tructural ntegration S ® I THE JOURNAL OF THE ROLF INSTITUTE MARCH 2017

TABLE OF CONTENTS

STRUCTURAL INTEGRATION: THE JOURNAL OF ® THE ROLF INSTITUTE FROM THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF 2 March 2017 Vol. 45, No. 1 COLUMNS Ask the Faculty: Cross-pollination of Rolfing® SI and Other Endeavors 3 PUBLISHER Rolf Movement® Faculty Perspectives: The Haptic Sense, Part 1 8 The Rolf Institute of Structural Integration CROSS-POLLINATION 5055 Chaparral Ct., Ste. 103 How Suite It Is: A Conversation with Steven Hancoff 9 Boulder, CO 80301 USA Lynn Cohen and Steven Hancoff (303) 449-5903 (303) 449-5978 Fax Practically Integrated: Where Parallel Practices Meet 13 Lynn Cohen EDITORIAL BOARD Body as ’Portal’: An Exploration of Rolfing® SI 16 ® Anne F. Hoff, Editor-in-Chief and the Diamond Approach Anne Hoff and Gregory Knight Shonnie Carson, Lineage Editor Szaja Gottlieb, Research/Science Editor Persistent Doubt, Perches in Apple Trees, 20 Linda Loggins, Movement Editor Putting Ground Under One’s Faith Heidi Massa, Latin America Editor Kevin Frank Keren’Or Pézard, Arts Editor The Sound of Integration: A Conversation with Maria Helena Orlando 21 John Schewe, Faculty Liason Heidi Massa and Maria Helena Orlando Matt Walker, Asia/Pacific Editor Dancing Between the Lines 24 Naomi Wynter-Vincent, Europe Editor Jason Sager Diana Cary Lynn Cohen Body, Speech, and Mind: An Interview with Tsuguo Hirata 26 Craig Ellis Anne Hoff and Tsuguo Hirata Lina Hack The Art of Rolfing and the Art of Sculpture, Part 1: 28 Dorothy Miller Seeing, Embodiment, and Space Meg Maurer Szaja Gottlieb Deanna Melnychuk Liberated Body – Where Body Nerds Unite 32 Max Leyf Treinen Dorothy Miller and Brooke Thomas Masculine Emotional Intelligence: A Way to Set Men Free 36 LAYOUT AND Owen Marcus GRAPHIC DESIGN Melding Interdisciplinary Fields: 39 Susan Winter Performing Arts, Bodywork, Psychology, and Teaching Heather L. Corwin Articles in Structural Integration: The Human Doings of Human Beings: A Conversation with Heidi Massa 43 Journal of The Rolf Institute® represent the Anne Hoff and Heidi Massa views and opinions of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official PERSPECTIVES positions or teachings of the Rolf Institute of Structural Integration. The Rolf Institute Closure 46 reserves the right, in its sole and absolute Noel Poff discretion, to accept or reject any article Burned from Within and Droop-Neck Syndrome 47 for publication in Structural Integration: The Ritchie Mintz Journal of The Rolf Institute. REVIEWS 50 Structural Integration: The Journal of The Rolf Institute® (ISBN-13: 978-0997956924, CONTACTS 52 ISSN 1538-3784) is published by the Rolf Institute, 5055 Chaparral Ct., Ste. 103, Boulder, CO 80301.

Copyright ©2017 Rolf Institute. All rights reserved. Duplication in whole or in part Cover image courtesy of www.ace-clipart.com. in any form is prohibited without written permission from the publisher.

“Rolfing®,” “Rolf Movement®,” “Rolfer™,” and the Little Boy Logo are service marks of the Rolf Institute of Structural Integration. FROM THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

This issue explores the theme of cross-pollination: how the diverse backgrounds and interests of Rolfers™ support and inform their understanding and practice of Rolfing® Structural Integration (SI), and how Rolfing training and work in turn have an impact on their other pursuits. Rolfing SI is an unusual profession, out of the mainstream and often found via a circuitous route of other varied careers before the future Rolfer hears about Rolfing SI, experiences the work, and decides to train. Before we were Rolfers we were engineers, dancers, teachers, lawyers, nurses, editors, professional athletes, psychologists, small-business owners . . . the list goes on and on. These careers gave worldviews and habits of thought that then encountered the Rolfing SI worldview in training. These mash-ups led to unique points of view that perhaps could only have arisen from those particular elements. I think of Rolfer John De Mahy, who understood the valuable efficiency of diagnostic algorithms from his prior career as an emergency-room nurse. As he practiced Rolfing SI and studied osteopathic assessment techniques, his understanding allowed him to create unique algorithms to assess low-back, cervical, and thoracic pain. He now teaches these algorithms in continuing education classes, to the benefit of us all. Another factor that feeds cross-pollination is that Rolfers tend to be self-employed, allowing flexibility in scheduling one’s life. This makes possible a dual career, if the Rolfer wants to continue a former vocation or add another in the future. And for those who are happy to have Rolfing SI as their only line of work, the flexibility can instead allow the passionate pursuit of a side interest or avocation. Thus, we have Rolfers who continue to be musicians, actors, yoga instructors, writers, and choreographers (among others), and we have Rolfers whose practice of Rolfing SI sparked lines of inquiry leading to a further career. Rolfing SI takes many into other body-related endeavors (e.g., Pilates or the Feldenkrais® Method), into mind-body considerations (e.g., Somatic Experiencing®), or into spiritual or energetic studies (e.g., meditation or SourcePoint®). In the articles and interviews in our cross-pollination theme, we hear from quite a number of Rolfers with diverse activities. We open with an interview with Steven Hancoff, who was the initial inspiration for this theme. An accomplished musician, Hancoff, in 2015, released “The Bach Project,” which began as acoustic guitar transcriptions of J.S. Bach’s The Six Suites for Cello Solo and then flowered into three CDs, a four-volume iBook, fourteen YouTube videos, and two full-length multimedia theatre pieces (with a third in the works). Also in the realm of sound and music, we hear from Lynn Cohen, who speaks to the interplay between learning/practicing Rolfing SI and learning/practicing cello, and from Maria Helena Orlando, who practices music and sound therapy. We see cross-pollination with other arts in articles from Jason Sager, who taught swing dance and danced competitively, and from Szaja Gottlieb, who sculpted stone before switching to the human body as his medium. And then we hear from Heather Corwin, who is an actor-director-educator-research psychologist besides being a Rolfer. In the realm of mind-body-spirit, we have a dialogue I did with Gregory Knight. Both of us are teachers of the Diamond Approach®, a modern spiritual path that has a unique understanding of the body and of the way that sensing and body awareness are useful in opening and pursuing the inquiry into other dimensions of reality and our true nature. The spiritual side of life is also examined by Tsuguo Hirata, whose study of Buddhism spans decades and is leading to interesting lines of thought and experimentation in his Rolfing practice. Brooke Thomas and Owen Marcus share how their personal processes of education and self-development led to other endeavors. In Thomas’s case, a curiosity to learn and share cutting-edge knowledge of the body and fascia led her to createThe Liberated Body Podcast, while Marcus’s personal process to understand and cultivate Male Emotional Intelligence took him into leading men’s groups, training other group leaders, and to his work being featured in a documentary film. Our faculty are also cross-pollinators. Rolf Movement® Instructor Kevin Frank shares body wisdom he has learned through Rolfing SI, Rolf Movement work, and pruning an orchard of apple trees. Other faculty members contribute in our “Ask the Faculty” column. The closing argument on cross-pollination comes from Heidi Massa, in the role of devil’s advocate. She disagrees with the whole notion of cross-pollination between two or more things, and argues that we each truly do only one thing, and that that one thing informs everything we do. A lawyer, Massa states her case quite persuasively. Other than the cross-pollination theme, Lucia Merlino introduces the haptic sense in the “Rolf Movement Faculty Perspectives” column, Noel Poff shares his developing insights on closure, and Ritchie Mintz vividly describes what he calls ‘burned from within’ – a unique situation Rolfers may encounter where the client’s fascial layers are matted and ‘burned’ together, most commonly from radiation therapy. Mintz tells us how he figured this out, and what type of Rolfing touch is most effective to help these clients. I hope this issue inspires you to consider what in your life cross-pollinates with your Rolfing practice or, as Heidi Massa would have it, what your own unique ‘trick’ or raison d’être is that informs how you practice Rolfing SI.

Anne F. Hoff Editor-in-Chief

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180 pounds, with no fat. I sat with him in his Ask the Faculty kototama meditation classes for a couple of years, and endured his methods. ® Cross-pollination of Rolfing SI and Other Endeavors In those first years after my training, Q: Can you speak to something in your own life that has cross-pollinated with living in New Mexico, I did not get much your Rolfing Structural Integration (SI) practice, leading you to a particular Rolfing SI, as there was no Rolfer near me. perspective, understanding, or way of working? Still, I sought out these people practicing ‘on-the-body’ techniques, and they formed a foundation that augmented what I had A: Speaking of the cross-pollinations that body. It was not so much that I was looking learned from IPR. By the end of 1974 I have affected my perspective on the body, for technique as for perspective and better was back in Big Sur for the first Advanced and on Rolfing SI, the first mandate from understanding of the ‘nature of structure’. I Training (AT) with IPR. There were about Ida P. Rolf (IPR) was to stick with her way of got lucky in finding a copy ofOsteopathy in sixteen of us in that class, and IPR put us doing the work for five years, or “until you the Cranial Field, by Harold Magoun. I read through her newly designed advanced think you know what you are doing . . .” I it front to back like a novel, and then picked ‘recipe’, a four series that ended with what have to say that I have yet to feel that I know it apart. I had no practical instruction, but it was the equivalent of a Seventh Hour. In what I am doing unto this day, but that I am awakened me to the idea of fluctuations of retrospect, that advanced work did not driven by her mandate to keep at it. pressure beyond heartbeat, peristalsis, and impress me so much. I did not think another respiration. Hmmm, the body moves onto The Rolfing work that I was taught was formula was where I needed to go. I wanted itself . . . it is not a discrete mass. Another to go deeper into what I was calling the forged in the crucible of the human potential book that came my way was a manual of movement at Esalen Instute. Peter Melchior ‘nature of structure’. That is not to say that chiropractic technique by a DC named the time with IPR was unproductive: I loved and I were the resident Rolfers™ at Esalen, DeJarnette. He had a method, and I did my and we alternated sessions on people who being in the class, and with my colleagues, best to understand what he thought about learning from my first real teacher. Still, her were in the residential program. The stated the body. I was examining premises. object of the exercise was to facilitate the choice to come up with another recipe, as psychological work that the Residents were It’s important to realize that in those years the AT, did not turn on the lights for me. exploring with Fritz Perls, Will Schutz, there was no Internet, no seminars to teach I can see that in the wake of Dr. Rolf’s and Abe Maslow. This exploration did nuggets of information and technique. If passing, and with Peter, Emmett Hutchins, not exclude broader studies in exploring you wanted to know more about the field and I being the first Advanced teachers, boundaries of all kinds. we were in, you basically had to steal it. the seeds of our differences regarding the There was an old-time naturopath in Santa work were sown in that first AT. I was When I left that environment and moved to Fe named Jay Scherer, who had a school of rural northern New Mexico in 1971, there sure that the way to train and develop a massage. He was a lifelong vegetarian, a bit Rolfer beyond the basic Ten Series was wasn’t another Rolfer for about 800 miles of a mystic. He was a vigorous manipulator, in any direction, and more importantly, to deepen the understanding of structure and a hell of a bonesetter. I took a course and the process of evolving the client’s no one had a clue what Rolfing SI or the of study from him to get my New Mexico human potential movement was. As I began inner connection to structure and function; massage license, and got lots of private to deepen the Rolfers’ ability to discern to build a client base, I did all Ten-Series work from him. I also gave him a Ten Series. work most of the time, but at the same time where their client’s growth was happening, He thought Rolfing SI was radical, and both internally and in movement; and people came out of the woodwork who called me Mao Tse-tung because it hurt so needed immediate help, and came because to function as both a manipulator and a much. I learned to do spinal manipulation teacher in support of that growth. I was the guy who worked on people’s from him, and had my first introduction to bodies. It was an assortment of knees, backs, fasting and ideas about cleansing the body. Along this path, there have been many and necks . . . the usual aches that drive more experiences and learning that have people to seek help. I worked with whoever I was really lucky to meet Sensei Nakozono, influenced my understanding of both the showed up, adapting the elements of the who was a Japanese acupuncturist and limits and possibilities inherent in Rolfing Ten Series to the situation at hand. This shiatsu doctor, a master of aikido, and SI, but the foregoing represent some of my was the only thing I was doing to make a a teacher of a meditation system called formative conditions. living – it sure was not my hobby – so I was kototama. He was a WWII veteran who not so anal about only doing the Ten Series. had marched with the Japanese army into Jan Sultan Virtually no one came for personal growth, Machuria. I studied with him and got my Advanced Rolfing Instructor and I had to educate my clients about the introduction to oriental medicine. His A: I sit at an airport in Eastern Europe other potentials of the work. Many of my treatments were more painful than Rolfing waiting for a flight back to Munich. And ‘first-aid’ clients went on to do the Ten sessions, and he was relentless. I found this I remember the many ideas I exchanged Series with me, and many sent their friends comforting, in a way: I was not the most with Ray Bishop, a Rolfing colleague and for Rolfing sessions, and first aid as well. painful practitioner around. Still, I learned through his hands, and his feet – in addition professional musician who is not with us As I went along in those first years, I felt to shiatsu, and bonesetting, he also walked any more. We had met many years ago at that I was woefully ignorant about the all over his patients, using his heels and the a workshop in Santa Fe. And I remember body, and I began to look for books by balls of his feet. At 5’8” he weighed about a few talks with my colleague Harvey other practitioners who also worked on the Burns: a late evening after co-teaching in

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Munich, the two of us listening to a slow Years ago, I spent hundreds of hours question of what prevents structure and motion of a string quartet composed by practicing the ability to play any rudiment function from allowing more space, less Joseph Haydn. I remember a present he leading with the left hand or the right. ‘contraction’, more listening and curiosity, once gave to me, a book about Miles Davis. Now after more than thirty years I feel that less concepts and more openness. And I will always remember the quality I am beginning to bring this love of two- Working with clients it seems to me very of Harvey’s touch. Our talks – the talks of handed improvisation into my work and often that we are moving on a line of musicians – are perhaps not that interesting teaching, whilst still feeling I am playing the balance between flexibility and stability. for bodyworkers. However, one aspect is Rolfing ‘song’. A prerequisite for ‘playing’ with this worth mentioning: musicians’ hands are balance is a certain amount of structural permanently trained to establish a better Harvey Burns ability – like physical elasticity, range of connection to certain areas inside the Rolfing Instructor ® movement, and coordination of movement. brain. Not only to the cerebellum, also to Rolf Movement Instructor Another is the willingness to open to the limbic system. Playing an instrument A: Despite being raised in an urban change, to risk moving out of common helps to make finer and finer distinctions environment, my upbringing included patterns. This is meaningful not only for coordination of movement and tactile enough camping trips and excursions for a process of integrating physical perception. It helps one to use the two into nature to instill an early and deep and coordinative structure, but also for hands differently, it helps one to be passive appreciation for the phenomenal world. perceptive and psychobiological balance. (‘supportive’) with the palm of the hand Growing up in the San Francisco Bay area Authentic Movement allows movement while the fingers give an active stimulus. also provided me an early introduction practice in a very subtle and protected way, The philosopher Theodor W. Adorno to meditation and contemplation. During to experience and reflect upon perception once wrote: “Music is similar to language a thirty-day meditation retreat in remote and expression – in movement and verbally. without being language itself.” The same upcountry Maui at age nineteen, the may be true for human touch. serenity I felt when out in nature merged Jörg Ahrend-Löns with meditation’s access to inner calm, and Peter Schwind Rolfing Instructor that forged into that “something” in my life Basic & Advanced Rolfing Instructor A: When I look back, it seems everything that has richly cross-pollinated with my I’ve done has influenced who I am as a A: It is extremely difficult to follow what Rolfing practice. Rolfer. And now, being a Rolfer influences Peter has written, because he has managed, Through meditation I discovered that the how I am in the world today. From the start as often in the past, to put subtle sensory quality of presence I sought out and so of my working career, I’ve always been experiences into words. Reading it has valued in nature was available in my own placed in leadership roles. Even when I prompted me to write a few words from inner nature. Over the years I’ve allowed started out on yard crews at fourteen years my side. myself to relax more into my practice (be old, I had my own crew. Out of high school I I believe there are a few important things it Rolfing SI or meditation). And eventually joined the military and in two years became from my life as a musician that have been the efforts of trying so hard to achieve the a sergeant tank commander. When I came of great value to me in my work as a Rolfer. goals of any given session or to sit still have home, I worked for an engineering firm that Naturally, one of the most useful abilities is a given way toward a greater ease of being. made mechanical parts and again took on sense of rhythm and timing. This has helped Out of the various styles of meditation I’ve supervisory roles. All of this helped me gain me enormously, in class and practice, to explored, the one I currently find most experience about creating ‘rapport’ with organize elements musically/rhythmically beneficial to my practice is the Tibetan people and how to work with others to get in a way that flows and makes sense. Buddhist Nyingma tradition of brief and things accomplished. more frequent meditation. In both my In the tunes of the so-called ‘standard’ On a personal level, having three daughters meditation and Rolfing practice, allowing jazz repertoire of the twentieth century, in educated me on the differences between the the dynamic of the breath to bridge the which I was deeply steeped, there exists mannerisms of both sexes. My friends and connection to gravity and ground serves to a particular phenomena that I believe family have also shaped me. Being with bring awareness out of the mind’s thoughts sees its reflection in the work of talented loved ones as they struggle with challenges and into the realm of sensation in a relaxed practitioners. Each of these standard tunes such as divorce and addiction deepened my and embodied way. has a set melody and musical shape – a understanding of the relationship between beginning, middle, and end, and the same Sally Klemm physical pain and mental anguish that is so number of bars – whoever plays it. So it is Basic & Advanced Rolfing Instructor often the case for our clients. the same tune, but interpreted differently Participating in a lot of different of sports by different musicians in the way they A: In recent years I came across Janet helped me understand the different ways improvise. But the tune is always the same. Adler’s method of Authentic Movement, clients relate to their bodies. Before I This ability to stay oriented within an which seems to me an entrance into a received Rolfing sessions, I treated my body agreed frame and goal, and yet find ways journey that allows a balance of what I as a tool that I could command to do things. to improvise that stay true to that goal, is perceive as ‘my inner world’ and what After my Ten Series, I came to think of my what transforms our Rolfing work from a surrounds me. Or – how I find a space in physical body as a member of my team set of techniques into an ever-evolving way which I have permission to listen to the that needs to be understood, appreciated, of working. world and to myself at the same time. The link between her work and Rolfing SI is the and cared for.

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My job as a mechanical manufacturing work was the notion of process. That to learn how I can augment each model to engineer helped me view things in three understanding of the unfolding of one’s organize a leg, balance the autonomics, dimensions. Not only do I try to sense existential path combined with the physical, untwist a bone, and enhance integration. what’s on the side I can’t see, but also how structural transformation of Rolfing SI The biodynamic model describes it relates functionally to the side that is near gave me a particular viewpoint on Rolfing embryology from an epigenetic perspective, me. Even now, when I look at someone in work and its timing. This also allowed which says that there is a blueprint (an a session, I see lines, levers, and rotations. me to move into an understanding of intention) that animates the fluids in the non-formulistic work, strategizing sessions My first experiences receiving bodywork embryo, which then influences genetic with a view that is not simply structural, but were painful, humiliating, and ultimately expression creating the details that we also process-oriented. This understanding educational. In my first massage, the recognize as a human being. This epigenetic of both the ‘Recipe’ and process helps me therapist came in, uncovered half my body process of embryogenesis is a function with the psychobiological unfolding that and jammed the sheets in places they didn’t that spatially organizes the shape and occurs as the Rolfing process happens. belong to expose my legs — all without then the myriad forms within the embryo a word of warning. Naturally, my body Pedro Prado through fluid movements. This inherent went on alert and I tightened everywhere. Basic & Advanced Rolfing Instructor function of the fluids continues into Throughout the session, she wondered Rolf Movement Instructor adulthood and throughout life. This process why my body was so “tight.” My second is always ‘working’ to keep spatial order massage with a more experienced massage A: In 1985 Tom Wing was the lead teacher and function as optimal as possible. And, practitioner left me black and blue for a in my Phase 2 Basic Rolfing training. I most amazingly, we can perceive these fluid week. At the time, she thought that was loved watching him work. I describe it motions with our hands and augment their what I needed, and I was proud of the fact as watching a Native American mold a ordering function to achieve the goals of that I could take it. These experiences have fine piece of pottery. He was incredibly Rolfing SI. left an indelible mark on my consciousness perceptive. I now know that what I was Dr. Rolf also spoke of a blueprint. However and taught me what not to do. experiencing in his work was a profound sense of presence. After the training the expression of the blueprint will All of these experiences have helped me ended, I asked what else he had studied frequently be limited and distorted by the define who I am as a practitioner and how besides Rolfing SI that contributed to how compensations required from the injuries I related to others. They influence my ‘ways he worked. Tom’s only reply was that he and disturbances of ‘life’. Our purpose of seeing’ and how I create boundaries and studied a form of Asian energy healing. as Rolfers is to help our client’s body a safe space that responds to my clients’ I remember him saying that if I go to the to ‘remember’ its blueprint. As Rolfers, needs. Thankfully, my experience as a depth and essence of whatever healing we have a system (the Recipe) that can Rolfer has also bled over into my personal modality I am practicing, I will discover reorganize the pieces. The changes we see in life. Because of my Rolfing training, the essence of many other disciplines. I our clients (enhanced space, length, depth, I better understand my body and my tell this story to students who ask me the groundedness, and ability to orient to the responsibility to work with it. It changed same question, because I have found his environment) are our confirmations that the way I relate to my friends and family, insight to be true in the progression of my this system works. We order the anatomy increasing my sensitivity to what they were own practice. so these qualities can appear. The Recipe going through. I am more compassionate. provides a framework that helps remove Lastly, it has made me more aware that Rolfing SI has deep roots in osteopathy. What the impediments to the embryonic intention processes in nature are different from has influenced me most is studying so that the expression of the blueprint manufactured parts. With guidance and and deepening into the three models can emerge. education, profound change is possible; of craniosacral therapy as articulated Science says that 70% of the adult body is but natural change happens in its own by William Sutherland, DO. A common fluid. Yet we study and work with the 30% time and sometimes it just takes a while. and important thread between the three we call anatomy. As recent studies have I am thankful for my life and my Rolfing models is the significance of fluids. Most shown, healthy, ordered fascia has a highly career. It is a blessing that has helped me fascinating to me is working with the ways fluid quality. The anatomy is suspended in find happiness and joy on both the personal the whole body responds to these different the fluidic fascial web. By working with and and professional levels. Thanks to all who fluid models. These three models are enhancing the fluidic nature of fascia, I am have contributed, even that therapist who biomechanics, functional, and biodynamic. able to help order the environment in which gave me a ‘wedgie’. I’ve learned a lot from Simply and briefly, the biomechanical the anatomy lives and thus am able to affect all of you. model is anatomy oriented / fascia focused; the functional model is based on fluid flow the ordering of the anatomy in a much more Larry Koliha and fluctuation; the biodynamic model comprehensive manner. Even though I am Rolfing Instructor looks at how fluids ‘breathe’. Learning often consulting one of my anatomy books, how to shift my perception between these when I work now, anatomy is not in the A: I had been working in clinical models, and how I have to change within forefront of my perception. I have learned psychology with a body-oriented approach myself to perceive the different fluid to inquire, to ‘hear’ with my touch: when I encountered Rolfing SI. Discussions expressions of each model, has contributed about the body-mind conjunction were • Is there a rock in the stream inhibiting the most to further my understanding of omnipresent in my field, and the main connectivity or flow? what we are practicing and what I do as a thing of value I brought from it into Rolfing Rolfer. It has been a fascinating exploration • What is the shape of this area? Does it fit with the rest? www.rolf.org Structural Integration / March 2017 5 COLUMNS

• Is there fluid flow? those parts of us the ‘movement brain’. and SI.) When I started Rolfing practice, The phrase is, among other things, less my go-to, for clients in distress, was to • Are there enough resources for the geeky. Then, a way to describe SI is that invite them to notice that when things are tissues to be capable of taking on a new it improves conversation between the hard, thoughts don’t help much – and so form or pattern? thinking brain and the movement brain. We I asked them, “What can you notice that I am also listening for wholeness as expressed call the result structural integration because isn’t thought?” by inherent motion. By synchronizing behavior changes – how people navigate As I entered Practitioning (what we with the fluids, we have the potential to life, physically and psychologically, now call Phase 3) of Rolfing training, the experience the body as one entire whole. changes in ways that continue to deepen universe was kind. Gael Rosewood assisted Wholeness then becomes an experience and integrate into life. But before any of the course. (It was interesting to discover instead of a concept. To experience the body this made any sense to me, I had to do that Gael is Huston Smith’s daughter.) not as bones, muscles, and organs, not as its some homework. Gael offered a free Continuum class each details, but as one comprehensive whole is I grew up in an extended family comprised morning before the ‘official day’ started. an amazing thing! of, and networked with, social scientists, Continuum helped me reboot an “I can As I continuously deepen into my psychologists, and psychoanalysts. do this” feeling during training. Why? I explorations working with the fluids, Thinking and talking about human behavior would now describe the reason as that it instead of trying to change dysfunctions I was a household pastime. That had some promotes body security. Continuum helps now seek wholeness within the dysfunction. advantages probably. But, by high school, one deal with psychological challenge I listen for what is working, where the in the 1960s, I perceived troubling limits to – challenges like those that can occur in kernel of essential health is. I can then shift ‘intellect-only’ ways to meet life’s deeper Rolfing trainings – in a movement-brain within myself to synchronize with inherent issues. I looked and stumbled into the Zen way. At times one needs better resources motion so the dysfunction can more readily option. I found a Saturday morning class than thoughts and memories of former reintegrate into the whole. To do this, I taught by one of Huston Smith’s students success – one really needs a quality of have to practice presence. I have to change at MIT. (Smith was a professor of religion adequate body security. Body security within myself. I have to respect the inherent at MIT and had written the introduction helps one do the work, independent wisdom within my client. When I’m to Kapleau’s Three Pillars of Zen.) The class from the ideas about oneself – a way to working with fascia, I am always looking introduced us to Zen, which involves a step out of local identity and, at the same for ease in the tissues. This makes my work lot of sitting (zazen). The sitting crossed time, become more present. Specifically, much easier on my hands as I do much less legged and staying perfectly still part was Continuum offers ways to replenish the rich pushing, focusing, and directing. I attend intimidating – as in, the hardest thing for sense of body – a bodily sense of volume, to the perceptions I receive from the fluid me to even imagine doing. But, it also felt density, and substance. The intensity of the system. I work slowly and with patience, like maybe a good choice – maybe because (Rolfing) training, for me, had the effect of allowing the inherent health of the body to it threatened everything familiar and erasing that important sense of substance. guide my work and to reorganize itself in everything for which I had some sense of It’s a movement-brain issue. We can’t will relation to the intention of the blueprint. competence. It turns out that even an overly ourselves to feel our substance. But we can To practice this relationship with the fluid intellectual, physically stiff, and moderately invite it, through playful improvisation body and partner with its inborn function fearful person can participate . . . eventually. in movement, imagination, breath, and of order and ease has contributed the most sound expression, which, in turn, provokes Later, a takeaway gleaned from zazen – and to further my understanding of how I can sensory experience, and thus restores a before experiencing Rolfing SI – was that help my clients and continue to progress welcome felt sense. body posture is a precious and miraculous as a Rolfer. event. The body knows how to hold itself As the years of Rolfing practice unfolded, Thomas Walker up, effortlessly. As the body stabilizes Continuum retreats helped differentiate my Rolfing Instructor and finds support, there’s a platform for body maps. Better mapping permitted me investigating being simply present, and also to see/feel a more differentiated perception A: There is evidence to suggest that we for gnarly questions –questions like, “Who of client bodies. Freshly back from doing can consider Rolfing SI and Rolf Movement am I?” or “How do I die?”; stuff like that. It’s extended Continuum in a group, it was work as pathways to subcortical processes – ultimately movement-brain territory (below easier to see what was going on in people, brain processes below conscious awareness. thought), at least after a while, because one’s and to better feel what to do about it. Rolf’s work allows us to influence parts struggle to think of answers fails. Something (Much later, while attending a Continuum- of ourselves that aren’t changed easily other than thinking has a chance to kick in. based workshop, a seasoned Zen teacher or directly; parts not changed by will commented to me that it might be helpful Rolfing SI and Rolf Movement Integration power, imitation, or ‘figuring it out’. for Zen teachers, in general, to do the sort offer people ingredients to access Subcortical processes aren’t the point of of sensation integration and tracking that movement brain wisdom as well. In traditional education – education, for those workshops provide.) example, to acquire knowledge or exercises addition to an experience of plasticity in to strengthen muscles. Rolf education, by shape and movement, the work helps one Along similar lines – differentiation of maps contrast, involves communication with distinguish what Jeffrey Maitland terms feeding the movement brain – two other parts of the brain that govern posture, ‘pre-reflective’ experience from ‘thought- pieces fit this story: the experiential anatomy coordination, and nervous system about’ experience. (Maitland has written and the evolutionary movement curricula regulation. We can, for simplicity, call lots of good stuff about the relation of Zen of Caryn McHose. After experiencing

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McHose teach and experiencing her appear reasonable to a broader audience. to realize that the corporate rat race wasn’t private sessions, I came to appreciate other, When we support students to engage in for me. Again, my stomach tightened and perceptual, dimensions of SI. McHose’s processes that lead to deeper embodiment, I knew I had to readjust my goals. I was early self study, drawing on, among other their confidence improves. These sorts starting to worry I’d never find my passion. things, Mabel Todd’s The Thinking Body of processes foster practitioners who For a couple of years, I wrote marketing and, later, Rolf’s Rolfing: The Integration of are better prepared; practitioners with materials for companies because I could Human Structures, led her to perception- critical skills for differentiating what work for myself. It wasn’t my dream but I based approaches for shifting body maps. they see, and for how they educate and liked to write and I learned that I enjoyed Her work produced (to me) impressive find appropriate language to support a running a small business. Eventually, long change in how people experienced their more varied spectrum of people within hours at the computer created pain and my bodies, and how they moved. It would clinical practice. yoga teacher suggested I see a Rolfer. One take me some time to articulate what session, and I was never the same. Before The challenge remains: how do we translate I felt and observed, or speculate about my Ten Series was complete, I was signed the serendipitous processes many of us why this happens. I would say now, up for Basic Training. experienced over the past decades into however, simply that experiential anatomy user-friendly education that meets the Everything I did before shapes the Rolfing demonstrates that the body is, effectively, contemporary student population for practitioner and teacher that I am. I often ‘hungry’ to feel and know itself better, to Rolfing SI and Rolf Movement Integration? say to students that we each have to find know its bony architecture and articular Developing effective and accessible the Rolfer in us. This work is about being capacities – to differentiate its maps. Better approaches to somatic education at the authentic, and becoming a good Rolfer is information gets recognized as such. Rolf Institute®, education that fosters depth a process of self-discovery. My dear father Evolutionary movement demonstrates of embodiment, is a fertile investigation. thought I was unfocused, but my body that body image is very plastic; the body knew better. Thank goodness I listened each hungers for morphological plasticity. The Kevin Frank time I needed to adjust my plan. body is responsive to invitations to embody Rolf Movement Instructor non-human life forms and shapes. In fact, Looking back, everything significant that these ‘other’ life form shapes are implicit A: I laugh because I remember my father I’ve done influences my perspective as a – embedded within human morphology shaking his head and telling me, “You’re Rolfer. I remember what originally drew me and movement. smart but you’re all over the place.” I’d to psychology and counseling – I wanted to majored in psychology in college and work closely with others to help them find The lesson to me is that movement- spent my summers interning at psychiatric answers for themselves. I wanted to help brain (subcortical) potentials lie dormant facilities. The plan was to get my doctorate people create meaningful change. During until called upon – until called to come in clinical psychology, because I wanted graduate school, I learned I had a knack alive through introduction of imagery, to work one-on-one helping people help for explaining things and that I could make playful improvisation, embodiment of themselves. But when the time came to complex ideas relatable. Business school anatomical detail, and creative expression. apply for graduate school, something in my taught me to think about systems and how The integration of thinking and movement- gut just didn’t sit right. I wanted to work to target small changes that had global brain parts of our beings has, historically, with skill-building and personal growth, effects (this is key to the way I think about either been largely implicit within traditional and I was getting ready to spend the next our work). Rolfing SI combines all these culture or explicit when pursued by fringe seven years in an environment that relied loves: I get to help people find ways to enjoy individuals who chose to separate from heavily on pharmaceuticals. Something told their lives more; I get to teach clients and the larger societal context to study and me I was going in the wrong direction, so students everything from fascia science to live as shamans, yogis, mystics, monks, I stopped and decided to work for a while. somatic awareness; I get to work for myself; etc. The domain of persons who choose and I work to find ways for systems to run to separate has been considered religious Qualities that served me well in more efficiently. I just work with fascia or spiritual in nature. Rolfing SI has, in its counseling and academia – being able instead of assembly lines. own history, had trouble finding adequate to listen, communicate, problem-solve, and develop strategy – turned out to be and appropriate acknowledgment of these Bethany Ward ideally suited to business. I worked in esoteric or spiritual implications of the Rolfing Instructor work. We now have secular opportunities to several manufacturing environments and learn what was formerly less available, and eventually returned to graduate school, scientifically validated ways to talk about but not as previously planned. I received a those previously elusive realms. master’s degree in business administration and specialized in operations management We never fully capture wordless and management science. Basically, I consciousness with words, or represent designed systems to work efficiently. the totality of personal or intersubjective During graduate school, I worked part-time experience in standardized categories. teaching prospective graduate students Nonetheless, grounding the cortical/ how to raise their scores on entrance exams. subcortical integrative process in modern I was surprised how much I liked to teach. concepts from brain science and motor control helps allow our work to at least By the time I finished graduate school, I’d consulted in enough large organizations

www.rolf.org Structural Integration / March 2017 7 COLUMNS ® object kinesthetically influences the kind of Rolf Movement tactile information our skin receives from it. This multisensory activity permits haptic function – active kinesthetic engagement Faculty Perspectives with the world that is at the same time receptive to tactile information from it. The Haptic Sense, Part 1: Perception as an Active Process Godard finds a direct connection between touch and palpation of objects by the hands By Lucia Merlino, Certified Advanced Rolfer™, Rolf Movement Instructor and the ground by the feet, on the one The author wishes to express special thanks to Hubert Godard for bringing these concepts to the hand, and our gravity response and bodily Rolfing® Structural Integration (SI) community. posture on the other hand. It follows that attention to the haptic sense To perceive is to construct a mental • orientation (gravity) improves the quality of our connection with representation through the receipt of both the ground and our clients. According • visual sensory input; i.e., we are conscious not to Godard, our active touch (kinesthetic) is of the things around us, but only of our • tasting/smelling more effective when at the same time we subjective representations. For centuries, allow ourselves to be touched (tactile) – as • hearing philosophers and scientists studying opposed to only grasping with the muscles perception have affirmed this idea, which is • haptic of the eyes, hands, and feet. foundational to the modern concept that the Haptic haptikós Lucia Merlino, PhD, is a member of the Brazilian social world is a system of interconnected , from the Greek , means proper to touch touch-sensitive haptic Rolfing and Rolf Movement faculties, and has private worlds in which all values , or . The system practiced in São Paulo since 1995. Prior to are subjective. is a complex of subsystems arising from the simultaneous activity of tactile and becoming a Rolfer, Lucia was a professional While the traditional perceptual categories proprioceptive receptors. It is the only sense dancer. Her passions for both movement and are five – sight, hearing, touch, smell, and through which we explore the environment Rolfing SI led her to pursue master’s and taste – some have postulated a sixth sense, actively – and the only one that allows us doctoral degrees, for which her focuses of study and variously described it as perception of to perceive the three-dimensional geometry, and research were SI, perception, metaphors, movement, proprioception, or kinesthesia. surface qualities, weight, and texture of and memory. Though there is not yet a didactic objects we manipulate, and to sense the consensus, the sense of touch is now being effects of our manipulation as the effects Bibliography redefined to encompass the haptic. The manifest. Berthoz, A. 1997. Le Sens du mouvement. term haptic, according to Grunwald (2008), Paris: Odile Jacob. was introduced by German scientist Max The haptic sense is highly developed in Dessoire as early as 1892 to refer to the the palms of the hands and the soles of Gibson, J. 1966. The Senses Considered as science of the human touch. the feet. The skin’s tactile receptors, which Perceptual Systems. Boston: Houghton- register mechanical sensations of pressure, Mifflin. More recently, psychologist James J. Gibson vibration, and touch, allow perception has challenged the idea that the effects of primarily of surface textures. Proprioceptors Grunwald, M. 2008. Human Haptic objects on an observer’s nervous system are found in the joints, muscles, tendons, and Perception: Basics and Applications. Berlin: purely the result of stimuli acting upon a skin provide information on body parts’ Birkhäuser. passive mechanical body. To the contrary, relative positions and movements, as well according to Gibson, the perceptual system as the muscular force required either to is both active and intentional. Gibson was maintain positions or to make movements. driven to redefine the perceptual system They also help us to discern the forms and to include psychological processes such as qualities of objects. It is the haptic sense of memory, imagination, symbolic thought, tactility and proprioception taken together and social interaction. that allows us to pluck a raspberry without crushing it (Berthoz 1997). Gibson’s arguments in support of a new approach to perception give rise to a new While the haptic sense has invited psychology as well. He does not ask how exploration by researchers in many fields, the perceiver constructs the world from structural integrators are indebted to our sensory input and past experience, but colleague and teacher Hubert Godard, who rather what information in the environment opened new paths to our understanding is directly available to be received. Gibson of touch and relationship with our clients (1966) suggests that our perceptual systems through his inspiring and original concept are attuned to both invariant and variable of haptic function. When our hands palpate phenomena, and that we actively seek this an object or our feet touch the ground, information through interaction with the we use our kinesthetic and tactile senses environment. His perceptual systems are: simultaneously. And, how we relate to an

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that this is a good process for me, opening How Suite It Is this stuff up – as threatening and dangerous a feeling as it is, it has real value. I didn’t A Conversation with Steven Hancoff know what that was, but I wanted to try it. I was dead broke, living in my car, and was By Lynn Cohen and Steven Hancoff, Certified Advanced Rolfers™ in California. I decided I was going to leave the country and drove to the East Coast, The melody is the dance; the irresistible attraction to the tonal center is the gravity. where I’m originally from, and I landed Steven Hancoff (from From Tragedy to Transcendence) near [Washington] DC. There were exactly two Rolfers there, one of whom left the area Note from Lynn Cohen: I spoke with Steven Hancoff by phone. He was in Sandwich, New and left Rolfing work, the other of whom Hampshire, towards the beginning of a three-month tour of New England and the Canadian I ended up marrying! [laughs] But not Maritimes with his show From Tragedy to Transcendence, a multimedia presentation about before I got a lot of Rolfing SI from her. In the life of J.S. Bach and the improbable journey of Bach’s music from near oblivion to prominence. the course of my ten sessions, I remember, A guitar player since childhood, Steven had recorded six solo guitar albums before devoting the after the fourth session, I went home and past several years to his all-consuming Bach project, which involved the creation of his three-CD the next morning a song came out of me recording of the Bach Cello Suites for acoustic guitar, a four-volume iBook (Bach, Casals and the and I wrote it down. I’d written a song! I’d Six Suites for Cello Solo), fourteen YouTube videos, and the arrangement/transcription of all six always played guitar, and I wanted to be a solo cello suites for guitar (see resource list at the end of the article). More than an arrangement, folk singer, and now here I was, twenty-five Steven has taken Bach’s iconic cello suites and filled them in with harmonies that clarify for us or twenty-six, and after the fifth session, what Bach might have heard in his own mind. Steven continues to practice and to receive Rolfing® another song just popped out of me. Structural Integration (SI), as he has done for over thirty-five years. I did not feel the ten sessions from the point of view of structural physical work; for Lynn Cohen: Let’s start with a question me it was all about awakening creativity, that can ground us. When and how were emotional release, recovering hidden you drawn to guitar and to Rolfing SI? memories, and the like. In fact, when I Steven Hancoff: Well, I’ve played guitar took my first class in 1977, I was shocked: all my life – since I was thirteen years old. I had no idea Rolfers were thinking about But I first heard about Rolfing SI when I structure in terms of muscular attachments was about twenty-five years old, in the late and fascial and segmental relationships, or ‘70s. I had just gotten a masters degree in even about gravity. I thought it was entirely social work from an absurdly inadequate about discovering and releasing emotion. psychotherapy course. I knew it was idiotic, Deepening a person’s experience of self. but I wanted the license, so I stuck with That was my experience of it. I didn’t notice, it. I met somebody at a six-week Arica for instance, that I could move my arms training, and he was living a life I envied. more easily. What I noticed was that I was So, I asked him how he was able to do that, getting more creative, more energetic, and and he said, “I don’t know, but I get Rolfing Steven Hancoff had deeper access to what had been hidden sessions once a week.” I had no idea what Photograph by Jiayi Lu. and to playing music. I have come to think he was talking about. All I’d heard about those are all good qualities! Rolfing SI was Rolfing SI was that it hurt like the devil, a miracle to me, which got this side of that they ripped your muscles off of the myself liberated. I was entirely stunned that bone and then when they heal everything’s anyone was paying attention to things like better. Back then there may have been some muscular attachments. I just didn’t know truth to it! that’s what it was about. Now, I come from a fairly tragic and LC: How did that influence your training? traumatized life. And I had suppressed SH: I flunked! I took the course in Berkeley as much feeling about my traumas as I with Michael Salveson, and he told me I could. At the time before I got Rolfing had to spend a year working on bodies work I barely knew what a feeling was. before I could go on. In the meantime, In other words, I did not know that I was I met Ida Rolf. My Rolfer/partner was angry, or sad, or resentful, or envious, Sharon Wheeler. She was taking the very or any of the dark side. I could not have last advanced class that Dr. Rolf taught. told you I felt that way. In the six weeks of Sharon and I were living together, and it the Arica training, I started to learn how Lynn Cohen wasn’t a secret – Dr. Rolf knew all about it. to feel emotion. You could say I started She was almost blind and in a wheelchair to experience my actual self. It was very by that time. I had recorded my first album, powerful. And when this person told me having won a contest at the very first annual about Rolfing SI, my inner ‘angels’ told me Scott Joplin Ragtime festival. Eubie Blake,

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William Bolcom were the judges! I don’t plenty. I don’t separate out the experience are different things. They’re not. It’s all one remember how Dr. Rolf got her hands on of living life from the experience of doing thing. Aristotle said, “All men want to know my LP – I guess Sharon must have given it Rolfing SI or getting Rolfing work. I recently what is so.” I presume he meant women to her – but when Sharon introduced us, performed in a tiny little hamlet called too! All people want to know what is so. she got up out of her wheelchair and said, Bethlehem (in New Hampshire). We stayed It’s just inherent in being a human being. “Ah yes, young man, I hope you make a at a quaint bed and breakfast. Friday night In order to not live according to that, you million dollars with your music!” Those we did a show, and Saturday morning I have to be like I was, hunkered down in an are the first words I ever heard her say. gave a Rolfing session to the lady who unwillingness to know because of the fear At Dr. Rolf’s funeral, Joy Belluzzi, who ran the bed and breakfast; she’d broken of what you might find out . . . that you’re was her secretary at the time, told me that her arm and it had been immobilized for not good enough, that you’re evil, you’re Dr. Rolf used to listen to my first album over three months. She complained at the ashamed, and that you might have to do every day. I can’t tell you how that filled me lack of range of movement. Of course, her something about it that you’re afraid to do with pleasure, that really mattered to me! humerus was entirely jammed up into her . . . whatever it is. In order to live according axilla, and her ribs, clavicles, and scapulae to a determination to not know, you are To me, being a Rolfer and getting Rolfing were a mess. It took about twenty minutes living a very, very distorted life. And a body sessions are inseparable. I am as much for the humerus to drop out of there, is all. responds to that accordingly. In order to a ‘Rolfee’ as a Rolfer. Getting Rolfing Yet she is thinking, “It’s a miracle,” while receive Rolfing work successfully, you have sessions and being a Rolfer is my path to I’m thinking, “It’s so obvious!” So I don’t to be interested in letting go of what was a and through my art . . . not merely art, see a difference between the guy who’s ‘holding’, a contraction pattern, of which but through my life, to the experience and articulated my impression of the life of Bach you hitherto were unaware. articulation and expression of my intellect, and the guy who got the lady’s humerus to and my feelings, and my heart, my spirit, LC: When you say the Bach project is your drop out of the axilla. There’s no distinction and my will. The reason that is so is because life work, what I understand now is that between those two people. it works for me. I think it works for me it’s not just the excavation of information because Dr. Rolf got it right. Hers is not the LC: You’re talking about integration of the for information’s sake; it’s a journey you’re only work I studied intensively. I was also a different aspects of being, you as guitar invested in following because you don’t colleague on the faculty of John Pierrakos’ player/Rolfer/emoter of music, whether it’s know where it’s going. The Institute of Core Energetics . . . Bach or ragtime. It’s artificial to delineate SH: It’s definitely a journey. I’d say an he invented Bioenergetic Analysis [with those aspects of who you are for the archetypal journey. And it was also an Alexander Lowen], for goodness sake. But purposes of compartmentalization. accident. I had decided I wanted to in my estimation and experience, it was SH: I would say that’s true but go further: all transcribe the Suites for guitar. Cello is a Dr. Rolf who got it right. those distinctions in any field of endeavor one-line instrument. With guitar, you can Rolfing SI helped liberate the musician/ or thought are artificial. Knowledge is harmonize. A guitar is idiomatically suited artist in me by liberating the ‘emoter’ and knowledge. Curiosity is curiosity. We set to play chords and bass lines and such . . . to ‘thinker’ in me. So, I get Rolfing work all the up our culture so some people study math, harmonize. I knew the music was profound, time. During the course of doing this Bach some people study physics, some people and wanted to serve that profundity, so project, I made sure to get Rolfing work study history, etc. We pretend that those I felt I needed to learn more about the man. Nobody knew much about him. I discovered that by the time he was thirty- five (when he composed the Suites), Bach had experienced a tremendous amount of tragedy in his life: both parents died when he was nine, three siblings had died, and three of his own children died. Now he’s married to the love of his life, and three kids of theirs have died. But now he has a family. He and his wife have four surviving kids. And for the first time, he finally has a satisfying gig. He comes back from a brief time away, returns home to find his wife, the love of his life and the only person who has ever actually cared about him, has just been buried. It was at that point he starts writing his masterpieces, the Violin Sonatas and Partitas and Cello Suites. I told you before that I had a lot of tragedy in my life. I did not know when I started down this path of self-discovery that I was sad or angry or etc. How in the world, I wondered, Photograph by Jiayi Lu. did this man transcend his tragedies that

10 Structural Integration / March 2017 www.rolf.org CROSS-POLLINATION were far grander than mine? I’ve seen a are. They’re both true. The whole universe his conviction about the rightness of lot of the world: I’ve performed in fifty was created for you to explore. his musical choices can evanesce to countries. One thing I see is that everyone’s who-knows-where because of who- LC: That’s an idea that is so elusive when bitching and moaning and competing to see knows-why. Life choices are tricky we’re going through the minutiae of our who can be the bigger victim. That’s what and uncertain. day, trying to please people, dealing with kept me moving on this project. I wanted our psychological baggage, our identities . . . So, maybe that speaks to your question. to find out how did Bach not hate God? Life? Not rail against the fates? Everything SH: . . . And our feelings of both arrogance I feel it best to not screw with Bach’s in his music is exaltation and upliftedness. and being not good enough, and being intentions. When I put in a bass note or Every note is always the right note. Giants victims ourselves. I’m sixty-eight now, and bass line, or play parallel thirds, or decide like Bach – they worked at it, had to figure I don’t feel the tugs of the neurotic patterns the melody note is really the flatted ninth it out step by step like everyone else; they and limitations that I had when I started of the dominant, I’m announcing that had wives and bills and bratty kids and self- down this path. That’s for sure. But there I think Bach’s intention was this chord interested bosses, they had regular lives. are plenty ways to go, and I get an awful and not a different chord. I’m trying to Johann Sebastian had to turn himself into lot of help as a client of Rolfing SI, because articulate a path that Bach took, that I also the Bach that we think of as Bach. This is something that I didn’t know I was holding believe is an archetypal path that we all what drove my project. I didn’t intend any suddenly releases. I don’t think Rolfing SI take, or can take. It’s a path that starts with of this. In order to transcribe for guitar, I stresses this so much, but I find that when innocence, optimism, and desire. There’s had to learn about the guy, and the more I I can make conscious that which I let go of, an innocence, a not-knowing about what learned, the more I asked, “How did he do that helps me a lot more than just feeling life is, to childhood, to early life. I call it it?” That’s what the iBook ended up being my leg working better. disappointment waiting to happen! What about. Let me also brag that I also turned drives a human towards introspection is LC: That’s sort of the secret to it, isn’t it? it into a great art book as well. It turned pain, tragedy, sorrow, loss. We each have a out to encompass the largest collection of SH: Is it a secret? It’s not a secret to me! I minotaur – the hidden negativity – smack Bach-inspired visual art ever amassed in guess you’re probably right. What I tell my dab in the middle of the labyrinth of our the world . . . and how that happened is clients when I give Rolfing sessions is, “Stay psyches. We are each a Theseus who must yet another story! with, pay attention to, the sensation.” I find at least identify, if not actually slay, that that when I do that as I get Rolfing work, monster. The act of profound introspection I think of Bach as a kind of bodhisattva. He that’s when the insight comes to me. will eventually give rise to extrospection. showed us how to endure our destiny and You begin looking outward from a point of embrace our own greatness. This might LC: How do you take that principle view of more secure groundedness in who serve Rolfers really well. We’re all trying into your exploration of how you filled you are, in reality. To answer your musical to do this amazing thing for ourselves and in the harmonies for the Suites? The question, the ground can be very slippery. the people we work with. It boils down harmonies are implied in the one-line I might think I know that this is Bach’s to this: you’re nothing – you’re one cell melodies of the Suites. Your explicit intention, and then get to it the next day and in the organism of all that is. That’s on the renderings of the harmonies were, to my think, “What the hell was I thinking? That one hand. On the other hand, you are the ears, delightful, arresting, surprising, even doesn’t work!” But at some point, I felt I magnitude of your spirit; the universe was shocking sometimes. You had so many had to say, because it’s recorded and written created just so that you can experience choices. I wonder, how fixed are these down and I’m not going to keep revisiting it it. It was created for you. It’s incumbent transcriptions? Because there are so many for the rest of my life, “This my statement.” on you to be exploring and expressing choices, so many different chord voicings I allow myself to express some of my own that magnitude. John Pierrakos used to you might have used on any given beat – the intention. Bach is the only composer, in say that a person’s greatest sin was in not way, after someone receives Rolfing SI and my experience, whose every single note embracing and expressing his greatness. stands, his or her options for movement is the right note, a meaningful note. By a Dr. Rolf figured out and intelligibly have increased. How do you relate that meaningful note, I mean he’s never trying to articulated something that took humanity freedom of having received Rolfing SI to evade where the thing itself goes, the thing 200,000 years of human history to figure the harmonic choices you made in trying to that’s inherent in the melody he’s written. out, and it’s been handed to us on a platter fulfill Bach’s intentions? as a silver gift. It’s not just that we give it I think that, in dealing with clients and SH: Yes, the harmonies are implied in to our clients; we have to be the ones to with ourselves, the emotional distortion Bach’s melodies. Bach’s written a melody. embody it. that we’re reaching for is something that And for those who don’t understand started being a distortion when the person LC: You’ve chosen, or have been chosen this language, we’re talking about chord distorted it, when the person said, “No, perhaps, to explore and honor the work structure. Well, let me tell you that one of I’m not facing that; no, I’m not going of these two giant people who have the things I say in the show (From Tragedy there; no, I’m not feeling that; no, that’s transformed the world in their different to Transcendence): not true” (when in fact it was true), etc. ways. We, as interpreters or executors of . . . the musician is compelled to Maybe there’s a need in civilized people their work, have a disadvantage because stand with his feet solidly planted, to appear to themselves to be ‘good’. And we’re not them. steadfast and confident, committed to these matters tend to be things that have SH: Bach showed us how to recognize how his tonal and harmonic choices, even long been driven into the subconscious . . . infinite you are and how insignificant you though experience informs him that which of course is why they are hard to

www.rolf.org Structural Integration / March 2017 11 CROSS-POLLINATION get hold of. Whatever the motivation, have no doubt that a person could write an you play in relationship to the sound hole the beginning of the distortion is always entire thesis about it. But let’s let this suffice effects everything. Is it like that on the cello? conscious, even if it’s for a fleeting instant. for what is, after all, a friendly telephone [Editor’s note: Lynn Cohen is a cellist, see That means we (as Rolfers) are getting our conversation between two colleagues. next article.] hands on a statement that says “No!” We’re In the end, I have concluded that the LC: Yes. The bow [in the right hand] is like getting our hands in the person’s negativity, cello music is Sebastian Bach’s baritone the breath, and the left hand acts as the teeth in other words. We are explorers, hopefully, voice undefendedly revealing himself as and the tongue. The articulateness of the of our own negativity, and I think those profoundly and deeply as he could, and left hand is very important, but it’s the bow of us who last doing Rolfing SI and turn as my presentation title forthrightly says, that draws the voice out of the instrument. it into a life path are people who, in spite moving From Tragedy to Transcendence. And of being afraid of it or resistant to it, keep SH: That’s the same on the guitar. The right there’s plenty more to say about the music, doing it anyway. Or, they’re not afraid of hand of the guitar is so much harder than not to mention the man himself; but let’s it. So I’m hoping I live a long life and keep the left hand! If you play near the bridge it’s let this suffice. getting Rolfing sessions every week. There more metallic. If you play over the sound doesn’t seem to be an end to what internal I’ll probably get in trouble for saying this, hole, it’s sweeter. And those strings are close stuff there is to explore. but I think that why Rolfing SI hasn’t grown to one another. So, striking the right string the way it ought to have, and why we are at the right time is a difficult mission. You The more a person forthrightly and so split, is because, as an organization, we know Bach once said, “It’s easy to play a successfully explores, the more true things are made of people who didn’t do that musical instrument. There’s nothing to it: he discovers. And this process must give forthright exploring work I spoke of before. all you have to do is touch the right key at rise to disillusionment . . . acknowledging What you’re really doing when you get the the right time, and the instrument will play your inner mistakes and misapprehensions, hamstrings opened up, or mobilize the ribs, itself.” Maybe it was easy for him, but for and stopping believing them and acting etc., what you’re really doing is releasing a the rest of us . . . as though they’re true. Disillusionment big ‘no’. And as an organization, we didn’t is a necessary step, because it dissolves LC: Indeed! As we end, I want to give you do that on ourselves. illusion, and the moment of disillusionment the opportunity to speak to anything that I gives rise to cathartic release, and it is LC: Now, of course, I want to know about haven’t asked you. that release that eventually allows for the the way, technically speaking, playing SH: Okay, so the name of my performance capacity of actual wonder to rise, without guitar and Rolfing SI inform each other is “From Tragedy to Transcendence.” I which transcendence is impossible. That’s for you. was recently asked for an explanation. the path. SH: They don’t. I mean, they might, but This is what I came up with, and this As for the connection between Bach’s my first impulse is to say they don’t. My is a description that could apply to the Cello Suites and the Rolfing process, you’d biggest albatross as a Rolfer is that I’m work we do as Rolfers too: “What began have to know about the structure of the always concerned that I’m going to hurt as an exploration of the life of J.S. Bach Suites, like we seek to know about the my hands on someone’s body. Jim Asher has become an exploration of life itself.” structure of the body, or of a person. There once told me my joints are hypermobile. Because, in a way, if Rolfing SI and receiving are six suites, and within each suite there And when I figured out what he meant, I Rolfing sessions isn’t a mutual exploration are six movements. It shouldn’t surprise realized that’s not a great thing for either of life itself, then what the hell is it? That’s you that the number six held significant a Rolfer or a guitarist. You want some sort what I’m doing when I’m on stage and metaphysical meaning for Bach. But that’s of solidity. Injuring myself, or stiffening when I’m giving a Rolfing session and when another story. Anyway, each individual my hands, have always been my greatest I’m receiving Rolfing work. piece of music has its specific structural ambivalences as a Rolfer. Reviewers have Let’s end with a quote from another of purpose. It is entirely coherent standing written about my “incredible dexterity,” the grand geniuses, Felix Mendelssohn. I alone as a piece of music, but it also is a meaning I can play fast and move up and think it fits for anybody for whom Rolfing piece of the structure and meaning of the down the fingerboard. Well, I don’t know SI is a life path. In a letter to his mother, he suite; and then each suite has its specific about that, but that presumed dexterity wrote: “. . . I endeavor to make progress structural purpose within the structure and depends on not being injured or stiff. without any ulterior views beyond my own meaning of the whole, if you can expand LC: What about the element of touch? improvement.” I’d say that’s an excellent your vision to experience the Cello Suites point of view both for an individual, being as one very intimate piece of music. SH: Rosemary Feitis once said to me that a musician, and for a movement whose in order to be a Rolfer you have to really I’d suggest that we can say the same holds purpose is the work of Ida Rolf. like the feel of human tissue. I think that’s true for each session of Rolfing SI, and for probably true. There’s nothing to like about Steven Hancoff “is an interpretive master who each group of sessions of Rolfing SI, not to the feel of a steel string pressing into your plays with fluidity, grace and passion” (Jazz mention the whole of the genius series that fingertips! However, whatis comparable is Review Magazine). Steven is a Certified is Dr. Rolf’s gift to humanity. Liberating the the specificity of touch. Playing a melodic Advanced Rolfer. For fifteen years he served as functions that are addressed in each session line or chords, you have to play the note an Artistic Ambassador representing the United has specific functional, structural purpose right. And the right hand – people don’t States, concertizing in about fifty countries to that session. But the work of each session realize that the right hand is far more throughout the world. He is a grateful graduate also has deeper purpose in relation to the difficult than the left, fingering hand. Where of St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland, entire process. Lynn, as we discuss this, I

12 Structural Integration / March 2017 www.rolf.org CROSS-POLLINATION esteemed for its singular “One Hundred Great Books of the Western World” program, and Practically Integrated a proud member of the Grand Canyon River Guides Association. Where Parallel Practices Meet

Lynn Cohen is a Certified Advanced Rolfer, By Lynn Cohen, Certified Advanced Rolfer™ cellist, writer, and dog-worshipper who practices all her passions in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Mid-life, I found myself in need of a vocation. Resources I had a bachelor’s and a couple of master’s degrees boxed up somewhere (along with “The Bach Project” consists of these two unpublished novels and a stack of short elements. stories), and my dog-walking business had run • The three-CD set The Six Suites for Cello its course. I needed inspiration and an income. Solo by J. Sebastian Bach for Acoustic Guitar Surprisingly, I was drawn to massage. I loved by Steven Hancoff is available at CDBaby, touching people (the surprising part) and I loved Amazon, Apple iTunes, and wherever anatomy. I was told I had “good hands.” One of CDs are for sale. my instructors came from a structural bodywork • The four-volume iBook (not ‘e-book’) perspective. He taught us about fascia, how to Bach, Casals and the Six Suites for Cello work positionally and in layers. By feeling a shift Solo (available for Apple computers, in my left hip after receiving ribcage work, I got iPads, and iPhones, from Apple’s iTunes; my first lesson in ‘where you think it is, it ain’t’. Lynn Cohen go to http://tinyurl.com/stevenhancoff- Certified and employable, I worked in a spa itunes). The volumes i n c l u d e for two years. It was grueling. I was vaguely about 1,000 historical images and embarrassed to represent an industry that used insults with the lower brass, who often sat the largest collation of Bach-inspired words like ‘pamper’, and ‘luxuriate’ on ads idle. I was the only female. The guys – ‘bass contemporary art ever collected. depicting towel-turbaned women, eyes serenely jocks’ – showed off the hardest licks from one of the concertos, or race-dueled each • A series of fourteen videos at Steven closed, whose creamy bare shoulders were being other through famous symphonic excerpts. Hancoff’s YouTube channel (http:// kneaded by a pair of impeccably manicured On good days, I was one of the guys. Most tinyurl.com/stevenhancoff-youtube). hands. I resented people snoring on my table. The work took a toll on my body. I sought relief days, I felt like someone’s kid sister at a • The written transcriptions for guitarists from colleagues and, though some were skilled, frat party. – or for people who like to read along I learned that a bad massage was worse than The cellists – now they had grace. They while listening (available for free at none at all. sat comfortably, eyes in line with the StevenHancoff.com; go to the Contact conductor’s right arm, instruments like page and click to download). I began my professional life at age eighteen as an orchestral bass player. The bass is natural extensions of their bodies. From my • Two full-length multimedia theatre a large, clumsy instrument. More than place behind, I watched them. Their fingers pieces: From Tragedy to Transcendence and twice as wide and taller by a foot than my did not so much move as kiss the strings. From Obscurity to Pre-Eminence (The 5’6” frame, it required a station wagon for They made their cellos sing and soar and sob, Almost Unknown Saga of How the transport. In the old days, the airlines sold plead and grieve, tiptoe and die. Secretly, Extraordinary Interactions between the me a row of seats when I traveled with it, I grew intensely envious. I wanted to be Bach and Mendelssohn Families Saved the and I fielded unhelpful, smarmy comments them, to play the juicy passages of Brahms, Music of J.S. Bach for All of Us). According (“Bet you wish you played the flute!”). Tchaikovsky, Debussy, and Dvorak. I wanted to Steven, “These are not classical music to take possession of that heart-based tenor concerts. The audience does not need As the foundation of the string section, realm that is a cellist’s domain. ‘to endure culture’ – as Mark Twain basses have the lowest, the longest, and, for It was like developing a shattering crush once famously put it. These are the pre- that matter, the fewest notes. Bass repertoire on someone a month after your wedding. eminent, grand and the most profoundly is small, and not especially inspired. serendipitous legends of Western culture We borrowed from cello repertoire. But, I had my first Rolfing® Structural Integration itself and include storytelling, virtuosic unless one is a significant talent (there (SI) experience a year or so into my spa tenure. guitar playing, music, video, historical are a few), playing Bach and Schubert on On the table, I felt my lungs. I met my ribs. I images, and contemporary art. A third the bass involves making certain aesthetic greeted various segments of my spine. I felt I presentation is in the works: Johann allowances. It’s more a physical feat than was being excavated, revealed to myself. After Sebastian Bach and The Six Suites for an enlightening musical experience – like a that session, walking to my car, I felt propelled Cello Solo, A Fanciful and Extravagant gorilla threading a needle, or an eighteen- forward, my legs free in an unfamiliar way. Allegory. (If you wish to be informed wheeler making a Y-turn. Massage, with its endlessly flowing strokes, of Steven’s performance schedule or Basses growled, grunted, and guffawed. suddenly seemed too small. I wanted to know book one of these performances, please During rehearsals, from our place in the how to make people feel like this: changed. Giddy contact Steven through his website back of the orchestra, we had surreptitious and inspired. www.stevenhancoff.com.) bow sword fights and traded good-natured

www.rolf.org Structural Integration / March 2017 13 CROSS-POLLINATION

What I wanted was to be a Rolfer. with each other, too exquisitely complex I have six days to prepare #20 for my lesson. to articulate. It will involve hours of agonizing practice At age twenty-three, I left music for another before muscle memory and instinct kick in, career altogether. Thirty-two years and a “Follow the recipe and you will get a cake,” and I begin to feel comfortable. I will have few professional incarnations later, I had a my Guild teacher said. “You can worry about frustration so intense I will want to smash thriving Rolfing practice in Los Angeles. A the science of cake baking later.” He did not my bow in half. Yet there’s only one way musician friend gave me his cello to keep entertain questions about ‘why’; only ‘what’, forward. I take it measure by measure, note while he traveled. It sat in the corner of my ‘how’, and ‘when’. He assured us that knowing by note, stopping to count the tiny lines dining room. Every time I walked past it, the goals and the territory for each session would above the staff to figure out what they are. something in me fluttered. Finally, I took it reveal, over time, the ‘why’. Only much later out of its case. It was thrilling, a greeting would I appreciate this wisdom. It’s painful, to my hands and to my ears that promised great intimacy. But I couldn’t and to my ego. Yet I persist. I’m driven to As a new practitioner, I had no idea what I play at all. My hands were uncoordinated, get better. It’s who I am. was doing. I couldn’t ‘see’ what others saw. I my fingertips hurt pressing the strings, the made up plausible-sounding answers to clients’ Three years post-Guild, still chasing after a bow felt like a club. I couldn’t make a sweet questions. I felt like an imposter. confidence and a knowledge base that seemed sound. If I was going to do this, I decided, elusive and fragile, I enrolled in the Rolf I needed to do it right. I found a teacher. I took every continuing education class I could. Institute® of Structural Integration (RISI) basic Surely, I thought, having more information While having played the bass helped to certification program. If I was going to do this, would make me a better practitioner faster. I inform certain aspects of cello playing – I decided, I had to do it right. was driven. I had to know more now. The classes bow grip, reading music, vibrato – my I took were all taught by Certified Advanced Students from both schools are understandably ‘bass habits’ worked against me as a Rolfers, respected in our community, who curious about the other. As I experienced it, the cellist. The ‘right practices’ of cello playing had developed their own teachable systems to main difference (aside from the teacher, which diverge from the ‘right practices’ of the address structural problems (visceral, cranial, is everything) was the inclusion of the Rolfing bass. Don’t shift when you can extend. Use biomechanical, osteo-SI, spino-mechanical, etc). ‘Principles of Intervention’. Taking Basic again more wrist than elbow for string crossings at RISI did not much change how I worked; it . . . It was maddening: I felt like a trans- The contradictions and sophistication of these both filled and exposed holes in my knowledge. It instrumentalist, born a cellist with bass approaches confounded me. I left those classes showed me that I had indeed learned some things body parts. I wanted to be a real cellist. frantic and frustrated, ashamed that I didn’t during my three years of practice and class I wanted my fingers to kiss the strings. I understand, convinced that I had no skills, no cramming. Most significantly, the Principles wanted to sing, soar, and sob. gifts for touch. Still, I kept cramming it in. I provided insights into some of the ‘why’s’ I’d believed that if I took just one more class, I’d Learning an instrument involves much been asking. finally get it. The secrets of the elders would repetition of rote exercises. It may be tedious, be revealed to me. I would know how to do . . . Tuesday, day three of Popper #20. A perfected but the fundamentals – the principles, the everything. I would finally feel legitimate. version of it insinuates itself into my brain. setup – are critical. By practicing scales and It’s there constantly, lodged like a splinter, simple tunes, I was learning to discriminate Sunday afternoon, January 2016. On my playing over and over. I can’t not hear it. between beautiful and not-so-beautiful music stand is Étude #20 by David Popper, I hear it when I wake up. It’s there when sounds; my shoulder, elbow, and hand a Czech cellist and composer who wrote, I swim. It’s there when I chop onions and began to move in coordinated arcs; I found among other things, a book of études drive to the store, and it’s there while I’m a way to change bows noiselessly; by using entitled, “High School of Violoncello walking my dog. Then life gets busy, and different pressure and angles of bow, I Playing.” All serious cellists are acquainted a day passes without practicing. The étude created different sounds. Having mastered with these études – musical exercises loops relentlessly in my head. A day later, the bass, I nevertheless felt more at home presenting specific technical challenges. when I go to play, it’s better than it was two with the cello – my tuberosities weighted By “High School,” Popper did not mean days before. It feels easier. Passages I couldn’t evenly in the chair, the long endpin rooted ‘pre-conservatory’. “High” meant advanced. manage have begun to flow. It’s resembling a and centered along my Fourth-Hour line, I don’t feel advanced. Laid out across two piece of music. Without having touched the the intimacy of the body-wood connection, pages are notes forming arcs, spikes, blocks, cello, I realized, I was practicing. the vibrations humming against my skin, tied octave scales, and double stops. The penetrating through my layers to my bones. Of all the ‘rules’ I learned as a massage therapist, clefs change from bass to tenor to treble and the most ingrained and resistant to adaptation I studied structural integration in fits and starts, back. It looks ridiculously impossible, but I as a Rolfer is: “never take your hands off a beginning with a brief foray into Hellerwork® won’t know for sure until I get my hands client.” It’s a lesson I have to keep learning and SI, followed by enrollment at the Guild for on the cello. re-learning; allowing for time between contacts Structural Integration. Learning the SI ‘recipe’ Every new Popper begins like this, thrusting during a Rolfing session does for the client involved repetition and memorization (the map, me back to a state of mild despair and what missing a day of practice does for my cello the territory, and the goals). But I was also conscious incompetence. My teacher learning process. It’s doing nothing. And it’s learning how to touch in a new way, through assigned me #20 because he believes I critical to integration. a set of ‘right practices’ that were different can do it. I’m unconvinced. My skills, from those of massage. I was learning to feel I know when I’m playing in tune by such as they are, seem to me fleeting the response, to have a conversation that exists knowing when I’m not. There is the wobbly and inapplicable. beneath language – systems communicating sound of overtones clashing, a jagged

14 Structural Integration / March 2017 www.rolf.org CROSS-POLLINATION sensation transmitted through my maxillae. bowings, repeat and repeat before my brain in with a never-ending list of problems for me to Playing in tune aligns vibrations, like iron understands what my hands need to do. ‘fix’, or those who have no ability to sense change filings obeying the power of a magnet. in their bodies, or who are attached to their pain I’ve always envied those Rolfers with ‘great There is a deep sense of ‘rightness’ in the for reasons I’m not in a position to address. I eyes’ – the ones who look, see, and know where communion between me – flesh, bone, must engage with all of them, work with them, the work needs to happen. While my ‘seeing’ protoplasm – and this piece of wood; the including their resistances and beliefs, in order skills have improved over time, I still need to I vibrations that I make / it makes when to bring out all that’s available in them. get my hands on the client before I will know I touch it / it touches me. The resonance where to spend my time. To play a ‘Double Forte’ (fortissimo = very affects me at a cellular level, awakening the loud), I use finesse. Squeezing or pressing optimistic part of me. It’s from that aligned Cellos are like clients; every one is as unique too hard will produce an ugly, crunching place that I can best express who I am. as the number of them in existence. The rare sound. With bow speed and pressure, I ones play themselves. The affordable ones I know when I am touching the right place by need to find the sweet spot on my cello. all present challenges (the C string is slow touching the wrong place – the place where to respond; the pleasing, round sound you To go deep into tissue that is locked up, I must nothing happens. When I’m where I need to hear under your ear can utterly disperse back off. If I push too hard, too quickly, it will be, I can feel responsiveness in antagonistic a few feet away; the upper register feels hurt the client. I need to adjust my pressure and muscles – twitches, pulses, vibration. There tight, etc). The overall quality can be dark, speed, perhaps broaden my touch, to enter into is movement. The person’s being responds. or bright, or warm, or penetrating. When I an acceptable contact with that person’s system. What my hands know can’t be replicated or bought my own cello, I committed myself prescribed. It is beneath thinking or language. To play ‘pianissimo’ (very softly) without to a relationship. I must find ways to deal I don’t even know what my hands seem to losing substance in the sound, I lighten the with its limitations in order to exploit its know. It’s some combination of analysis and pressure but speed up my bow to engage finest qualities. intuition, informing each other, allowing me the strings, making sure my left fingers to be who I am. Clients are like études; some are relatively are pressing precisely. The notes ring, soft straightforward, while others present major and clear. I envy musicians who can sight-read challenges. The dream clients: “I can breathe well: they look at an unfamiliar piece How to enter into a client’s system? Pianissimo. better, I feel so light!” (after the First Hour); “I and whip through it. If the music is feel so grounded!” (after the Second Hour); “I Lynn Cohen is a Certified Advanced Rolfer, easy, I can do that. But with any intricate feel so much more three-dimensional!” (after the cellist, writer, and dog-worshipper who practices rhythmic or notational patterns, I have to Third Hour); etc. . . . There are clients who come all her passions in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. experiment with different fingerings and

Photograph by Richard Dorbin.

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teachings of A.H. Almaas (the founder Body as ’Portal’ of the Diamond Approach) interesting. He gave me the name of one of Almaas’ An Exploration of Rolfing® SI and the Diamond Approach® books, Essence, and the contact information for a teacher who was going to be leading By Anne Hoff and Gregory Knight, Certified Advanced Rolfers™ and Diamond a local retreat. I really enjoyed the book. ® Approach Teachers It had a kind of intellectual curiosity that I saw lacking in other spiritual books I Anne Hoff: Greg, we are both Rolfers, had read, and it resonated with some and we are both students and teachers of vague experiences I had had. I went to the Diamond Approach, a modern spiritual the retreat and loved the work. I found path. I believe we have similar periods of the teachings and the exercises we did time in each of these. Let’s compare notes to be psychologically rich, heartfelt, and on what got each of us into each of these personally impactful. Like you, I felt things and see if there are parallels in the work could take me to and beyond our trajectories, and flesh out a bit about my edges. these endeavors. What really touched me were the inquiry I became a Rolfer in the mid-1990s. I had first practices we did. On that first retreat, the read about Rolfing® Structural Integration teaching was on an aspect of our inner (SI) in John Lilly’s autobiographical book nature we call Personal Will. This is a sense The Center of the Cyclone when I was a of inner support that does not come out of teenager. I was a little too young to be part efforting, judgment, or ego ideals but rather of the 1960s human potential movement, Gregory Knight and Anne Hoff simply arises naturally. It is both a sense but I was very impacted by how that wave of steadfastness and of effortlessness. So moved through the culture. When I got a would like doing the work. I was interested we spent time doing explorations into our Rolfing series, what drew me was not pain in being a Rolfer because I wanted to experiences of efforting, into ways we resist or posture but embodiment. I knew that help people resolve chronic pain and find certain experiences, and into the experience my embodiment lagged my development more ease and openness in their bodies. of not having inner support. I loved how in other ways, emotional and ‘spiritual’ And Rolfing SI also felt like a practice the inquiries had a sincerity and openness for lack of a better word. I was wanting that I needed to be in, that I would learn to them. They kept me directly engaged in to synchronize my clocks, so to speak, to something about my own inner nature that my own personal experience, not trying land my development into my body. What would come out of doing this particular to make something happen but rather about you? How did you come to Rolfing kind of work. exploring what is actually hidden within SI, and was it before or after finding the AH: Now let’s talk about the Diamond my direct experience. Diamond Approach? Approach (aka ‘the Work’). For myself, I’d I kept going on retreats, began working Gregory Knight: It sounds like our always been a ‘seeker’ and had explored one on one with a teacher, and over time trajectories have been very similar. I got various teachings and meditation traditions, got deeper into the teachings. About eight certified as a Rolfer and Rolf Movement® but I’d never found a path or a teacher to years ago, I began the teacher training (the Practitioner in 1994. I first heard of Rolfing whole-heartedly commit to. Then in 1995, teacher training is seven years long with SI during college. I went to the University in the midst of big life changes and shortly ongoing continuing training after the ‘core’ of Chicago and studied philosophy and after finishing Unit I of Rolfing training, I teaching) and am now an ordained teacher. psychology, and was also exploring things heard about the Diamond Approach. By my like t’ai chi, yoga, and meditation. At second retreat, I knew I had found my path. AH: Yes, interestingly you and I met in the some point in college I came across an The felt sense and image of that realization Diamond Approach teacher training, rather article by Dr. Rolf and it occurred to me, was “I’ve gotten on a train, and I’m both than through Rolfing SI, maybe because “Here’s a person who’s got something excited and terrified, because that train is we live on opposite coasts. We became interesting going on: interested in the body, going to take me places I want to go, and Rolfers about the same time, and we became its form and function, and at the same time also places I could never go on my own.” It Diamond Approach teachers about the interested in something more, in how our was a deep and felt recognition of the Work same time. How would you describe the experience in our bodies says something as a living teaching that would move me to Diamond Approach? about being human.” And the fact that Dr. and beyond my edges. That has consistently GK: The Diamond Approach is a Rolf was a trained scientist, that she had a proven true. What’s your story with finding psychologically informed spiritual path: certain kind of intellectual rigor, was also the Work? modern psychological knowledge is integral very appealing. GK: I had been doing Rolfing SI for two to the teaching, while the teaching leads Over the course of a few years, as other years when I learned about the Diamond us to inner experience that psychological interests faded, Rolfing SI kept coming to Approach. I was getting mentoring knowledge doesn’t conceptualize. The the surface. I had my first Rolfing sessions from Paul Gordon, a longtime Rolfer in primary practice is inquiry, a practice of in part to help with chronic pain from old Boston. From some of my conversations exploring our immediate experience in injuries and holdings, and in part to see if I with Paul, he thought I might find the such a way that we naturally discover

16 Structural Integration / March 2017 www.rolf.org CROSS-POLLINATION what’s more true within ourselves. Inquiry processes (the neonate developing into a includes precise questioning, psychological child who gradually develops a sense of discernment, breath work, and body- self and other and world) and also through sensing practices. And primarily it is an trauma and deficiencies in the environment. open-ended exploration, finding out what The result is a person (soul) convinced that we are, fueled by a love for the truth. she is a bounded ‘entity’, a self separate from nature, separate from spiritual reality. The Diamond Approach is unique in part And who firmly believes she is defined because of its distinctive understanding as a particular sort of person, an identity. of how our essential nature manifests As we work with these structures in the in various forms – like joy, compassion, Diamond Approach, both in retreats and personalness, peace, courage, emptiness, in private sessions with a teacher, we can boundlessness, etc. – and how each relates to begin to dissolve the sense of entity, which specific, universal psychological fixations. leads to nondual spiritual experience, and The Diamond Approach has grown quite dissolve the sense of identity based on Figure 1: The Ridhwan ’Hu’ symbol organically over the past forty years. Like personal history, which leads to experiences represents the inner, absolute ground of essential states and also to what would Rolfing SI, the Diamond Approach emerged that we, as human beings, express in the in this culture, during our modern time. world. “That innermost nature doesn’t see classically be called ‘self-realization’. A.H. Almaas is the primary person who itself as innermost nature. It is the ‘All’ and GK: Yes, for me there was a natural has given voice to the Diamond Approach, the ‘Everything’. It is the fact that is always progression from exploring my experience and there are many books now about there in us, that is the seed in us, moving of Rolfing SI to exploring my experience the teaching. us toward itself” (Almaas 1987, 30). through the Diamond Approach. That AH: That’s a great description. I’d add a sense of inner space and support you get couple of things. The Diamond Approach work. It’s very embodied and palpable in Rolfing is a great door to exploring inner is not transpersonal psychology, and it’s not while also being spiritual in nature. I’d like nature. And then my work in the Diamond psychology mixed with spirituality. Rather, to share an experience that illustrates how I Approach has had impacts on my Rolfing it’s a mystical path of self-realization, feel there is a cross-pollination between our practice. For example, about five years into and within the teaching there arose an work as Rolfers and our work as Diamond my Rolfing practice, and three years into the understanding of how psychological Approach teachers. When I was in Unit Diamond Approach, I realized how unclear issues directly relate to spiritual issues. II, Pedro Prado led us in an exercise of I was about what I was touching. I had my For example, it’s so common for people gradually finding our bodies on the ‘Line’. vague notions of what I was palpating, but today to feel a sense of emptiness, or It was deep sensing, slow and meditative. it began to dawn on me that my sensing meaninglessness, a feeling they are As my body came to the Line, I felt this was filtered through so many ideas about not authentic or not living a real life. incredible updraft of energy, so strong what I ‘should’ be feeling, transference of The Diamond Approach understands that it almost made me nauseous. So of my own history, and countertransference that from a psychological perspective, course I had to get off my Line! What I’ve with the client. but also understands it primarily as a understood since then is that the Line is a In spite of doing many trainings, knowing spiritual concern – that it expresses how catalyst for beginning to sense the body as anatomy, and having sophisticated models our conventional ‘growing up’ process is energy or space – a portal for the experience for understanding the body, we often don’t incomplete until there is an awakening to and expression of being rather than merely learn tools to progressively clarify our essence that completes the maturation of a physical structure. In Rolfing sessions touch, so our work ends up being filtered the human being. This is why the Diamond we are removing some of the structural through our ideas of what is happening Approach is a ‘work school’ – we don’t just impediments to this opening to the body rather than our direct experience. I wanted receive teachings or meditate, we actively as a portal to the experience of true nature. my touch to be more precise, to know truly work our inner material, as in the breath This is why I’ve always been interested what was happening, and the Diamond work and inquiry process, to allow the in Rolfer Will Johnson’s writings, he has Approach gave me the tools to really clarify opening to essence and guidance. a similar take: that the tension patterns in the body are egoic patterns, and that as what was occluding my touch. Since that GK: Yes, the Diamond Approach the tension patterns release and the body time, when I’ve mentored other Rolfers emphasizes exploring the mystery of our is on its Line, we can begin to experience and bodyworkers or taught classes, I’ve inner nature while living fully in the world. the body as a shimmering field, part of the used these lessons from my own experience Awareness of and curiosity about our ground of being. along with some of the teachings of the direct, personal experience is the doorway Diamond Approach to help people really to our deepest inner nature. This includes So in Rolfing SI we are working with get to the point of what is actually obscuring attention to our bodily experience, making physical structure that potentially opens their ability to sense clearly. use of different kinds of sensing practices the door to more than physical reality. I think it’s also important to say that the and breath work to awaken our awareness Then in the Diamond Approach we are also Diamond Approach emphasizes that inner and presence. working with structure, but particularly how consciousness is structured. This exploration is an adventure of continuous AH: I think that inclusion of the body is happens through normal developmental discovery. As you explore and realize more emblematic of the Diamond Approach about your inner nature, you find all aspects

www.rolf.org Structural Integration / March 2017 17 CROSS-POLLINATION of your life becoming more fascinating, full presence in oneself and a student in a compassion and kindness is – not trying to of wonder and curiosity. This creates a rich session. And presence is not emotional fix pain, but a loving presence that brings platform for learning while working with energy, chakra energy, chi, or fluid sensitivity so the pain can be understood Rolfing clients. circulation. It is the ontological being-ness and metabolized – my touch changed. of a person that is dynamic and expresses When a body is touched with kindness – AH: As Diamond Approach teachers, we itself in various forms. Learning to be aware and likewise with clarity, inner stillness, or both work with ‘students’ doing spiritual of true presence, I can now see when that gentle curiosity – the body armor that holds inquiry sessions – part of the work that over is arising in a Rolfing client, appreciate the inner critic softens. It’s a change that is time connects individuals to their own inner its importance, and can bring the client’s happening through the physical contact unfolding and guidance, the “adventure of awareness to it. rather than through dialogue. continuous discovery” that you mention. In these sessions, we work with the content What do you find? Are there any challenges for you in of the moment that the student brings in, keeping the two modalities separate from AH: Presence is key – to tracking what whether, e.g., an expanded experience or each other? is going on, whether with a Diamond insight, or being furious about something Approach student or with a Rolfing client. AH: I’ve had a couple of clients where a that happened to them at work earlier that How explicit or verbal the cross-pollination more explicit inquiry process has come into day. We then see where the exploration of is depends on the Rolfing client. Someone their Rolfing sessions. I wanted more clarity that content leads in terms of insight into coming to me for pain relief may have no about this, out of respect for each modality, the student’s personal history or essential interest in consciousness or in other factors so I did a supervision session with Linda nature or reality. An important part of the that could be influencing their structure. So Krier, a senior Diamond Approach teacher sessions is a unique form of breath work it’s looking for an opening to subtly point and an Aston Patterning® practitioner. done on a mat, to bring awareness to to something and see if there’s uptake to, She still practices bodywork, so it was the body – perhaps highlighting tension for example, how their identity or some interesting to get her perspective. I got patterns, revealing inner ‘structures’, or attachment to something might be feeding clear for myself that inquiry in a Rolfing opening access to various dimensions of into their structural issues. Other clients session was not ‘mixing’ provided it was essence and being – as just a few examples. already have some organic sense of inquiry organically arising from the client’s own So I’m wondering what cross-pollination into their bodies and processes, and with sensate experience and not something you are seeing between your work with them I can be a bit more explicit. So it’s imposed from outside. But for the most Rolfing clients, and your work with your really client-driven. I don’t ‘mix’ Rolfing part I find that Rolfing clients and Diamond Diamond Approach students? work and the Diamond Approach, but there Approach students are coming in for GK: Having been doing Rolfing SI for are definitely useful elements I can bring different things, so it’s not a challenge to twenty two years has certainly had into the person’s field. keep them separate. What about for you, an impact on my work as a Diamond any challenges? One that’s sometimes important to point Approach teacher. Spending so many hours out to a client is what we call the ‘super GK: In my first couple of years of Rolfing looking at clients’ bodies through different ego’ in the Diamond Approach – what is SI and the Diamond Approach, it was lenses, different taxonomies – structural, often called the ‘inner critic’ or the ‘judge’. sometimes hard for me to keep the views functional, energetic, emotional, etc. – has The Diamond Approach has a quite unique separate, and I would invite a Rolfing given me a wide base of information to understanding of and methodology for client into an inquiry rather than, as gather from when working with a Diamond working with this critical voice until it you say, letting it arise from his or her Approach student. Also, I have enjoyed loses its hold over us. With Rolfing clients, own experience. So there was a learning playing with the Rolfing Principles of I often see it as a rejection of their body or process. It’s not difficult now to keep things Intervention – holism, support, adaptability, their experience. It’s hard to get change in distinct. Going through it, in hindsight I palintonicity, closure – in the Diamond the body when the person is not holding his feel appreciation for the process and the Approach work, seeing how they are experience with kindness, or is driven to try learning, and I am compassionate for all of sometimes helpful to determining if a to fix something out of a negative judging of us as we learn to integrate new experiences student is ready to inquire into something. his current state. So I do try to point out the and understandings. From the Diamond Approach perspective, harshness of the self-critique and encourage This does lead to the question, though, the one-on-one work we do with students the person to be more welcoming to the about when a person who is a student of – the work we do with body, breath, and body as it is. the Diamond Approach might want to inquiry – really shows how any attachment GK: That’s a great point about having a check out Rolfing SI, and vice versa. One to historical conditioning or set of beliefs, way to engage Rolfing clients when they benefit of bodywork is that it makes your any ego identification, includes a bodily have a lot of judgment about what their body more receptive to subtle experiences contraction. It’s very useful to be able to tell body is ‘supposed’ to be. That makes me like those that can occur in spiritual work. the difference between that kind of holding think of something similar. In the Diamond If you have bindings in your body, it’s hard in the body and tensions that are rooted in Approach we spend a lot of time realizing to sense certain dimensions of reality, or something more physical, e.g. an old injury, various essential qualities of our nature your experience will be split, with a kind of when working with a Rolfing client. (what are sometimes called the lataif in schizoid experience. Even when a spiritual Also being a Diamond Approach teacher Sufi teachings), like, Joy, Peace, Will, etc. path teaches that the body is an expression includes learning to be aware of and track When I finally began to understand what of one’s true nature, people still hold subtle

18 Structural Integration / March 2017 www.rolf.org CROSS-POLLINATION beliefs about their body as somehow a going out of town for a retreat. But I think of spiritual awakening? How to keep the separate ‘thing’. Getting great bodywork only a few of my Rolfing clients have actually streams of different teachings separate so can get past a lot of those beliefs, sometimes been interested in a referral to a book or a they retain their unique understanding in a way that sitting on a cushion or doing teacher or group. However, when some of and clarity, and at the same time allow for inquiry for hours doesn’t. our Seminary colleagues were looking for influence between them? students in the training phase, I did put What would you add to this? AH: Yes, it is an ongoing inquiry. the word out to local Rolfers in their area Interestingly, this dialogue, which began AH: I’ve actually done Rolfing sessions and apparently a few found students that a while ago, is finishing while we are both on a lot of Diamond Approach students way. Because of the confidentiality, I don’t at a Diamond Approach retreat on the because I take my table to retreats and know if those who became students were Phenomenology of Realization – about offer sessions in the time off. One simple Rolfers or friends of those Rolfers or clients how realization of various spiritual states thing is that Diamond Approach retreats, of those Rolfers, but my announcement is experienced in one’s subjectivity, one’s and many other spiritual paths, involve about the opportunity sparked an interest. interiority, which includes the body. It’s very a lot of sitting, so people have the usual I was happy to facilitate those connections appropriately on topic. body issues that come up from that. Then, because I do see a continuum between like you say, there’s the other dimension of the transformative power of Rolfing If readers would like to speak to either of us about getting bodywork to help open the body sessions and the transformative power the Diamond Approach, we would be happy to more subtle experiences, which can be of the Diamond Approach. The Rolfing to share information on books, web resources, really useful in retreat settings, as well as community has always had many ‘seekers’ retreat groups, and private-session work. Anne on an ongoing basis. in it. can be reached at [email protected] and Greg at [email protected]. But there’s also the flip side. People’s egoic What about you? Have any of your patterns and ways of operating come into Rolfing clients become interested in the Anne Hoff is a Certified Advanced Rolfer the Rolfing room, whether a Diamond Diamond Approach? and Diamond Approach Teacher in Seattle, Approach student or not. A primary Washington. She is also the Editor- GK: I’ve had a few Rolfing clients want to tenet of the Diamond Approach is to be in-Chief of this Journal. Her websites are explore the Diamond Approach work. We with your experience, not to try to force www.wholebodyintegration.com for bodywork talk about what that would mean, which change, yet sometimes a student will and www.innerworkforourtimes.com for includes wrapping up our work together approach a situation with his or her body Diamond Approach work. She works with doing Rolfing and having a clear break from from a viewpoint of ‘make it go away’ – Diamond Approach students in person and by that. That can be a difficult for some clients particularly if it’s pain. So if the person on Skype or Zoom. because they love coming for that work. my table is a Diamond Approach student, There’s a transition, a kind of mourning of Greg Knight is a Certified Advanced Rolfer and I may suggest he or she consider whether on old relationship, but also a beginning of Diamond Approach Teacher working in Rhode the body issue is simply from sitting a lot a new one, one of teacher to student. Island and Massachusetts. His websites are at a retreat, or whatever the surface idea is, gregoryknight.net and gregknightrolfing.com. or whether the material of the retreat or the It’s been great to work with these folks. He works with Diamond Approach students in person’s process is landing in such a way With people I have known for years and person and by Skype. that it’s bringing a physical manifestation thought I knew well, of course I only knew a to awareness. certain side of them. As Diamond Approach Bibliography students, its opened up a whole new terrain. And sometimes a student at a retreat comes It’s wonderful to see them touch into their Almaas, A.H. 1987. Diamond Heart Book in primed for a really powerful session hearts, their soul and being, challenge Two: The Freedom to Be. Berkeley: Diamond because he or she is already deep in an themselves to be with what’s most intimate Books. unfolding line of inquiry and teaching, as and real in their experience – maybe seeing I am, and we are in a potent field – at the a way they distance themselves from their largest teachings, there may be 500 students own presence with judgment and how DIAMOND APPROACH and the Ridhwan in the hall. This setting can bring a very painful that is and seeing what underlies “Hu” symbol are a registered trademarks exciting co-creation between the student’s that. As they open to their real, essential of The Ridhwan Foundation in the U.S., inquiry drawing out the full and creative nature there’s a grounding and enlivening Europe, and various other countries. repertoire of my skills in bodywork and they discover. It’s like the experience of my presence and guidance to allow a very ground and space that comes from Rolfing multidimensional session that is much SI and yet completely different. And their more than a physical session although fully Rolfing experience can prepare them to grounded in fascial work and resolving inhabit essential experience. structural patterns. I’m quite curious about the relationship GK: What is your experience of Rolfing between body awareness and essential clients becoming interested in the Diamond or inner realization. I think this will be a Approach work? contemplation for me for awhile: how do AH: I’ve had some ask me a lot of questions, somatic practices contribute to a spiritual because they get curious when I mention practice that focuses on the embodiment

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Effort tends to produce compression Persistent Doubt, Perches and loss of space, described by the term concentricity. To undo patterns of effort, we learn ways to change the preparation in Apple Trees, Putting to move or pre-movement. Is there clarity, though, that a pre-movement that produced a useful response in the past will be able to Ground Under One’s Faith produce the same effect today?

® By Kevin Frank, Certified Advanced Rolfer™, Rolf Movement Instructor Each day, as practitioners, as we prepare to practice Rolfing SI or teach Rolf Movement I find I’m a person of strong doubt. Doubt Integration, from where does our confidence is an unrelenting taskmaster, but it can lead derive? What provides fresh evidence? Is it to innovation. I tend to doubt the party possible to test the fundamental hypothesis line about why things work, at least until so that even a person with deep doubt can I can puzzle the story out. I was, from the work with a certain degree of assurance, start, skeptical of the Rolfing® Structural being reassured that there is integrity in Integration (SI) ‘story’ – the part that tells the work? us that our bodies are plastic because fascia I first tested the hypothesis with simple is plastic, and that once you place things things; while riding my bike, I imagined a in order, the body says “thank you,” and feeling of two directions in my spine and the stays that way. The work itself is fantastic; pedaling became easier; when chainsawing it helped (and continues to help) my body a tree for firewood, feeling the contact of my in many ways. It offered me an interesting hands and feet and the volume inside and career – no doubt there. The explanations, outside my trunk allowed my belly to soften however, those words used to sell people Kevin Frank and the saw to feel lighter. These beginnings on what we do, and why it works, felt led to a catalog of ways to illustrate that our simplistic; akin to a mutual agreement Four years after being certified, I continued work is legitimate. To notice the difference to believe in something that hadn’t been to gnaw on the questions: What makes between concentricity and eccentricity is thought through deeply enough. What posture and movement plastic? How does a question for what happens every day – happens to our clients? If they like the work, change really occur? These questions got lifting groceries from a car, carrying a child, and look different after a session, how do I support from study with Hubert Godard, vacuuming, raking leaves, or throwing know it isn’t mostly due to a placebo effect? and the work known as tonic function. The a ball; any catalog is only as helpful as it Rolfing practice, for me, has been a orchard and the tonic function inquiry are draws upon one’s life. continuous question about what is really now an interwoven story for me. When The apple trees got taller and gained in going on during sessions, because how much first introduced to it, the tonic function girth. Each year a tree needs to be pruned, to of what I tell clients is grounded in what I story made sense to me, and with the better remove some of the prolific new wood, so the directly know and feel? Each part of my work story came a way to test Dr. Rolf’s premise tree stays healthy and produces good apples. as a Rolfer and Rolf Movement Practitioner in many different ways, and to feel it flower The pruning is a nice analogy to Rolfing includes the questions: “How do I know this in the orchard. work – both are satisfying artistries. The works? Can I feel the mechanism prove itself A central feature of Dr. Rolf’s work, and more potent lesson, however, occurred as I in my body?” After this, the next important also of tonic function, is the idea that when was up in the tree, setting root with feet and questions become, “How do I access this an educated body encounters demand, elbows and knees, so there was stability; then mechanism in me? What activates it, at any it lengthens – elongating rather than I could use one or both hands to reach out time, or any place? How can I bolster my shortening, and continuing to act and with shears, to prune and shape. Sometimes clarity and faith, and speak only from fresh feel longer and more spacious as demand I reached farther and farther and the stability experience? Why shouldn’t anybody be able increases. This is counterintuitive to what had to grow in many dimensions to support to access Dr. Rolf’s understanding in simple seems logical. Jeffrey Maitland found an that reach. There were moments that it all accessible ways?” ancient Greek word for this remarkable became a little bit dangerous. About the time that I became a Rolfer, I feeling – palintonus, a feeling of length One wishes to sustain the reaching and started to plant and tend a small orchard occurring in two opposite directions. climbing and chopping, aloft, for several of apple trees. The trees became a leitmotif Another word for it is eccentricity, which hours, in a manner that feeds the body; for the act of observing shape and growth. means ‘away from the center’. Whatever the confirming that bodies like to lengthen if Much labor was needed to sustain them, name, this useful quality is associated with you feed them useful information, and that and to actually bring a crop to fruition. With an accompanying improvement in stability, a body that lengthens again and again stays time, the trees became a place to climb, and security, and sense of well-being. The source happier. Tree climbing and pruning is a set for extended times, while perched here and of this elongation and increased stability is of motions and actions that engage both there in the geometry of the branches, a natural and normal. At the same time, it’s girdles, all extremities, and all planes of place to feel the shape, mass, and support also natural and normal to acquire habits of motion in the spine. One immediately feels of the limbs. effort that interrupt being able to lengthen.

20 Structural Integration / March 2017 www.rolf.org CROSS-POLLINATION the usefulness of a robust sense of ground for prep, but use what I have learned in the and space and omnidirectional awareness. tree to refresh a detail of pre-movement, The value of feeling into surfaces and some coordinative element produced in textures in contact with the hands and feet slow motion, in my office. becomes obvious. The activity confirms the An apple-tree story from another person’s principles of Dr. Rolf’s legacy. Confirmation backyard. Atop an apple tree in lower gets repeated; confirmation awakens and Bavaria, I toss apples from newfound sustains faith – faith that what we practice perches. To my surprise, and then delight, and teach is real. A fresh sense of ‘this is real’, I experience a quiet presence that shows up in a body, communicates itself to others. to help: a mysterious movement guy below There are many self-care ‘exercises’ that me, catching apples with one, and then allow anyone to confirm their faith in both hands, each hand independent, each Dr. Rolf’s work. I teach them every day. It’s movement mindless and easy. One senses especially useful to find ways that her work broad orientation to the open space – an interweaves with life activities we love, and autumn field of trees and grass and sky – to learn the crucial elements of perception an absence of focus on where the apples and orientation that underlie the ability are – yet each one ends up in those hands. to change from effort to elongation, from Kevin Frank is Certified Advanced Rolfer and frustration to satisfaction. Rolf Movement Instructor. Kevin’s teaching Just before offering a lesson to a group of and private practice are informed by study with students, or to a client, I find it handy to Hubert Godard, Continuum Movement with draw on a personal experience that answers Emilie Conrad and Susan Harper, and practice the question, “Does this stuff still work in Zen and Meditative Inquiry. Kevin lives and today?” I probably don’t run out to the tree works on land in rural New Hampshire.

to the conduct of trainings and workshops. The Sound of Integration During that time, our number grew from only about eighty Certified Rolfers to nearly A Conversation with Maria Helena Orlando 140. And, from 2006 through 2014, I served as the international representative on the By Heidi Massa and Maria Helena Orlando, Certified Advanced Rolfers™ and Rolf Institute® Board of Directors. Rolf Movement® Practitioners HM: Is there a key insight that your years of Heidi Massa: Lena, you’ve been Rolfing practice and service to the Rolfing practicing Rolfing® Structural Integration community has brought you? (SI) for more than twenty years, right? MHO: In these twenty-two years I’ve Maria Helena Orlando: Yes, after been a Rolfer, I’ve always worked toward finishing my Basic Training in 1994, I got bringing more knowledge to my practice my Rolf Movement certification in 1998 and expanding the possibilities for and completed the Advanced Training in assisting my clients. All of this has been 1999. Then, in 2010 I completed a post- an apprenticeship, both professionally graduate program for Rolfers here in and personally, that has enriched my Brazil. Developed as a partnership between understanding of the complexity of the the University and the Brazilian Rolfing human experience in all its aspects. This is Association (ABR), it requires taking courses fundamental: we treat the person as a whole in research theory and methods at São – not just the person’s physical aspect. Paulo’s Universitário UniÍtalo; designing Heidi and Lena during their Rolfing HM: You’ve established a second and executing a research project using the training in Brazil, 1994. professional practice as a music therapist. case-study method; and publishing the What led you to add music therapy to your 1 results. The subject of my research was MHO: I was president of the ABR, from professional repertoire? Rolfing SI as an agent of integration among 2003 through 2011. During that time, we MHO: Music has always been a big part of posture, behavior, and quality of life. met many challenges. We developed a my life. I play acoustic guitar and piano, modular format for the Basic Training; HM: Besides your clinical practice in São and I love to sing. In my ongoing search for implemented a proper financial control Paulo, you’ve given years of service to the greater knowledge and deeper experience system; created the Universitário UniÍtalo Rolfing community, both in Brazil and to of the human condition, music therapy was postgraduate program; and moved the the international organization.. Tell us a one way to expand my horizon. little about that. organization to a headquarters well-suited

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HM: What did your training involve? MHO: I studied the Benenzon Method, recognized internationally as one of the five most important schools of music therapy. Its approach is interdisciplinary, bringing in concepts from philosophy, science, art, and literature. The confluence of ideas yields a complex system of theory and practice for how to use the nonverbal resources of the body, the vibrations, and music to establish a therapeutic bond between practitioner and client. Certain empirically based ideas are key – for example, that every person has a unique sonorous identity. The training covers both theory and practice, but the most difficult and richest challenge is to develop the skill of therapeutic listening as the main tool for accessing the client’s Figure 1: A set of Tibetan singing bowls. concerns. Because music therapy is almost entirely nonverbal, the interaction between gradually through the body to promote them gently, their vibrations are transmitted the therapist and client takes place through relaxation, comfort, and security. to the client’s body. Each size bowl emits sound. So – to attend to the client’s process a particular frequency that tends to be and establish a dialogue, I have to tune in The bowls are made of a combination of therapeutic for a specific body area. Bowls to the client completely by listening with twelve metals, chosen for their capacity emitting lower frequencies are used below my own body. to emit perfectly harmonious sounds in the diaphragm, and the one emitting the frequencies that have therapeutic effects. HM: Isn’t it also true in your Rolfing highest frequency is used for the head. And Generally speaking, I use as many as seven practice that you need to sense the client the Universal Bowl, which has the broadest- different bowls during a session. Because with your whole body, and that much of spectrum frequency, can be used anywhere. the bowls are positioned on the prone or the communication is nonverbal? supine client (see Figure 2), when we tap HM: So the bowls have physical effects? MHO: Sure, this is a point in common: metaphorically speaking, we ‘listen’ in any therapeutic practice. But it’s not that simple. With music therapy, because communication must be established on a nonverbal level, the therapist’s presence and ability to literally listen are essential to establishing the basic understanding between the practitioner and the client. The therapist is particularly tuned in to the perception of the sounds, silences, and rhythms that appear during the interaction with the client. Something as simple as a sigh or a prolonged silence can be an important signal as the session unfolds. HM: These days, what does your music- therapy practice consist of? MHO: During my training, I was introduced to an approach called Sound Massage, which was developed by the German Peter Hess. It immediately touched me and made quite an impression. Sound Massage uses metal bowls, called Tibetan singing bowls (see Figure 1), that emit pure and perfectly harmonious sounds. We place the bowls on the client’s body and get them to sing by gently tapping them. The sounds of the bowls have a calming effect on the body and spirit. Their gentle vibrations spread Figure 2: The bowls positioned on the body.

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MHO: They do. Vibrations are a physical MHO: For both practices, the practitioner’s challenges. When we accept them with reality. They propagate through fluids therapeutic attitude is fundamental to the open hearts and minds, we’re certainly on (Figure 3), and they’re amplified by gasses efficacy. With my experience as a Rolfer, I an evolutionary path. or fluids under pressure. To experience this, was already skilled as to how to approach just hold an inflated balloon in the presence the client therapeutically, which helped a of vibration and feel the amplified waves. lot. But as far as the approach, the two are Now imagine how connective tissue is a completely distinct. My personal experience fluid matrix – and how the human body with music was just as important: nobody is a pressure vessel – and you get the idea. can practice music therapy without having The vibrations help to release soft-tissue musical sensibility in the first place – and adhesions, so using the bowls during or that’s especially true for work with the along with Rolfing SI can be very efficient. singing bowls. HM: How do your music therapy clients find you? MHO: Usually they are already Rolfing clients, or else they are referred by my friends or professional colleagues. HM: What kinds of client concerns do you find best addressed through music therapy, Maria Helena Orlando as opposed to SI? Maria Helena Orlando practices Rolfing MHO: The clients who benefit most from SI and music therapy in São Paulo, Brazil. music therapy and Sound Massage have Figure 3: How a bowl’s vibration affects a Her academic background includes business difficulty with anxiety, stress, and insomnia; fluid medium. administration, and prior to becoming a Rolfer and behavioral issues such as aggression, in 1994, she operated her own business. She was hyperactivity, and attention deficit. HM: Would you give us an example of President of the Brazilian Rolfing Association using the singing bowls and conventional HM: How do you decide which of your from 2003 through 2011 and the international Rolfing protocols together? professional skills to use in working with representative to the Rolf Institute® Board of a particular client? Directors from 2006 through 2014. MHO: For example, I used the bowls with a client suffering from non-specific lumbar MHO: I can get a sense of which approach Heidi Massa, a Brazil-trained Certified Advanced pain. In several sessions, I worked on the would be most beneficial during the client’s Rolfer and Rolf Movement Practitioner, has been lumbar fascia by placing bowls on both initial interview. And, during the course guiding the somatic adventures of the discerning, the lumbar area and the sacrum. I would of treatment, how things play out in the the curious, and the brave since 1994. She has tap a bowl, allowing its vibration to spread sessions indicates what approach would served on the Rolf Institute’s Ethics and Business throughout the lumbar region – and at the benefit the client. Practices Committee for twenty years, and been same time do some manual myofascial an editor for this Journal since 2000. While HM: In terms of your ongoing personal and release. This combination produced a Chicago is home to both her Rolfing and complex professional evolution, where do you go release of the entire area, which reduced the business litigation practices, as well as to her from here? What’s next for you? client’s pain. I did not make entire sessions architectural and interior and landscape design of this protocol, but applied it within the MHO: Personal evolution is what I’m interests, Heidi travels frequently to Colorado, context of the client’s Rolfing sessions. usually looking for when I choose a course where she maintains a fine pre-War home in of study, a therapy, or even a trip – and this impeccably original style, hikes in the mountains, HM: Do you ever use the bowls to help the shows in my work. As to what’s to come, and dances the tango. client manifest the Rolfing ‘Line’, or to give I try not to have expectations or make big the sense of simultaneous lift and ground? plans. After all, three years ago I hadn’t even Endnotes MHO: Yes. Often at the end of a Rolfing thought of studying music therapy, much 1. For a description of the UniÍtalo session, when the client is supine, I’ll place less had I considered working with Tibetan postgraduate program, which awards a low-frequency bowl near the feet and a singing bowls, since I hadn’t even imagined participants the equivalent of a master high-frequency one near the head. To give that this kind of therapeutic approach of science degree, see Pedro Prado’s a sense of the axial, I’ll tap first the one near existed. Recently, to cope with a personal article The Case Study Method: Scientific the feet, and then the one by the head. This loss, I’ve joined a singing therapy group Exploration of Rolfing® SI in the Holistic also works with the client standing: I put a where everything is just now unfolding. Paradigm, appearing in Vol. 39, No. 2 of low bowl on the ground and balance a high The start of my work as a Rolfer brought this Journal (December 2011) and reprinted bowl over his head. Because, the sounds of quite a bit of stress: I was a businesswoman in the 2012 IASI Yearbook. Abstracts of the the bowls are so integrative, they’re well- who decided to take a massage class research projects of individual participants, suited to this Rolfing goal. without having any idea where it would including Maria Helena Orlando, are available at the Ida P. Rolf Library of HM: Was your experience as a Rolfer an lead me. I feel that life invites us, over advantage in learning the music therapy? and over, to take up various journeys and Structural Integration (www.iprlibrary.com or www.pedroprado.com.br). www.rolf.org Structural Integration / March 2017 23 CROSS-POLLINATION

seen and the way I had been trained. As I Dancing Between the Lines contemplated my home scene and training, there was a very clear feeling of “Oh . . . Rolfing® SI, Lindy Hop, and the Interplay of Play that’s what’s going on.” The dominant form of teaching was very much driven by the By Jason Sager, Certified Advanced Rolfer™, Rolf Movement® Practitioner idea that there is one right way to do this, in effect installing the subtext that there is In the summer of 2002, fresh out of college, a lot of ‘wrong’. In essence, people learned I went to a swing dance for the first time. to dance with an influence of “Don’t screw I was a shy young adult, grown from a up,” rather than an influence of play. shy child with no experience in music, and a weak high-school wrestling career Overcoming Inhibitions as my most athletic endeavor to date. But Coming back from Brazil, I made it one something about dancing took hold of me of my missions to overhaul the inhibitory and my attention in a way nothing else forces in my dancing. My goal became to had up to that point. Inside six months I try anything that came into my head on had come to the conclusion that I wanted the floor whether I knew how to pull it off to teach. Within the first two years I was or not. Many moves failed; many moves taking lessons from everyone offering came out weird: if I’d been trying to make them in the area and beginning to travel to a living from my dancing I’m sure I’d have learn as well. At my height, I traveled to a starved that year. workshop at least once a month and was Jason Sager However, out of chaos grew a new kind taking three different classes from three of order. As I was repeatedly presented different instructors, teaching not-terribly- petrified, thinking “Oh s***, I don’t know with failed moves, I also started to learn complementary styles, in three different how to have the kinds of dances these better how to save them or make them into locations on the same night. people are having.” something new. When a dance partner In the spring of 2007, I decided I wanted to ‘zigged’ if I had asked for ‘zag’, I began to My competition career at that point had be a Rolfer. After five years in dance and ‘zig’ with her and make something new, been clean but had failed to advance two teaching, I had begun exploring body on the fly, out of her contribution. And in beyond first elimination rounds, because mechanics and creative territories that most the span of a year I went from being told I of similar inhibitions. The feedback I of my dance instructors had never taught wasn’t taking enough risks in competition routinely received was that my dancing me. Where my instructors had provided to being told I was taking too many. I was good, but that I didn’t really stand out a form for students to fit themselves into, also went from never making finals to in any fashion. I’d struggled through tears I saw the differences and sought a toolset consistently making finals, and then either and heartbreak for a few years with this to bridge the gap. I also knew by then placing or coming in dead last among consistent feedback, and while the Denver that making a living in dance was not the finalists. dance scene showed me what was possible, for me, but I needed to escape a life in it didn’t fully help me to figure out how to computer programming to do something Reworking Teaching achieve it. more physical. My first session of Rolfing With the start of my own fundamental shifts Structural Integration (SI) with Bethany Rolf Movement Training in dancing, I found myself struggling to find Ward confirmed that there was something in Brazil uninhibited play with dancers back home. here with at least an order of magnitude While I had changed, the local scene had Fast forward about fifteen months from more information about the body than not, and out of a sort of self-preservation my Unit One, and I found myself in anyone I’d encountered in swing dancing I started to overhaul my teaching to try to Brazil for Unit Three with Jan Sultan and so far. By late summer I had completed evoke a similar sort of freedom amongst Rolf Movement training with Monica my Ten Series and was off to my Unit One dancers in my home scene. training in Boulder. Caspari. There were so many moments of brilliance and heartache throughout I began some of this going straight at the Dancing in Denver that training (including being dumped inhibitions, talking about how we tend to lose technique when we get scared, but my The Rolfing training took me to Boulder remotely, on week two of ten), but for the approach to teaching technique remained and Denver and an entirely different purposes of this story, I will share one of the mechanistic at times. I started working to dance scene to the one I had grown up moments that etched itself on my soul and break movements down to a sort of ‘first in. I had been traveling and competing radically altered the course of my dancing principles’ level of ‘here are the absolute rather unsuccessfully for several years at and teaching. basic building blocks, and here’s how to that point, so it wasn’t entirely out of my One day, we were discussing freedom of practice them’, then combine that with an experience, but the level of play and skill movement, and Monica made the amazing awareness of touch and social interaction in the Denver dance scene was something I statement: “The primary cause of physical with one’s dance partner. It worked, found deeply intimidating. I can remember dysfunction is social inhibition.” In the days though not as readily as I thought would driving the hour or so to the Mercury Café after that, I mulled over the dancing I’d be possible, and students in my classes in Denver just to sit on the bleachers, almost

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some people didn’t want to go. I gained a reputation locally as someone you should totally go take classes from . . . but nobody seemed to be able to explain why. Current Status In the past few years, my relationship with dance has gone up and down a great deal. I built and ran a dance studio for a few years right around the time that my Rolfing practice took off. While I continue to love dance like nothing else, the studio was ultimately a great deal of work for very little emotional payoff. About two years ago I realized that Rolfing SI was rewarding me far more strongly, both in emotional and financial terms, and that I needed to close Vaudevillian Revue: Bootlegger’s Ball at Southland Ballroom in Raleigh, South Carolina, the studio doors in order to save my own 2012. Photo by Christopher Donald. love of the dance. I’m currently making a slow return to began to comment on how different the experimenting. The instructors set out a dancing for myself, seeing if I can evoke approach was, though they were at a loss certain amount of material for the attendees the things that most charge me up in dance to explain how it was different when trying to play with, but in general it was a free-for- without having to teach them. I still hope to encourage their friends to join the classes. all exchange of ideas. to find a dance partner who’ll want to I had a sort of “What have I done?” On one of the days, we were watching clips explore it in the ways I do: the relational moment, feeling like Pandora might have, of some of the original swing-era dancers aspect with another person and another when discussing “oh s***” reactions on the now in their 70s and 80s, dancing at a body is one of the things that makes swing dance floor. We were talking about how place called Bobby McGee’s in California. so difficult to achieve but also so awesome mistakes tend to stop us in our tracks in The idea of the class was to try to replicate when it happens. It’s much the same energy different ways: some of us flip into apology the moves from only the visual tape that drew me to Rolfing SI, and I expect the mode; some scramble their feet; some stop provided. As I watched around the room, two will continue to dance together in my moving, etc. One of the students looked at something never seemed quite right in attention and influence each other’s growth me with a semi-shocked expression and how my colleagues were replicating the for the rest of my life. declared to the whole class, “That’s how I moves. After watching and comparing for Jason Sager is a Certified Advanced Rolfer and am in my whole life!” a while, it finally occurred to me that they Rolf Movement practitioner in Raleigh (and were imitating eighty-year olds, but doing I think the real aha moment came for me hopefully soon Durham), North Carolina. He so as twenty- and thirty-year olds. Some when I had a realization that has become is a recovering ‘danceaholic’ (not an actual of the dancers in these clips weren’t doing one of my mantras for learning anything the diagnosis) and currently deep in some personal things that way because they particularly past few years: “At some point in history, work discovering what life has to offer beyond liked the aesthetic: they were doing it that somebody made this up.” Swing dance the dance world. Jason occasionally blogs about way because they were protecting aching started as a street dance, which means that Rolfing SI and dance and their intersections joints. As I settled instead into watching the music existed, and people moved and with his personal and professional life at for how something felt (rather than simply played and made things up to it, until those sagermeister.com. looking for biomechanics), I felt my dancing movements coalesced into the dance that begin to resemble what I saw in the videos, we call Lindy Hop. dancing as if my knees hurt. By taking on Watching by Feel their internal experience, my body began evoking their movement much more readily One of my dance-influences-Rolfing SI- and completely. influences-dance moments came during an event called ‘The Experiment’, which I I found myself drifting further away from attended for a few years and which was a my dance colleagues in terms of approach big influence on my approach to teaching and ideology. I also found over time that dance. It’s a concept that still makes me while my teaching became more effective, wonder if it would work with Rolfing SI. it also asked more of my students to engage Essentially, a group of very high-level and practice and challenged not just their dancers rented a beach house in coastal dancing but their ways of being in the North Carolina, a few international-level world. While it created amazing shifts in the instructors came, and we basically spent students who wanted to delve deep, it also Photo by Hilary Mercer a week dancing, trading ideas, and, well, sometimes ran headlong into places where (http://hilarymercer.com).

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came to be a Rolfer and what other kinds Body, Speech, and Mind of bodywork you practice. TH: That’s a good description, midlife crisis: An Interview with Tsuguo Hirata that applies to my life at that time. In learning By Anne Hoff, Certified Advanced Rolfer™ and Tsuguo Hirata, Certified Rolfing SI, I was searching for the possibility Advanced Rolfer, Rolf Movement® Practitioner of changing an ordinary person into a kind of ‘superman’ who could recover from injuries and dysfunctions. From Rolfing sessions, Anne Hoff: Tsuguo, you have a strong I felt good about my own body’s changes background in Buddhism and religious and my increased awareness of body and studies besides being a Rolfer and doing movement. I saw the effectiveness of the other kinds of bodywork. That’s an work during my training; however, I was not interesting combination and I’m wondering totally content with Rolfing SI alone. I started how these influence each other in your life to feel subtle pain and bodily discomfort, and in your practice. But to start, tell us especially in the area of my old injury in about your background with Buddhism, the left lower leg. Some of the best Rolfing as that came first. instructors did very good work on me, but Tsuguo Hirata: First of all, thank you there was something fundamental that Anne for this honor of being interviewed hadn’t changed. for the Journal. Before talking about my So I started to learn biodynamics involvement to Buddhism, I want to say through Tom Shaver, DO, as well as that I trained in karate during senior high visceral manipulation, and nerve/artery school. I wanted to be physically strong Tsuguo Hirata manipulation from the Barral Institute. and was influenced by karate comics and Besides that, I learned esoteric healing the real-life story of the famous karate through the International Network for school founder. However, in the spring Energy Healing, as well as embryology and of my second year I got in a motorbike Somatic Experiencing®. These taught me accident and my left lower leg was broken that the body is not only made of anatomy, into pieces. After two and a half months of the physical solid stuff, but also includes treatment, my concern turned to becoming the subtle body, fluid body, emotional body, a spiritually strong man who was not afraid electromagnetic body, and mental body of death, and I read books on Buddhism (including consciousness, memory, beliefs, and Indian philosophy and searched for the and concepts). The more I learn various best training such as yoga and meditation. types of bodywork, the more I ask myself, I then majored in Buddhism and Indian “As a practitioner, what kind of changes do philosophy at university in Kyoto. My I want? As a client, what kind of changes concern at that time was how I could become do I expect?” We can enhance our touch enlightened and what enlightenment is. In sensitivity, our perception too. Deeper, Japan, as well as in Asia, we have many Anne Hoff serious change will happen at very subtle schools and branches of Buddhism. I was levels of the body and can be perceived in checking into each school’s advocates Ramakrishna, and Sri Aurobindo, and a still calm mind state. and its areas of superiority to others, but their influence on the subsequent hippie AH: Now I see the path of Buddhism/ this generated confusion. I asked my movement in California. consciousness studies intersecting with questions to students ahead of me and to the bodywork! my professors, but their study of Buddhism Then, after graduation, I spent twenty years being a businessman in the computer was strictly intellectual study of ancient TH: Yes. As I studied subtle levels of touch industry, keeping my innermost concerns texts, starting from language study. I almost and searched for more effective touch from for Buddhism inside. Towards the end of gave up on finding excellent Japanese the physical side, I noticed that what we that career I attended Tibetan Buddhist Buddhism teachers. So I spent my time gain and realize through Buddhist training retreats overseas and Zen retreats in Japan. reading books about the great teachers is very close to what I was searching for as Then in 2000, at the age of forty-three, of the past: Kukai, the founder of Japan’s a bodyworker or in working with clients’ I started learning Rolfing® Structural Shingon-Mantrayana sect of Buddhism, minds or beliefs. Buddhism teaches that Integration [SI] in Boulder, quitting my Tibetan yogis such as Milarepa, and Indian our existence is made of body, speech, and company because I was totally bored with yogis such as Yogananda. But I could not get mind. Our body, speech, and mind are a corporate career. peace of mind just from mental speculation. working together incessantly; however, Honestly, I didn’t have good teachers or AH: It sounds like you had a midlife crisis, we do not know the integrity and the an acharya (realized teacher) for taking the as we call it in English. Something in you integrated state of Body, Speech, and Mind. path of Buddhism at that time. I wrote my woke up and you returned to your true Buddhist training has various kinds of graduation thesis on Ramana Maharishi, interests, your true self. Tell us how you practices to calm body and mind, to observe

26 Structural Integration / March 2017 www.rolf.org CROSS-POLLINATION body and mind, and to integrate body, tension in the body parts. He uses his bones though most Japanese do not practice speech, and mind. On the other hand, after a as electromagnetic conductors. Buddhism except to visit temples on good Rolfing session, the client’s body looks particular occasions – so I suspect there AH: That sounds fascinating. I hope you radiant, divine, and integrated, his mind would be more respect for such practices. will share more about the ninja arts in a has stilled, his perception becomes refined. future article. I have another question about TH: Even in Japan I would be called a Clients feel their body as fresh and new, your practice. Do you share any Buddhist or ‘flakey’ guy if I pushed these things on they start to see and feel their world with meditation ideas with your clients, or just ordinary people in my sessions. I have new eyes. At that moment, or later on, they let the way it has integrated into your touch introduced these Buddhist practices to just a can rethink how they handle their potential. have whatever effect it has on the client? couple of my long-term Rolfing clients, and I In Mantrayana Vajrayana practice, we will introduce this idea to interested Rolfing TH: That depends on the situation and establish a calm and pure mind through colleagues in the future. I think it’s worth the client. If a client shows interest in yoga visualization practice and observing consideration as Buddhist practices have exercise or meditation. I introduce some prana (the life force moving in the body) been devised, developed, and experientially yogic breathing. If he relates that his brain and thus begin to control the life force. In ‘tested’ over two thousand years. As a functioning seems to be deteriorating visualization practice we have to use our biodynamics practioner, I was taught that (e.g., memory or perception difficulties), mind’s creative ability with sharpness, the slightest intention and strong attention I recommend mantra recitation and clarity, and precision, projecting an affect both the practioner’s touch and the visualizing a (written) character to enhance insubstantial inner world that we explore client’s body. mental clarity and also coordinate the mind and scrutinize with subjective inner with the visual and auditory capacity. I AH: What are your current interests perception. As a practitioner, I can apply have also experimented with visualizing concerning Rolfing SI other than the topics this experience to my subjective experience a divine character and reciting a mantra we’ve discussed? of touch, to explore and scrutinze my while touching to monitor the affect on the touch perception clearly and consciously. TH: These days I am interested in fluid troubled area of the client’s body, and this It is helpful to distinguish between clear work. Tissues need living fluid to recover does support change in the client’s body. sensation and unclear sensation, as well as qualitatively. This past January I took to catch the changes in gradation. AH: Are clients open to this? I think if you Jane Stark, DOMP’s workshop, “A Fluidic did that in the U.S., you’d be considered Approach to the Treatment of Connective Also through Buddhist training, I have ‘new age’ and ‘flakey’ by many people. But Tissue,” where I studied the relationship become more sensitive to pain and Japan has a long Buddhist history – even between fluid and fascia from a different discomfort in both my body and in my perspective than I knew from biodynamics. client’s body, and my touch has become I’m interested also in the relationship more sensitive as well as more calm and between fluid in the body and gravity. subtle. So I can sum it up by saying that In our work and experience as Rolfers, I Buddhist training cultivates a bright and believe we will learn more about the role clear mind, and that strongly and directly and function of gravity on our structure. affects my touch as attention, awareness, I believe that gravity is affecting our and the precise observation of process. fluids, bones, and fascia, and that we will AH: I think this is a very valuable point. come to understand another level of Ida Meditation trains the mind in various Rolf aphorism ‘gravity is the therapist’. I ways. It can train the consciousness to be appreciate this opportunity and hope that one-pointed, able to discriminate clearly this article will be of some benefit to the and track in a precise nuanced way. It can Rolfing community. also train the mind to open to spacious AH: Thank you, Tsuguo. You bring a very consciousness that is neutral and sensitively unique background and perspective to aware to the totality of the field. There’s our work! no doubt that these are useful states for bodyworkers to cultivate. Tell us a bit about Tsuguo Hirata graduated from Kyoto University your practice. in Japan in 1981, majoring in Buddhism and Indian philosophy. After spending almost TH: Besides Rolfing SI, I bring in mainly twenty years as a businessman in computer- biodynamics’ fluid touch, visceral work, related industry, he began Rolfing training in nerve/artery work, and Sharon Wheeler’s Figure 1: A Japanese scroll for meditation/ Boulder in 2000 and was certified in 2001. He BoneWork. Depending on the situation visualization practice. The ancient Sanskrit became a Certified Advanced Rolfer in 2005 after and the client’s request, I mix those in a character representing the character completing Advanced Training in Europe. His session. When giving movement sessions, I ‘A’ (sounds like ‘ah’) in the white moon Rolfing practice is in Tokyo, Japan. also introduce exercises and ideas from the translates as ‘the unborn nature of our martial arts of the Japanese ninja tradition. mind’ or the mind essence. The white Anne Hoff is a Certified Advanced Rolfer in I have been taking classes in ninja martial moon is a representation of purity of both Seattle, Washington. She is also a teacher of the arts for the past three years from a Japanese mind and heart. The lotus is a symbol of Diamond Approach®, a modern spiritual path, supporting power and cultivates creative man in his thirties. His movement is so and interested in the interface of consciousness power for the mind and heart. excellent – very fluid-like, fluent, free of and physical embodiment. www.rolf.org Structural Integration / March 2017 27 CROSS-POLLINATION ® liberated me from the deadening idea that The Art of Rolfing SI and a drawing should look like what you see and instead freed my life force. Other students in the class who saw my the Art of Sculpture, Part 1 drawings commented that the work looked like that of a sculptor, emphasizing the Seeing, Embodiment, and Space physical aspects of space, form, mass, By Szaja Gottlieb, Certified Advanced Rolfer™ weight, and density. A series of fortuitous events led me to a stone-sculpture studio a Forget the anatomy and take on art and you’ll look at a body as something built around year later, and I took up the art until the mid a line, a vertical line. 1990s. In so many ways being a Rolfer simply Dr. Ida P. Rolf feels like a continuation of my explorations as a sculptor, but now with a human body I came late to my ‘Line’. At age thirty-one rather than stone or other materials. Upon in 1978 I underwent a Ten Series in Santa discovering my background, clients often Barbara, California, with Rolfer Hal Milton, ask whether I still work as a sculptor. My ostensibly for a back problem. I did not usual reply is, “Yes, right now, on you.” This know at the time that that life-changing article is an exploration of the relationship event would be a psychic divide in my between these two art forms and how they life. Until that point I had been wrestling inform one another. with the religious ethos of my Orthodox Judaic upbringing versus the siren call Seeing and the Senses of the ‘rational’ secular life. (I got my The art of Rolfing SI and the art of sculpture bachelor’s degree from Yeshiva University, are both explorations of space involving a men’s college for orthodox Jews, then the senses of the body, the sense of seeing got my master’s degree in European certainly being the dominant component. intellectual history from the University Dr. Rolf put a premium on seeing, and it of Massachusetts.) I didn’t realize that no Szaja Gottlieb was a tradition of the SI teaching model for matter what the degree of my rebellion, I many years to limit students to observation was still a prisoner escaping from one room for a number of months before being allowed of abstract ideation to another. Ten sessions to actually put their hands on a client. Each of Rolfing Structural Integration (SI) pierced observed session was thus an exercise in that veil and suddenly my burdensome seeing spatial relationships in the body. cerebral existence stood on one side and I, as a body, stood on the other. But Dr. Rolf’s concept of seeing was no simple affair. She suggested there were five levels Some who undergo the transformative of seeing derived from the ‘epistemological experience of Rolfing SI soon travel a path profile’ of French phenomenologist Gaston moving from client to practitioner, but I was Bachelard. The first three levels are defined not to complete that journey for another by mechanical, everyday seeing based on twenty-three years, becoming a Certified Newtonian mechanics. The fourth type of Rolfer in 2001. The intermezzo was a period seeing, which she called ‘relational’, is based in which I was a manual laborer – including on visualizing how various structures of the construction work, carpentry, painting, body relate to one another. Significantly, she truck driving, and furniture moving – as noted that this fourth level is the appropriate well as being an artist and sculptor. In my dimension for the Rolfer. The fifth level of own mind, becoming a Rolfer years later seeing is based in the intuition, which may was simply a continuation of my career be available to an experienced Rolfer but switch to manual laborer. which is a double-edged sword in that it Exchanging the pen of the scholar for the may also undermine the logical foundations hammer and chisel of the sculptor did not of his/her analysis and conclusions. happen overnight. A life-drawing class Dr. Rolf’s comment is instructive, “I bid from an artist, Margaret Singer of Santa you to examine your own ways of thinking Barbara, a Holocaust survivor like my Monopolylith (wood, wire, sandstone), and looking. What you clearly do know, 1992, Art City, Ventura, California. parents, proved pivotal. Her instruction as long as you can measure it, is on solid to me was to put the charcoal to the paper ground. The ground becomes less solid in and look at the model without looking back the fourth area, and when you get into the at the paper as the drawing developed. fifth area, your feet are off the ground. Your This process-oriented method, which security lies in your ability to look at these emphasized open-ended exploration, levels of abstraction and thread them apart.

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the sensory level. Said Dr. Rolf, “When I am ‘Rolfing’, he and I form one [my italics] for at least the time that I’m working. Look and feel. You don’t need feedback, you need to look at what’s there” (Rolf 1978, 96). The artist and Rolfer both withdraw to their place of seeing, studio or office, to engage the object. In the case of the sculptor, the object might be a piece of stone on a table or a rock large enough to be freestanding on the ground. In the case of the Rolfer, it is a human body, but I would submit, an object nevertheless. The history of science from the time of Galileo is a movement from the belief that phenomena revolve around humans to an understanding that humans are part of natural laws that govern all phenomena, including humans. And here I would like to stop for a moment to fully realize the radical implication of Dr. Rolf’s vision which I believe is underappreciated – that everything, both living and nonliving, is equal in the field of gravity. The human body thus takes on the same quality of ‘thingness’ as every object in the gravity field. Some might instinctively recoil to being classified an object, feeling perhaps their humanity is being questioned. However, I submit that the Rolfer’s first critical task is to demonstrate this ‘objectness’ to the client as it implies that he or she accepts living in the gravity field along with all other matter on earth. One might consider this acceptance as the first step of embodied awareness in the Up Down/Down Up, charcoal, 1979. SI process. It will give you a great deal more security like to think quickly, to think and to infer, Rolfers and sculptors both view the object in your intellectual and emotional life if to get on with it. But there is too wide a gap with the goal of remodeling its spatial you can do this and not simply say, ‘I feel’” between experience and inference. Mistakes organization within the larger gravity (Rolf 1978, 45-47). get made” (Rolf 1978, 107). Clearly, Dr. Rolf field. As object makers and shapers, Rolfers celebrated body experience as superior thus have more in common with the The Rolfer and the artist/sculptor engage to cogitation. manual laborer and craftsman than with physical reality, not just with the eyes but the university professor and academic. with all the senses. An artist looks at the body This body-to-body information is Their proper sphere is the physical plane, and draws. The line on the paper not only instrumental in evaluating not only the client not the cerebral one. This explains why expresses what the eye sees but also what the but also our own work during the process Dr. Rolf many times eschewed intellectual body feels. All the sense organs of the body of a session. In a recent interview Advanced approaches to SI, particularly in prospective are in a sense eyes. Similarly, when a Rolfer Rolfing Instructor Michael Salveson spoke Rolfers, preferring more direct hands- views a body, he or she is not just seeing that about the importance of a practitioner on experience. “In this culture we tend structure but feeling that body through his/ knowing his information system: in other to overweight the importance of head her own. The more the Rolfer can feel the words, how he or she receives information judgments. You could make a good Rolf client through his senses while delaying while working. “Every practitioner needs to practitioner with a man who’s deaf, dumb, cognitive conclusions to appear, the better. have confidence in their data set that they use and blind, guiding his hands along. His So says Dr. Rolf, “There are five senses and to determine whether or not the organism is hands could function” (Rolf 1978,179). here are five ways of getting experience into actively integrating as a result of what they you. Rolfers need to be able to focus on the are doing. You can watch the nervous system Embodiment level that impinges on senses. The sense of or the energetic flow; or, you can watch taste doesn’t really enter into it: the sense of movement. But there needs to be a way” Ideas expressed or manifested in the physical smell sometimes enters into it, but not often. (Gottlieb and Salveson 2016, 15). Clearly universe are ideas embodied, and this What can be seen is the most important the process of an SI session between Rolfer concept of embodiment is fundamental in clue; describe what is visible. Typically, we and client is a body-to-body experience at SI. The dictionary definition of embodiment

www.rolf.org Structural Integration / March 2017 29 CROSS-POLLINATION is “a tangible or visible form of an idea, quality, or feeling” or “the representation or expression of something in a tangible or visible form.” In SI, the practitioner, in his role of educator, leads the client into a greater awareness of his body in the gravitational field to manifest, for example, the Line when walking, or feeling balance through the ischial tuberosities when sitting. The essence of this concept of embodiment for a Rolfer is for the client to internalize a concept and then express it in his body structurally, particularly through movement so as to, as Rolfers often put it, ‘own the work’. In the technological, cerebral age we live in, with computers, cell phones, etc., the clients who walk through our doors are often disconnected and disembodied. During SI sessions, clients often ask the practitioner for help to define their experience. Our job at this critical point, according to Dr. Rolf, is to refer them back to their own physical sensation. “It is very important to make the person being ‘Rolfed’ realize he is the one who can do the feeling about what has happened to him. So many people are still asking, ‘What should I feel?’ I say to them, Sacral Vision, onyx, 1980. ‘Well, who the heck knows what you should feel except you. I can’t feel what you feel.’ output as a ‘body of work’, an interesting Space It’s very important with some people to shift counterpoint to the bodywork of the Rolfer. Besides being material, the body is of space their attention and get their agreement to However, the body as a repository of values, and in space. Ostensibly the art of practicing take responsibility for themselves” (Rolf as a truth, has been traditionally looked Rolfing SI on a body and the art of sculpting 1978, 58). upon with suspicion by the value drivers of a stone would seem to be analogous in that Similarly, the client’s complaints can be civilization, philosophy, and religion, even to both the Rolfer and sculptor are shaping presented to the client as an invitation to the point of religious prohibitions on creating material to realize form potential. As engage, to listen, and to reintegrate with images based on the human body in Judaism Rolfers we might refer to this as plasticity. a body that he or she may relate to only if and Islam. This divide between body/mind, However, the primary relationship begins there is pain. This reintegration with his and this deep distrust of the body in religion not with the becoming of the material but or her body, this body embodiment, is no and philosophy as a repository of truth, with the being of the object in space. The small matter; it seeks to address and resolve deeply embedded in Western culture, was primary relationship is thus not between a fundamental division in Western culture recognized by the philosopher Friedrich Rolfer and client, or sculptor to stone, but between mind and body. And, it mirrors the Nietzsche in the nineteenth century. Some of object to surrounding space. attempts of phenomenological thought in of Nietzsche’s comments about the body We experience this interaction when we visit the twentieth century to bridge this great are notable in their defense of the body as a an artist’s studio or a gallery or museum. divide between mind and body that, as source of truth and inspiration: The art work, sculpture, or painting sits practitioners, we see clients display every “My genius in my nostrils.”1 within a cleansed spatial setting, removed day in our workspace. from the distraction of the world, offering “There is more wisdom in your body than Embodiment is quintessential in art in two the possibility of experiencing the physical in your deepest philosophy.”2 ways. First, the thoughts and emotions world in a new way. The client, similarly, within the artist are transferred into the “Body am I entirely and nothing more; the stands or moves within the space of the physical universe, in different media such soul is only the name of something in the Rolfer’s office, removed from the usual as stone, clay, paint, or, as a dancer might, body.”3 artifacts and usual human relationships, with his or her body. Second, the human and is given an opportunity to experience Though we as Rolfers may not realize it, I body, whether in the work of Michelangelo his physical existence differently as a result believe that one of the critical tasks for SI is or the more contemporary Picasso, is of changes in his spatial organization. Even to restore the body as a touchstone of truth the central symbol, the touchstone, of all the changes the Rolfer performs on the and what one might call a reality generator art as far back as we can trace it, even to client lying on the table are not activated within our society. the Paleolithic cave paintings in France until the client stands erect and vertical in and Spain. We even refer to the artist’s space, once more in the gravity field, which

30 Structural Integration / March 2017 www.rolf.org CROSS-POLLINATION is why Dr. Rolf said that gravity, not the first session, up or north pole; the second Rolfer, was the therapist (Rolf 1978, 87). session, down or south pole; the third session, sides; the fourth, fifth, sixth, and It may be said that Rolfing SI is about simple seventh sessions, center (lower), center, things that are overlooked, simple things center, center (upper), respectively. like the constants of the gravitational field or breathing. The physical location and The idea behind this spatial awareness orientation of the body might be considered model is simple enough: it’s difficult to go another one of these overlooked factors. anywhere if you don’t know where you are There is a famous work, a triptych, by the starting from. Also its corollary: without an French painter Gaugin, painted in 1897, embodied awareness of gravity, direction is entitled, Where Do We Come From? What difficult to find. Ostensibly, Vitruvius Man Are We? Where Are We Going? – valuable is about the proportions of the human body questions in considering our identity. But, as applied to architecture. But when you perhaps, the key question in discovering look closely there is much more. The feet ourselves in terms of identity is missing, stand on a square, an ancient symbol of the “Where are we?” In practical terms, where earth, and the figure is inscribed within a Da Vinci’s Vitruvius Man. is our body at the present moment in space? circle, a symbol for the cosmos, indicating, as in our own work, the relationship Spatial awareness as a key to knowing Being, as it discusses, probably with greater between structure, integration, and self and identity is a relatively new idea depth, some of the topics in this paper. higher consciousness. in psychology. “Who we are might be In regards to the topic of the ten-session integrated with where we are and impact Szaja Gottlieb first received Rolfing sessions in series and sensory awareness, Certified how we move through space” (Proulx et 1978, which resulted in him becoming a stone Advanced Rolfer Dr. Ed Maupin has al, 2016). Asking clients where they live sculptor, which, in turn, led to his becoming a covered this topic more extensively in will usually elicit the street address of their Rolfer in 2001. He lives with his wife Ko and his writings on expansional balance. See home, but if you remind them of the present daughter Judith in Los Osos, California and “Expansional Balance and the ‘Line’”, body that they entered this world with and practices in San Luis Obispo. He believes in the which was published in the June 2014 issue the very same body that they will leave transformational potency of SI. of Structural Integration: The Journal of the when they expire, their concept of ‘home’ Rolf Institute® 42(1):19-21. is immediately and dramatically altered. Author’s Notes Endnotes Leonardo Da Vinci’s famous drawing of the Part 2, “The Art of Rolfing SI and the Art Vitruvius Man, which can also be referred of Sculpture: Ground and Transformation” 1. Nietzsche: www.azquotes.com/ to as the Vitruvian Compass, expresses will be forthcoming in a future issue. quote/365108 this directional spatial awareness The Though I have only scanned it, I want 2. Nietzsche: www.goodreads.com/ ten-session series thus can be presented to mention Advanced Rolfing Instructor quotes/68916-there-is-more-wisdom-in- as a series of sessions to reorganize the Dr. Jeffrey Maitland’s latest book,Embodied your-body-than-in-your) client’s directional awareness of space: the 3. Nietzsche: http://kindlequotes.tumblr. com/post/11571318902/body-am-i-entirely- and-nothing-more-and-soul-is Bibliography Gottlieb, S. and M. Salveson 2016 (Sept). “Burning Man, Part 2: Continuing the Interview with Michael Salveson.” Structural Integration: The Journal of the Rolf Institute® 44(3):14-18. Proulx, M. et al. 2016. “Where am I? Who am I? The Relation Between Spatial Cognition, Social Cognition and Individual Differences in the Built Environment.” Frontiers in Psychology 7:64. (Published online; available at http://journal.frontiersin. org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00064/full.) Rolf, Ida P, 1978. Rolfing and Physical Reality. Rochester, VT: Healing Arts Press.

DreamShell, alabaster, 1979.

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DM: It’s awesome that it has helped all these Liberated Body – other people as well. When you first started the work, it was more to give additional information to mostly clients. At this point, Where Body Nerds Unite do you have a sense of your audience? Do you feel like you are talking to mostly A Discussion with Podcast Creator and Host, Brooke Thomas practitioners in the field or clients?

By Dorothy Miller and Brooke Thomas, Certified Rolfers™ BT: When I started it, I remember the question I asked myself was, “Why don’t Introduction by Dorothy Miller: At the time I just put something out there, a blog or of this interview, Brooke Thomas had just something, where the things I say a million wrapped up the third season of her Liberated times to clients, I just say in a more public Body Podcast. During the first three seasons, place so more people can hear them?” I Brooke produced sixty-one shows in which she definitely was thinking of it as helping explores the work of researchers, practitioners, people as a practitioner, the same way I and educators from a variety of fields that focus would in my practice. Very quickly though, on the amazing entity that is the human body. once I started the podcast, I realized that If you have not had a chance to explore the work that was not at all what this was about. It she has created, all the shows can be found at quickly became a show for other people www.liberatedbody.com or on iTunes or Stitcher. who are in practice. I would say that the I had the opportunity to speak with Brooke after audience is undoubtedly mostly other she wrapped up her final taping of the season. movement and manual-therapy people We talked about some of the people she has of all stripes – bodyworkers, movement interviewed and how her work on the show has educators, yoga teachers, Pilates teachers, Brooke Thomas informed her work as a Rolfer. fitness people, all different things. Dorothy Miller: What prompted you to DM: I think it is terrific that you were able start Liberated Body? Can you talk a little bit to transition it in that way. What do you about the evolution of the show and how it envision the show looking like a year from ended up where it is today? now, or five years from now? Brooke Thomas: There were two main BT: I honestly have no idea. I would say motivators to start doing this work. Like that the show has surprised me a lot more many in these fields, I came to Rolfing® than I have planned it. It’s led me around by Structural Integration (SI) through my own the nose completely and I continue to let it healing crisis. After I got better, I was really do that. It is about finding a balance. Since motivated to share the work with other I have developed this platform where I am people. I have been a Rolfer for sixteen able to communicate with a large group of years and after having many one-to-one manual and movement therapists, I would interactions with clients, I wished there like to continue shining a spotlight on all was a way to let more people know not those people and their work. On the other hand, it is also about my own learning just about Rolfing SI, but the wide variety Dorothy Miller of manual and movement therapies that journey, and I am the kind of person that can only do the stuff that I really care about, exist, and how much they can help. Many force, which was to use it for myself as a so that gets me into different rivers and clients I worked with would ask, “Why learning tool, made me want to go down streams. I don’t know where it will take didn’t I know about this sooner?”, so a big the rabbit hole a little bit. motivator in my work on the show has me. I am just ending season three and it is been to find a way to make these fields I had been in practice as a Rolfer and was a natural pause point. I am looking ahead more visible. enjoying it and helping people, but you get to season four and I can’t quite envision yet to a certain point where things start to feel what it will become. We’ll see. I started Liberated Body as a website with a little stale and I felt like I was doing the DM: I for one am excited to see what a blog and self-help videos. However, it same thing all the time. Instead of having it becomes. How has your work on the started to feel too narrow and was too any particular continuing education path podcast informed your Rolfing practice? focused on me and my ideas. I was posting calling to me, I turned the podcast into my things that were important to me and my continuing ed path. I have to do so much BT: There are a few of categories of things clients at the time; for example, what might prep for each interview that I was reading that have changed the way I am working help piriformis syndrome or issues like that. all of this amazing research. It definitely with people. One is understanding the Ultimately I was much more interested in changed me and changed my viewpoint of new paradigm of the body. Even though I all the really amazing people, practitioners the work and of the human body generally, went to the Rolf Institute® and have been and researchers, who had their own input to way more than I thought it would. in practice for a long time, there were still share. That’s when the second main driving things that were very hard for me to grasp;

32 Structural Integration / March 2017 www.rolf.org CROSS-POLLINATION like biotensegrity, that thinking about a to know if you aware of any follow-up on both have the personality and charisma to muscle as one thing doesn’t really make their projects and how your work with move that forward, so I am really excited any sense, it’s more about motor units or, children, including your own, might have about that. as Robert Schleip says, a school of fish that been affected through these interviews. DM: Another personal favorite of mine was swims together when it performs a certain BT: It is that holism thing again. Your the interview with Christopher McDougall, action. I got a much better handle on that body is not separate from the environment the author of Natural Born Heroes. One of the and started working differently with people that it operates in. I love that. The natural many things that are meaningful to me about because of that. My work became a lot movement piece has become really Rolfing work is the hope and ownership of more holistic. I have become less PT-like. important to me. We don’t think about it. one’s body that it instills. In this book, Chris’s Before, people used to come to me with Our world is just our world, our chair is just telling of the story of the Cretan rebellion tissue damage because of something that our chair, and we get into the habits we get during WWII is an amazing tribute to what had occurred and I would fix it by being my into. I don’t have many young children in the human body is really capable of. Can good Rolfer self. I have come to feel that that my practice but I am having conversations you share with us some highlights of your is not what I am doing when I help people. with their parents. My son is going into conversation with him, specifically relating People are still getting helped, but I am fourth grade. You really see their bodies to the research into fascia and movement able to see their lives in a more whole and start to change in first grade. I try to control that he did for the book? continuous way. As tempting as it is to use what I can, like our environment. We do a anatomical words when people ask “What BT: He got interested in fascia in a student/ few things, like before-school hiking and are you working on right now?”, I want superficial way. He studied with Tom Myers often after-school hiking. It helps connect them to understand that it is never just one and Robert Schleip. What was so cool about him to the natural world and get back into thing. I want them to understand that their Chris McDougall having an ‘aha moment’ natural human movement. We also do a pain does not necessarily correlate with on fascia is that he is so good at bringing movement scavenger hunt. For example, tissue damage. Their whole life informs these concepts about what the human body today is a climb-over-things day and you what the sensation feels like in their bodies. is, and what it is capable of, into mainstream find as many things as you can to climb culture. He got really interested in the The other big change that has also changed over. Often he will pick two things, like elastic recoil property. He was also looking the path forward for me in my career, it’s a pick-up-things and a balance day, so at how parkour uses it. It all came back to because it is what calls to me personally, is we’ll pick up rocks and logs and we’ll find springiness in the body, which is totally somatic meditation, somatic psychology, fallen logs or stone walls to balance on. different from the Newtonian idea of a and somatic spirituality. This has become a It injects fun and playfulness into things machine of parts connected by pins and huge part of my life over the last couple of instead of me just telling him to sit on his hinges. It was exciting to have Chris, who years. I am inviting people into their own ischial tuberosities all day. The screens do is so great at conveying these concepts to sensation more. I am inviting them to trust exist, school does exist . . . but we’ll also a wide audience, letting people know that their bodies more, instead of thinking of have furniture-free days at home. I try to the body is not what we think it is. them as just broken down. I am not super do stuff that feels playful instead of just ‘woo-woo’ about that in practice, as my lecturing. He does seem to get it. At the end DM: The research piece of your show is so practice is on Yale’s campus and I work of his last school year, they made a crazy important to keep people up to date on what with a lot of head-oriented people, but I no-running-at-recess rule. He came home questions are being looked at. For example, would say that people do stop seeing that and told me that he got all the kids at recess the research on the role of connective their body is at war with them and start to sit around a tree and just stare at the tree tissue in intracellular communication seeing that it is trying to help them out and so that they could protest the no-running and inflammation that you spoke about communicate with them. It opens things up rule. I feel like some of my propaganda got with Dr. Helene Langevin is fascinating. for people in a way that is very exciting to in there [laughs]. Would you be willing to talk about your me, beyond just their knee getting better. conversation with her on this research or DM: I bought Kathleen Porter’s book, Happy any other research that currently has you DM: I think of it as a gift that you give to Dog, Sad Dog. When I showed my kids the excited right now? clients that they can take with them into pictures, it was easy for them to pick out all their lives outside your office. It is the the Sad Dogs with unsupported structure BT: I am particularly excited about the power to be in tune with themselves and to versus the Happy Dog bodies that were research coming out about cancer and be able to affect change in that system and supported. It seems like a huge opportunity fascia. This past year there was a joint not just feel like, “Oh no, here we go again”. to get this generation of kids to learn about conference on acupuncture, oncology, You did a series of interviews focused on their bodies and movement. and fascia at Harvard University that children. You spoke with Juliet Starrett, Dr. Langevin headed up. The reason why BT: There is also some follow-up on these Richard Brennan, Patricia Pyrka, and I am personally most excited about that practitioners. Kathleen Porter has a new Kathleen Porter. As a mom of two school- research is that it is going to be a huge documentary called Born to Move. The aged children, I was especially interested in motivator for mainstream culture to start organization Stand Up Kids, which is Juliet the work they are doing with kids and in to get holism and continuity. What they are and Kelly Starrett’s organization to make schools. My son is starting fifth grade and finding is that understandingthat is the key schools chair-free, has partnered with Let’s I am seeing firsthand how his posture and to curing cancer. Cells don’t just go AWOL Move, which is Michelle Obama’s active movement has changed as he spends more and crazy on their own. They have to do it schools initiative, so that is exciting. They time in chairs and on devices. I am curious within a framework and that framework

www.rolf.org Structural Integration / March 2017 33 CROSS-POLLINATION is fascia. So if you can understand fascia, eating disorders. She’s in the Biobehavioral community: there is a sense that people which means you have to understand Nursing Program. She is bringing the could harm themselves with therapy balls continuity, then maybe you can actually importance of touch to the forefront in its or that they will continue in their ‘parts- disrupt this whole cancer thing. This is ability to heal. based’ way of thinking. That’s true enough, exciting for me because it is going to force but with the way that I use them in my DM: I completely agree with how important people to see the body in a different way. practice, I have found that it empowers touch and interoception are. I talk to my You can’t think of it as divide-and-conquer clients to touch themselves and access clients about their role in the Rolfing process anymore. You can’t think of it as attacking themselves and give their tissue little bits and the importance of what they feel on the the faulty broken part. One of the reasons of nourishment without having to be on inside and finding new ways to move. It’s that cancer treatments don’t work the my table. I’ve found that kind of work not about something happening to them; for way we want them to is because cancer really does speed people’s healing, as there to be lasting change, the change has to metastasizes. How does it metastasize? It much in the fact that they feel empowered come from within them. A challenge for us as does that along the fascia. about healing their own bodies as anything practitioners is finding the right way for each else. I think that is a beautiful gift to give The other thing that I personally have a lot of client to hear this in a way that makes sense people. I have found the therapy balls to be interest in is all of the interoception research to him. You’ve mentioned other trainings a very straightforward way to give people that is going on. I think we can get excited you have taken. Which trainings have had that gift. Also because of who I am, I am about the complexities of the human body, the most impact on your personal life and always educating my clients in continuity, but the interoception work is really showing your Rolfing work? so they don’t just find some ‘hot spot’ and the simple, yet profound, basic fact that if BT: The somatic mediation work, which ream on that. Sometimes when they do you can cultivate a relationship with your I have studied at Dharma Ocean and that anyway, they feel worse and then they body, that involves listening to the sensation with Judith Blackstone, has changed the learn something. People can have very of your body, your life actually improves. way I approach working with people and nourishing aha moments with these therapy It sounds weird because we have very little has also completely changed the whole balls when they work a totally different part regard for the body in our culture, but here orientation of my life. MovNat® has also of the body from where the pain is and find are these researchers showing that if you been a really important part of my life that they get relief. can have a better internal sensation map, and is how I train. Because people come many issues like depression, substance DM: Are there any guests who have had a into our practice with the concept of the disorders, and eating disorders can resolve. particularly big impact for you? body as a machine that has busted parts, That is pretty amazing. Beyond the fact and they want to know how they can fix BT: Joanne Avison and John Sharkey are that stuff gets better, it gives people’s lives that one part, MovNat has been a really two separate interviews. [Editor’s note: the an opportunity to unfold. It seems weird useful and playful tool for me to give to John Sharkey interview can be read in the to the outside world, but we Rolfers know clients to experience the idea of continuity. December 2016 issue of this Journal.] Both of that when people go through a series with It also helps them not obsess about the them really get the new paradigm about the us, they don’t just feel better, they don’t just ‘broken-part’ idea. If someone comes in body. They are also both brilliant teachers lessen their pain or improve their mobility, with plantar fasciitis, [he is] often looking of that. Some people get it but it’s hard their lives change. for ‘parts-based’ exercises that [he] can do to convey, but John and Joanne are both I think our relationships with our bodies to ‘fix’ [his] foot. I may give some self-care really good at communicating concepts are way more powerful than we think they that involves the foot, but I may also give like continuity of form, individuality of are. In our realm we get that to a certain a playful MovNat sequence that involves anatomy, biotensegrity, and bound water extent, but it is exciting that there are these very easy balancing exercises or walking on and how fascia is responsible for our fluid researchers gathering to talk about this. uneven terrain when appropriate. It starts volume. They have helped me to have Bo Forbes has created the Interoception to open up a way for [people] to see their many aha moments about understanding Tribal Council to gather and share ideas. environments as connected to their bodies the human form that I’ve been trying to A lot of them are neuroscientists. I spoke and that their healing may not just be about get for years. with one, Norm Farb, and most recently I them sitting alone in their bedroom doing In terms of shifting the way I feel about talked with Cynthia Price. Her work really exercises. It can help them cultivate a more pain, Steve Haines, Neil Pearson, and Todd stands out to me. She started the Center playful relationship with their body. It is Hargrove helped me to see that pain isn’t for Mindful Body Awareness. She is based definitely responsible for me feeling good about tissue damage. Steve Haines actually out of the University of Washington. Her in my body during all these years in practice has a short pamphlet, more like a graphic works is exciting to me because she started as a Rolfer. It has been an important part of novel, which is illustrated really beautifully, out as a clinician, with over a decade as my self-care toolbox. called Pain Is Really Strange. I highly a massage therapist, before she became DM: Are there any other trainings that you recommend it. It is a very straightforward a researcher. The work that she is doing want to touch on? illustrated guide to how there is no division is in the realm of using touch to help between our mind and our body, and our educate people about their bodies so they BT: The other training I find myself using pain can be as much about how we feel can start to develop a relationship with a lot with clients is Yoga Tune Up®, which about our pain and our lives – our body their bodies. She is working with people is Jill Miller’s work. She uses therapy balls is being very effective at trying to get who have very significant chronic pain; to teach people self-myofascial release. our attention about the fact that we are people who have been traumatized; people I know that has been contentious in our discontent somehow. dealing with PTSD, substance abuse, and

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learning. The format will mostly be a conversation between me and Vanessa about being students on the path and bringing in teachers sometimes. It will be less about interviewing people about their work and more about having a conversation between two people who are very much in process, as opposed to ‘experts’. It will be of most interest to people [who] are on some sort of spiritual path. [The website] is www.blissandgrit.com. DM: Thank you so much for your time today and for all the work you put into creating Liberated Body. I am happy to join you in “making the world a more embodied place.” Brooke Thomas is a Certified Rolfer who has been practicing for over fifteen years. A self- admitted body nerd, she teaches movement and hosts the Liberated Body Podcast as a continuing-education resource for those in the manual- and movement-therapy fields. Visit www.liberatedbody.com, or visit www.newhavenrolfing.com for more information Brooke Thomas and Vanessa Scotto recording their new podcast Bliss and Grit. about Brooke and her practice. Dorothy Miller is a Certified Rolfer in Bend, With the natural-movement / natural-world interested in different things and discover Oregon, practicing since 2014. She is passionate stuff, Katy Bowman and Erwan Le Corre different ways and have different aha about healthy movement and helping people were great interviews. Katy Bowman moments. Anything that commits you to feel better in their bodies. You can find out is the founder of Nutritious Movement doing that is really powerful. There is so more about Dorothy and her practice at and Erwan Le Corre is the founder of much good work going on, and I think that www.rolfingconnections.com. MovNat. Frank Forencich also talks about we are culturally at the beginning of a sea the ‘long body’, the idea that we are not change of coming home to our bodies and discontinuous from our environments and seeing them for how sacred and amazing how our environments shape us. [Editor’s they are. note: the Frank Forencich interview can DM: Agreed. It seems like we may have be read in the November 2015 issue of come to a tipping point where all the pills this Journal.] This has changed how I see and surgeries that maybe had been ‘fixing’ the world and how I talk to and educate things before in a more duct-tape solution my clients. aren’t working all that well. People I am DM: That is all great information. Is there seeing are more open to coming back to anything else you want to add for our their body and learning things. Any last readers about having an extracurricular things you want to share about upcoming activity, like your podcast, outside of their projects you are working on? Rolfing practice? BT: I am starting another podcast with my BT: I didn’t realize how nourishing friend Vanessa Scotto, calledBliss and Grit, and revolutionary it was going to be for that is more about being on the spiritual, me personally, as a human being and a embodied path. practitioner, to do this project. I would DM: Does this stem out of the somatic encourage people to take on some kind meditation work you have been studying? of learning project, besides just going to a continuing ed workshop; something BT: Yes. Two years ago, I became engaged that requires that you go on a journey in in a practice in the Dharma Ocean lineage, a certain way. Everyone’s journey is going a Tibetan Buddhism lineage, that is my to take [him or her] somewhere different. own personal spiritual practice. This is the All I am doing is learning in public on this direction my personal and professional show. People get to hear the paths that I life is going, so I am creating this to have got interested in, but other people will get another podcast in which I can continue

www.rolf.org Structural Integration / March 2017 35 CROSS-POLLINATION What We Can Do Masculine Emotional Intelligence First we need to understand that how a man experiences and expresses an emotion may A Way to Set Men Free be different than how a woman does it. As 2 By Owen Marcus, MA, Certified Advanced Rolfer™ Alison Armstrong says, “A man is not a hairy woman who is misbehaving.” (For sure, we are more similar than different.) A Being an emotionally intelligent man is not man will shut down when asked what he is an oxymoron. Being behind the emotional feeling. We know he’s feeling something, we curve is the fate of most men. We can’t suspect he’s not aware of what he is feeling seem to connect emotionally. We try our – that’s probably true. How he frames best, but so often fail at expressing what that emotion may be different. When an we feel. We leave interactions feeling expression is linked to weakness, even in incomplete and unable to articulate our a therapeutic situation, most men will not experience to anyone. We go off to lead speak. If he is considering speaking, he’s lives of quiet emotional desperation. Men translating it to fit the model he was taught. who could understand and appreciate our For example, we are taught not to raise our destiny we don’t speak to; women who we voices. For a man that can be like telling him can confide with can’t understand why it’s not to speak. We accept a women crying; a such a struggle. man shouting scares us. I fell into developing my Masculine Without knowing it, his attempt to feel and Emotional Intelligence (MEI) because my Owen Marcus share his emotion is like a woman’s. That is relationships were failing. I was smart natural when women were his only models enough to realize that I was the one series of skills than a formulaic technique. for emotional sensitivity and expression. He consistent variable, so I started working Quickly men learned how to be present. is certainly not going to ask a male friend on it. My first approach was to try to heal They learned how to ask questions that for emotional guidance or support. He may it all by myself like I healed my dyslexia, weren’t about what was going on in their ask his wife or a woman he knows. dyspraxia, and Asperger’s Syndrome. Sure, heads rather than their hearts or bodies. there were some things I healed, such as my They learned to focus on just being rather We want our men to be emotionally present; PTSD state when I spoke to women. than fixing. we tell them how to behave. When they don’t behave the way we want, we correct But the more I tried to do the guy thing, ‘fix After watching a couple hundred men them. Men might be emotionally illiterate it’, the more frustrated I became. Gradually I go through our free groups, having a under certain circumstance, but they aren’t realized that my problem wasn’t a problem, documentary film made about us (About dumb. Men will pick up that they did not it was a lack of modeling and teaching. Men; see http://freetowin.co/men-film/), perform well, if only unconsciously. With Unlike my mental ‘problems’, with this and starting a business teaching other men performance being important for men, our challenge it was important to recognize how to start and lead their own free groups, failure is another arrow in our backs. After that I had companions. I realized other men we figured out how to teach MEI. a while, men give up. struggled with emotions and connecting, too. As men we all share not being taught Key Observations I’m not saying women are to blame or that what works for men. Once men begin to Ever since we left the format of the tribe men are innocent victims. Again, it’s the connect with other men, they realize that 10,000 years ago, how boys were trained to culture we inherited. Supporting men to how they feel, express, and connect can be experience and express emotions changed. learn what they never got to learn is the different than how woman do. A woman Two hundred years ago, when we left most powerful and freeing support for all will appreciate a man’s unique orientation the farm for the factory, men lost male involved. When women aren’t around, and to emotions when she encounters a man modeling and teaching. With the fathers men interact more honestly with other men, who is connected to his MEI. away at work, mothers became virtual they start modeling and getting cues from someone other than a woman. Twenty years ago, I went to my first men’s single parents raising the kids. Gradually, group, frightened that I would have to what it is to be a man emotionally skewed Men need to express with their bodies. As 1 show up vulnerable. My expectation was toward a feminine perspective. Rolfers we all know too well how bound correct, but I wasn’t alone. Every man had For generations, our emotional instructors up men’s bodies are. In spite of that, men fear about being vulnerable and authentic. were our mothers, female teachers, female express with their bodies. We take action. Trained not to sit and emote, we become Ten years ago, I took the traditional model counselors, and female partners. No, this is an emotional ADHD man when we try to of men’s groups and reinvented it. I created not a conspiracy. It’s women and men doing do it the way we were taught. One way a format where the focus wasn’t on doing what they had to do. We never stepped we can support men is to encourage our any particular technique, it was on taking back to look at the impact this has had male clients to find ways to move their men deeper into their own experience. I on men. With 90% of the therapists being emotional energy through their bodies. We created a few processes that facilitate going trained today being women, the traditional have all seen the bound-up athletes. I’m not deep; where it’s more about applying a institutions are not changing the paradigm. talking about using exercise as an escape.

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I’m suggesting getting the man to go for 3. Deep purpose What Men Get walks in nature, take a yoga class, or take • Having a mission in life We all know the biggest catalyst for men up a sport that is new to him that will cause • Living beyond self him to use his body differently. Doing his to look at changing is a relationship. We • Allowing your unique creativity to get men coming to our men’s groups and normal activity will tend to reinforce his manifest physical-emotional pattern. Taking up a trainings because their partners sent them. • Serving through your purpose new activity that is slower and in a different In most cases, men are stepping up because setting fosters more awareness and new • Living your own life they see the need to grow. We come to this movement patterns. • Following deep desire(s) that give you scared; performing in an emotional arena deep pleasure was not where we exceled. Men run from therapy. So many men feel • Passion follows purpose ganged up on by a female therapist. Even Once a man joins one of our free groups, he quickly sees an entirely new model of male therapists intimidate men. Men don’t 4. Holding space communication occurring with the men like to do things that we can’t win at. Feeling • Supporting others no matter what’s in the group. Men are vulnerable and handicapped emotionally, we see therapy occurring in your own life real. They aren’t speaking some new age as another loss in the emotional game. It’s a • Standing for what is best for another crisis that gets a man to see a therapist. If the gobbledygook – they are speaking directly • Speaking and hearing the truth therapist is good and the man brave, huge about what they feel. He immediately things can come from it. Seeing therapy • Holding space for your deepest experiences the brotherhood of the group. as the only solution can shame and trap purpose Men are intimate in a way only men can many men. • Providing and serving emotionally be. It’s obvious men care for each other in a real way. They are kind, but honest. A man • Keeping healthy boundaries, saying Framing their emotions as stress and a may get mad at another man, but he doesn’t “No” and backing it up physiological phenomenon usually gives attack the man, he simply speaks about his the man a frame he can use. Explaining to • Creating a container for the relationship own feelings. him how his body and his emotions might • Fostering community and brotherhood be having a mini-PTSD experience tells him Quickly a new man realizes that a man 5. Assertive vulnerability that his mind is not screwed up. It’s his body is honored for taking emotional risk in • Emotional expression with strength in doing what all bodies do under stress. and out of the group. A man who never vulnerability expressed his anger and gets angry at a Traits of Masculine • In the face of fear man in the group is encouraged to express. Emotional Intelligence • The openness of vulnerability with the Years of repression come out. Not only is the strength of commitment release of that pent-up tension significant, From observing men, and feeling the need • Expressing while holding the space for seeing that he is not shamed for his anger to create a new model that works for men, is a substantial reframe. I created the five MQ (Masculine Quotient) yourself and others Traits.3 Briefly, these are the key aspects of • Leading with your vulnerability The skills a man first sees then practices in the the five traits: • Not collapsing group rapidly transfer to his relationships. He finds himself communicating to his • Risking with vulnerability the 1. Emotional entrepreneur – orientation wife or partner in ways he never imagined. expression of emotions and wants for towards action When she is upset, he listens rather than • The ability to initiate something bigger • Willingness to take responsible risks to succeed • Feel and express as you act • Your actions come from your deep purpose • Take a stand that is bigger than you • Dance with chaos 2. Having a person’s back • Love through the action of taking risks for another • Taking a stand with another person or for another person • “It’s not that others have your back, it’s that you have theirs.” • Honor is love for a man • Having the ‘back’ of a relationship (being willing to fight for relationship success)

www.rolf.org Structural Integration / March 2017 37 CROSS-POLLINATION checking out or attacking. Through having One of my reasons for starting a men’s Owen Marcus, MA, founded the Sandpoint a safe place to feel and express in the group, group was to offer my male clients support Men’s Group and the nonprofit Men Corps. He a man learns what he was never taught. He for their Rolfing changes. I know of trains men around the world on how to start starts having deep conversations with his other health-care practitioners, including and lead a group through his company Free to kids. Rather than just passing by them as therapists, who use a men’s group to Win. His blog www.owenmarcus.com offers free he leaves the house, he sits down and asks support their clients. It makes their resources for men. them about their lives. work easier. Resources Ever since women started being the By providing a new model for men for their sole teachers of boys and men, women emotions, we allow men to relax into feeling If you or a client have any questions, please became the responsible party for emotional and expressing their emotions, something contact me. I would be glad to direct you or him communication and the relationship itself. few men would claim proficiency in doing. towards the best resources. Below I list some With men only being trained by women, Supporting men to join a men’s group you can consider. we default to their expertise. Because this organically teaches men this new model • I am working on a free Google map also gradually escalated over the years, while providing a place for them to practice. at www.freetowin.co/mens-groups-2 women don’t feel the full impact of being For us as Rolfers, a group can serve the where a man can insert his zip code to the one responsible. Women I don’t know social and emotional needs of our clients find a group near him. will come up to me on the street to thank me in ways we can’t in a session. For some ® for what the group did for their partners. men, relating to a female Rolfer is exactly • The nonprofit ManKind Project has a They speak about how they changed, how what they need. For others, they need to network of groups: www.mkp.org. they fell back in love. These women often develop an ability to relate to men. Like • We started a nonprofit that gives a free mention how their relationships are no many female psychotherapists, a female set of protocols to men for starting a longer so much work. After centuries of Rolfer can encourage a man to participate group: www.mencorps.org. women getting used to a certain role, when in a men’s group (see Resources, below) to a woman doesn’t have to do all the work, provide the masculine support he needs. • We also have more services available at it’s like living in a new country where life www.freetowin.co for starting a group. The emotional changes Rolfing SI produces is easier. go a long way to having men be emotionally Endnotes literate. Breaking up the old emotional Offering Resources 1. I explain this in my TEDx talk, “What structure and models puts a man on the 10,000 Years of Progress Cost Men” (see When you see a man struggling, suggest road to being his own man. Giving him http://tinyurl.com/OwenMarcusTEDx). he find a men’s group or start one. A good other men to help teach him what he never group will give him a place to release, learn, was taught will escalate his progress. 2. See http://understandmen.com. and grow that won’t strain his relationships. No longer will Masculine Emotional 3. Visit www.mqtest.org for an MQ Test One of the benefits of the group is that for Intelligence be an oxymoron. the most part, their relationships are in the where you are scored on your Masculine group. They don’t sleep with or work with Quotient and given a book on how to raise their fellow group members. the score.

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gasp, or cheer, I found that people would Melding Interdisciplinary Fields engage with me in performance; and they were changed by me. Change is powerful. Performing Arts, Bodywork, Psychology, and Teaching Over the years, I also found I had a talent to act because everyone told me so. Listen By Heather L. Corwin, PhD, MFA, Certified Rolfer™ to people. If two people share a positive observation of your talent, they are being The Pieces of My Puzzle kind. If hundreds tell you over time and People are diverse. Lives are complex. your heart soars with excitement at the Interests diverge and intertwine as people knowledge you have talent, pursue that gain wisdom and experience. This shows road. This quickening of the heartbeat is up in peoples’ lives through how they the body’s way of telling you that you are educate themselves, where they live, and revealing a deeper truth about yourself. what career(s) they pursue over a lifetime. Following your bliss, as Joseph Campbell Personally, my convergence of all of these would say, will make you happy. Listen areas can be defined as a through line to yourself. (theme) in my life, or goal, that stems from Theatre artists require years of training to helping people discover who they are and how develop the skills necessary to project the they operate in the world. My catchy way voice; adapt to any character physically to say this is helping people become more and emotionally; learn behaviors and comfortable in the skin they’re in. I do not mannerisms of historical periods; and Dr. Heather Corwin think I am unique in having a wide range of understand and execute with any success interests in my life. The key to success when methods of actor training. What’s more, to Acting on stage has been dear to me as far a person embodies a span of interests and become a great actor, one needs to expand back as I can remember. The kindergarten knowledge is to be able to link the interests imagination and focus. Actors spend time hula dance when I was on stage front in such a way that value can be mined. In with scripts across the ages to historically and center began my fascination with this article, we will explore the disciplines understand the great playwrights who performing, and it grew from there. The of performing, bodywork, psychology, told stories that withstood the test of draw was not attention – though that and teaching. Then, we will examine how time. Reading, traveling, and trying new certainly did not hurt my attraction to the areas combine to form a fulfilling and things are all helpful tools for the actor acting. Rather, what drew me (what I sustainable career. Lastly, I will suggest how to expand understanding of culture and can now articulate) was the ability to a person might discover the connections how people live differently with unique make others feel something. Whether my to manifest a diverse and personally choices and hierarchies in society. Actors performance would make people laugh, cry, driven livelihood. are taught to identify impulses informed by sensations that lead to action and understanding of self and wants/needs. In art, we examine relationships and the destructive mechanisms human conditions can supply to supplant happiness. Hamartia, the Greek word for ‘fatal flaw’, is one element Aristotle names as necessary for a tragedy to occur and it is found in the hero of the play. Another vital element is hubris, which is defined by Merriam- Webster as ‘a foolish amount of pride’; it always leads to the downfall of the hero. These ideas have stuck with me through life because art imitates life. Regardless, the most important element of actor training that seems to impact my life in all spaces at all times is the skill actors work on to be ‘in the moment’. Being present is necessary for all sorts of authentic and meaningful interactions. This vital skill helped me discover how to fully make contact with others through touch in a healing capacity. Most notably, this skill is what brought me to bodywork and Rolfing® Structural Directing Lysistrata. Photo by Nagham Webhe. Integration (SI).

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cognitive, empathetic, and neurological are primary. In truth, becoming a ‘talk therapist’ was never appealing to me. Rather, research is a way I can use my knowledge of psychology and study people to explore avenues for people to change. Cultivating awareness is a large part of psychology, and also of teaching – another of my endeavors. Where psychology examines how people exist in the world, teaching helps people discover who they wish to be in the world. Teaching is an effort of love. I’ve been a student the majority of my life, and I have always found that the most inspiring teachers share their deep appreciation and value of the material. I have a deep love for acting, and sharing this love through teaching brings me great joy – hence, my joy is twofold. I am able to share a skill I love and guide the student within the realm we explore, which is actor training. An additional element to great teaching is the ability to arouse the Heather Corwin and Wyatt Fenner as Electra and Orestes. process from the student, shining light on the student’s potentials and joys, rather than having the student mimic my process Bodywork is not simply a healing art form information that intrigue. Yet, at the core or become a replica of me. This is where that my clients are able to enjoy. The act of all of this work is the simple fact that high-school learning, which is primarily of being in the moment with my clients when I was growing up, my mom loved regurgitation of facts (a valuable endeavor), gives my very active brain the space to for me to rub her back. She loved it when differs from college learning, which ideally slow down and let whatever other things I would soothe her aches and pains, and I integrates ideas to produce ownership of might be happening in my life fade into the loved helping her feel better. My work is critical thought. background. The therapeutic relationship I infused with the simple truth that I really practice with my clients is one that focuses love to make people feel good. This led me The final area of teaching I find present on their experience now and how we can to the idea that if I can make people feel in university – and in Rolfing sessions make this existence more vibrant and physically well, and if I could perhaps help – has to do with seeing the student or easeful. Just thinking about an intention, people understand what motivates their client as they are and as who they have like helping others exist more vibrantly, behavior, I could help transform their lives. the potential to become. In a romantic calms me as I work because I have a focus Here enters the field of psychology. relationship, it is a bad idea to fall in love and purpose for what I’m doing that can with potential, because, as we have noted Much overlap occurs between addressing only be measured by the client’s experience. earlier concerning psychology, people do the mind and dealing with the body: so I tend to mirror and reflect energetically and not often change. However, as a teacher and much of the therapeutic work Rolfers do has verbally what I witness to add clarity to the as a Rolfer, I am invested in the idea that psychological underpinnings. The difficulty moment-to-moment work. How a person you have the ability to change and that you in what we do as Rolfers lives in the fact exists in this moment is also revealed in how are with me precisely because you wish to that many people are not psychologically the body physically presents. The body is change. The change can be in the form of healthy and ready to change even if their the map for our journey through wellness; knowledge, ways of being, ways of moving, bodies are presenting with pain suggesting anatomy is the key. and/or ways of understanding how you change is necessary. This is where other exist in the world. Anatomy is endlessly fascinating to me. skills can converge to aid in helping others. Exactly where muscles exist is always Yet psychology is not a pursuit for the feint One Person’s Trajectory unique to the person. Which muscles will of heart. Considering the multitude of ways be particularly outstanding to me? Will people can suffer in life and family, the lists The ways in which I have pursued my career this person’s psoas be short or connect to a and lists of conditions that stymie people’s include formal education and experiential place other than anatomy books suggest? interactions in the world, the task of helping work (doing): earning undergraduate and How does this person’s point of view on the others in this field can be daunting. graduate degrees in theatre; earning a world impact how she lives in her body? As PhD in clinical psychology with a somatic Fundamentally, I do not believe that people I work, I often have so many more questions concentration; being a massage therapist for can change unless a variety of personal than I have answers. Bodyworkers are eighteen years; becoming and practicing as and physical resources are available. always ready for a mystery, because a Rolfer. All prepared me for my current role These resources are monetary, but also the bodies always present interesting bits of as the Head of Movement for Actor Training

40 Structural Integration / March 2017 www.rolf.org CROSS-POLLINATION at Northern Illinois University (NIU). The research I do looks at how performing arts impact emotional intelligence. What does all of this mean? To me, it means that I love working with people to discover what they’re good at and what they want to be good at. My journey along my path was slowed at times because others did not always see the path, even if I spelled it out for them. Worse, when I lived in certain areas of the United States, bodywork as a profession was akin to admitting I was a prostitute. (Alas, that is a whole other article.) I bring this up because I want to acknowledge the fact that some people are thrown off their paths because of cultural stigmas that have nothing to do with reality. We are bodyworkers. When I was studying theatre as an undergraduate at Millikin University, I took a stage-combat class. My instructor, Robin McFarquhar, had a terrific knowledge of kinesiology and anatomy and I was rapt. In a fortunate conversation with him, he suggested I investigate Rolfing Movement Class at Northern Illinois University, Kris Downing (mask) and Shawn Thomas. Photo by Heather L. Corwin. SI. Although I did not seek the work out immediately, I did experience the Ten Series at the age of twenty-three, and this forever of people I respected, and on the fact that Margaret Eginton, the Head of Movement changed my understanding of aging and Redmond is a tremendously gifted actress. Training. Thus began my dissection of pain in the body. My dance minor in college I auditioned for all of the programs I was how to teach others to work on awareness had made me think pain was an inevitable considering, gaining insight into the types in a practical way, as well as how to part of life that would worsen as I aged. of people I would be working with as support students in their personal evolution Chronic foot pain from dancing and neck students and as teachers. Astoundingly, FSU/ through physical expression. Asolo was the only place I recall hearing pain from a car accident seemed to be my Graduating with my MFA, I needed to laughter. The people who auditioned me lot for life until Rolfing SI intervened. After be able to make a living, and I needed a were kind and perceptive and inspired me the Ten Series, I no longer had pain in my break from acting. Rolfing SI seemed the as we worked. Jim Wise, who was the first- big toe and my neck pain had decreased. next logical step. I took it. Then it was back year acting teacher, took the time to have My story is not unique. At the time, I and forth. After becaming a Rolfer, I was a conversation with me. We are both from was a massage therapist, so my attention an assistant professor of theatre in Ohio. Chicago and we hit it off. He made me laugh went to considering becoming a Rolfer in I loved my students and colleagues, but many times, and I saw that in this program conjunction with an acting career. the man I loved lived in Los Angeles, so I would be able to work hard but not take I quit academia and developed a thriving But my life shifted again when I worked on myself too seriously. a production of W;t at Tennessee Repertory Rolfing practice there. But I missed full-time Theatre (TRT), where the Artistic Director I was not invited to the FSU/Asolo program university teaching, so sought out adjunct at the time was David Grapes, who was but was put on the wait list. I’m not put off positions at Pasadena City College and close friends with the head of Florida State that easily, so I moved to Florida ready to Azusa Pacific University. begin my training the following year. I was University (FSU) / Asolo Conservatory. Education helps me discover ideas and not going to take ‘no’ for an answer. I didn’t Better yet, one of my cast mates in W;t was ways of approaching material. I decided even make the wait list the following year, Barbara Redmond, who at that time was a PhD would be fun and help me reach but I did get into an original musical with Head of Acting at FSU / Asolo Conservatory. my goal of regaining a full-time teaching American Stage based on Shakespeare’s Although FSU/Asolo was in the top ten for position. I spent five years earning my Love’s Labour’s Lost. All of the FSU/Asolo MFA acting programs, I had never heard PhD in clinical psychology with a somatic faculty came because there was an alumnus of it. I was applying to Yale, Harvard, concentration, again weaving the threads in the show, and one night I had a note in University of Delaware, and Rutgers. of my interests. My dissertation is titled, my trailer asking me to phone Brant Pope, Professor Redmond was not interested in “The Relationship between Emotional the head of the conservatory. It could only conversation with me, so I considered her Intelligence and Sanford Meisner mean one thing – I was going to be asked ‘antisocial’ and gave her plenty of space. Actor Training.” I assumed I would not like to be in her to join the incoming class. As the pieces come together, I am now an program, yet added FSU/Asolo to my list During the program, my persistence led interdisciplinary academic with the ability of places to audition based on the advice to my becoming one of the first interns for

www.rolf.org Structural Integration / March 2017 41 CROSS-POLLINATION to produce research – not a skill many When you have answers to these questions, Los Angeles; her MFA in theatre from Florida actors have. I recently found my academic you may not be able to make a change State University / Asolo Conservatory; and home at NIU where I serve as the Head immediately; but you can map out a plan her BFA in theatre from Millikin University. of Movement for Actor Training. NIU is to address what you need over time. She has practiced Rolfing SI since 2005 and a research university, so I also have the practiced massage for eighteen years. Currently, I’ve also learned that I have to pick one support to conduct research and expand Dr. Corwin is the Head of Movement for Actor thing at a time to work on until I have contributions to the fields of acting and Training at Northern Illinois University. the courage and ability to chuck what psychology – a delight and honor. At the She is married to Douglas Clayton and has a I’m doing and boldly change my life – same time, I work with graduates and daughter, Cassandra, who is in kindergarten. which for me has included quitting a job undergraduates to grow their physical and Dr. Corwin’s research focuses on performing or moving across country. Not everyone psychological connection with their whole arts training and how that impacts the skills has the ability to do that or would want person. We play, we imagine, we extend of emotional intelligence. Find our more at to, so you have to determine your bottom mind and body, we sweat, we laugh, we www.BodybyHeather.com. lines and what you’re willing to negotiate cry, and we evolve. This work is the stuff for what you need. This process is what for which I am meant to be on this earth works for me: continually assessing my life, and makes my heart happy – which is how thereby fostering a personally driven and I know that I am living right for me. satisfying life. Your How Does Compromise is often necessary, but acting Puzzle Come Together? from self-knowledge you will discover a The way to guide yourself towards a path that can join the many skills you have successful convergence of the pieces of with the career you create. Not everyone your own life’s puzzle is to continually ask will understand or appreciate the work yourself the questions: you put into your life to manifest your goals, but you will know you are living • Does this make me happy? the life you crave. If or when the hunger • Should I be doing something else? subsides, transfer those skills to a new hunger that is waiting for you in your heart. • How does my body feel when I’m doing To paraphrase, go boldly in the direction of this work? your dreams! • What other type of person do I need Heather L. Corwin earned her PhD in clinical around to make this better? psychology with a somatic concentration from the Chicago School of Professional Psychology,

Heather Corwin (left) acting in an Asolo Theatre Festival production of The Imaginary Invalid with Dean Anthony (center) and Lucianne LaJoie (right).

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essential nature of an animal just by looking Human Doings of Human Beings at it. These authors’ inquiries are scientific and philosophical, but also aesthetic. And A Conversation with Heidi Massa they’re fundamentally Aristotelian – both the authors and the questions of form By Anne Hoff, Certified Advanced Rolfer™ and Heidi Massa, Certified Advanced they’re exploring. So there’s SI again – and Rolfer and Rolf Movement Practitioner then I went to University of Chicago Law School and became an attorney focused Anne Hoff: Heidi, you’re active as both a on complex business litigation. That was a Rolfer and a lawyer. Aren’t those radically full-time gig for nearly ten years. different professions? AH: How did SI come into the picture as Heidi Massa: Not really. Right after formal study? finishing my training as a Rolfer, I HM: That’s funny – and also too long of mentioned the new career direction to a a story here – but it’s always been in the medical psychiatrist I know. His astute background. In our culture, anybody reply: “It doesn’t matter. Either way, you with a big left brain who can string a straighten people out.” sentence together is shunted into being an AH: So – do you agree with him? information worker – regardless of whether that suits the animal. At one point, the need HM: Absolutely. The main idea that informs for physical labor and manual work became how I practice both law and Rolfing® clear to me, so the question was what kind. Structural Integration (SI) is rectification. That means moving from disorder to Heidi Massa Now even though my law practice never had order; from disharmony to agreement and anything to do with bodies – no personal congruence. It’s about putting things right. injury, and no medical malpractice – I had That’s just what I do. these laminated anatomical charts behind my credenza and staff members would AH: What other concepts from law come come to my office and say, “Heidi, I hurt over to your Rolfing practice? my whatziz-whoziz . . . what should I do?” HM: Rectification isn’t a concept from And they’d always want me to touch them. the law. It’s an aesthetic that informs my Maybe it’s atavistic. My dad was a gifted particular legal practice. It can also inform orthopedic surgeon who thought surgery SI, architecture, interior design, gardening, was usually a bad idea – but he’d tell you writing, and a host of other fields one might he was “the best cast man in Denver,” think of – but those are a few I happen to and probably was because he grooved on care about. bone setting and other minimally invasive AH: What did you do first – law or SI? restoration techniques. In fact, he taught in the medical school there how to set complex HM: I think SI came first. My mom tells a Anne Hoff fractures by feel without cutting the patient. story about my first real words: as an infant, And when there was no choice but to cut, I was crawling around on a floor of age- world through language. So even as a kid, it was always, “Take it back to where the degraded 12x12 tiles. I stuck the pointed end I knew I wanted to be a lawyer. body’s still good and build out from there.” of a pencil into the tiny space where four tiles met, and when the pencil stood straight up, AH: What did you study in college? AH: I’d like to take a step back to those I exclaimed, “How nice!” So there you have fields you said can be informed by an HM: Officially, political philosophy – but it – an infant’s recognition of support in the aesthetic of rectification. These areas can at the University of Chicago in the 1970s field of gravity. By grade school, they say, I be pretty subjective. How can you go about they let you study pretty much whatever was remarking to friends and acquaintances ‘putting things right’ in something like you wanted. For me, one thread was the about posture – stuff like, “Why are you design? Isn’t what’s ‘right’ more a question purposive nature of living beings, including always looking at the ground when you of taste? humans. In that regard, two modern walk? Why don’t you stand up straight and authors stand out. Philosopher Erwin HM: Not at all. Taste is what someone look where you’re going?” Straus (1952) wrote a remarkable essay on happens to like – not what’s good or AH: So when did law come into the picture? the meaning of the upright posture and what’s right. Whether I prefer blueberry what it tells us about how humans should pie to cherry pie is a question of personal HM: Early grade school. Childhood was a be in the word. Zoologist Adolf Portmann taste – and the answer, whatever it is, says chaotic experience for me; and very early (1952) describes his book Animal Forms exactly nothing about whether fruit pie is on I discovered the organizing power of and Patterns as a study of the appearance of good food. We like lots of stuff we wouldn’t language. As a kid I got preternaturally animals. He explores the meaning of animal call good in the sense of being excellent, good at language. Law, like philosophy, gestalt, and of what we can learn about the advisable or suitable. is an instantiation of that – organizing the

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AH: Okay – but it seems hard to call any AH: So there are limitations and you work clients. If we don’t keep this idea somewhere one thing more ‘right’ than another in an within those to get the best you can? in the background, our work might still aesthetic sense, don’t you think? be helpful at some level – but it won’t be HM: Or the best they can – exactly. particularly interesting and certainly won’t HM: I disagree. There’s often more than one AH: What’s your tactical approach? be very meaningful. way to be right, but there are myriad ways to be wrong. Just walk down the street and HM: Show and tell: I show – in the sense of AH: So with SI we are talking about the you see wrong all over all the time – but you shining a light on what’s happening – and human species. How do you address each see right only once in a while. the client tells. Once the client observes client’s unique situation and attributes? and perceives his own experience, telling Last month I was planting a parkway HM: You mean moving from what kind it – putting it into language – crystallizes bed outside my Mies van der Rohe condo to which one? From a human to this it. So language is a self-organizing tool. building. The bed has a tree in the middle of particular human? The conversation with the client is a give- it. It was just diagonal lines of plants – two and-take, an iterative process, the same AH: Exactly. purple and one white, over and over – but kind of Socratic process I learned in college, because it’s outside a Mies building (Mies HM: Most of the time, though not always, the same kind of conversation I’d have in began his career as a bricklayer), the lines the client has some particular focus or theme prepping a witness. had to be oriented strictly with respect to that we can get him to notice and articulate. abstract space. A neighbor came to help AH: So your Sl process is similar to what Maybe the client repeatedly solves the same and installed the plants where I’d placed you do as a lawyer? problem or gets over the same obstacle, as them – but in her mind the lines oriented it shows up in different flavors or guises. HM: Sure – in many ways it’s the same on the tree. Her section looked pretty cool Maybe the client continually instantiates, thing. As a lawyer, I take in a big tangled – it had a curved surface like a Grant Wood in a variety of different situations, a single mess of data and put out a clean, coherent painting – but it had to come out because in archetype or ideal. In other words, maybe narrative. It takes an instinct for the jugular, that context it just wasn’t right. the client is a one-trick pony – and there’s which sounds a lot like, “Find the most a good argument to be made that each of The point is to have the ability to recognize obvious restriction and go from there.” It us is just that, that each of us really does a right option and the willingness to also takes an eye for the incongruent, for only one thing, but in many ways – like a choose one. At the margins, it becomes an where the story doesn’t add up, which is the behavioral fractal. ethical question. same idea we use in body reading. In both fields, the points of incongruence show you AH: Is the idea to help clients escape AH: So how does it play out in the conflict, and working through the conflict, repeating patterns? To develop more tricks? therapeutic relationship with your SI rectifying it, reveals what’s true. clients? Are you defining what is ‘right’ HM: No, because if we tried that, we’d fail. for the client, imposing it from outside? And that circles back to language as an There’s not necessarily any choice in the Wouldn’t that be authoritarian? organizing principle: whether I’m working matter. We’re not only particular human with a Rolfing client, a deposition witness, beings, but also particular human doings – HM: That would be – but that’s the opposite a space to be designed, or even an author and the doing is inseparable from the being. of what I do: I tell every one of them on the of a Journal article [Editor’s note: Heidi The thing is, when a person recognizes first walkabout, “You’re the one who’s lived has been on our editorial team for more his one trick, it’s a very powerful lens for in that body for however many years and than fifteen years], there’s nothing more detecting both opportunities and pitfalls. knows what right is.” So there’s nothing important than articulation of what’s right authoritarian in the sense of me telling the We can use me as an example. Since my – or to say it another way, what’s true. “Tell client how things should be. In fact, when one trick is rectification, I’m drawn to me what” and “Tell me why” – asked in that the client asks me if some structural or opportunities to straighten stuff out – order – have enormous power to get to the functional thing is ‘right’, my response is, particularly by guiding others to articulate essence of things. And when we do get to “Why ask me?” their truths, which is what I do as a lawyer it, we can feel it. and as a Rolfer. Beyond that, in our SI AH: So the client has the answer? AH: You mentioned that at the margins, the community, for instance, I look for colleagues HM: Of course. My job is to guide the client aesthetic we’re discussing can be an ethical with great ideas who have a hard time to find at least one instantiation ofright and question. What do you mean by that? getting them on paper, and I help them to do to recognize it. that; and I serve on the Ethics and Business HM: Ethics is about how to be in the world. Practices Committee at the Rolf Institute® AH: How do you get clients to that place? We can’t go there without first answering, – which is the best job going, by the way, “Be what?” Being an upright human makes HM: The starting point is helping the client because its process, which I wrote back in demands very different from being, say, get who and what he is – as an upright 1997, requires getting things totally straight. a lizard. The demands are inherent in human being in general and a unique each of us as instantiations of the form we On the flip side, knowing my trick lets me individual in particular. Then I guide the call human. SI is all about this. As our stand back and recognize that just because I client to find ways to be more right in the colleague Dr. Karl Humiston would say, can put something right doesn’t mean I have sense of being more his better self. Of course, there’s a blueprint of perfection in every to. I don’t have to jump into every steaming where any one of us is at any particular time human being, and as Rolfers we evoke vat of silly string in my path and untangle it. is somewhere on an asymptote with respect clearer instantiation of it in each of our to the ideal of being rightly. AH: You try to pick your battles?

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HM: Yes. I’m trying to stay out of those that HM: Notice what you do over and over. The engineers, mechanics, and others in aren’t worth the aggravation. Discern the patterns, draw the analogies, Hephaestus’ camp – bless their hearts, I’d and find the universals of which the be a wreck without their fine work – stay AH: You called the Ethics Committee “the particulars are instantiations. Or else just pretty quiet. They don’t need much external best job going.” Why is that? ask your oldest and closest friends. validation, so they rarely bloviate or toot HM: We’re the fire department without the their horns or otherwise make an issue of AH: Would our profession benefit from sirens. Because fortunately we don’t have their worldview. more of us making that inquiry? much to do in the Rolfing community, hardly We do have a few shrinks and shamans anybody has even heard of us; but when HM: I should think so, since making it among us who believe that SI is a form needed, it’s a dirty job that somebody has involves discriminating the personal from of somatic psychology, emotional release, to do and we’re remarkably good at doing the general and cleaning up our perception whatever. Two of my instructors in what it. The Ethics Committee exists to protect and language accordingly. was the precursor to today’s Phase I were the Rolf Institute – period. But the Institute Take the adage, “If the only thing in your from that tribe. Just because one might is protected when its members behave toolbox is a hammer, everything looks like like to practice psychology or shamanism well – which helps both the members and a nail” and turn it inside out: “If what you or induce catharses or visions or whatever their clients, and at the same time protects do is drive nails, then everything in your through SI doesn’t mean that’s what SI is – the public. Totally aligned interests. With toolbox looks like a hammer” – to you. and anyone who says it is will just scare off rectification, everybody wins. After my dad closed his human restoration the poor guy whose back has been hurting AH: We’ve talked about helping clients practice of orthopedic surgery, he started for twenty years and he just wants it to to recognize their tricks, as you call it. But treating rare books. In the bookbinding stop already. what about practitioners? Should we be shop at the back of the house, he still used There are lots of other examples, but those identifying our own? the old familiar tools – the scalpels, clamps, are a few. Meanwhile I won’t insist to our scissors, suture, whatever – but since his HM: Absolutely. First off, to know your colleagues or to the public that SI is an new patients didn’t benefit much from trick – or raison d’être, or calling, if anyone existential and ontological inquiry into how plaster, he added a nipping press and some would prefer one of those terms – is to know to be more fully human in our bodies – even other book-specific stuff to his restorer’s your sweet spot, which helps you choose though that’s what my clients and I do. tool box. My point is that the surgical tools the clients you can help the most and refer remained surgical tools – even though he AH: In closing, how is this interview an out the rest. So when the client’s big focus deployed them to restore books. example of what you do? is to improve his triathlon time, I accept that his concern just doesn’t interest me and And one time my elderly and way-too-dotty HM: Open a door to cleaning up an send him to someone else. Everybody wins. dentist needed a smooth bit for burnishing existential discussion and I’ll walk right a gold restoration. When he could find through it. Just can’t help myself . . . Thanks But more important, when we know what only regular barbed drill bits, he ran out for the opportunity! it is we really do, we can distinguish what and returned with a frigging carpenter’s we are doing, on the one hand, from how AH: Thank you! hammer, of all things, and announced, we’re doing it, on the other hand. Now for “This will work fine!” Imagine . . . Even Heidi Massa, a Brazil-trained Certified Advanced our readers here, even though the what is though he used the hammer as a dental Rolfer and Rolf Movement Practitioner, has been personal and individual, the how of SI is the implement – if only to burn the barbs off guiding the somatic adventures of the discerning, same for all of us: it’s basically a discipline the regular drill bit so he could use it for the curious, and the brave since 1994. She has of working in the connective-tissue matrix burnishing – the hammer stayed a hammer. served on the Rolf Institute’s Ethics and Business and the perceptual systems to improve Practices Committee for twenty years, and been structure and function in gravity. So when So, whatever the practitioner’s particular an editor for this Journal since 2000. While that psychiatrist told me that I’d “straighten trick happens to be, SI remains SI and Chicago is home to both her Rolfing and complex people out,” he was commenting on what doesn’t morph into something else by virtue business litigation practices, as well as to her I, Heidi, would be doing as a Rolfer – and of sitting in that guy’s toolbox. architectural and interior and landscape design not on the nature of the work itself. AH: How would that idea affect how we interests, Heidi travels frequently to Colorado, AH: Why is that distinction important? talk about and think about SI? where she maintains a fine pre-War home in impeccably original style, hikes in the mountains, HM: Because each of us needs some HM: Well for starters, maybe Rolfers who and dances the tango. modesty and sense of place. We need to see themselves as ‘healers’ could spare avoid conflating our personal shtick with us their insistence that SI is a species of Anne Hoff is a Certified Advanced Rolfer in the work itself. Otherwise there will be a healthcare – or, God help us, ‘alternative Seattle, Washington. big mess . . . medicine’ – before they bring a super- sized ration of regulatory crap down on Bibliography AH: . . . that you’ll be tempted to straighten our heads. That they do their health-care out? Portmann, A. 1952 Animal Forms and worker’s or healer’s trick through SI doesn’t Patterns: A Study of the Appearance of Animals. HM: You got it. make SI ‘health care’. And maybe the ones New York: Schocken Books. who come from massage could refrain from AH: How would I identify my trick? calling SI a type of ‘deep-tissue bodywork’. Straus, E. 1952 (Jan). “The Upright Posture.” ‘Bodywork’ is what they do – not what SI is. The Psychiatric Quarterly 26(1):529-561.

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of Rolfing SI, closure guides my work in Closure letting me know when to stop and let things be. It is just as important as what I choose By Noel Poff, Certified Rolfer™ to do and how much of it. I keep closure When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves. in mind, not just at the tenth session of a Ten Series but in every session, in every Viktor Frankl intervention, and in every touch. In every Author’s note: This was written in August 2016 and read to my graduating class. experience there is a beginning, a middle, and and end that forms a completeness, and form loves completeness. Rolfing SI is not I just finished my third ever Ten Series with when there is so much more that could be just an art of doing, it is an art of not doing. a client from the public. The completion done? Am I ever finished? of these sessions goes along with the Noel Poff currently lives and runs his practice I guess we could say that nothing is ever completion of my Basic Training at the Rolf Lowcountry Rolfing in Charleston, SC. He first entirely finished. There is always more to Institute® of Structural Integration (SI) and came to the field of bodywork through personal do. Even with more to do we could also say the end of a life chapter beginning more training and massage therapy in 2005. He that there comes a point where we don’t than a year ago. It has been a long time completed massage school and became a licensed have to do anymore. Take something like coming and it will be a short time going practitioner in 2007. Subsequently, he went on Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa: sure, it could have back home. to study philosophy as both as an undergrad been added to – but I think the general and graduate student at the University of With all of this and other big changes in consensus is that is was best that “Leo” South Carolina. Feeling more compelled to work mind, I have been thinking a lot about the left it as it was when he realized he was with movement, Noel eventually found it most word ‘closure’. Being a natural lingerer I done. There are points when we know we accessible through Rolfing SI. He completed never really had a knack for ending things. are finished as creators, and time is not his Basic Training at the Rolf Institute in In most settings I kind of just waited until always the determining factor. Time is Boulder, Colorado in August of 2016. For more I was the last person to go so I didn’t have indeed influential in how we finish things, information about Noel you can visit his website to say goodbye: I just wanted to hold the but there are still a lot of ways in which the www.lowcountryrolfing.com or contact him at space and keep holding it until the people developing art of closure can make that [email protected]. who left returned. The same applies to limitation seemingly nonexistent. how I operate throughout the day: I just We need closure. We need it not just as a keep doing things until I pass out because means to navigate personal relationships I don’t want to end the day, I want to hold but also as a means to navigate through onto it and make it last as long as possible many of our daily practices. Even things so there are more opportunities for people, like going to bed require a certain form places, and things to continue adding to of closure that allows us to let go of the my experience of it. It is a bit tiring to say current day thereby enabling us to wake the least but oftentimes feels rewarding. So up for the next. even though I’ve been thinking a lot about closure, I still don’t believe I understand There are places where I have wanted it or how it applies to my life. But some to remain forever and moments I never wisdom began brewing within me when wanted to end. There are sessions where I I was introduced to Closure as one of the feel like I could keep working with that Zen- Principles of Intervention in Rolfing® SI. like rhythm. Sometimes I feel like I can dig deeper and keep uncovering new territory, There are many moments in my life where but something stops me. It is not just the I find myself living with a Zen-like rhythm. time, the overload, or the realities of getting Most people have experienced something tired and hungry. Instead, it is for the sake like it, where in the midst of an activity they of growth. Things need space and time realize they could just keep going. It could between interventions if they are to evolve. be a long run or hike. It could happen while The silence between experiences is just as painting a picture or jamming with friends. important as the moments themselves. It could occur while lovers are enjoying That silence, that nothingness, is being in the company of one another. It could be its purest form. The form responds to the someone getting on a roll with projects at interventions made by us. When we let go work. I think it is a wonderful feeling, even of that form and free it from the confines of more so when I have a real passion for the our intentions it can then grow into what it activity. With such engaging delight it is wants to become. difficult to know when to stop or when the time is right to be finished. Is there ever This is getting heady but the main point I a right time? If so, what determines that? wanted to make is that the word ‘closure’ How do I know when the moment is done has come to mean something more to me than what it initially did. As a principle

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Furthermore, she was in great pain and ‘Burned from Within’ hypersensitive to my contact. She winced with every touch. I knew in the opening moments of the and Droop Neck Syndrome first session that something about her was By Ritchie Mintz, Certified Advanced Rolfer™ different from all the people I had ever touched before. I asked her, “Have you ever Author’s note: This article was not originally intended for Structural Integration: The Journal had any accident or injury that might have of the Rolf Institute®. It was written as a post to a Facebook page. In that context, I hope I have changed your tissues?” She assured me exerted enough ‘scientific caution’. But I felt the personal experience, the casual tone, and the lack that, no, except for the usual fender benders of original research disqualified the piece as a Journal article. That was, until I received enough and falling off her roller skates as a kid, feedback that indicated I had ‘struck a nerve’. I then thought this article might be worthy to submit nothing untoward had ever happened to to the Journal because of the fact that Rolfing® Structural Integration (SI) can help this structural her. She continued her series with me, and condition, now named by medical science. the work went on. Many times throughout her series, I had to stop and ask again, I learned a lot about bodies and about of the blood can also be slowly metabolized “Are you sure you never had some kind of Rolfing SI in my training at the Rolf and returned to the body as waste to be really traumatic injury?” “No, nothing,” Institute®. But I learned a great deal more excreted, but a lot of the cellular particulates was her reply. from my clients and their bodies through do not reabsorb. They remain engorged in the practice of the art and science of Rolfing the layers of the tissues surrounding the This went on, week after week, until we got SI. This article is about what I learned from fracture and they fixate into a gooey, gluey to the middle of the ninth session. Every two particular clients. cast that restricts future movement. This other person with whom I had worked restriction is not just for the duration of had made significant progress toward People and their bodies get pretty banged up the healing; it remains an impediment to integration by this time in the series. But here on planet Earth. Most people recover normal movement from that point onward. here, I felt I had barely made any progress from their injuries and move on without That is the nature of injury: impact and and, truth be told, I was a little exhausted a second thought. On the Rolfing table, local fixation. from feeling all my input getting bounced however, many clients report remembering back at me. I paused the session to take old and seemingly insignificant injuries. I worked with the first of these two clients a breath and ask yet again, “Search back Many times, in the recall of the event, clients of which I speak at the beginning of my through the feelings of my input. Are you realize that the injury was more severe than Rolfing career, and I must admit that I really sure you never had a bad wreck or originally thought at the time. This tells me was unprepared for what I was about traumatic event?” I could see in her eyes that fascia is one location where the record to encounter (although I did eventually that she was leafing through the Rolodex of traumatic events is stored. figure it out). The second client was later of her life. Suddenly, her eyes lit up and in my career, and when I encountered this Most injuries are imposed upon the body she said, “Well, I was hit by lightning when similar situation, I was better prepared to from the outside. Boxing is an example of I was nineteen. Is that what you mean?” work with him. a sport where simple impact injuries are We looked at each other in silence for a long common. When a boxer takes a left hook Client One – time. Now my mind was racing. “Wow,” to the head, the force clearly comes from Struck by Lightning I finally said. “Bless your heart. And you the outside and is directed inward. In a didn’t think this was worth mentioning to punch to the abdomen, try to imagine the My first example introduced me to a your Rolfer?” And she said, “It was so long shockwave that spreads from the impact different kind of injury. I was a pretty fresh- ago, I forgot all about it. I just remembered.” site through the body. Consider other faced Rolfer, but I had taken quite a few Only then did she tell her story. She had examples that lead to a myriad of other people through the ten-session series of been a counselor at a summer camp. There injuries, e.g. an auto collision, a fall from a Rolfing SI. I had also done enough post-ten was a thunderstorm one afternoon, and she ladder or down a flight of stairs, stubbing work to have a pretty good feel for bodies had gone running back through the rain a toe. If the blow to the body is forceful and their tissues. However, from my first to the tent to secure the flaps so the bunks enough, a bone may fracture. touch, this woman felt different. Gooey and would not get wet. The flap rope was tied gluey does not begin to describe the level of After the initial impact, fixation is the to a nail in a tree. Just as she touched the fixation that I felt. It was as if the goo and nail, the tree was split in two by a lightning next phase in an injury to a bone. Bones glue permeated to every layer and level from are highly vascularized, with a rich blood bolt. She was badly burned and taken to a her skin to her bones and beyond. It was not hospital for a day and released. supply. When a bone fractures, blood seeps fixated locally; it was everywhere! Every into the surrounding tissues. (Bones do attempt of mine to penetrate and release In that moment, it all made perfect sense. not have to break for blood to infiltrate it was met with resistance. Everything I This was not the usual type of injury I had surrounding tissues. A simple bruise is tried to input bounced off and got reflected dealt with. This was very different. The caused by broken blood vessels.) After outward. Her entire body was matted and impact did not come mechanically from the bone is set and begins the process of welded into one immovable unit from left the outside. In this case, every atom of healing, the liquid portion of the blood to right, front to back, top to bottom, inside her body had been instantly lit up from infiltrate (plasma) is slowly reabsorbed to outside, locally, regionally, and globally. the inside. Because the body’s interstitial into the body. Some of the cellular matter

www.rolf.org Structural Integration / March 2017 47 PERSPECTIVES fluids are naturally ionized by virtue of I would lose her trust. Because of that, I Lightning injuries are extremely rare, their electrolyte content, the fluids were developed a way of working that I called but radiation after-effects are rampant. a perfect conduit to distribute electrical ‘shaving a balloon’. It was deliberate and Nuclear therapy is a standard part of cancer current to every cell of her body at once. delicate work. The delicate balance was treatment today and its use is growing. Imagine dropping a plugged-in toaster into getting that close shave without popping I can still say that in my whole career I a bathtub of salt water; a toaster, however, the balloon. Popping the balloon, in have had only one person as a client who operates on 110-volt house current, and this case, meant eliciting any kind of was hit by lightning; the number of cancer this woman’s body fluids were conducting pain response, even a twitch. But after a survivors who come to my Rolfing table perhaps millions of volts. To add to the few years, we were able to accomplish with radiation sequelae is immense. trauma, consider the suddenness of the many goals. It started innocently enough. Gloria and event. A mechanical injury spreads through I only encountered one other client through I were at an SI conference where Dorothy the body in a progressive shock wave. A the years who had suffered a similar Nolte led the group in her exercise of “Drop lightning strike illuminates the entire body injury. That was a carpenter who had a line from the front of your sacrum and at once. accidentally drilled into a 440-volt cable. hook it to the center of the earth; now raise When I considered all this, it made sense He told me about getting electrocuted in a line from the top of your head and hitch that every layer of this woman’s body our introductory consultation. As soon it to a star.” I had no trouble following the would be fused together from stem to stern as he mentioned it, I thought, “Oh boy, imagery but Gloria told me, “I can’t do and from port to starboard. It explained here’s a great chance to check my theory.” that.” And, sure enough, she couldn’t find a lot. I thought back on my experience of His tissues were sufficiently similar to her ‘Line’ because the radiation-treatment every other body with which I had worked. the woman struck by lightning for me to sequelae had shortened the front of To work with most bodies is somewhat like conclude that there is a special type of her body. untying a shoe. When tying a shoe, you injury that I can call ‘burned from within’. Soon after that, a seventy-seven-year-old begin with a half hitch and then tie a bow The good news is that this kind of injury client came to me with his head, neck, on top of that. The bow functions to keep is quite rare. and thoracic spine positioned so severely the half hitch in place so that it remains anterior that he couldn’t lie on his back tightly cinched. When you want to untie Client Two – without nine inches of pillows under his it, all you have to do is pull out the bow Cancer Survivor with head. His friends and family said he was and the half hitch comes loose. With my Radiation Sequelae “bent with age,” but his story held other previous clients, if I untied enough knots, This is where the story gets personal. If you clues. In his initial consultation, he told I would come to a place where the deeper know me, you know my wife, Gloria Gene me that he’d had thyroid cancer that was layers would give it up and let go. But not Moore. Gloria is a three-time, thirty-seven- treated with large doses of radiation. The here! Here, every layer had to be ‘peeled’ year cancer survivor. She was diagnosed treatment worked, the cancer was gone, open one layer at a time, in order, from with stage three Hodgkin’s lymphoma, her but the scar tissue that formed from the the surface inward. I say that because, as I first cancer, at age twenty-eight. She had a radiation had left him bent and bowed over mentioned, this client was hypersensitive to fist-sized tumor growing around her aorta in front. He said he couldn’t understand touch. In order for her to tolerate the work, I at a time when Hodgkin’s was considered why the cancer treatment had changed his had to peel her layers open from the outside a death sentence. Her doctors told her there structure. I was no longer a rookie about in, one at a time. Any time I peeled too much was hope, and sure enough, she was among burns from within, so I was able to help at a time, she squirmed and gasped. the first to survive Hodgkin’s. The survival him. After that, cancer survivors with I was already in the middle of the ninth was not without its costs, though. forward-head posture sought me out. session when I had this insight into my Gloria told me her story when we met. Her client. I knew I only had a session and a Droop-Neck Syndrome surgeons performed a thoracotomy (chest half to do as much as I could. The first shift crack) to excise the tumor and followed up One evening, Gloria and I were sitting at I made was to drop the goal of getting her with radiation. I heard what she said but it home on the couch. I was watching TV and to where I was able to get everyone else in didn’t connect with me until the moment she was reading a Facebook page called ten sessions. I recognized that the extremely I touched her tissues, after we became a Survivors of Hodgkin’s. Suddenly, she rare event of getting struck by lightning couple. I expected to find structures out said, “There’s this thing here that they’re made this client unlike most of the rest of place and out of proper alignment calling ‘droop-neck syndrome’.” I grabbed of humanity. We did the best we could because that is the usual aftermath of any the remote and shut off the TV. She had my in the remaining time left in her series of surgery. What I didn’t expect to find was complete attention. As we perused the page, Rolfing work. that the radiation that saved Gloria’s life I knew that I, and the entire SI world, had a We continued with advanced work for had also ‘burned her from within’. The syndrome on our hands. Unlike years ago, several years. Those advanced sessions usual structural displacements from the when I struggled to understand why my confirmed for me the effects of electrical surgery were there, but in addition, those lightning client was so different, I knew that burns in the body. My strategy for the work displacements were solidly fixated into Rolfing work could be effective for people was the same; peel her burned and boiled- place by the ‘boiling’ together of her tissue with tissue damage from radiation. together layers apart in small increments layers from the radiation burns. It was the The general mission of Rolfing SI is that she could tolerate. I knew that if I lightning lady all over again! alignment of the body with gravity, as exceeded her very sensitive boundaries, seen in Figure 1. Applying these alignment

48 Structural Integration / March 2017 www.rolf.org PERSPECTIVES principles to droop neck syndrome (DNS) point where my clients could allow a deeper becomes problematic when every fiber form of peeling that I call ‘tissue loading’. of tissue in the body is ‘burned’ and Tissue loading means that I gather any fused into a web of seemingly intractable loose fascial layers that I can find and deftly fixation. DNS is not an exception to any press (load) them against a handy nearby of the foundational ideas of SI, but it is bony margin. If I load at just the correct an exaggeration of the patterns that afflict angle and in just the correct direction, I every human on Earth. Therefore, it falls can feel the deepest layers open. I feel deep squarely within the spectrum that Rolfing fixations release. I feel joints de-rotate. I feel SI can address. We, as practitioners, can the body differentiating sleeve from core help, but only if we know with what and able to find its front and its back. I feel we are dealing. This combination of the body find its alignment with gravity. severe misalignment plus burned-from- These are changes that Rolfers routinely within fixation makes for a daunting achieve in ten sessions. But in a body that long-term project. is ‘burned’ through, it takes a lot of gentle The Work Required ‘shaving’ to release the deep pressures that make the body hypersensitive and I would like this next section to be read like hypervigilant. Only after the fascial body is an open letter to SI practitioners, but the decompressed and desensitized is it ready public is invited to read along and listen for tissue loading. in. On the one hand, I apologize for the Figure 1: The Little Boy Logo showing the jargon, but on the other hand, I welcome ‘mission’ of Rolfing SI. Thus ends my professional counsel to any its use, because it is time to educate the practitioner of SI who might find a client public about human physical structure. Our the neck has no chance to launch upward; with DNS following radiation therapy fascially illiterate public must set aside its instead, it is forced anterior into the droop on their table. To any reader who is obsession with bones, muscles, and nerves shape of the syndrome. If each rib is rotated experiencing DNS, or if you know someone and consider that fascia, the soft-tissue downward in front, the sternum will be who is, my advice is to find a practitioner of frame of the body, is the organ of structure dropped in the front relative to the vertebra Rolfing SI and share this article with him or and support. Since DNS is a fascial issue, in back that launched the rib. That is the her. My experience is that it will probably this is a teachable moment. hallmark of DNS: the sternum is dropped take a lot of delicate work, but results in front relative to the spine. To undo the are achievable. For a random structure (the normal client syndrome, the Rolfer’s job is to de-rotate Ritchie Mintz received his initial Rolfing Ten who has not received any SI work), it each rib-vertebra unit upward in front so Series in Boulder, Colorado in 1973. He trained is common for the structure to slump that the sternum and each rib can lift instead at the Rolf Institute of Structural Integration forward. If you are working on a client of collapse. Then, the neck can rise upward (RISI) in 1978 and did his Advanced Training with a combination of DNS and ‘burned instead of being forward and droopy. from within’, ten sessions will be just the in 1981. Ritchie is the author of Foundations beginning, but it is a good way to begin That sounds easy to a Rolfer and in of Structural Integration. He lives in because the Ten Series is designed to create most cases, it is. But here, the collapse is Austin, Texas. balance between the front and back of compounded by the burned-from-within the body. fixation. All the tissues are desiccated, fused together, and fit the bones like a tight Take the case of my seventy-seven-year-old shrink-wrap. A quote from Dr. Rolf (that thyroid cancer survivor who was “bent with I cannot attribute) speaks to this type of age.” I don’t see him as bent with age. I see a tissue fixation, although she probably was neck and thorax that was ‘burned’ through not referring to what I call burned from so that his flesh became like parchment within: “The problem is there’s nothing stretched thinly over his ribcage. Because to work with because it’s all stuck to the his tissues desiccated and shrank during bone. That’s your job: Get that tissue up treatment, they rotated each rib downward off the bone.” so that each thoracic vertebral body was forced into an anterior tilt. The tilt was more So, that’s the Rolfer’s job: get that tissue back exaggerated when moving higher up the to being layered and lifted up off the bones. spine, so that each thoracic vertebra was If that sounds easy, it’s not. To a client who more forward than the one below, and so is truly burned from within, every touch on, up to T1. feels intrusive. It brings us back to the strategy I developed of ‘shaving a balloon’. T1, the first thoracic vertebra, is an Shaving the balloon means peeling the interesting structure. T1 launches the first stuck layers in tolerable increments. After ribs that connect in the front to the sternum. many advanced sessions of shaving my way T1 is also the launch pad for C7, the first in from the outside, I found I had reached a cervical vertebra. If T1 is tipped forward,

www.rolf.org Structural Integration / March 2017 49 REVIEWS

traverses her way upward through every as musical accompaniment the masterful Reviews joint and joint system all the way to the CDs of the Rolfing® Structural Integration head, peppering the reader with clinical community’s own Steven Hancoff, who Centered: Organizing the Body through insights, research, invitations to participate, was playing Bach’s Cello Suites on guitar. I Kinesiology, Movement Theory and recommendations for verbal cueing, and got to know Steven first when he attended Pilates Technique by Madeline Black what to look for in practice. She speaks the very first dissection workshop I ever (Handspring Publishing, 2015) to the psychobiological implications and offered back in 1995. At the time, I marveled Reviewed by Stefan Knight, Certified to the interrelationships to the structures that he had at that point travelled the Advanced Rolfer™, Rolf Movement® above. Black pays strong homage to the entire world for the State Department as a Practitioner, Masters Certified Pilates role of fascia and then takes you through ‘musical ambassador’ for the United States, Instructor somatically rich movement exercises for playing American ragtime and folk music I should start by saying that if I were going the embodiment piece. on goodwill tours, in addition to being an avid whitewater rafter, Rolfer™, and an to write a book compiling how I work with This is a practitioners’ manual, clearly incredibly intelligent and insightful human folks from a movement perspective, this illustrated with both photos and diagrams. in general. book, Centered: Organizing the Body through She offers insight into the energetics of how Kinesiology, Movement Theory and Pilates to see movement in others and feel it in Remaining connected as friends afterwards, Technique, would cover most of it. In fact, it our own bodies. The final chapter entitled some years later Steven contacted me to would serve as the perfect text book for a “Perception and Felt Sense” goes deeper read over the liner notes he was writing for program I currently offer called Integrative into the value and perspectives of somatic the recordings he had produced of Bach’s ® Fitness . . . even though I’ve never worked mindfulness as well as qualities of touch The Six Suites for Cello Solo, having with the author Madeline Black before. The and sensing into others to perceive states painstakingly transcribed them in their collective consciousness at work, I suppose. of being. entirety for guitar. Steven spoke eloquently of the depth and power of this music, Coming from a broad perspective as a Black’s aim here is clearly (but not limited of Bach’s genius, and of his passion dancer, choreographer, weightlifter, Pilates to this) to turn Pilates teachers who ‘show’ for rendering them accessible to the instructor, anatomist, manual therapist with exercises into practitioners who embody world in this way. It was a monumental inquiry into physical therapy, osteopath the art of teaching, bringing in relevant project to which he devoted himself (among others), Black brings it all together science to provide depth and quality to for years. in this guide for both the practitioner and the practice. She presents many tie-ins those looking for a path for self-care and to Pilates utilizing most of the available I was already a fan of Steven’s own musical exploration. Black’s experience in various equipment, and many without, making genius, having spent years listening to his fields of study is clear to see. While this book good for both professionals with exceptional finger-style guitar recordings many of the ‘exercises’ are variations of equipped studios and anybody equipped on several albums he had produced, and Pilates exercises, many look similar to Rolf only with interest and a willingness to consider him one of my all-time favorite Movement work, and others might include explore. This book is an extraordinary musicians. I was excited to hear the kinesis-taping or manually evaluating resource for the Pilates community that I recordings, but several more years passed nutation of the sacrum, utilizing muscle have been a part of for fifteen years. It is before I had the privilege. That is because energy technique, or traditional Pilates extremely user-friendly and accessible to in the interim, Steven had expanded abdominal work. any Rolfer or other movement professional. the liner notes themselves into a multi- Black is a real resource in the Pilates I invite any practitioner (whether a hands- volume, multimedia iBook set amounting community and her book demonstrates on therapist, movement practitioner, or to a comprehensive account of Bach’s that. I have always been equally interested personal trainer) to dive in and actually life and work, epic in scope, particularly in muscle activation as I have been with participate in body and practice. with respect to the development of his The Six Suites for Cello Solo. When he ‘releasing stuff’ and Centered presents them Black has produced a real resource of rich, eventually shared those volumes with as truly two sides of the same coin. If there valuable, and usable insight, from my me, along with the recordings he made were such a thing as Rolf exercise, this would humble perspective. It’s the book I wish I from his transcriptions for guitar, I was be it. Just looking at the title you can hear had written. A wonderful contribution that truly astonished. I felt myself a witness to echoes of Dr. Rolf – “Organizing the Body bridges the gap between ‘letting go’ and musical history in the making, so thorough, . . .”. Black incorporates a combination of ‘firing it up’. manual techniques, kinesiology-informed so captivating, and so masterful were movement, and strengthening with bias both the historical accounts and musical The Bach Project (CDs, iBook) by Steven toward muscle recruitment as the best way renditions of these deeply beautiful works. Hancoff, 2015 to bring a body from dysfunction to strong Steven has rendered Bach accessible in a and good functioning. Reviewed by Gil Hedley, PhD whole new way to the world, and there is no praise really sufficient to account for She begins with the feet (of course) as I spent yesterday in a rapture as I drove his accomplishment and contribution for our base, leading the reader down the for hours from Denver, Colorado west having done so. path of awareness-based kinesiology across the Continental Divide, on my way as a primer, then through the relevant to Paonia, Colorado, a small town in a I have since spent many hours delving into anatomical structures involved, as well beautiful Rocky Mountain valley. I was the iBooks, which are treasure troves of as the physiology. From the feet, Black traveling in a rental car, and had brought music, art, and history relating to Bach and

50 Structural Integration / March 2017 www.rolf.org REVIEWS these Suites, and have many times enjoyed The volumes include about 1,000 historical listening to the recordings. And so it is not images and the largest collation of Bach- surprising that I would have chosen this CD inspired contemporary art ever collected. set alone to be with me on a long-needed • A series of fourteen videos at Steven solo vacation. Driving through the Rocky Hancoff’s YouTube channel (http:// In Memoriam Mountains is itself breathtaking. But doing tinyurl.com/stevenhancoff-youtube). Structural Integration: The Journal of so with this music was transformational. the Rolf Institute® notes the passing Steven’s mastery of the instrument literally • The written transcriptions for guitarists of the following member of our boggles my mind. I am not in any way – or for people who like to read along community: knowledgeable about music, but I do while listening (available for free at have an innate appreciation of beauty. StevenHancoff.com; go to the Contact page Hadidjah Lamas, Certified Rolfer™ This is beautiful music that engages the and click to download). listener beyond expectation. Hancoff plays • Two full-length multimedia theatre the guitar, and Bach’s genius flows with pieces: From Tragedy to Transcendence and his own. Steven’s capacity to render the From Obscurity to Pre-Eminence (The underlying spirit and intention of Bach Almost Unknown Saga of How the is felt in literally every note and chord. Extraordinary Interactions between the But beyond this, Steven does not merely Bach and Mendelssohn Families Saved the play the guitar, nor even merely Bach. He Music of J. S. Bach for All of Us). A third plays the human heart, the strings of which presentation is in the works: Johann vibrate and the depths of which are opened Sebastian Bach and The Six Suites for by the most caring and uplifting touch. I Cello Solo, A Fanciful and Extravagant openly wept as I drove with a complex of Allegory. (If you wish to be informed feelings that I cannot fully describe, but of Steven’s performance schedule or joy and awe figure prominently in the mix. book one of these performances, please I believe with certainty that Steven’s skill contact Steven through his website and decades of experience touching people www.stevenhancoff.com.) in his Rolfing practice profoundly impact his capacity to deliver the message and power of Bach’s music in this way. He perfectly translates his empathy for Bach’s scope of feelings, embedded in these cello suites, to his own instrument, and then conveys this to the listener in a way that is biologically active as it were: the effect is palpable. One could marvel at an intellectual level at Advanced Training what Steven has accomplished here, and be on the mark. But if you stop there, you will miss the most significant, and lasting, Take It to the Next Level effect. Listening with your heart, you can understand with feeling much more deeply the transformative power of these Register Now extraordinary works, which will work their own wonders in you. Thank you Steven, you have outdone yourself, and possibly AT2.17 Bach for that matter, and we are all the beneficiaries of your shared genius. Charlestown, WV The “Bach Project” consists of Tessy Brungardt • The three-CD set entitled The Six Suites for Cello Solo by J. Sebastian Bach for Acoustic & Ellen Freed Guitar by Steven Hancoff (available at CDBaby, Amazon, Apple iTunes, and Sept. 27, 2017 – wherever CDs are for sale). May 6, 2018 • The four-volume iBook (not ‘e-book’) Bach, Casals and The Six Suites for Cello Solo (available for Apple computers, iPads, www.rolf.org and iPhones, from Apple’s iTunes; go to http://tinyurl.com/stevenhancoff-itunes). for more info

www.rolf.org Structural Integration / March 2017 51 CONTACTS

OFFICERS & THE ROLF INSTITUTE® AUSTRALIAN GROUP BOARD OF DIRECTORS 5055 Chaparral Ct., Ste. 103 The Rolf Institute Boulder, CO 80301 5055 Chaparral Ct., Ste. 103 Richard Ennis (At-large/Chairperson) (303) 449-5903 Boulder, CO 80301 [email protected] (303) 449-5978 fax USA www.rolf.org (303) 449-5903 Amy Iadarola (Western USA/Secretary) [email protected] (303) 449-5978 fax [email protected] www.rolfing.org.au Linda Grace (At-large/Treasurer) [email protected] [email protected] ROLF INSTITUTE STAFF [email protected] Christina Howe, Executive Director/ Ellen Freed (Faculty) Chief Academic Officer [email protected] Jessica Bystricky, Office Manager BRAZILIAN ROLFING® Les Kertay (Central USA) Colette Cole, Director of Membership ASSOCIATION [email protected] & Placement Services Dayane Paschoal, Administrator Mary Contreras, Director of Admissions R. Cel. Arthur de Godoy, 83 Larry Koliha (Faculty) & Recruitment Vila Mariana [email protected] Pat Heckmann, Director of Education Services 04018-050-São Paulo-SP Jaslee Lord-Burgardt, Clinic & Billing Manager Ron McComb (Eastern USA) Brazil Samantha Sherwin, Director of Financial Aid [email protected] +55-11-5574-5827 Susan Winter, Director of Communications +55-11-5539-8075 fax Hubert Ritter (Europe) & Education Systems www.rolfing.com.br [email protected] [email protected] Keiji Takada (International/CID) [email protected] EUROPEAN ROLFING® ASSOCIATION E.V. EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE Laura Schecker, Executive Director Rich Ennis Saarstrasse 5 Amy Iadarola 80797 Munchen Linda Grace Germany +49-89 54 37 09 40 +49-89 54 37 09 42 fax EDUCATION EXECUTIVE www.rolfing.org [email protected] COMMITTEE Russell Stolzoff, Chair Carol Agneessens ® Tessy Brungardt JAPANESE ROLFING Larry Koliha ASSOCIATION Meg Mauer Yukiko Koakutsu, Foreign Liaison Kevin McCoy Omotesando Plaza 5th Floor 5-17-2 Minami Aoyama Minato-ku Tokyo, 107-0062 Japan www.rolfing.or.jp [email protected]

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52 Structural Integration / March 2017 www.rolf.org

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