Introduction
The encounter with Rolfing was covered in “How I Found Rolfing — Searching for a Way to Deepen the Postures.”
After meeting Akinori Ito on December 23, 2013, the first session followed the next week, on December 29, and continued weekly — ten sessions in all, through March 2, 2014. The method of releasing fascia to undo tension in the body held a great deal that made the body easier to inhabit. Three things came into view worth sharing here.
The ten sessions run as follows: the Sleeve in sessions one through three (breath, below the knee, the sides of the body), the Core in sessions four through seven (the pelvic floor and the adductors, the abdomen and the psoas major, the sacrum and the spine and the external rotators, the neck and the head), and integration in the final three.
First, the effect showed most clearly in the breath. Yoga had seemed to involve taking the postures deeply and slowly in time with the breath, yet air began entering the back of the body as well. Which is to say: the breath had been available in the up-down and left-right dimensions, but front-back had not. Once that became available and the breath deepened, flexibility increased. The backbending postures that had been difficult opened further as a result.
According to Kazuma Ito’s Ago o Hikeba Karada ga Kawaru (only in Japanese), there are three kinds of breathing, each with its own effect:
- Up-down breathing, the harmful kind, which contributes to jaw tension and stiff shoulders.
- Left-right breathing, suited to movement, which makes intra-abdominal pressure easier to maintain.
- Front-back breathing, which activates the parasympathetic nervous system and settles the mind.
Seen this way, discovering the front-back breathing that activates the parasympathetic nervous system was a significant realization.
Second, between the brain and the body, the body responds faster and the brain more slowly. During the sessions, the body would register immediately that something good was good, while the brain, caught up in habit and reasoning, was slow to catch up.
For instance, receiving the Core sessions makes it easier for emotions stored in the deep tissue to surface. The body understands that response well; the brain asks why such a response is occurring. What follows is conjecture, but the brain may be rewriting internally — thinking it through by reason, interpreting it into a form where the reasoning holds, and putting it into language. That would consume energy, which may account for the slower response.
That the brain proves surprisingly conservative when the approach comes from the body and the thinking shifts afterward was both a surprise and a fresh discovery.
Third, a sense of connection between the upper and lower body. As a result of the integration across the ten sessions, that connection became something to feel. The body gained a definition it had lacked — where to apply effort and where to release it — and came to move organically, in linkage. This showed most in walking. Where the neck and the feet had seemed not to work together, walking brought a sense of the hip joints, the knees, the neck, and the chest all moving as one.
Study will surely bring further discoveries about Rolfing. Facing one’s own body and moving forward a step at a time is the intention from here.