RESEARCH: an exploration

I am a Rolf Structural Integrator first and foremost. My explorations and research began with me putting my hands on people. A career in Rolf SI ("Rolfing") is not for everyone. My training utilised the ways of Dr Ida Rolf who apparently mused at the end of her trainings that the first couple of years would be a case of "press and pray". She also stated that even in a state of pressing and praying, if her 'recipe' was followed (which in some ways is a navigational tool for which part of the body to go to next) we would get results. And this proved true. 

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The journey as a Rolf SI practitioner is not for the fainthearted. After a year or so of practicing, I began to notice certain things I had not seen before. And so the progression continued until I encountered new things monthly, weekly and then daily. Fifteen years on and I still frequently encounter things I have never noticed before both through my hands and my eyes. 

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Not to get bogged down in this history, I will move to the point when I began to notice the flow of energy in my clients. I could not quite name what I was seeing. In Rolf SI we are looking more at the uprightness of the client. The so called gravitational pulls and strains. At some point, and I believe it came along after I certified as a Gyrotonic trainer, my eyes were drawn to something almost intangible. I could literally see that the client was not connected to the floor. 

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After certain Rolf SI sessions, the client does look more connected and, more often than not, they feel a connection. I also find the same thing teaching Gyrotonic. 

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Gyrotonic focuses on opening the joints, spirals, movement of the spine and helping people to find their hamstrings. I have spent years finding out what it is that allows for natural movement to return to the body. It was through Gyrotonic that my own body began to feel light and free, mobile and strong. But this is not the main point to what I explore. I began to feel truly connected to the earth. Like I was suddenly plugged in. 

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I also began to experience an immensely deep connection between my technological or thinking brain and my body. And the connection was nothing I had imagined. Through all my years of yoga study, including somewhat of an immersion into Tantric yoga, I could never have imagined what I now experience on a daily basis. 

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I have other influences that perhaps brought me to this understanding, the primary one being the teachings of Jiddhu Krishnamurti. Krishnamurti gave me the courage to stop listening to others, to put away all that had been said before by others, to leave behind all concepts. He taught me to observe and to question. Through Krishnamurti I began to see beyond myself, the pettiness of my past and the demands of my future. To live with more freedom. Which continues to be elusive because I continue to live in an incredibly fixed pattern.

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Through my work with clients and my wider observations, I see and understand that we humans are generally boxed in by extremely powerful habits. This is true of both the body and the mind. 

I have been asked a particular question by a client over and over. Probably more than one client has broached this question. If there is something we repeat over and again and we know its 'bad' or we don't like it why can't we get rid of it. 

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This is a difficult question to answer, yet it is also simple. The simple answer is that we are comfortable in our patterns. In that comfort we can remain the same without too much work. The more difficult understanding is that the more we want to change something, the more ingrained that thing will become. In the same way, the more we resist, the stronger we become toward that thing resisted. 

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It seems true that we can relieve ourselves of pesky habits by utilising tools and through certain types of psychoanalysis and hypnotherapy. In general these can help with the outer layer of habitual behaviour, by which I mean those things that are obvious to us. And they are obviously negative. Deeper, daily habits, go unnoticed.

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To truly 'change' requires work that is so perpetual and difficult that it is beyond most of us. The work is to remain aware. Eckhart Tolle once pointed out that "awareness is the greatest agent for change". It is so easy to quote platitudes, but to come to understand them on a deep, cellular level, is quite another thing. 

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I no longer believe it is possible to teach another person how to be aware.  I will, however, relate my experience of awareness and it might be helpful.

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Awareness begins in shallow waters. It starts as a choice. Perhaps we decide to become aware of something in particular. In my line of work, perhaps we become aware of holding the arms back, or holding/lifting the shoulders perpetually. In terms of the body, I can guide a client into where to place their awareness. 

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So at first one becomes aware of the fact that the shoulders lift pretty much continually. Through this simple awareness, the person lets go of a little tension and their shoulders drop fractionally. Five minutes later they are aware again of the shoulders lifting. And it goes on and on. If one becomes frustrated, we interrupt the awareness. The key is to remain aware. 

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This stage of awareness might be all we are able to do for quite some time. The frustration sets in when we wonder how we can just stop the habit. But the habit is ingrained into the tissue... and the mind. So we watch, we begin to sense it. Over time it begins to reveal itself to us even when we are not choosing to be aware of it. 

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Perhaps I guide a person to feel what the rest of the body feels like when the shoulders are lifted. Or maybe, through the consistent awareness of the lifting shoulders someone might come to notice certain knock on effects themself. I might as what happens to the breath when the shoulders almost imperceptibly lift. I might ask what happens to the state of the way one feels. It is all wrapped up together. Nothing is separate. 

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If we keep up this singular awareness, perhaps something unexpected will be revealed to us. 

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Awareness is a topic that will arise over and again. 

At some point in human history, not so long ago, we began to voluntarily engage muscles. We created concepts like a bicep curl, a tricep dip, core engagement. 

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While I was enamoured with muscle engagement for many years, I found myself having to 'undo' my clients' overused muscular patterns. I was convinced for the longest time that the core was the most valuable element in stability and movement. When I use the word 'core' I am using it from the stance of Pilates which was my formative movement training. When I learned Pilates and when I did the teacher training, engaging one's core comprised attempting to engage the transverse abdominis and the pelvic floor. Core recruitment was warranted because it stabilised the lower spine by calling into action the multifidus muscles. 

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I didn't question the truth of it. So many people were propounding the 'core' principle. One day, my mentor, Secret Kelly, asked me if I really believed the core was more important than the hamstrings. Of course I thought it was. I could not believe she might think the hamstrings were that important at all!

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I will go into the hamstrings at some point in my explorations, suffice to say right now that on further reflection they are one of the most overlooked group of muscles in the body. This is partly due to our inability of engage them as voluntary as, say, the quadriceps. 

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I trained my own body through Pilates and yoga and I felt and looked strong. But I was entirely aware that my movement lacked grace. I am talking about walking more than anything else. My muscles worked as the independent units I had trained them to be. I thought I was strong... and relatively flexible. 

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There is more than one downside to active voluntary muscle engagement.

a) In an intelligent body, the muscles know exactly when to switch on. Creating an arbitrary concept around muscle recruitment dumbs down the body. Eventually the body finds in nigh on impossible to adapt according to its original laws of nature.

b) Many of the muscles recruited become overused. An overused muscle often becomes tight and weak. An overused muscle suggests that other muscles are likely underused.

c) The body is an intricately designed organism that works as a whole. The body contains a myriad communication pathways which are interrupted by voluntary muscle engagement.

d) When we engage specific muscles the body can no longer self-stabilise or self-regulate.

e) Clear joint movements are overridden.

f) This muscle engagement interferes with the mind, breathing and movement. 

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The list could go on, but we see the point. In part, the point being that I am no stranger to wanting to recruit, train, override my body and my musculature.

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No muscle or muscle group work as an isolated unit. Rather, they are entwined in the full workings of the physical body all of the time. When we train regions of the body, the knees for example, we are likely to feel okay for a fair amount of time. What we do not know as we perform strengthening actions is that we are creating an imbalance somewhere else. This is because the body truly works as a whole organism and when the organism is separated into pieces, confusion arises. 

The tendency to recruit specific muscles leads to a breakdown in communication in the body. Take for example the oft repeated instruction in a Pilates floor exercise called 'marching'. Marching involves lying on the back, knees bent, feet on the floor. The instruction is given to engage the muscles of the lower belly in order to stabilise the pelvis. With the pelvis in place, one leg lifts into 'tabletop' position (lower leg horizontal to the floor, thigh vertical). 

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What this effectively does is it interferes with the natural communication pathways between one leg and the other (they should always be able to communicate with each other) and between the legs and the pelvis. This also means that communication with the spine is cut off. 

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If this movement is done without interference, the natural course of events is that as one foot lifts off the floor, the other leg understands its role which is to help the movement of its relative. Which means the leg that stays put moves into the floor which not only helps the opposite leg, but it also helps the pelvis understand its position. Added to which, the spine gets to feel the movement and all the muscles necessary react relationally. 

To be continued

To be continued

To be continued

To be continued

To be continued