Rolfing in Boulder

The world faces an energy crisis: an exploding world population; increasing demand for electricity and automobiles, and dwindling, noxious fossil fuel resources. Aside from developing renewable energy sources, like wind and solar, energy savings through conservation and efficiency measures could be a key part of the solution. Systems can be analyzed, streamlined and improved. This is the goal of the Rolfer™: to improve your human movement system through analysis of gait, breath, posture, muscle tone; to “streamline” it by easing restrictions in the fascia to allow ‘glide’ between parts; to help you better ‘differentiate’ and articulate your joints, in motion, to gain improved leverage and spread the work of a movement through your entire body. A system that moves more efficiently uses less energy to accomplish the same tasks. Conserving energy also preserves the health of the organism-in addition to bringing an evident sense of ease and calm to a person.

Would it not be great if scientists could use Rolfing Structural Integration as a ’systems theory’ model for increasing energy efficiency-by enhancing glide; improving structural expansive balance and “span”; seeing ’support’ as a dynamic, responsive, aware, yielding principle, or finding ways to increase an articulated ‘variability’ of subsystem response to movement and stress ( also a hallmark of the body-like a healthy heart, for instance.) In this and other ways, the human body, and the way that a sensitive, educated Rolfer, and Rolf Movement® therapist interacts and works with it, could have a lot to offer scientists looking for a fresh point of view on energy conservation, in my opinion.

‎’Embodiment’ goes beyond physical skill to sensing, presence, enjoyment, connection with self, other, environment and body wisdom.

I remember stepping onstage once at Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, and having a moment to take a breath, feeling my feet relax into the ground and my head release skyward. Afterwards, I was praised for my “stage presence” during that performance. Some times you do not have to gyrate and jolt your body to be a powerful dancer. You have to allow more of the “being’ sense to come through. Alwin Nikolais talked a lot about this. It is a way of being available in the moment, not overinflated, or working hard, not floppy and unresponsive either.

Embodiment, to me, also means sensing what is going on, in the body, when something feels ‘not quite right’; it means giving that vague sense a bit of time to clarify itself, rather than seeking a quick removal of the irritation through a ‘quick fix’, via a chiropractic adjustment or a pain pill. “What is this telling me about how I am in my body right now?”

Being clearer in our own body/mind ‘felt sense’ gives us a clearer sense of where we begin and other, environment or outside irritant, end. So, in my opinion, deeper embodiment helps us clarify personal boundaries, making us better able, then, to connect with and respond appropriately to others, and our environment.

Rolfing® Structural Integration and Rolf Movement work help to relieve pain and optimize performance, but there is a deeper gain to be had-the warm inner glow of increased awareness and …embodiment.

The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) cites gait as a primary indicator of health in a individual: “Researchers found that predicting survival based on gait speed was as accurate as predictions based upon age, sex, chronic conditions, smoking history, blood pressure, body mass index, and hospitalization.”1

In addition to speed, what Rolfers™ and Rolf Movement® therapists look to facilitate is awareness, responsiveness and variability in gait. Nature has provided us with 26 bones in each foot for a reason-they dance with each step! Variability is also shown to be essential for healthy heart function, too.

So, when you walk, don’t always go for the regular, smooth path. Uneven surfaces, grades of incline and changing speed and direction is good for your gait, your feet, your heart and your overall health!

1. From Fahey, Brian, “Your Fate is your Gait”, Structural Integration, the Journal of the Rolf Institute, June 2011, Vol. 39, No. 1: 1Sudenski, Stephanie, “Gait Speed and Survival in Older Adults.” JAMA, January 5, 2011; 305 (1), pp. 50-58.

How do we express ourselves through our feet? We think of dancers being very connected to their feet-to the expression of energy and rhythm, and shape, spatial positioning. But all who walk upright live from the ground up, in how we relate to the earth, and how we support our spines, heads, and dreams.

Feet are not blocks of wood. They are lithe instruments of perception and action. Opening them up to a greater range of motion, responsiveness allows the whole person to feel as if they are ‘growing up out of the ground’, finding better balance, and helping us to feel more emotionally centered as well. For dancers, I would call on you to experiment with openings all through the foot; not just the ability to point or plie. How easily can you stand? Can you release through the heel and ankle? Can you allow the gentle spiral of balanced rotations, of balanced supination, in the standing part of gait, to pronation in the push off phase?

The hardest thing about this for many dancers is the act of venturing outside of the limits of the training that they have received, from ballet and many forms of modern dance and jazz. If nature had intended us to have feet like pointe shoes, we would be proportioned like elephants, who are so large in relation to their feet that they are essentially always “sur les pointes”-walking on an extremely small surface area. How many ballerinas can claim the softness of gait and agility of an elephant, really?

Bodies are a constant work in progress, for better or worse. They respond to how we move, in daily life, class, at the gym or whatever. One of the theories about bunion development, for example, is that the stress is going into that part of the foot because of an overuse of the big toe/first metatarsal joint, and usually in a laterally rotated lower leg. Worse, instead of a bunion,an arthritis can develop in this joint, possibly leading to a total fusion and immobility there.

What I wonder is; what important joints and muscles above this joint are being underused, to create overuse in this area? By opening movement through the heel and ankle, we can hopefully head off this kind of dysfunction and pain. I teach my clients how to work with balls to help with this, and movement coaching in gait. A positive byproduct of this work is increased sureness in standing and walking, and more ease and confidence. I think of a sense of joy that rises up from below, naturally, like the Asian concept of a ‘bubbling spring’ coming up from the ground and through the feet. What a great idea!

Comments on this popular video:http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1664492411895&ref=mfI decided to take a look at this wearing my dance and Rolfer™ hats. One thing a Rolfer looks for in a client is their movement initiation preferences for using ground and spatial orientation. We all do both all the time, of course, but we will have a tendency for one over the other. This pattern is termed here ‘G’ for a grounded, weighted, push preference, and G’ for a spatial, lighter, reach preference. The terms also indicate ‘functional centers of gravity’ for an individual: a G individual’s functional center of gravity lower, nearer the area below the belly button and downwards, and a natural ‘down’ focus in the eyes and in coordination; a G’ individual naturally carries their functional gravity center higher, in the chest area, with a natural ‘up, out and around’ attention. In terms of iconic dancers, this is often simplified into G’=Fred Astaire, and G=Gene Kelly.Both of these are important and valuable functional patterns. They are important to recognize because often the one that is dominant in an individual is part of the problem with postural or muscular pain and dysfunction. Because it is “familiar” to the individual, it also needs to be part of the solution, on the way to later opening up to the other preference to round out or relax the individual into better alignment in movement.So, the question is, are these dancers more G or G’? My impression is more G’, but within a very “grounded” movement context (?) . There is some strong use of ground in the more gymnastic parts at the end, so it would submit to a more detailed look. Looking at the beginning, the dancers lilt and skate over the ground, like ice skaters. Regarding the ’street vs art’, the partnering is clearly ‘modern dance’ in look and feel. These guys have seen the inside of a dance studio, regardless of what medium they are now working in, and bring that background to this video-at least in the opening of the video.So, more Astaire than Kelly; more sky than earth, at the start. They glide and float around and over imaginary spaces and fulcra. Balletic twirls with arms raised overhead, but the shoulders are still tight into the neck-this is ‘imitation’ and playing around, more than use of a balletic movement-base, a bit like Fred Astaire incorporating turns in his routines that look like ballet, but clearly were not the product of years of training in that style. One lad does a wonderful turn on the tip of his sneaker that is extraordinarily rooted, for me, in a way that most ballerinas would die to be able to be. The shoes, and his native strength, allow this sense of ‘ground’ on point. Again, many contemporary ballerinas would love to achieve that, but don’t.The same fellow takes lovingly, perhaps reverently to the ground for a ‘breaking’ style ground spin, as much paying homage to the style as anything, showing his fluency earth/sky. The striped short gentleman than goes so far as bend over backwards to ‘one-up’ the previous, using his head as a landing point and support. This looks very ‘ground’-mainly because the ability to yield into the movement is what saves him from injury-but the jarring look of the landing shows less adaptability than he, and we, might like. Orange raincoat man shows explosiveness out of the ground, like a gymnast, more fully confident in his yield to pushing sequence, which is a hallmark of effective G orientation, to me. White T-shirt shows the success in an ‘up-based’ strategy for an equally athletic flip in the air, his preparation for jumps coming by clearly establishing length and spatial pulls, like a ballet dancer might, before a tours en l’air. All-black outfit shows again his fluency between up and down orientations, yet is subtly more G than G’, for me, not just in his choreographic choices of movement, but in his sensitively weighted efforting, even in turns and ’skating’ movements.The gestural bit at the end shows the essentially improvisational collaborative and playful nature of the whole thing. The gestures are like a sign language with the hands, chest and torso, very G’ in their way of relating to the group and their common space.