Whole-Body Integration

A Rolfer's Thoughts on Barefoot Running

There's been alot of talk about barefoot running since Christopher McDougall published his book Born to Run a few years ago. The premise is that humans walked and ran barefoot for millenia, and that running injuries were not the plague they are now until the "sports shoe" industry developed all those high-fallutin' shoes with cushioned heels. McDougall himself had had to give up running due to injuries, but tossing his running shoes and learning to run barefoot allowed him to resume running without pain or injury. To help understand why, read this article about barefoot running, and watch the video with Harvard scientist Daniel Lieberman (chairman of the human evolutionary biology department) showing the impact of heel strike in a shod runner versus a barefoot runner. 

Not everyone wants to run completely barefoot, and in response to the barefoot running premise, new minimalist sports shoes have been developed, the most well known being Vibram FiveFingers®. Such shoes have a thin rubber sole that lets you feel the texture of the surfaces you move on, and also lets all the joints in the feet have mobilty and play.

I ran some in my 20s, but haven't run for years - especially since my surgeon for a lateral tibial plateau fracture in 2003 advised against it. I became curiuos when other Rolfers™ on our community email forum began talking about barefoot running after reading McDougall's books. They reported that barefoot walking and running were completely synergistic with the ideas of Rolfing® Structural Integration: in our form of bodywork we are concerned with the natural alignment of the body, and the mobility and integration of body segments. They reported that in barefoot walking and running, your toe hinge functions as it should for push-off, because the toes are not engaged in a wad of leather and rubber. And they reported that the increased mobility of the foot was working its way up through the chain of muscles, fascia, and joints and improving issues with knees, hips, and low backs. At that point I went out and bought a pair of Vibrams, to give barefoot walking a try.

I remember my first walk in them. It was late evening, a damp and cold autumn night in Seattle, and I was tired and reluctant to go out, but I hadn't walked my dog yet. So I put on my new Vibrams, put the furry girl on a leash, and headed out for our usual 20-min loop around the neighborhood. Astonishingly, within a couple of blocks, I felt pure unadulterated joy surging through my body and I was wide awake. It seemed like having my feet in such deeply felt contact with the ground was awakening dormant energy and enlivening me. I've always believed in the mind-body-spirit connection, - it's what drew me to Rolfing - but this still surprised me, the intensity and immediacy of the response. I spend the entire work day barefoot, yet something about being "barefoot" and actually striding and moving with a purposeful gait was waking up my feet and my energy in startling ways. I've been a convert to barefoot walking ever since, and I've also noticed improvement in my knees. I'm even starting to run tiny bits again.

Besides McDougall's book, there's alot to read on the web about barefoot running, including this article from today's New York Times, where McDougall updates the barefoot running world on the importance of form for good effects and also mentions Dr. Lieberman's research on unshod runners in Kenya. In other words, it's not just the shoes (or lack of shoes), you have to re-learn how to move so that you minimize heel strike and move more to the forefoot. I believe that Rolfing sessions can greatly assist in this process as part of what keeps us in habitual movement patterns is the familiar tension patterns in the body. So I would recommend that anyone transitioning to barefoot walking or running read up on the available literature, but also schedule a session with a local Rolfer to work on, especially, the sole of the foot, the calves, the knees, and hips. Getting more freedom through these areas will make for an easier transition and quicker benefits, and also help to attain proper running form.

I have recommended minimalist shoes to any number of my Seattle Rolfing clients, and many take me up on the idea. (I recommend REI locally, because they have a great selection of minimalist shoes (not everyone likes the toes on the Vibram FiveFingers, and a shoe that fits like a second skin is key to the benefits), and because you can return shoes if you don't like them, even if they have been worn. One friend who switched to Vibrams has also found that she no longer has flat feet. This makes total sense, as the arch of the foot is based on a balance of muscles and fascia through the legs. Rolfers have known this and worked to "create" arches through balancing fascia, but my friend's story shows it can also be done through proper foot mechanics from barefoot running.

 

 

 

Viniyoga: This Rolfer's™ Favorite Form of Yoga

Rolfing® Structural Integration and yoga make a perfect pair. The Rolfing work gets your body aligned and open, freeing both surface and deep restrictions, and yoga is the perfect practice to keep you body supple, elastic, and toned. Yes I have clients who don't do yoga – or other stretching – and that's ok, they just need Rolfing tune-ups a bit more frequently. That's beneficial for my business bottom-line, but my real business is to help clients become more embodied, and a yoga practice increases body awareness and reduces your reliance on outside help from chiropractors, Rolfers, massage therapists, physical therapists, etc. 

There are many types of yoga, suited to different body types. If you are young and flexible and energetic, power yoga may be for you. Many of my clients, however, need to 

• recover from an injury or get help with chronic pain,
• reduce the impact of aging,
• regain lost mobility, or
• reduce stress

My favorite form of yoga to recommend to these folks is Viniyoga, and my favorite Viniyoga studio in Seattle is Whole Life Yoga in Greenwood. Whole Life Yoga has a new blog, and one of the early posts is "What Makes Viniyoga Different?" She outlines the 4 main factors, which I'll explain below from a Rolfer's perspective.

1. Adaptation – This means the yoga asanas (poses) are adapted to fit your body – you don't have to become a pretzel to fit a strict form. This is important for me in recommending Viniyoga to my Rolfing clients who have had injuries that limit flexibility, range of motion, and the like. It's a form of yoga that works for all bodies.
2. Use of Repetition and Stay – In a Viniyoga class you do sequences that move you in and out of a pose a number of times before holding it. I support this as a Rolfer because it prepares the body for change by gradually signaling stretch receptors in the muscles to give a little more, then a little more. You are also working your awareness of your body in motion, and noticing the changes with each repetition. If you can't notice something, you can't embody it – that's why at the end of every Rolfing session I ask my client to "stand up and see what you notice, what's different." Repetition helps to focus the mind and enhance awareness. 
3. Moving with the Breath – It sounds so simple – as you breathe in, move this way, as you breathe out, move that way – yet coordination of breath and movement is magic balm for the nervous system. I see hypertoned (too tight) bodies every day in my Rolfing practice, and a portion of that tightness comes from a wound-up nervous system. As you coordinate your breath and movement you automatically slow down, become more fluid in your movements, and bring your nervous system back into balance.
4. Sequencing – Viniyoga practice combines poses intelligently into a fluid moving practice based on class goals. For example, I often recommend that clients with back pain try out Tracy Weber's Yoga for Healthy Backs as I know that her Viniyoga training has taught her to string poses together in a way that will pose-by-pose prepare the body to gradually and sensitively open painful areas. (Tracy owns Whole Life Yoga; you can read here how yoga resolved her severe back pain.

If you see me for a session, be sure to ask me for a free class pass for Whole Life Yoga, to experience for yourself what Viniyoga is.

 

 

 

Parenting for Happiness Rather Than Success

Pop quiz: You are about to be born. Who do you want for a mother, the woman whose mothering style has the aspiration of Raising Happiness or the woman who marches to Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother?

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother is Amy Chua's book about parenting, which was excerpted in the Wall Street Journal to much ado on the internet, including my furious response. Raising Happiness is a book by Christine Carter Ph.D., who gives an articulate rebuttal to Amy Chua's ideas here.  Chua advocates a demanding form of parenting – expecting perfect grades, allowing no playdates, insisting the child master violin or piano, etc. – that she believes is the key to the child's future success. As I noted in my post, Chua is a "success" in the world – a law professor at an Ivy League school – but has no credentials in psychology, child development, or parenting. In contrast, Carter is a sociologist and parent educator, and her article shows a broader understanding of what constitutes "success" than mere outward achievement. Refreshingly, Carter speaks to happiness as the key component of success, noting that "three decades of research clearly suggests that such a narrow focus on achievement can produce wildly unhappy people." Validating what I mentioned in my post, where I commented on research presented in the book A General Theory of Love, Carter also articulates that "social connections are the foundation for happiness, health, and success in life." 

Carter's book Raising Happiness is about "the science of raising happy kids," and part of her mission is to help parents be happier. On her blog, she has a pledge you can sign: "I understand that improving my own happiness is a way to make the world a better place. Over the next nine months, I will take steps to increase my happiness." I like this. While happiness is not something you can make happen in your life, we all know things that make us happy and we can create time to do those things and cherish those moments. Paradoxically, many of the things that make us happy can often be traced back to the qualities and things we most loved as children – another reason that it's important for kids to have fun and play. 

For many of my clients, creating and enjoying freedom and movement in their bodies makes them happy –whether it's through yoga classes or exercise or bodywork. One of my Seattle clients, who did the 10-session Rolfing® series a couple of years ago, was in for a tune-up in November. We were talking about the upcoming Christmas holidays, and what she and her family would do, and she decided on the spot that what she wanted for Christmas was to gift herself an Advanced Rolfing Series. For her, the quality of life she experiences getting in touch with her body brings happiness, more than the various things she could buy. 

I encourage you to find what it is that makes you happy, to enjoy it, and to make happiness contagious in your families and in the world.

 

Save Us from Dominating Mothers and Bless Us with Neuroscientists – Comments on Amy Chua's Wall Street Journal Article "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior"

An article called "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior" appeared in the Wall Street Journal and is getting attention in the blogosphere. The author, Yale Law School professor Amy Chua, contends that stereotypical "Chinese mothers" who force their children to excel academically are the best mothers. Frankly, I feel like a victim of child abuse / neglect just from reading this article.

Chua shares about how she raises her daughters who were "never allowed to:

• attend a sleepover, 
• have a playdate, 
• be in a school play, 
• complain about not being in a school play 
• watch TV or play computer games
• choose their own extracurricular activities
• get any grade less than an A
• not be the No. 1 student in every subject except gym and drama
• play any instrument other than the piano or violin
• not play the piano."

She writes "Chinese parents believe that they know what is best for their children and therefore override all of their children's own desires and preferences." It seems that the methodology is to break your child's will, and insult them if necessary. In Chua's mind, that's okay, because the result is a child who excels in school and music. The example she gives "in favor of coercion" discusses relentlessly drilling her 7-year old daughter for a piano recital, threatening to give away her toys, and calling her "lazy, cowardly, self-indulgent and pathetic." (When her husband suggested that this was "insulting" the girl, Chua's response was that she wasn't insulting her but "motivating her.") She won't let her leave the paino to go to the bathroom, she loses her voice yelling at her daughter, and "still there seemed to be only negative progress." (Somehow I'm not surprised.) Then suddenly her daughter can do it (angelic intervention?), followed by hugs, etc., and a perfect recital. For Chua, the results justify the means.

Yes, the little girl learned the piano piece. She also learned a pattern of relating that is based on coercion, degradation, love as a reward for compliance, and a compulsion to succeed. This groove is being dug deeper and deeper into her brain with each similar interaction. It is how she will raise her own children, and it will stymie all of her relationship so that love becomes equated with performance goals. She will have the tendency to find relationships that mimic this, where she is either the rejecting coercer or the rejected coerced. She will equate love with performing properly.

How Neuroscience Shows Us That This Form of Parenting Is Not "Superior"

Chua states that she learned her parenting model from her parents. She doesn't question it or look further because she values the results. She is completely blind to the emotional side of the equation. I am not a psychologist, but over the past few years I have been reading and studying extensively on the subjects of child development and psychology. I have also experienced therapy and am engaged in a spiritual path where my colleagues and I work with material from our early childhoods, and it is clear from our work that episodes like these leave devastating imprints on the psyche. Everything I read by experts in child and developmental psychology is counter to what Chua writes. While Chua is a law professor, she has absolutely no credentials in anything to do with child psychology or child development or education. Her only credential is the biological achievement of having borne a child. In the human species, bearing a child does not automatically make one a good parent.

Most recently in my studies I read the book A General Theory of Love – which should be required reading for every human being, and particularly all parents. Written by three psychiatrists, it is an easy-to-read, poetic and passionate rant about how the human race has strayed so far from understanding what we need as human beings to feel happy, loved and valuable, and to be able to relate in healthy ways. Our emotional needs are hard-wired in our limbic systems. As infants/children we need love and holding. We need parents who love us unconditionally and will spend one-on-one time with us. We need reflection from and dialogue with our parents. We need time to cultivate relationships as much as we need time spent drilling math exercises or practing violin. There is research behind this, from both animal and human studies.

Children who are driven to become performing automatons may excel academically, may play piano perfectly, but will they be able to have authentic, valuable, successful, dynamic relationships with their peers, with future romantic partners, with their own children? Will they be happy? Will they know who they are uniquely as individuals, their own preciousness?

One commentator on the Huffington Post, raised by Chinese parents under similar methodology, writes as an adult: "I was good at my job. But I had chronic hives. I couldn't sleep, and when I did I would wake up with fingernail imprints in the palms of my clenched hands. I couldn't get pregnant. I was 30, a success, but felt a failure." 

There's much we as humans can learn about optimal parenting – as evidenced by all the unhappiness, malaise, and delinquency we see in young people and in ourselves. I sincerely hope that no parent takes Chua's advice to heart. There are compassionate and loving models out there that will guide us better and are substantiated by our increasing understanding of the human mind and soul.

Rolfing® Series Timing and Life Cycles

Yesterday I posted about calculating one's personal year using numerology, something I do every new year. This got me thinking about other timing cycles based on astrology, where key planetary aspects relate to rites of passage. It's interesting to note that sometimes clients doing the 10-session Rolfing® series – a big structural overhaul for the body – are in their Saturn return, Uranus opposition, or Chiron return. This makes sense, as I'll explain below. Knowing this timing can give me a sense of some of the other forces moving through their lives, besides whatever body issues they come in with.

Saturn Return (28-30, 57-59, 86-88)

Saturn orbits the sun in 28-29 years, so it "returns" to its place in your own birth chart every 28-29 years. Because the planet Saturn governs structure, each Saturn return is a time of reexamining the structure in one's life and determining whether it still fits and making readjustments to one's trajectory.

The first Saturn return at age 28-30 is often tumultuous. Up until this point, your life has often been structured by others – your parents, society, the school system, etc. In a sense it's the time of coming into true adulthood when the individual decides what old structures didn't work and what new ones s/he wants to put in place. So we can find people quitting jobs, changing direction, divorcing – if those things were "wrong" for them – or instead getting married, starting businesses, going back to school to build structure. I can't count how many Rolfing clients I've had who are choosing to do a series at this point in their lives, it's quite common. They are usually bursting with energy and trying to feel out their next step in life and wanting to get their bodies and energies in alignment with that. 

The second Saturn return at around age 57-59 is more about moving into wisdom and spirit. In the first 28-30 years you did life the way society wanted. In the second time around, you did it your way. Now, at the threshold of the senior years, many individuals begin to wonder again about the deeper meaning of life. They've had careers, raised families, done alot of externals, so they may ask more about what's inside, or about what they can contribute in a bigger sense. In traditional India, this is the time that one would delve deeply into the spiritual, having fulfilled their obligations in the world. In our culture, it could be the time one seeks in one's profession to become more the mentor to others, to share what one has learned. The Chiron return (below) and this second Saturn return often lead clients to Rolfing sessions as they begin to look inward and become more interested in their bodies not as tools of action but as sensate fields of beingness that crave awakening along with a general inner awakening.

A third Saturn return would occur around age 86-88 for those who make it that far – rare in the past but increasingly common in the our times. It may be a time of transition and looking toward the next stage – death – whether examined consciously or reluctantly because of illness, or it may be a time of deep reflection on one's life as a whole. I have had a few Rolfing clients in this age group. They have sometimes been people who are fighting age and pain with difficulty, and sometimes elders who still have optimism and enthusiasm for life and are looking for ways to keep mobile to keep enjoying life.

Chiron Return

The Chiron return is another event, at about age 50, that signals a turn inward, toward wisdom and maturity. You can read about it here, where the author says that it "delineates the end of the heroic youth, as we enter the realm of 'elder.'" This transition is easier for those who have had an inward or spiritual orientation already in life (who have "done their work" on themselves), harder for those who have sought their identity in the externals (looks, status, income...). Sometimes bodywork at this life stage can help give a person ground for this turning, as well as ease some of the accumulated aches and pains and restrictions from their life out in the world.

Uranus Opposition

The Uranus opposition occurs at around age 42 and correlates to what we commonly term the "midlife crisis." While Saturn builds structure, the planet Uranus is about awakening, freeing oneself from constraints, and opening to dynamic energy. At age 42, Uranus has moved halfway around your birthchart and is opposite to where it was at your birth, bringing with it a torrent of energy. Remember the lyrics to the Talking Heads song "Once in a Lifetime"?:

You may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
You may find yourself in another part of the world
You may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
You may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife
And you may ask yourself, well, how did I get here? 

 This is the wake-up call when suddenly you see your life afresh and ask yourself, "well, how did I get here – and what am I going to do about it?" Barbara Hand Clow, in her uniquely titled astrology book "Liquid Light of Sex: Kundalini, Astrology, and the Key Life Transitions", believes the kundalini energy of the body may spontaneously awaken at this time and try to move up the spine through the various chakras. Wherever you have a block, that's where your "midlife crisis" issues will manifest; in her view, this is commonly around the heart chakra for men (therefore the red sports car, jettisoning the wife, and falling freshly in love) and the throat chakra for women (issues of creative expression, "being heard" in ones life). This is another great time to get a Rolfing series as it can help free the body from the sense of restriction many people have from tight fascial wrapping, allowing more vitality and energy flow. 

In Conclusion

There's no one "right" time to get a Rolfing series – except when you feel compelled by life to work with what presents through your body. What is interesting to me is how often that coincides with one of these life cycles, and how often these life cycles unfold as stated, which says to me that there's something here for even the skeptic to consider.

I'm not an astrologer, but for anyone wishing to delve deeper, I recommend Frederick Woodruff and Shakti Carola Navran. Check out their websites and blogs and see who's a fit for you.

 

 

 

 

 

Life Cycles and Calculating Your Personal Year

It's a new year, which brings a new energy. Already the phone is ringing with some new clients wanting to get Rolfing® sessions - must be New Year's resolutions or the return of the light in Seattle as our days start to get a little longer. Or maybe alot of them are entering a numerological "personal year" that motivates their attention toward the body.

When I was in my 20s I was very interested in astrology, tarot, and numerology. Now my spiritual interests have taken a different direction, but I still give note to certain timing cycles. Yesterday I posted about an astrologer friend's outlook for 2011. Here I'll say a bit about personal life cycles from numerology and what I might correlate to the motivation to get Rolfing sessions or other bodywork, and tomorrow I'll write about life cycles in astrology. 

Numerology is fairly simple. There are things you can learn from your name, and also from your birthdate. Adding up the month, day, and year you were born gives you your "birth path" number. Then each year you add up the month and day of your birthday with the number of the current year, and tht gives you your current "personal year" according to numerology. This is a nine year cycle, starting with 1, going through 9, then back to one.

Here's how you calculate it. Say you were born today, January 7, in 1970. That would be

1 + 7 + 1 + 9 + 7 + 0 = 25, which you reduce to a single digit as 2 + 5 = 7.

The birth path is indicative of one's career or life path with seven being someone who is spiritual, inward, a thinker.

To calculate that person's personal year for 2011, we substitute the current year for the birth year and do the math:

1 + 7 + 2 + 0 + 1 + 1 = 12, which you reduce to a single digit as 1 + 2 = 3.

A 3 personal year is said to be an outgoing year of social activity, expansion, play, creativity.

The years I pay the most attention to are the ending years of a cycle (8, 9) to consider what is outmoded in my life, and the early ones in a new cycle (1-4) as that is when you are building the base for what you want to accomplish.

I'm more conscious of correlation between clients getting Rolfing sessions and the larger astrological cycles (which will be in my post tomorrow) because I can determine that just from someone's age, but I imagine there are relationships with numerology too, nuances that may alter the focus of why the person seeks my services. For example, someone getting bodywork in a 1 year may be looking to support a new start, while someone getting work in a 9 year may be trying to end old troublesome patterns. 

I'm in a 3 year in 2011, and this is proving to be kind of fun (fitting the theme of play and social activity), trotting out and sharing something that was a very creative endeavor for me in my 20s. I don't have a numerologist to recommend, but you can find alot of do-it-yourself info on the web. Tomorrow I'll share my recommendations for astrologers.

An Astrologer's View of 2011

Happy New Year everyone!

Here's what my astrologer friend Frederick Woodruff has to say about 2011. It might make you want to fasten your seatbelts, but his advice is to jump.

This is the macrocosmic view; in a few posts in the days ahead I'll make some comments on personal life cycles and what I notice in my Rolfing clientele going through these cycles.

How Rolfing® Sessions and Movement Work Can Help Musicians

Today I want to expand on the topic of Rolfing® Structural Integration and other bodywork modalities for musicians. (Yesterday I posted about Leon Fleisher, the renowned pianist whose career was truncated by focal dystonia until he found a way to manage the disorder through Rolfing® Structural Integration and botox injections to the affected muscles; you can read that here.)

The positioning of the body to play many musical instruments is asymmetrical. For example, playing a guitar or double bass, one arm is up, and one is down, and each does something different – fretting versus plucking, strumming, or bowing. Or the violin, where the head and chin tuck to the instrument. While playing the piano seems symmetrical, I found it interesting that in Fleisher's interview he attributed his focal dystonia to the fact that the affected fingers – the fourth and fifth fingers of his right hand – play the keys that hit the piano lyre's shorter strings. Shorter strings have less resonance, and the fourth and fifth fingers are generally weaker, so Fleisher says you have to work harder to play these keys.

Focal Dystonia

Fleisher's ailment is focal dystonia, a neurological movement disorder that has no cure but can be managed by a regimen that includes botox injections and Rolfing sessions. Fleisher reports that 10,000 musicians around the world suffer from focal dystonia. 

Repetitive Motion Injuries / Tendonitis

More typically with musicians I see issues akin to repetitive motion injuries and tendonitis. Practicing and playing hours a day will use the same muscle groups over and over, with the potential for contracted muscles, localized fascial shortening around them, and entrapped/inflamed nerves. This type of situation responds well to hands-on Rolfing Structural Integration sessions, as well as manual therapy for the nerves. This work is best done in conjunction with movement therapies for reasons discussed below.

Rolf Movement® and Other Movement Modalities

In an article in Structural Integration: The Journal of the Rolf Institute, Rolfer™ Elmar Abram reported working with a few musicians who had the diagnosis of focal dystonia, but whose limitations disappeared when they were coached to play their instruments differently using Rolf Movement® Integration techniques. In some cases it had to do with how they played their instruments in terms of posture and alignment, in other cases there was a deeper mind-body issue involved. This shows how much habit affects function, whether it is back pain from a habit of poor sitting posture or other body issues from the habitual way a musician holds and plays his instrument. And it is not surprising that there can be mind-body issues involved, particularly with professional musicians who are under tremendous pressure from an early age to develop and master their craft.

Besides Rolf Movement Integration, I would highly recommend Alexander Technique, the Feldenkrais Method® of Somatic Education, and Aston® Kinetics, three other sophisticated movement modalities that have helped many musicians and other performers. 

 

 

The Impact of Negative Attitudes and Language Towards Our Bodies in the Rolfing Process

As I'm a Rolfer™, most of the clients coming into my Seattle bodywork practice are addressing posture or pain in some fashion – even if their bodies function pretty well, they want them to function better. This is a great goal, and Rolfing® Structural Integration in particular works to optimize the body's structure in a way that serves this goal. As do craniosacral work (for headaches, TMJ, whiplash, auto injury) and visceral work (implicit in many postural issues and often a "missing piece" when someone has a stubborn pain issue).

In my practice one of my goals is "mind-body integration," and with yesterday being Thanksgiving I reflected on how our attitudes towards our bodies can affect how easily we can recover from injury and change old patterns. This is not to say that pain is "all in your head." After all, an auto accident or other injury, or pain from a postural complaint, can definitely turn aspects of your life downhill. Rather, it's to say that viewing your body in an appreciative way, for all that it does for you, gives holding and context for change and optimization to occur, and compassion for the ways we are suffering.

For example, I'll never forget a client of mine who was dealing with alot of physical pain – from fibromyalgia, and from an acute knee injury. She also had emotional pain from a recent ugly divorce. One day during a session she said with vehemence "I hate my body." I don't know how that felt to her or to her body, but to me it felt like a slap, and I wasn't even the object of her hatred.

In wondering how her body felt in response to the hatred and rejection she expressed toward it, I remember an episode in Unit II of my training at the Rolf Institute® of Structural Integration. In this phase of the training, students work on each other to learn the Rolfing "Ten Series" of work. The training is intense, requiring students to both give and receive work, as well as to absorb large amounts of information about anatomy and Rolfing theory in a period of about 10 weeks. It's not uncommon as a Unit II student to feel pressured and at your "edges" as a combination of the learning challenges and receiving at least two Rolfing sessions a week. One day the student working on me was doing her pre-session visual analysis, with an instructor observing. She was frustrated with her work and said something like "I fixed the arches in Anne's feet last session and now I don't see the change anymore, what happened?!!" While I intellectually understood her frustration with her learning curve and felt for her, my body had an entirely different reaction: It felt like it locked down and said "well then, screw you, I'm not going to change just to make you happy."

This is why one of the things we learn in Rolfing training is to language change in a way that is supportive. Here's an example: As a practitioner, I could say "Your shoulders are up in your ears, you've got to learn to let them go," which implies complaint, judgement, and an expectation that you change for me. Alternatively, I could say "How would it feel if your shoulders could relax back and settle here?" (using my hands on the mid-back to give a sensory cue). This is language that is meant to evoke, to help the body feel and consider an alternative that might be more comfortable. It's also language that invites the body to participate, rather than to put up resistance and deflector shields in the face of demands for it to change.

Whatever our pain or posture issues are, these bodies we move through life in are a miracle of interconnected functioning. They work so hard for us in the face of our criticisms and judgments ("sit up straight," "you're too fat," "you used to be in shape," "you're looking old"....) Any time you find yourself wishing something were different about your body, I encourage you to take steps toward that betterment, and at the same time to appreciate all that your body does for you despite whatever limitations it may have. That viewpoint makes it easier to enlist all of you in the change you seek.

Rolfing® Benefits Explained in my Radio Interview

 

I participated in a radio interview on alternative health in September, talking about Rolfing® Structural Integration specifically. It was a segment of a program called Voices of Diversity on KBCS 91.3 FM in Bellevue, WA. The host of the show, Sonya Green, was great and she had done her homework and asked intelligent questions that led to a good discussion about the benefits of Rolfing work for injuries (auto injuries, sports injuries), postural improvement, and emotional change and transformation. 

Go here if you'd like to listen to the archived recording of this show, then scroll down the page until you find the listing for the September 15, 2010 show on Alternative Medicine. The first guest is naturopath Nesreen Medina, and I'm the 2nd guest, from about 15 minutes in until the break at 30 min. [There's an audio problem with my first response (bad mike), then the rest is quite listenable.] Then from the 37 min mark til the end of the hour there's a discussion with Nesreen and me that covers more about Rolfing work and about complementary medicine.