Whole-Body Integration

Empathy vs. Sympathy and Its Role in Healing

This brilliant animation on the difference between empathy and sympathy has dialogue from this talk by Brené Brown. The whole talk is well worth listening to, and this animation is a wonderful extract of one of her points, where the art beautifully and whimsically illustrates the content. 

At one point in the longer talk, Brown says "Our capacity for whole-heartedness can never be greater than our willingness to be broken-hearted: which is a terrible thing, but a truthful thing." Empathy requires the capacity to be present to another – which includes being present to our own pain. This requires vulnerability, letting down the defenses around our hearts. 

She speaks of this in terms of interpersonal relationships, but from my bodywork practice in Seattle – whether the client is seeing me for Rolfing® Structural Integration, craniosacral work, visceral work, whatever – I feel the question is also one to address to ourselves, to the wounded places, to the parts in pain. People don't like to feel pain, and we tend to defend against our mental and physical pain. I hear clients say things like "I hate my body," or "I wish I could get rid of this bad knee, just cut it off!", and they usually are oblivious to the violence they are expressing towards themselves. 

I work with whole-body integration, with uniting the mind, body, emotions, and spirit. That means letting the mind be aware of the hurt, letting the heart feel the pain, letting your being feel how physical pain affects your spirit. Going back to the animation above, the question becomes "Can you be empathic to your own pain?" Instead of doing the sympathy trip – telling yourself something like "my [knee] sucks, but at least I have xyz in my life" – can you open your heart to that body part, can you fully feel in your body what is going on in the tissue rather than armoring against it? Can you wholeheartedly be with your own pain? 

While my work could probably help many people without that kind of emotional vulnerability on their part, multidimensional transformation comes from being deeply human, which means opening to all aspects of ourselves. Being human is being vulnerable. The more of you is available in receiving bodywork, the deeper the work can penetrate, the more it can support self-healing and be more than a quick fix.

 

Instinctual Intelligence and the Belly Center

I had to share the link to this amazing fox video.

First, as a Rolfer™ who works with bodies everyday – from the ordinary to the super athletic – I'm always blown away by what the human body can do (and how it can change!), and in this case what an animal body can do. Such amazing grace as this beautiful creatures dives into the snow for field mice underneath.

Then, as a meditator and student of mind-body-spirit integration, I marvel at animals' instinctual intelligence. The narrator says that the fox is most successful at catching the mice – about 75% of the time – when it is oriented to true north as it dives. Yet, clearly an animal doesn't do this as a mental, head-based process of "plotting a trajectory." Rather, this is going to be a deeply instinctual, embodied action, and that is part of what causes the grace.

Have you ever noticed how clunky your movements can be when you are self-conscious? – like when you first try to learn to windsurf or dance? It is only when our movements are deeply entrained into body intelligence (the belly center – which the Japanese martial artists call the hara and the Chinese the dantian) that we find that fluidity. Not surprisingly, the belly center is considered the "center of being" and many meditative traditions teach practices of concentration on this area as a way to develop presence. When the belly center is integrated, we move from "fitness" to "art" in our movements. This is the difference between an ordinary person mindlessly pumping away on an exercise machine while watching the TV screen at the gym and the grace of a dancer or martial artist whose mind is focused but relaxed and deeply present with his or her movement. (You don't see martial artists and dancers watching CNN on video screens as they work out!)

The belly center truly does have a function of intelligence, as is recognized in the common expressions of having a "gut feeling" or "I knew it in my gut." Yet we so often tend to focus our minds and knowing in our heads, and become disembodied as a result. Optimal intelligence, function, and grace comes when the whole body is integrated so that mind-body-spirit function as one.

In my Rolfing® Structural Integration practice in Seattle, I work with clients' bodies to free up tensions and restrictions, to enhance range of motion, to create natural alignment, and – critically – to enhance body awareness so that there is more possibility of integrated function and mind-body-spirit integration. Let us all aspire to the grace of foxes!

Woman Uses Tattoo Process to Move through Trauma

Bear with me... There are a few pieces to bring in to preface this video.

As a Rolfer™ I see alot of bodies and therefore alot of tattoos. (The places I've worked, Maui and Seattle, have lots of people of all ages with gorgeous ink.) What I love best is when people have great stories of their tattoos and what they mean for them personally. 

In Rolfing® Structural Integration work, I also see many clients with trauma histories. Trauma is a fact of life – almost everyone has experienced some form of trauma, whether a difficult birth, being fired from a job, losing a loved one, having a surgery or a sports injury, etc. It is now commonly known that trauma makes us lose touch with our bodies, as part of our being retreats from the overwhelm of the event. Many clients come to Rolfing work with the particular goal of reconnecting to those frozen parts of their bodies and/or psyches. Others don't have this goal, but find themselves remembering events from the past as their bodies receive work in an area that had experienced something traumatic. [Of course, if you have a significant trauma history that is affecting your emotional state currently, it is good to do more than bodywork – to see a psychotherapist or trauma therapist trained to help unwind these impacts. One particularly effective form of work is Somatic Experiencing™, which uses the body and one's felt sense as a doorway to gently release trauma. Peter Levine, the founder of that work, was originally a Rolfer, but developed Somatic Experiencing as his work led him into a profound mind-body-spirit-integrated understanding of trauma, the body, and the nervous system. He's written a good number of books; a good place to start is this one.]

Now to pull these thread together! This blog post was inspired by this video, about Molly Ortwein, a woman who underwent a double mastectomy for breast cancer. Ortwein found that tattooing her chest with a design that held alot of meaning for her helped her feel good about her body and scars after her surgery / breast reconstruction. Like many tattoos I see on my Rolfing clients, hers is deeply personal, deeply meaningful. Listening to her speak, it seems that getting the tattoo was a way for her to reverse the impact of a traumatic event through an empowering act. (She has started an organization to help other cancer survivors connect to tattoo artists, if they want to follow her example.)

Note: Because you see her chest in the video, some might consider this NSFW.

"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. 

Research Shows Rolfing® Sessions Helping Kids with Cerebral Palsy

Rolfer™ Karen Price was featured in the San Francisco Chronicle recently, in an intelligent article on a research project by Stanford University School of Medicine looking into whether Rolfing® Structural Integration can help children with cerebral palsy (CP). According to the article, CP is "the most common physical disability among children in the United States," and the Rolfing SI "is producing early and promising improvements in such children" by significantly improving their motor skills. Other treatment for CP ranges from physical and occupational therapy to botox injections or other medications and surgery, so the prospect of Rolfing sessions helping these kids is fantastic.

As a Rolfer, I'd say the article's discussion of our work is pretty accurate, discussing the role of fascia in "holding together the body's structure and supporting its posture." Importantly - and something the media often misses - the article distinguishes Rolfing SI from massage, and notes that the children do not experience it as being painful. (There's some great photos of one of the kids being worked on accompanying the article).

The preliminary study is complete with results published in the April in the Journal of Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine (abstract here). The researchers are currenlty recruiting more children for a further study.

 

New Year's Resolution: Exercise for a Healthy Brain

As we move past the winter solstice – allowing our dark Seattle days to gradually become lighter! – and into 2014, my mind is on my vision for the new year, which includes improving my level of health and fitness. I found some great support for that today in a blog post by The New York Times health and fitness writer Gretchen Reynolds. She surveys research that links the evolution of the human brain and cognitive capacity to the development of physical fitness and endurance, suggesting that "if physical activity helped to mold the structure of our brains, then it most likely remains essential to brain health today." 

Sounds great, especially as there's also reams of research linking physical activity to longevity and happiness and quality of life. As you engage in any new activity or increase in your current level of activity, it's important to avoid injury so that your program is not derailed. Here's a few words of advice from my professional background and training in bodywork and movement:

• Any increase in activity or training needs to be gradual and intelligent: don't "just do it" but listen to your body and what it tells you as you move, as discussed here. Work out in a harmonious relationship with your body, not as its dictator.

• As you add in or amp up strength training or cardio workouts, be sure to stretch as well. I recommend yoga (particularly  Viniyoga) and Scott Sonnon's Intu Flow (which you can learn from  this dvd or on YouTube in this video and others.) I'll be writing more about Intu Flow in the future as I work with it myself, but my initial impression from doing it for about 6 weeks is that it is an awesome methodology for joint health and mobility, plus it is fun to practice.

• To support your physical activity, you may want to consider bodywork, particularly Rolfing® Structural Integration and manual therapy for the nerves to open up stuck fascia around the muscles, joints, and nerves. These "gunky" shortened areas will be challenged as you increase your level of activity, and you may feel restrictions there as either tension or pain that will make you lose heart rather than stick to your program. Some quick tune up sessions can easily jump start your range of motion and make it easier to stay on track.

• For the truly inspired, you may want to consider the Rolfing Ten Series, a ten-session protocol that I describe as "a 50,000 mile tune-up for your body." 

Wishing everyone a happy and healthy 2014!

 

 

In the News: Rolfing® SI Helps Hockey Player and Gymnasts

Here's a quite good news story from a couple of days ago that describes how former professional hockey player Mark Howe of the Philadelphia Flyers credits Rolfing® Structural Integration with improving his game and extending his career after an injury. The text can be read here. There's comments from a Rolfer and testimonial from Howe, his father Gordie Howe, and two young gymnasts who discuss how it helps them to stand up straight with better posture and to relieve pain.

 

A Dancer Speaks of His Body, a Rolfer Interprets

Here is a beautiful video, "Body of a Dancer," a cinematic poem about Tim Persent, a South African dancer based in the Netherlands. While it is stunning to watch, there's so much wisdom in the words he shares, which I'll discuss through the lens of my experience as a Rolfer™ working daily with people and their bodies, their injuries, their pain, their posture, and their transformations.

I was struck by so many of the things Persent says about his relationship to his body. While I'm not a dancer, it parallels what I have learned from my own trajectory of embodiment, and from my work as a Rolfer with so many other bodies. Let's start with Persent's opening statement: "I am a dancer – my body is my instrument. I take good care of it. It has treated me well. I have been dancing for the past twenty-five years." There are so many key ideas here, I want to parse it out:

• "I am a dancer – my body is my instrument." For all of us, our bodies are instruments. Most basically, they are our vehicles through life, but more than that, they immediately express our presence, our energy, our emotions.
• "I take good care of it." How many people take good care of their bodies? And what does good care mean? To me, good care is more than just the right food, sleep, and exercise, good care is about a dialogue and relationship with your body. This is something that many people awake to only when their bodies fail them, when an injury or illness prevents "business as usual." But has the body failed them, or is it trying to say something? (More on the dialogue with the body coming below.)
• "It has treated me well."  This is an expression of gratitude, not rejection. How many of our statements about our bodies reflect appreciation and gratitude, rather than rejection and complaint? From so many of my Rolfing® Structural Integration clients I hear negative statements, things like"I hate my legs," "I don't like how I look," or "Because of this injury I can't do xyz." What if we instead spoke of our bodies in a relationship of appreciation? If you are in relationship with a person and only complain, how good will that relationship be? A relationship benefits from scrutiny, but also from efforts to improve it and to enhance the appreciative elements.
• "I have been dancing for the past twenty-five years." I would venture that part of the reason Persent has been dancing so long is that he has treated his body so well, and that has allowed him a long career.

After this opening statement, Persent describes how he warms up, and how he "asks" his fingers to relax. This is so important! When we ask our body something, and listen for a reply, we are in dialogue. If the body says something hurts, we listen and attend to it. If it says it's tired, we find ways to rest. If it says it wants to move, we allow that. If we try a new form of exercise, we ask the body how it feels, and modify the activity accordingly.

This type of feedback loop is the antithesis of the Nike slogan "Just do it," which encourages us to force ourselves and our bodies to do things along a one-way circuit without feedback. I see many clients who have injured themselves through this attitude, and who delay their recovery by continuing to "just do it" even though the bodies is saying "I can't run ten miles right now." Thankfully I also see many clients who are working with their bodies and dialoguing and learning what is uniquely right for each of them. For one Seattle Rolfing client, the Nike attitude and her friend's encouragement got her to sign up for a Boot Camp exercise program. Through the pain and muscle tension that were aggravated, her body told her to find a different form of exercise, at least for now, while her body was releasing old patterns through Rolfing sessions and learning how to regain length and flexibility.

Persent says he imagines his fingers to reach out so they become longer. Thus, even in stretching there's a gentle touch and an invitation to the body, through the mind, to expand. This is very different from an ethos of stretching that sees the body as a series of mechanical levers (bones) and muscles to be pulled on as if objects. In asking the body, imagining, and listening for a response, he is working with the mind-body as a unity, an embodied, intelligent presence. As Persent states, "By thinking an idea, something will happen to the body." Yoga and tai chi are wonderful body disciplines because they invite you into an idea (an asana, a form) with a mindfulness that works this mind-body loop, but mindfulness can be present in any activity, whether eliptical at the gym or a charge down the basketball court.

Persent also says, "Dancing is spirit made flesh: it physicalizes ideas, emotions, thoughts. That's why it is beautiful, powerful, and freeing." As a bodyworker, I see daily how many of us use out bodies to either contain and restrain our energies and emotions. The fascia, or connective tissue, that I work with as a Rolfer is the shrinkwrap that locks the muscles and bodies in physical constraints, and often those physical constraints involve a history of emotions, or injuries, of old self images. We could call this the "personal history made flesh." In freeing the fascia, we free those energies and emotions and make space for a new self image. In doing a Rolfing series, or any transformative bodywork, there is potential for every body to be more "spirit made flesh." This is a renewal, so it's also spirit and body made fresh.

While the average body, not trained for years in dance, will never be able to do many of the things Persent can do, we all have the potential to evolve to experience our bodies with the presence, consciousness, and embodiment he exemplifies.