feel the need to come in a few times a year for some maintenance. Some people will feel the need to come in for a more detailed advanced series at some point, and because we have addressed many of the basic stability issues in the 10 series, we can slow down and focus on other things. Weather a person decides to come in a few times a year, or do an advanced series, there is also the possibility for regular maintenance sessions. Some people feel that they respond best to having some regular ongoing manual therapy. The fact is, there is always something to do and the interaction between a Rolfer and a client helps to develop and feed the nervous system, increase proprioception and balance . This can not only lead to a fuller sense of oneself, it can help maintain a sense of balance. For this some people will decide to come in monthly, but really anything that feels right works just fine! Our options are far greater after we have addressed the basic issues that people commonly face. Now we can slow down, perhaps work on the hands for a full session, or an arm if seems appropriated. The hands and fingers can lock up the arm all the way to the shoulders. The arms can then lock up the muscles of the back. The toes and feet lock up the legs and the legs lock up the pelvis and even the spine. There is still plenty of work to be done. We don't just focus on symptoms, but the symptoms and clue us into greater imbalances, and Rolfing is about finding balance. A 10 series is like setting up your garden, what comes after that is like maintaining it. So, what ever your interest is, we can come up with a plan or we can play it by ear. Consider dong a package to save some money. You can share them with friends and family. Introduce your friends to Rolfing! I am sure they will at find the experience interesting. I know I do! #Rolfing #StructuralIntegration #HealthMaintenance

A well known traditional folk song begins with "once I had a bunch of Thyme". It goes on to explain that she lost it due to a man and now that she is old she has none. It ends with "let no man steal your thyme". Obviously all the puns are intended here. How we experience time is subjective. Is it possible to feel like someone or a situation is taking it away from us? More so, how does this affect us emotionally and even physically? Is there some relationship between our sense of time and our sense of space, or spaciousness? These are questions of psychology, and as Rolfers we are primarily concerned with what we can put our hands on, but there is a point at which experiences of the psyche and the emotions manifest themselves in our physical form and structure, and that does concern us. Let's start by considering a concept like identification. When I become drawn into an idea or a strong emotion, it tends to consume me. All of a sudden almost nothing else exists. To some degree it takes over my mind and my attention, but what happens to my body? If I observe myself during my experience of a negative emotion like anger, if I am able to do so, I notice that my heart speeds up, my temperature may rise, but most notably, I react with muscle tension. Unnecessary muscle tension ends up in unnecessary flexion and essentially I am folding in on myself and loosing my sense of extending into space. My world gets smaller. The process does not stop there. Internally, I tend so speed up and rush into what ever I am doing next, or even act on the negative emotion, like maybe calling someone I am angry at, or simply going somewhere to vent. When this occurs I can see that I have not only lost my sense of space, but lost my time as well. Likewise, if I am rushed, late to work, or feeling pressed for time, I tense up and unnecessary muscle tension arises and my loss of time causes loss of space. This effects me emotionally, and physically. This is of concern to a person like myself, who's profession revolves around trying to help people stand up straight in gravity and move with greater ease. Greater ease is a key word here. When we have a greater feeling of space, and likewise not rushed for time, we may feel a greater feeling of ease internally. We may have less muscle tension and less restriction in our breath as well. I believe it was Socrates who once said "A wise man is never in a hurry". I am sure he was not simply talking about slackers who don't do anything important, but rather someone who is calm an collected, and goes about their daily tasks without a sense of being rushed internally. Must be nice, that is not usually me, but it is a goal to aspire too. On a physical level, if we try to let go if internal identification, and unnecessary muscle tension, and being rushed, we have more extension outwardly, we take up our space, and we may have a feeling of our inner world as well as our physical world being bigger, more expansive rather than smaller. Not being caught up in identification is easier said than done, anyone who has struggled with this knows that. Not to be identified does not mean that one just turns off identification by snapping their fingers, at least not if you are a normal person like me. What it means is coming into a greater/wider attention that will allow the thing being identified with to be present but not the totality of one's attention. In order not to be identified, I must be bigger than the emotion or thought that is sucking me in and winding me up. It may still be there, but it does not control me so much, it does not make me react. Instead of trying to banish it, or turn my attention to something else, I come into an attention that is bigger or more comprehensive and I am able to "host" my negative emotion or pain without it controlling me, at least not completely. In my profession, by helping people become stacked better in gravity, and addressing restrictions, we are gaining greater ease of posture and movement. When we are aligned well, the deeper muscles of posture spring into action with a nearly tireless effort and we experience lift in gravity rather than fighting gravity. With this lift comes a feeling of extension into space around me, and I have a feeling of spaciousness rather than constriction. With this feeling of spaciousness, when I am not totally identified with pain or negative emotion, comes a sense of time or even timelessness occasionally. What do I do when feeling rushed, when angry, or fearful? The first thing I can do is to bring my attention to my body, maybe a light attention from head to toe. I can then become aware of my unnecessary muscle tension and try to let it go when possible. I can do this while being still, but one should also try while in action, while doing the things they do in ordinary life. In that way we can start to reclaim our time and space, and with that greater ease of posture and motion. Does this sound like a lot? It is, it's a lifelong practice that can develop into more sophisticated practices, but these basic ideas are available to anyone who wants to try making an effort. But we do hope that with experience, sometimes these efforts will be nearly effortless and we can rest in a feeling of timeless spaciousness. #time #meditation #Rolfing #structuralintegration #identification #emotion #tension #health #wellness

In a process like Rolfing where we take clients through a somatic experience of themselves I am often at a loss for how to explain ideas like attention, sensation, and awareness. I can throw these terms out there easy enough, but the fact is there are meditative traditions that can make real experience of these things more meaningful. Through practices like meditation and mindfulness, a person can become more sensitive and take in more information (sensation) consciously, and this can help the body and the nervous system adjust, adapt and deal with issues like posture and chronic pain. Rolfing is not just knuckles and elbows, it is a journey through movement and sensation, that is how real change occurs. I have been involved in meditation and movement exploration for some time, but I am not a teacher of meditation, that is not my place. I encourage clients too seek out and experiment with different forms mindfulness training. Such things are best learned from an experienced teacher but books and videos can be helpful too, especially in the beginning. A book I have found recently very helpful is: The True Source of Healing- How the Ancient Tibetan Practice of Soul Retrieval Can Transform and Enrich Your Life- By Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche. In this book there are concepts and exercises that could be quite valuable to both the beginner and the experience in terms of exercising consciousness and awareness, engaging in meditative practices and ways of developing a new relationship to negative emotions as well as pain. I find the latter very important. Sometimes we can not change what is causing physical pain but we can change our relationship to it and make life more bearable, even transform the pain. There are other important concepts explained in this book, like how to be grounded when doing things in life and around people, and also more esoteric concepts like how to interact with the elements and experience nature as a source of healing. I think this book is accessible to anyone who is interested in these concepts, and best of all it is available as an audio book on Audible. Ida Rolf was influenced by a number of traditions that speak of awareness, attention, and consciousness as a means of transformation. Osteopathic medicine, yoga, and the practices of Gurdjieff's school of development via John Bennett. I have spent a fair amount of time working with Gurdjieff groups, and some time exploring yoga. Any deep progress with these things would require working with a group and people with experience personally. The same goes for Buddhist meditative practice as well, but lets keep things simple at first. Anyone could benefit from a little exposure to meditation. This book is a good place to start just for some of the ideas and principle stated, even if one is not necessarily interested in taking up meditation. The ideas speak for themselves.

Moshe Feldenkrais once said "all negative emotions end in Flexion". What do the terms negative emotions or even flexion refer to? Feldenkrais was a Ukrainian/Israeli physicist who developed a system of subtle movement to help increase better functioning and self awareness. He and Ida Rolf were students of John G. Bennet who was a student of G.I. Gurdjieff. Both of these teachers expounded a system of development that starts from the idea that we are not conscious of ourselves through out the day but through the training of attention to our minds, bodies and emotions simultaneously we can cultivate the ability to be more conscious of ourselves. These ideas are embedded in the practices of Rolfing and Feldenkrais movement. The term "negative emotions" will immediately evoke Gurdjieff's teaching to anyone who is familiar to it. Also referred to as "unpleasant emotions" they are classified as an automatic reaction to stimuli that causes us to be identified with something outside or even inside ourselves, and waist a good deal of our energy. Contrary to popular psychology, Gurdjieff said that these emotions have no objective usefulness and has his students try not to give immediate expression to negative emotions, but to struggle with them internally. Popular wisdom disagrees with this, but Gurdjieff never thought highly of modern psychology anyway. Whether or not you give this idea any credit, I think we can direct our attention to something more obvious. Unpleasant emotional reactions cause muscle tension in the body. Flexion is defined as the natural movement of a joint to shorten the distance between the two bones that end in a joint. To do this the muscles associated with the joint need to shorten to pull it closed. To allow this, the opposing muscles, the extensors, need to lengthen to allow it. As Rolf often said "when the flexors flex, the extensors must extend". Although people do have issues with over active extensors too, more often than not the primary issue most people face over all is being stuck in a state of flexion in many of their joints. This not only amounts to bad posture, but a lot of unnecessary muscle tension. Flexion is a natural protective action that we have inherited not only from our development from a fetus, it is something we share with the quadrupeds we have evolved from. In being upright beings, all of our vital organs and other important structures are along our front and easily exposed to danger. It is a nature reaction to stressors in the environment to flex and turn inward to protect our sensitive areas. In quadrupeds, these areas are more protected as they face the ground, but flexion, bringing their undersides low to the ground, bringing the head down and arching the back are all common protective mechanisms that we see in four legged creatures. Unfortunately, these all become habitual in humans who are not necessarily exposed to direct physical threat, but to stress, trauma and all sorts of less immediate danger. Humans are upright beings, it is our birthright. If posture and habit do not allow us to stand up tall and not fold in on ourselves, then we have an unhealthy relationship with the world around us, both structurally and emotionally. As Rolfers, we only work with what we can touch, so the emotional elements that cause one to get stuck in unhealthy patterns are not within our realm of exploration, but addressing the physical restriction can affect the emotional. To walk around folded in on ourselves, not to stand upright and extend into the space around us, is to be stuck in a trauma response. The first step toward coming out of this trauma response is to bring one's awareness to oneself. The next step is to let go of unnecessary muscle tension, and the next step is to repeat the first two steps over and over again. A Rolfer can help with the unnecessary muscle tension that comes from restriction and lack of stability, but the rest is up to you. #Rolfing #structuralintegration #Gurdjieff #Feldenkrais #emotions #trauma #flexion #health

So we have gone through a full basic series, addressed restrictions, strain patterns, and habits. We have worked with muscle and connective tissue, joints, movement, and helped an individual redefine their posture and relationship to gravity. Until that time, at least from the Rolfer's point of view, the path was somewhat clear. Certain things need to be addressed before other things, just as the foundation of a house needs to be good before other things can be built over it. But now we are done with the series the path becomes a sprawling valley. What happens next? Upon successful completion of a basic Rolfing series we are hoping the client has more support, can sit, stand and move with greater ease, has a better sense of where they are in space. Hopefully, things are pretty good, if not great. There will always be issues though, and some of these issues can be addressed through post 10 series work or even an advanced series. Because we have spent so much time in the past separating muscle and connective tissue that has been glued together by use, and helping one get stacked better in gravity, we can now focus on deeper and more specific issues, some of which take a great deal more time to address. One of the major issues we address in advanced work is joint/ligament articulation. Ligaments are known as the masters of the joints. Unlike tendons, they lengthen to allow greater movement only very slowly. They, along with the shape of the bones in the joint, control how the joint moves and does not move. Ligaments can become overly short or they can become wrapped and coiled up, restricting the proper movement of a joint. In order to allow the joint to sit and move more comfortably, they must be slowly lengthened and allowed to uncoil. After this is done they can shorten back to what ever length they need to in order to provide more support. Ligament work takes more time than muscle, connective tissue, or even tendon work, but as we feel like we have covered the basics in the 10 series, now detail work is more available. An advanced series is typically done in 5 sessions, it could be more than that, it could be less, it depends on what the client wants and what is needed. In addition to ligament work, there is still muscle and connective tissue, tendon and spinal mechanics as well as movement education, just like there was in the basic series, but now we can slow down and really focus on what is most important at the moment. If there is a problem with one arm, we might spend the whole session on that arm, or whatever seems to be the most significant issue at the moment. Through the series we are looking to address a few primary issues, help build more support, develop a better relationship between the muscles of action, the muscles of posture and the spine, as well as allow movement to course through the body with less restriction. All this and to integrate our work at the end. A Rolfing series need not necessarily be any certain number of sessions, but the fact that we are approaching it as a series means that there are unfinished projects until we are done with it. Even with a series, we may get to the end and feel that there are unfinished projects and need to add another session or two. We may sometimes feel that it would be best to go into an advanced series directly after a basic series if there are still some major unresolved issues, but usually it is best to wrap things up and see what happens. After a basic series an advanced series can be done any time, and after that maintenance work can be done anytime as well, but is usually a good idea after completing a series to give people a little space and see what happens. This is really about seeing what the body's natural intelligence does, something more sophisticated than what you or I probably understand. Ida Rolf once said that "gravity is the teacher" but I believe the body's own innate since of balance is the student. So, lets get into the classroom again and start some advanced work! #rolfing #rolfer #advancedrolfer #structuralintegration #advancedrolfingseries

In Rolfing we often speak of awareness as a vehicle for change. When speaking of bringing awareness to any part of the body, or the body as a whole, we are usually referring to sensation. Trying to explain what this really means can be difficult, because we must first clarify what we mean by sensation. Is it the feeling of the wind on my face, the feeling of my feet contacting the floor? Does it revolve primarily around the sense of touch, or all of the five senses? Is it primarily proprioception, i.e. the sense of where I am, or where a part of my body is in space. Is a feeling of self, is it my concept of self? It may in some way be addressed by all of these experiences and information that is being taken in by a sensitive being, but the other side of the question is- how much of the information being taken in by an individual is being taken in with awareness, with consciousness, how much is unconscious, and how much does that matter either way? We are constantly taking in information from all of our senses, information from outside, and information from inside, far more than we could ever process consciously, but can taking in this information with more awareness be helpful to my situation? From the standpoint of Rolfing, we believe it can if that awareness does not necessarily cause us to react and interfere with the process. One may ask “what process”? Just as the process of breathing has its way of taking in substances from outside like air, and assimilating nutrients as well as expelling waste, so does my digestive system do so with food. Likewise, the nervous system depends on input from the senses to find proper health and balance, both conscious and unconscious, so perhaps we can think of the process of taking in sensation as a sort of food as well. As I often mention, Ida Rolf spent some time working with the ideas of G.I. Gurdjieff from his student J.G. Bennet. In Gurdjieff’s system of development we learn that he has categorized 3 types of food that humans need to survive, ordinary food, air, and impressions. Ordinary food, this includes water, is easy enough to understand, and one can probably recognize air as a sort of food as well, but the idea of impressions as food is not so easy to understand. All these foods require taking in some sort of substance or energy from outside, and assimilating it through some sort of digestion. The digestion of food on a basic level is obvious, and respiration as our means of digesting air makes sense if one things about it, but what about impressions? Let's consider the first two foods, physical food and air. One can eat food, digest and assimilate it well or not if digestion is poor. If the food is not digested, it is not helpful. In severe cases of poor digestion like crohn's disease, one could eat all they like and still be malnourished to the point of death. If someone has a condition where their lungs can not absorb enough oxygen, then this can result in sickness and death as well. So we can say that an individual’s ability to digest and metabolize food and air can vary. What Gurdjieff taught his students is that if one takes in food consciously with attention, one absorbs more nutrients and digestion is better. We know this with physical food, this is why it is commonly recommended to eat in a calm environment instead of doing so while rushing to work. What is not considered is that taking in and processing air properly can lead to more oxygen absorption. Gurdjieff claimed that we are absorbing more nutrients from air than just oxygen and that someone who takes in air consciously will absorb more nutrients than someone who does not. Thus even the waste products of an individual who lives in a greater state of consciousness throughout the day will be different than a person who does not. What does this say about impressions? The concept of impressions as food may be hard to swallow, pun intended, but one can break it down more easily by considering that all of our senses depend on taking in some sort of energy from outside and processing it. Vibration in the form of light, vibration in the form of sound, touch, smell and taste also in reality depend on taking in vibration from outside. All of these energies are taken in, blended together by the nervous system and processed to make impressions, and most of it is unconscious. The senses help us map our surroundings, but they also help us map ourselves, to know where we are in space, where we are standing and walking in relation to gravity, where in space our limbs are- proprioception. Just as I can parallel park a car by the feeling of the boundary of the car once I am familiar with it, I also have a mental map telling me where my body is in space, but this map can be more or less detailed, more or less accurate. To come back to a sense of my body as I go about my daily activities can help to fill in the details of my mental map, and to help the body’s own intelligence to adjust and make changes when necessary. If Gurdjieff’s system could be boiled down to one phrase it would be to “remember yourself”. This is based on the idea that we are generally not aware of ourselves often throughout the day. If an individual can mindfully practice coming back to a sense of the body throughout the day, along with observing the emotions and the mind together, they are more present throughout the day. If a person takes in food while being present, it is said that they absorb and assimilate that food better, and this also goes for taking in air and taking in impressions through the vehicle of sensation. It is believed that this will deposit an energy in the body over time that will become more refined and help one to be more conscious throughout the day as well as develop a deeper sense of being. This is a lot of information for people who may not be particularly interested in Gurdjieff’s system, but please take it as food for thought. More puns intended. When approaching structure and function through Rolfing, we are trying to help the body’s innate intelligence to adopt better posture and movement. This must be done by manually addressing restrictions, but those changes can not be retained unless the nervous system feels it is best. If there is a restriction that is part of a compensation pattern the nervous system feels is necessary, it will just come back again. What the system needs is more input, a more comprehensive map of the self, and this can be aided by bringing one’s attention to the sensation of the body throughout the day. A light sense of self, nothing too heavy, nothing that interferes with the functioning of the body, but just the light of conscious sensation, or mindfulness if you will, can make the changes over time that lead to transformation. Working with taking in sensation and movement consciously acts as a food that both nourishes and tones the nervous system. Studies have shown that walking barefoot on a path of river polished stones for a period of time daily, an old Qigong practice in China, can significantly reduce blood pressure and improve balance. Just think of how many other exercises in sensing the world around us may also have benefits! A good way to get out of our habitual mental rambling is to slow down what we are doing a bit, and allow sensation to come in more fully. This takes us out of the fight or flight mode we tend to often be stuck in during our daily lives. Digestion stops during fight or flight states, we know this about physical food, but what about the food of impressions brought to us through sensation? This is a food that can be taken in a bit more mindfully, a bit more slowly. Try to chew on this idea for a while. #rolfing #rolfer #structuralintegration #sensation

The recurring question,” is Rolfing painful”? From its inception, Rolfing has earned a reputation of being painful and unpleasant. There is good reason for this. The purpose of Rolfing is to help achieve a higher degree of order in the individual’s structure, and not to simply have an enjoyable experience, as it might be when seeing a massage therapist. Like a massage therapist, a Rolfer will spend a fair amount of time dealing with muscle and connective tissue, but for the purpose of Rolfing, we are trying to address restrictions and holding patterns. Ida Rolf had a reputation for being very direct and deep with the pressure she used and so did her students. Part of the reason for this was the belief that we were trying to “liquify” connective tissue and “melt” what is restricting itI, and to do so the use of a fair amount of force is required. This attitude even led to some practitioners concluding that “the more force used, the better the results” and so many Rolfers did practice with this idea in mind. Over time our understanding of how muscle and connective tissue work has changed, and Rolfers have continued to educate and re-educate themselves accordingly, but even the old school Rolfers who were unnecessarily brutal were probably functioning according to misunderstanding and insensitivity. When addressing muscle restriction, we sink down to the layer of restriction and challenge it there, and no further. If the layer of restriction is superficial, we work superficial, if the layer of restriction is deep, we sink in deep but no farther than necessary, without excessive force. We now know that connective tissue and muscles do not “liquefy” or “melt”. Muscle tension and restriction can only let up when the nervous system allows it. Carefully administered pressure and manual elongation of the muscle will often send the signal to the nervous system to let go. If approached in an effective way, the nervous system may not take up a protective posture again, the muscle restriction may be taken out, and the changes might be retained. Although a certain amount of pressure and shearing motion is usually required to encourage this. It is important to understand that if a practitioner goes overboard with pressure, goes too deep too fast, or just over works a client in general, the sympathetic nervous system can be triggered and go into a state of fight or flight. Though the symptoms may be mild, the client will be subconsciously resistant to change, and even more likely to slip back into old patterns. This is what is currently being taught at the Rolf institute. Any Rolfer who has stayed in the know of how our education has changed understands this. As a result some Rolfers take a fairly light handed approach, and some are more direct. The Rolfers who are working toward the high end of an individual’s threshold may be old school Rolfers, but even many of the Rolfers who received their education from Ida Rolf herself currently have the understanding that to over work a client is to defeat the purpose of what you are working for, and is not an effective or efficient way to work. More often than not, when I have met a client that has been hurt or senselessly over worked by a manual therapist, it is from a massage therapist trying to do deep tissue work without an understanding of the principles of deep tissue. They are really just doing a hard massage rather than carefully sinking down to the level of restriction and challenging it there. If a client is very sore, especially for days, they have been overworked and there has been some mild tissue damage that needs days to heal. To work with an over use of force is to work with violence, which is often directly from misunderstanding and insensitivity. The understanding that one does not need to use excessive force to get results had led to a backlash in the opposite direction. Forms of tissue work, like John Barns' myofascial release, have been developed that use very light pressure. Although this approach and these techniques should not be written off, I have found that the body responds more effectively to the careful administration of deep direct work. Some Rolfers also work with feather light touch. I have had many clients who have come to me because their Rolfer, in their words ``barely touched them” and were looking for something that felt more effective. Really one need to pay attention to what is working and what is not. I used deep pressure, but only just enough. When that does not appear to be working we will do light work and see if that works. It is all about trying to be attentive and sensitive to the changes taking place. If the use of force is excessive, the practitioner is working with violence, but the appropriate use of force is not violence. #rolfing #rolfer #structuralintegration For more info on Rolfing, checkout my website: https://www.integrative-body-work.com/about-rolfng

Rolfing is a distinctly western holistic approach to health and well being, yet its core principles seem very eastern in nature. Ida Rolf took from her study of osteopathic medicine, also a distinctly western tradition, the idea that the individual possesses the inner ability to find balance and to heal themselves. This differs from the standard medical approach in the west, one that focuses on disease and disorder. Rolfing and osteopathy focus on the health of the individual, not the disease. By bringing attention to an individual’s innate somatic intelligence, the process of healing and finding a greater degree of balance and order can begin. There is a profound proverb from traditional Chinese medicine that encapsulates this idea. “A man is not sick because he has a disease, he has a disease because he is sick”. While considering this statement, I began pondering the very word disease. Does it actually mean what it sounds like? Dis- ease, a lack of ease, a feeling of unease? Having quite a few professors of historical sociolinguistics as a student at the University of Texas, I know better than to just assume that a word’s origin is what it sounds like, words change over time and so does meaning. Also, you can not validate a philosophical concept from etymology alone, but it can support your argument with it and it can yield some interesting results. So having looked it up I came to find that our modern English word “disease” comes into Middle English from Old French meaning “lack of ease”. Just what it sounds like. So we see that this word does not just describe a pathogen or a specific condition in as much as it expresses a lack of balance and a lack of a feeling of well being. When a person's system is off balance it fosters an environment ripe for problems to develop, and to live in a way that is contrary to the balance of an individual’s system is said in Ayurvedic medicine “to invite disease”. Disease can lead to more disease just as disorder can lead to more disorder. Driving a car around with structural issues, rather than fixing those issues, will certainly lead to more issues. I am sure that makes perfect sense to everyone. People rarely think about how that applies to themselves though. As Rolfers, we deal with strain patterns, just as chiropractors, physical therapists and even massage therapists do. The difference is Rolfing acknowledges that strain patterns can be very far reaching, from head to toe, especially when the act of movement is included. Most professionals in manual therapies understand that tight pecs will pull and individuals shoulders forward and cause pain in the upper traps and rhomboid areas. What they often overlook is the fact that an individual may not be getting enough support in the their upper body for their shoulders to sit comfortably where they need to be, and when the shoulders are anterior of the mid line, the pecs with shorten, so is the problem from not having enough support from the hips? Is the way they walk affecting their neck and shoulders? Very few manual therapists ask the question, “is their neck and shoulder problem issuing from restriction in the feet and ankles when walking?” But this is still only dealing with the most overt mechanical aspect of an individual’s well being. What about the nervous system as a whole? The brain sits in a protected region of the body, in the skull, but does it really end there? From the brain issues forth a nervous system that branches through the entire body, and in doing so we can say that the brain does too. Our nervous system is mission control for the body and or overall experience of reality. Over any changes, any correction, and sense of balance or lack of balance, the nervous system has ultimate control. This is often looked over by western manual therapists who think they can work on an individual like a car or some other machine, which is a typical mechanical western approach that does not acknowledge that with humans and animals, maybe with all things- the Whole is Greater than the sum of its Parts. The brain experiences input from the nervous system, it takes in sensation. It is also the realm of our thoughts. Both sensory input (conscious and unconscious) and thought, blend together in the mind. Does this not also mean that the mind runs throughout the body just like the nervous system does from the brain? Western philosophy typically views the mind and the body as two separate phenomena, just as western religion separates the soul from the body, and the soul is considered to be the true individual, whereas the body is simply a vehicle. Most of western philosophy is based on thought games, so it is not surprising that it may come up with an idea so very divorced from reality, that we are ghosts trapped in a meat shell until death liberates us from our carnal prisons. Westerners tend to project this idea on everything they study, and this includes eastern philosophy. To us it is nearly unfathomable that spirit and matter could be considered one and the same phenomena, and even more so for the mind and the body. I often hear Americans profess that the word yoga means to unite mind and body. This is primarily because the word yoga comes from a Sanskrit root that means “to yoke” and does yuga, which is a designation of the four ages the world goes through in between creation and dissolution. The problem with this explanation of yoga is that in most of the major branches of Indian philosophy the mind is considered to be material and belonging to the body. Yoga is based on Samkhya philosophy, and many of the other branches of philosophy in India are based on Samkhya cosmology and psychology. I am sure it is reassuring for westerns to believe that as our bodies age, and break down, it will all be ok, we are just a ghost imprisoned in a shell and one day we will be free, but this does not help us with gaining the richness that is available to us through becoming present to the sensation of ourselves, through our bodies, nor is this idea helpful for health, healing and balance. The body has its own intelligence, people will hear me say that over and over again. I say this for the case of simplicity, in reality I do not differentiate between the intelligence of the body or the mind. They are one intelligence, and thought is only one very small aspect of this intelligence. Likewise, conscious perception is only one very small aspect of this intelligence, whereas there is a whole realm of experience that is being taken in unconsciously, and that is why it is foolish to try to control every expression of the body with the very small aspect of our mind that is conscious to us. We believe that we know best, and so we try to drive our bodies like a car, forcing it to do what we want, instead of trying to allow the body to express itself, as if we could even begin to understand all of the factors that are involved in even standing upright and walking in gravity. Again, I am using language that supports the idea that the mind and body are separate phenomena for the sake of simplicity, but I am of the opinion that they are one and the same. Watching an interview with Indian yogi Sadhguru I perceived an important view of reality. He stated that if I eat bread, the bread becomes part of me. If I eat more bread, I do not become more bread-like. He was pointing out that there is a force within me that perpetuates my “me-ness”. This is to me, as a Rolfer, an illustration of the inner intelligence of the body, but this intelligence can become compromised through life experiences, such as injury, habits, and being divorced from sensation. The inner intelligence can become “deranged”, as it is said when one of the humors which produce balance in the body is aggravated in Ayurvedic medicine. So it is this sense of balance that needs to be addressed for an individual to heal, adjust and perform at their best in everyday activities as well as athletic activity. Instead of trying to control, micromanage, and force the body to do everything the way we think things should be done, we could try to listen to the body, to learn its language. To do sports, dance, martial arts and even to do a workout, we need to be trained to do these activities properly, but my advice is to leave this attitude in the gym, in the dojo, in the activity you have been trained for. There is a gentle awareness that goes into functioning in life gracefully, and this is not done with excessive force, excessive tension, with violence. This grace issues forth from a confidence that I can function in life with a relaxed awareness and an inner wisdom that is to be found deeper than the realm of ordinary consciousness. I can learn the subtle language of the body, of the emotions, and of the subconscious mind, but it takes time and it takes patience. To hear one’s inner voice, one must learn to listen. #rolfing #rolfer #structuralintegration #easternmedicine #holism #tcm