はじめに
Hello, everyone! I’m Hidefumi Otsuka, offering Rolfing sessions in Shibuya, Tokyo.
What Does It Mean to Organize the Front-Back Balance? — Grasping the Body from Flat to Three-Dimensional
Rolfing is a method in which, once every one to two weeks, using manual technique, treatment is carried out each time along a theme. Because one can polish “bodily sensation” while organizing the body, the body’s troubles (stiff shoulders, low-back pain) improve as well.
Two sessions ago, in Rolfing’s first session, I introduced how organizing the breath, and last time, in the second session, how organizing the soles of the feet — polishing bodily sensation around these — each influences the “mind.”
When we enter the third session, we extend the two dimensions (upper body, lower body) further, and conduct the session with attention to three dimensions (front-back, space). This connects to re-grasping the body in three dimensions, and brings great change to the body.
This time, I’d like to focus on how the shift from two to three dimensions influences the body and the mind, and on where, in Rolfing’s third session, we approach.
The History of Western Painting and the Human Worldview — From Two Dimensions to Three
When I took Rolfing’s Basic Training (Phase II) in September 2014, the Rolfing instructor was the Italian Rolfer, Giovanni Felicioni.
“The moment the two-dimensional way of seeing changes into three dimensions, how does the human worldview change?”
Because comparing it to the history of Western painting made it easy to grasp, I’d like to introduce it again here.
To begin with, “a painting” tends to reflect “how the maker is seeing the world.”
People who lived in the Christian era expressed the world using “icons.” An “icon” is an image depicting Jesus Christ, saints, angels, important events or parables in the Bible, or events in church history, drawn mainly on a flat surface (two dimensions).
In the Middle Ages, which Christianity dominated, the human being was a sinful existence. For this reason, human beings — and holy figures — came to be expressed in two dimensions rather than three. And this was also to avoid idolatry.
In Rolfing’s first and second sessions, treatment is carried out holding this kind of view of the human being.
In Italy, as the Middle Ages gave way to the Renaissance, the era entered a time of economic development. Giotto came to bring three-dimensional spatial expression and the natural expression of human emotion into painting. At last, the three-dimensional way of seeing the human being (the third session) appears in art history.
Raphael pushed this even further; in The School of Athens, he incorporated mathematical thinking, attending to left-right and front-back symmetry and reflecting it in the work. In this work, he gives the impression of a more profound awareness of space.
In time, the Impressionists Van Gogh and Pissarro succeeded in bringing depth into painting by incorporating the vanishing point of perspective into spatial perception.
A vanishing point is the point at which lines that are in fact parallel, when drawn as if not parallel, meet.
When observing “walking” in Rolfing, one asks: where is the walker’s gaze directed, toward what vanishing point? Toward concrete things, objects (desk, chair), windows, buildings? And is the field of the gaze narrowing or widening?
In fact, when the awareness of the vanishing point (awareness of the vanishing point means determining direction) is not settled, “spatial perception” narrows. When you widen the perception of the background (when you perceive what is behind), the vanishing point grows larger, and the strain in “walking” and “posture” comes out.
What expresses this well are Matisse and Monet. Looking at these works, spatial expression comes to place emphasis not only on the foreground of the depicted object but also on the background. As a result, balance is brought to the painting.
From Two Dimensions to Three — A Change in How We Keep Distance in Relationships
When one comes to use the vanishing point and the balance of foreground and background well, one becomes able to take an appropriate sense of distance between the external environment and the body.
For example, it may be easy to understand if you think, “How much distance do I take from others, from space?”
When this sense is weak, then perhaps because “I don’t know my own standing position” and “I don’t know others’ standing position,” the possibility of “leading to antisocial behavior” also rises.
In Sandra Blakeslee’s The Body Has a Mind of Its Own, the following is written.
She invites the reader to stretch both arms all the way out in front of the body, fingers extended flat, and then to swing them up and down and side to side — sweeping them in a large arc from overhead down to the flanks, as if becoming the many-armed god Shiva, to spread one’s territory wider. She then asks you to picture the entire space the arms have passed through: this is the personal space surrounding your body, which neuroscientists call peri-personal space (“peri-” meaning “around”), and which is mapped corner to corner within the brain.
This peri-personal space differs from person to person, and it appears in how people take a sense of distance from one another.
As for why securing personal space matters: when you place yourself in the external environment, unless you have grasped how the brain is moving through space, you become unable to respond to the unexpected (for example, a car or bus heading toward you, a person approaching).
In order to respond, you need to reach out a hand, pull away, draw close, or protect yourself. It is for this that peri-personal space is formed.
In fact, to grasp things in three dimensions is to secure one’s own space. This is important to become conscious of before organizing the body’s central axis.
Ultimately, by grasping the body three-dimensionally, the body sense gains in richness, and preparation for the deep-muscle sessions (sessions 4–7) becomes complete.
The Front-Back Balance — Where Do We Approach?
To organize the front-back balance, Rolfing’s third session focuses on three places:
The shoulders and arms, the spine, and the thighs.
Both the shoulders and the arms lie on the side of the body, the boundary of the “front-back balance,” and they play an important role in organizing the body’s front-back balance.
For example, when “walking,” we swing the arms; this is to handle the front-back balance so that it does not become unstable during walking.
Furthermore, the spine forms curves through the cervical, thoracic, and lumbar vertebrae and the sacrum, and those curves are often collapsed by fascial tension.
To organize the front-back balance is also to organize the curves. This, in turn, leads to the easing of low-back pain.
Conclusion
In Rolfing, through breath, the feet, and the front-back balance, the body becomes organized three-dimensionally.
This time, we have looked at how the human way of seeing — from two dimensions to three — influences us psychologically.
Next time, I’d like to take up the sessions that organize the central axis, from the fourth session onward, and why this matters.