by Rob McWilliams | Jul 28, 2010 | Uncategorized
The Psoas ( major): a pair of muscles that connect the lumbar spine and groin, joining at the lower attachment with the illiacus muscle that lines the pelvis, at the lesser trochanter bone. It is classically defined as an important hip flexor, though contemporary studies ( geeks see Yoshio, M et al, 2002, Journal of Orthopaedic Science, 7:199-207) call that into question. It is now viewed more a stabilizer for the lumbar spine, helping to maintain an appropriate lumbar lordosis curve. The psoas minor is said to serve the same function, but is often absent, and may be evolving out of the species. Why does it matter? I believe it matters because it helps us to coordinate between upper and lower body in a fluid and long-muscled erect posture. This is part of the “magic of normal function” that can heal many “ills”.
Ida Rolf was an early proponent of psoas assessment and treatment, and it is part of the “Core”work not usually handled in the Rolfing SI 10-series until sessions 4 and later. Certified Rolfers™, then, usually work through the body in layers, considering that psoas work should not be undertaken until the larger relationships, between, neck, thorax, pelvis, legs and feet, are put into better order.
A lot of clients have come to me with bad ( ie painful and innefective) “psoas therapy” stories. It has become a common treatment territory for massage therapists, PT’s and chiropractors. Mostly, they do this without any of the preparatory work mentioned above. They operate under the assumption that if an area is a concern, work on that area-without taking into account how well the client has been made ready for this treatment, which can mean the difference between small discomfort and agony-and how well the client will be able to adapt, in the rest of their body, to the new condition of the psoas. Treating any muscle in isolation may mean trouble, for successful therapy, in my opinion.
There are many gentle and effective techniques for achieving improved length, freedom and coordination through the psoas that are learned by Rolfers, especially those trained in Rolf Movement® work. We are trained in recognizing tendencies that may limit our stability and freedom of movement, and in ways to offer new options to clients in simple and more complex actions.The common activities we look at first our basic: breathing, standing, sitting, walking, and progress to more refined coordinations of limbs and core.
One very simplistic statement: sitting at a desk all day is slow-motion murder for all of us, period.The psoas becomes very weak, from slouching, or hyper-toned ( tight) from arching the back forward against the hips all day. Get up every twenty! Move around! Consider getting a standing desk. Exercise in ways that demand longer muscle use, like walking, running ( in moderation, with the running!) dance (with ease and flair!), swimming ( flutter kick is great for length in hips/thighs) yoga ( watch out on those “down dogs”!-is your shoulder girdle/upper spine ready for this?) and a number of devices, like the elliptical machine. Cycling is great exercise, but think about it: is the position you are in, while on the bike, really optimal for your neck, shoulders, low back, hips, and calves? The answer is no-but you can sort of “un-do” this with proper cross-training, ( see above) awareness of good alignment in normal functioning. A lot of dedicated cyclists walk kind of like they are still on the bike: tight shoulders and neck, forwards in the chest, hips tucked under in “posterior tilt”, very tight quads and hamstrings that lock up in walking, tight, unyielding calves that don’t allow the heels to release in their stride.
The psoas muscle, in this postural and functional pattern, is under-activated, often, in favor of a massive quadriceps muscle. Therapeutically, what is called for, if the client is having problems-probably with knees, hips or lower back, but also shoulders and neck, because of the bicyclists’ use-pattern-is work to free restrictions in the fascia-system to re-normalize posture, and movement re-education to allow underused postural muscles, like the psoas, to be more active, and over-used “phasic” or powerful, short-use muscles like the quads to more relaxed, longer and more flexible in motion.
We want to activate this muscle to gain good spacing and balance in the lower back-maintaining “neutral spine” in an appropriate level of lordosis for that individual structure and function. To me, psoas activation is primarily a coordination question. In dance, we talk about a sense of length down the back and throughout the leg, in hip flexion, together with a sense of dropping the sitz bone down to lift the thigh. In sum, it is a co-ordinative pattern, relating legs, pelvis and spine, that is key for proper activation. The focus, in dance, is often termed balance between concentric, eccentric and isometric contraction in use, making for beautiful and effective training and performance. Learning to maintain neutral spine while working the legs to the front and side is a strong challenge to lumbar spine stability, activating the psoas major, I believe.
The “magic” of normal function, lost in our sedentary culture, often heals many of our physical “ills”!
( Caution: brain pain may ensue here!) Rolfers look for a sense of length of hip/thigh/heel in the back leg in gait, as this is a sign that the psoas is able to lengthen. When it can do this, it will reflexively contract, appropriately, causing posterior tilt in the same side of the pelvis, which sets off a long stretch-reflex action activating hip flexors, to bring the knee forward to step, in the next gait phase, without undue effort by the hamstrings on that side.
(Okay, relax!!) So, gaining good co-ordination in this chain of actions can help prevent or heal low-back, hip, knee and foot pain!
by Rob McWilliams | Jul 21, 2010 | Uncategorized
In Rolf Movement work, we look to re-activate areas that can help us that have been sluggish. A key spot is the base of the scapula..aka shoulder blades..also aka chicken wings..never mind! Anyway, a lot of the reason we get shoulder and neck pain is overuse of the muscles on the top of the shoulder. The usual suspects: upper trapezius, levator scapula, supraspinatus. Folks, this can be relieved through myofascial work, then prevented by improved coordination. We want to wake up that bottom corner of the shoulder blade, called the inferior angle, and the muscles that move it, mainly the lower trapezius and rhomboids. The Shoulder Pulse exercise, taught to me by Mary Bond, a very well-know Rolf Movement master, helps start that process.
Start by finding the inferior angle of your scapula. Laying on your back, slide one arm across your body, and reach below it with the opposite arm and across the ribs a bit until you find the shoulder blade. Move down the outer edge of the bone until you find its lower tip. Gently rotate your shoulders little, and use your fingers to open and awaken the tissues all around the pointy bottom surface of the bone. This should help you get a better feel for where it is, in your body image. Relax your position, so that you are lying flat on your back again. Now is the hard part: Isolate that place, in a short downwards pulsing movement. Just pulse down and release-do not hold a position. Do not push the shoulder forwards. Do not tense your back muscles, or arm muscles. Just pulse the bottom tip of the shoulder blade down towards you feet.
When you start to feel like you have “found it”, try initiating an arm reach with a shoulder pulse, first. Do not hold the muscle contraction. It is a muscle coordination exercise, and timing is important.Just use the shoulder pulse to start an arm reach, then drop the arm and relax it. Do this several times, to feel the coordination. Now try the shoulder pulses sitting up. It may be more challenging for you to find the inferior angle and isolate it in movement, while seated. It helps to keep trying, and even to go back to laying down to reacquaint yourself with it, then try again. Do the same standing. Do it while waiting in line. Do it in the morning when you are first waking up. Fun!
Over time, you want to explore how to use this to initiate most all movements of the arms. This can help your arm movements flow more freely and beautifully! When you do the opposite, and initiate from the top of the shoulder, the effect is neck pain, stooped posture and fatigue. You can also use this technique to counter those symptoms, when you feel them coming on.Try it!!
by Rob McWilliams | Jul 16, 2010 | Uncategorized
As hard as it is to describe, quickly, what Rolfing® Structural Integration (SI) is, Rolf Movement® is at least equally daunting. A quick-ish description: Rolf Movement helps us anchor the on-the-table work of SI in movement. We look at the general tendencies in walking, standing, sitting, breathing, and generally moving in gravity, time and space. Dancers-sound familiar? The tricky part for dancers: it is not about “mastery”, or achieving a particular aesthetic look or goal. Still, the process of becoming more “normal” in your function, versus what is average, can yield an much more resilient and sensitive artistic instrument. This is sort of Zen-type paradox, then: finding a sort of “beginners mind” of non-mastery that leads to fulfillment in expression.
When I read the writings of Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, the similarities to Rolf Movement (RM) are too strong to be a coincidence. In her seminal book, Sensing, Feeling and Action ( Cohen, B., Contact Editions, Northampton, MA, 1993, p. 114) Cohen’s discussion of the difference between sensing and perceiving could come right out of a RM class. In summary, she shows how our past experiences color our perceptions, via what she terms “pre-motor focusing” or selective attention. Our expectations, based on the past, color our perceptions, and our repertoire of responses.The goal, in Body Mind Centering and Rolf Movement, is to help uncover new options-new ways to frame our perceptions and new ways to respond to them in movement. For Rolfers, her description of the vestibular system is wonderfully simple and straightforward, and should be used at the Rolf Institute®, as well as her emphasis on touch and movement as primary forms of perception and communication.
So, if you want to know what Rolf Movement is..it’s a lot like Body Mind Centering. Finding new options, towards “normal” functioning, in gravity, space and time. Did that help?
by Rob McWilliams | Jun 23, 2010 | Uncategorized
“Don’t you ever rest” I was often asked. For my whole adult life, I was a professional dancer, choreographer and teacher, and I stayed busy. Sometimes I was a compulsive exerciser and stretching fanatic. It always felt like I was serving a goal of improving my dancing, maintaining a professional-calibre base fitness and performance level well into my late forties. I was always a strong proponent of deep stretching because it felt good and felt helpful to my path as a dancer. My body was my instrument. In some ways, I was an instrument: of art, expression, esthetics, and a philosophy.I like to think that I learned a lot, over the many years, about effective training; about what worked and what didn’t. One of my most effective tools was one that I learned back in the day was “Constructive Rest”, based on the work of Mabel Todd and Lulu Sweigert, later Barbara Clark, Irene Dowd, Andre Bernhard and now championed by Eric Franklin in his own technique. This work helps use mental imagery to help create better balance between agonists and antagonists. It is a kind of “active passivity” that helps you to find the appropriate “resting lengths” of your muscles. When this happens, flexors and extensors can work in better harmony, and there is a noticeable improvement in ease, and range of motion. These are two of the main goals of stretching!So, this is the main question: how much stretching is enough? Why are you stretching? How do you assess your success? What are you going for? If you want a higher front extension, dancers, test it out. Is it improved after all those splits? If not, will it really help to stretch, in the same way, a lot more? What you may need, instead, is a better balance of strengthening, coordination and differentiation within the muscles of your body that are being either over or underutilized to achieve the movement.Often times, dancers stretch for the feeling of “rightness” of the position achieved: the hip bones squared, the shoulders pulled firmly back. There is a quality of “just so”-ness. The emotional component starts to take precedence over the functionality. In order to get a higher front or side extension, it is not enough to stretch your hamstrings, adductors, quads, etc, if you can’t balance their use in the moment. You need to be able to, among other things: keep a sense of space and balance in your back (spine, psoas) and front (abdominals, chest); anchor down to the ground as you lengthen away to the clouds; deepen the insertion of the femur into the acetabulum, keep a long-muscle sense in the hip and thigh while directing the movement with your feet, into air and ground! If the powerful hip flexors of quadriceps and adductors overpower the hip extending hamstrings, it is pretty hard to have a good arabesque line.The notion of “line” in dance already implies the complex balance of flexors and extensors envisioned by somatic geniuses like Moshe Feldenkrais and Ida Rolf. I am thinking particularly of the notion of “two-way stretch” and “expansional balance” for dancers, “span” and “palintonicity” for RolfersTM. When muscles are well differentiated in the body, their distinction is clear, and they are not “adhered”, “lumpy” or “stuck together”, this phenomenon of “line” as we know it in dance starts to happen on its own. When we learn to use our spatial awareness and use of weight to help us properly and effortlessly coordinate all movement, this newly acquired “line” can be anchored in our bodies, more dependable in function than any brute conditioning program. Combining an awareness of line, two-way stretching-the ability to lengthen in both directions in any action- with physical strengthening exercises is most effective, then, in my view.I m a huge fan of Robert Cooley’s program, as set forth in “The Genius of Flexibility” (Cooley, R., Fireside, New York, 2005) for achieving functional gains through resistance stretching. It will not improve your coordinative skills, however. In addition to a good, observant dance teacher, I recommend “Dynamic Alignment Through Imagery” (Franklin, E., Human Kinetics, my copy is from 1996.) Allow your aesthetic sense to guide you further. A side extension that depends on a distortion of your hip line to get the leg up is not beautiful, and should be avoided. It is also dysfunctional structurally-it will impact your joints down the line!Sometimes your body is trying to tell you that you don’t need more stretch, but strength, in an area. I am thinking of a dancer client, fairly new to the Rolfing® work still, who has had chronic tendinitis in her ankles and Achilles her whole life. To me, this speaks not just of a lack of fluidity in the backs of her calves, but a failure of the main support structures higher up-thighs, hips, psoas, spine-to take more of the work out of the overworked tendons below. No amount of stretching the backs of her calves will remedy that, as long as she keeps doing fundamentally unsupported relèvés and turns.So, perhaps a more sophisticated stretching program could have the goals of:• Line: as discussed, a two-way reaching in the limbs, pelvis and spine that enables us to gain support from the space around us.• Differentiation: the ability to separate out flexors from extensors in function; taking the “brakes off”. Rolfing® is great for this!• Strength/Stretch combined, as in Cooley’s work; resistance training (weights, jumps, relèvés, etc) that doesn’t overpower the kinesthetic sense of weight. Our sense of weight is a fundamental element in all coordinative tasks, as is the spatial sense. We always stretch best when we have an anchor in the floor somewhere, too-not “ground” into the floor, but “yielding”, opening gracefully to accept support.
by Rob McWilliams | May 22, 2010 | Uncategorized
I spent thousands and thousands of hours watching movement before I started to see the aesthetics. As in the Rolfing training, at first this was a sort of investigation of technique. How do you do this movement, (‘how do I accomplish the First Hour’ in the ten-series?) How does the leg lengthen in that way for that dancer, and not the other one (‘why does this technique work for this client and not the other?)
This deepened into an inquiry regarding “What is Dance?” Early on, working with William Bales, one of the early Modern Dance pioneers who founded the dance department at SUNY Purchase, we looked at metaphor: “it’s as if…” and so on. Movement, for Bales and choreographers of his ilk, was meant to evoke an experience, and not be viewed simply as an event unto itself.
Earlier experiences just watching the great Modern Dance and Post-Modern choreographers of the mid-70s, a very rich period in American dance, at performances at Brandeis University, had already given me hints of other aspects, though. I’m talking about artists ranging from Twyla Tharp, Merce Cunningham, Paul Taylor, Laura Dean, to Murray Louis, Alwin Nikolais, Alvin Ailey, William Carter, Trisha Brown, not to mention Martha Graham, Jose Limon and Pearl Lang.
Feeding in from the post-Modernist aesthetic, via early viewing of choreographers like Eric Hawkins and Trisha Brown, came a window into a new body awareness and somatic sensibility, for me. I had already been investigating body awareness work on my own, with a special interest in the writings on this by Fritz Perls. I didn’t know then that my future ways of moving, sensing and seeing movement were being shaped already, then.
For the purest inventiveness and de-construction (how “post-modern!) of the body, before Cunningham, Taylor, Dean, Brown, Tharp, Pilobolus or Cirque de Soleil, there was Alwin Nikolais. Before I had a chance to work directly with Nik, and Murray Louis, who was my boss, from 1980-89, if not always mentor, I had a chance to see them both very early on n my development as a dancer/choreographer. Only the term “kaleidoscopic” could begin to describe what he was able to do with fairly simple use of light, color and sound, by today’s standards: I believe that creativity will tend to trump technology every time, because it re-frames experience, cognition and perception. Nik was a master of the elements of theater. He literally helped us change the way we frame an image, like a Rorshach image morphing, the Gestalt re-configuring right in front of us. This quality of his work is well documented in articles and books, so I won’t go on about it. I would like to discuss the methods of “seeing” that he used, in pedagogy and in choreography, based on my experience at the Nikolais/Louis Dance Lab ( school), in rehearsal and performance, in relation to my work now as a Rolfer™.
Rolfers look for breaks in symmetry, as in the famous logo of a boy in blocks that are all cattiwampus, then stacked up neatly, but the things is, an obsession with symmetry could also be called ‘the hobgoblin of little minds’ to coin a paraphrase. We see where the flow stops, and are able to see, sense, reason and uncover what the hindrances are. Sometimes it is a restriction in muscle/fascia/bone. Other times, it is a lack of activation in certain areas. We are “structuralists” in that we look for releasing the restrictions that are inhibiting the weak side from waking up, and our Rolf Movement® training gives us further strategies for opening, activating and “bringing on-line” areas that have felt cut off or disconnected from the whole.
I think that for me, this is a lot like sensing what part of a piece of choreography is not connecting with the rest, is unfulfilled, or perhaps just not fully danced-not enough breath release in the movement, not a full push, pull, twist, or just lacking in relaxation into presence. I trust in that place in me that is both artist and healer. It is not woo woo, really: rather, it is based on many, many years of working in Dance as an art form.
One of Alwin Nikolais definitions of the art: Dance is the Art of Motion that has its own Intelligence. He distinguished between what he called “basic dance” ( the kind of impulse to move referred to by Curt Sachs and others) and the art form. A lot of what is teaching-and choreography-were about was being able to break things into constituent parts, like Time, Space and Motion, to better discuss what it was he was wanting to express, and to bring out more of its inherent power and mystery.
In Rolfing work, I think of the work to differentiate throughout the body, in form and function, so that each area and aspect can claim their own “identity”, before being brought together into harmony. Nikolais referred to this harmony in action as “consonance”. To him, this had a nice resonance with Jungian and Gestalt psychology, but it also sounds an awful lot like the Rolfing terms “congruence” and “continuity”. Congruence, for Rolfers™, is about bringing all of these different little brains in the hips and spine, etc, to come together in one overall pattern, before attempting to shift them all towards a more neutral position- ‘stacked-up’ like the blocks mentioned above.
Continuity refers to an evenness of muscle and tissue tone throughout. A trained mover who has a sense of continuity throughout his structure will inevitably exhibit Nikolais’ “consonant” quality-wher evrything is moving in concert, the work spread evenly throughout the body. He would have us work for an hour on walking forward and bending down to pick up an object before he was happy that we had grasped this movement “principle”. Just as Nikolais, Laban and others worked through “Principles” of Dance or Human Movement, so also do Rolfers work with Principles of Integration, which are, in extremely brief form: Adaptability, Support, Palintonicity and Wholism. The discussion of “continuity” and “consonance” above would belong under the Wholism umbrella, for example.
“Seeing” is then, also about “Principles”-in art or human movement: butI would be foolish to leave the explanation of how and what I see there. Reason -giving us a framework to see and operate with Principles-is important, for me, when it is supported by wisdom and feeling:the feeling that comes from sensation and compassion. Sound and visual rhythm, joy, and the sympathetic feeling in my own body must be the main thing, really, as if I were dancing with each client, responding to their moves, both overt and barely expressed. This is what I mean, when I say that I am “just an old dancer” as a Rolfer. I follow and lead, analyze, differentiate and integrate, just like a dance partner, or choreographer, looking and feeling for the overall Gestalt, and what it needs next.
