Session 1 covered the importance of holding an awareness that separates the upper body from the lower, organizing the upper body, and above all organizing the breath (see “Session 1: Organizing the Breath“).
What matters in gait is that the lower body receive the ground fully — grounded together with gravity — while the mobility of the upper body increases, its direction being upward. Comparing the body to a rod may make this clearer. Hold one end of a rod fixed in the hand, and the other end moves. The fixed end is the lower body meeting the ground; the other end is the upper body, free to move.
What Session 2 attends to is the foot, sitting at the very bottom of the lower body. The feet form the foundation for standing and for walking — but living as we do, how much use do they actually receive? Leslie Kaminoff, during a yoga teacher training, said something interesting on this.
A shoe company, he recounted, once ran a study on what condition serves the foot best. The expectation was that the ultimate shoe would emerge. The conclusion came out the other way:
for walking that puts the foot’s function properly to use, bare feet serve best.
For the foot to receive information from the ground fully and carry it to the brain, bare is best — yet modern life runs in exactly the opposite direction, lived amid shoes, socks, and paved roads.
Noboru Yasuda, himself a Rolfer, in Yurumete Reset: Rolfing Kyōshitsu (in Japanese only), describes the importance of the foot this way: seen through the lens of fascia, the sole of the foot is the terminus of the musculature of the back, whose starting point is the forehead. When the sole tightens, the lower back, the back, the shoulders, and even the neck tighten with it.
Put the other way: releasing the sole leads to a release across the whole of the back.
The theme of Session 2 becomes, then: how is the foot worked with, the foundation that receives the ground?
The work covers not only the movement of the foot itself, including building the foundation of the arch, but also the relation between the lower leg and the foot — are the two clearly differentiated and working in coordination? — how the parts of the lower leg coordinate among themselves, and whether the information from the foot carries fully to the spine so that the connection registers. Foot, lower leg, and spine: the work proceeds while seeing the whole.
Stated more explicitly, the goals of Session 2 are:
- Bring awareness to the feet and free them, building the foundation of the arch.
- Work on the tibiotarsal joint so as to differentiate clearly between the lower leg (tibia) and the foot (tarsals).
- Differentiate clearly among the parts of the lower leg — around the head of the fibula, the tibial condyles, and the malleoli.
- Bring the connection between foot and spine into awareness.
Note: “differentiate clearly” means releasing the tension in the fascia so that each part comes to work according to its own function.
In Session 2, two positions are observed — walking and standing — and body reading proceeds chiefly on these questions: where is gravity felt? Does the body incline backward or forward? Does the pelvis tilt forward or back? What is the balance between left and right in the lower legs and the heels?
Here again, the process is worth recording through my own experience.
The body reading came out with three main points:
- Poor balance between left and right lower legs: strong muscular tension on the right, weak on the left.
- Poor balance in gait: the toe hinge underused, the weight carried at the heel. In walking, the tibia participates on both sides, but on the left the femur does not.
- Lying face up on the table, the work proceeded in sequence: releasing tension in the fascia of the sole, around the tibiotarsal joint, and along the shin and thigh of the lower leg, and finally, in standing, releasing tension in the fascia around the spine with the relation between spine and foot in awareness.
The changes felt after Session 2:
- The feet became able to communicate with the ground. With the balance between left and right lower legs organized, walking grew smoother — the impression was almost of the lower legs taking part in the breathing.
- Mobility increased at the shoulders, and effort left the area around the clavicles, sharpening the sense of the head being drawn upward, the sky hook. Swinging both arms while walking came naturally.
- Thoracic breathing front and back came into awareness, and the breath deepened.
- The change in breathing exceeded that of the previous session in particular. That the feet matter not only as a foundation but also for breathing was a significant realization.
Session 3 works the sides of the body, integrating upper and lower. One more layer of the onion comes away, and the preparation for approaching the Core begins. The intention is to keep recording this firsthand experience on the blog.