Whole-Body Integration

"The Epic Split": With Commentary on the Adductors, Leg Swing, Low-Back Pain

In Rolfing® Structural Integration, we have a classic 10-Session Series that I tell my Seattle clients to think of as a 50,000-mile tune-up on their bodies: it's a very thorough protocol to align and balance the body in gravity, strategized and tailored for each person. One of my favorite sessions of the Series is the 4th session, where we work the inner line of the leg to increase leg swing and connect a sense of lift from the arch of the foot to the pelvic floor – a mysterious connection that relates to Ida Rolf's axiom that gravity will lift an aligned body, rather than drag it down. 

Among the key structures of the inner leg are the adductors – a group of muscles between the quadriceps group in the front and the hamstring group in the back. The adductors connect onto the pelvis at their upper end, and when tight can "drag" on it, and through the pelvis drag on the spine, contributing to low-back pain.

When contracted, the adductors bring your legs together. When relaxed, they allow your legs to spread. Now watch the linked video.

For your legs to go into the splits like Jean-Claude Van Damme does here, you have to have good adductor length - as well as superb control to gradually let the muscles go. [Any of you who do Pilates reformer work will know this from the move where you have one foot stabilized on the frame, and the other on the unfixed carriage, using the adductors to bring the carriage in and slowly release it out.] 

Most people can't do the splits because their adductors are too shortened, and unfortunately these muscles are neglected in most people's stretching programs. An exception to this is martial artists, and I think it's no accident that Van Damme is a martial artist. If you are going to do any kicks into the air and moves like that, you need adductor length, and you need your adductors to have fascial glide relative to the quads and hamstrings. In most human beings who are not martial artists or dancers, the adductors are shortened – dragging on the pelvis – and bound up with either the quads or the hamstrings or both. A session with a Rolfer™ can help free and lengthen your adductors, resulting in much more mobility (a longer stride for runners), which often helps to relieve low-back pain as each step you take is no longer dragging on your pelvis.

And of course Van Damme shows amazing self-possession and centering here. He's clearly trained his mind and emotions, not just his body.

How Rolfing Sessions Help People Feel Better

Are you wondering if Rolfing® Structural Integration could help you? Would you like to hear first-hand from people who have experienced Rolfing sessions? Gary Gurney, my colleague across the country – I practice Rolfing® in Seattle, and he practices in Portland, Maine – has a nice video on YouTube. A number of Gary's clients generously share their experiences, and their words hit all the key points on how Rolfing sessions can benefit people – relieving pain and injuries, enhancing self-awareness, and removing emotional blockages that are lodged in the body. One woman says how Rolfing work was life-changing. That was my own experience, and part of why I became a Rolfer™. For more on the details of  what Rolfing SI is, see here and here.

An Amazing Demonstration of Strength + Flexibility + Embodiment

I had never heard of "acrobatic gymnastics" before seeing this. As a Rolfer™ in Seattle I've had dancer and yogi clients with good core strength and flexibility, but this is off the charts. 

As a meditator, I'm also interested in the concentration and mindfulness aspecs present here, which are unique since this is a team event. To do this discipline, each of the three young women must be impeccably present in her own body, with the single-pointed focus that many meditation practices work to develop. Yet as a team event that relies on intricate multi-body balance, each participant also needs to be acutely aware of what the others are doing for these combined poses, which is more an aspect of field awareness. In a sense, they have to function almost as a group organism. 

If they were in Seattle, I'd love to do some Rolfing® Structural Integration on them and see what their muscles and fascia feel like. I would expect a nice quality to the fascia, as the flexibilty required of them would lengthen the muscles to counterbalance any contraction from their strength training. It's the balance of contraction and lengthening that allows the fascial envelope around the muscle to stay resilient and hydrated.