I have set down a list of nine objectives for Rolfing® work, created by contemplating the Nine Types from the Enneagram, for those of us that are interested in that.
1. “Perfectionist”: Rolfers invite more symmetry to your structure, to help improve balance of body-tone in action. Total, perfect symmetry is not only boring; it is structurally impossible and undesirable.
2. “Giver”: Imagine actually feeling more of the support in yourself for your own goals that you try to offer to others. Imagine how much easier it can be to reach out to others, or the “stars”, without clinging on to them. Rolfing can help this effortless grounding.
3. “Performer”: Yes, Rolfing enhances performance. What does this mean? What would it be like to have increased power, range of motion, flexibility, speed AND subtlety, harmony, balance and control? That’s what Rolfing can offer.
4. “Romantic”: A truly resilient organism has the capacity for strong highs AND lows. Rolfing helps you adapt to the changes in life, and to develop the clear witness sense within the maelstroms.
5. “Observer”: Rolfing can help us clarify and refine our own personal boundaries, to better reach beyond them.
6. “Loyal Skeptic”: Sometimes recoiling from unpleasant sensations in our body gives them power over our experience. Rolfing gives us an opportunity to experience some of the feelings and areas in our bodies that we have recoiled from, allowing us to peacefully confront and master our fears about ourselves.
7. “Epicure”: Rolfing is a way to cut through some of the non-sense that we carry about our bodies. We are our bodies, we can be more grounded and we can take care of our needs and those of others in a common-sense, sensible, sensate and sensitive way.
8. “Protector”: Rolfing helps you learn to be able to use just the right amount of force, around clear axes and fulcrums, recruiting just the right amount of effort from the appropriate areas of your body/mind into play. After efforting is done, we have more resilience to spring back into response-ability for the new moment, experience, sensation, perception, awareness, decision, and joy.
9. “Mediator”: Like a sailboat riding on a breath, nudged by a rudder and helms-person, Rolfing indirectly invites and gently directs you towards change. It is foolish to go against the wind, and foolish to blow about the ocean without a sense of direction. The Rolfer senses which way the wind is blowing for the client, and keeps the map of desired goals in mind.
To me, Rolfing® Structural Integration is a Flow Experience, in the sense defined below. Here’s Wikipedia on “Flow” as an educational and Zen-like state:
“Flow is the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing, characterized by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity. Proposed by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the concept has been widely referenced across a variety of fields.
Many other terms and idioms exist for this mental state: to be on the ball, in the zone, or in the groove”
Rolfing® Structural Integration has many overarching objectives, anatomical references, scientific explanations, strategies and tactics to use to help the client to integration.
Ultimately, intuition must play a strong role in Rolfing. You’ve got to “get into the groove.”
Different forms of dance put different demands on the body and require specific skills for optimum performance. If you are interested in Contact Improvisation, the connection to the ground gained through Rolfing, plus the freeing up of key fulcrums around the pelvis add up to much more stability, enjoyment and responsiveness in your dancing.The ability to elongate the body in the air and land in a safe and also elongated way is of importance in Ballet and many other western dance forms.
Some of this is helped by lengthening hamstrings, gastrocnemii and quads, but the ability to call upon the skills of elongating and turning in movement, on the ground or in the air, are very much moderated by core muscles ranging from illiopsoas, quadratus lumborum to transversus abdominus. Learning how to integrate the freedom gained in these core areas as an integral part of your dance technique is key.
Guided imagery with exacting movement plus precise hands-on work such as received in a Rolfing® session are very helpful for this.Specifically, releasing and relating the illiopsoas and quadratus lumborum to the rest of the structure creates better balance and freedom because they connect and moderate the relationship of the pelvis and legs to the spine. As an example, it is neccessary to push evenly from both feet to attain as symmetrical as possible a spin in an air turn,or “tour en l’air”. Rolfing® Structural Integration can help you release, relate and integrate these core areas,and achieve better balance, symmetry and performance. Also, the illipsoas work can definitely deepen your sense of grounding and “plié.”
Speaking from personal experience and observation, it is very important for people engaged in vigorous skill activities to moderate their output while getting Rolfing. Simply put, you’ll have to re-train a lot of complex movements, to allow for the new lever lengths and strength resources that you’ll discover. The body is a bit like “wet cement” at this time,also, and new relationships between bones and other structures need time to settle. While I don’t want to be alarmist, and this really only applies to those whose activities tend to challenge “safe” edges, caution is absolutely in order as injuries can result.That said, Rolfing has got to be one of the main programs under consideration for any serious athlete or dancer to enhance performance, in conjuction with other “best practices”. I am a big fan of “resistance stretching” work as described by Robert Cooley in his book “The Genius of Flexibility”. This work actually creates improvements in flexibility AND strength, and is a natural to combine with Rolfing.
