Introduction
Somehow, even when the head thinks it is relaxed, the body can keep holding tension. Why is that?
- “I don’t know how to let go of the force.”
- “I don’t understand why there’s so much force in me.”
These are words I often hear in the field of the session, from those who come carrying low-back pain or stiff shoulders. In most cases, the person is not deliberately putting force in. If anything, the wish is “to let go if possible.”
Even so, the body keeps putting force into the same place, and keeps sending out a sign as pain or stiffness.
This time, I want to write about an experience even deeper than that — about the moment, during a session, when words disappear.
A Body That Cannot Release Even When Trying To
Once a session begins, a body that feels it “doesn’t know how to let go” reveals several shared features:
- Awareness has left the body and gathered up toward the head
- The toes are cold, and the sense of pressing the floor is faint
- The center of gravity is forward, and the body leans slightly ahead
- The pelvis is tilted forward, with sustained tension around the lower back and shoulders
Even without any awareness of putting force in, the body cannot stop “the posture of continuing to support,” “the posture of continuing to try hard.”
In this state, even when told to “please let go of the force,” it is natural not to know where, or how, to release.
“Not Knowing” Is Not Because Sensation Is Poor
The more chronic the tension in the lower back or shoulders, the more often words like these are spoken:
“I have no sense that force is entering here.” “Even when touched, I can’t quite tell.” “It’s been like this for a long time, so I thought this was normal.”
This is not that sensation is dull. It is the result of living, over a long time, together with that tension.
Past stress, adaptation to the environment, unconscious bracing and enduring. Such things pile up, and the body has learned “the state of continuing to put force in” as a safe choice.
That is precisely why the sensation arises of force being present without the reason being clear.
Touching a Fascia, and Simply Waiting
In a Rolfing session, a certain area of fascia is approached by hand.
But there, there is no “trying to change” it. Simply touching, I wait until that area holds the will “to move.”
Before long, it begins to move slowly, in the direction the body wants to move. It is a sensation as if an area that had been silent were waking up with a warmth.
In that moment, the client’s words disappear. Explanation and analysis become entirely unnecessary.
A Discomfort with the Word “Release”
The term “fascial release” is often used.
But the word “release” has, somewhere, a ring of the practitioner’s dominance.
The practitioner loosens. The practitioner heals. The practitioner changes.
But what is actually happening is different.
The needed movement, the needed position, the needed answer —
the client’s body finds them on its own.
The practitioner becomes neutral. Does not decide the direction. Does not rush.
In a sense, the resource — the force needed for healing — is on the client’s side. The body holds the power to come into order holistically.
Holistic power means the body is grasped not as a mere collection of parts, but as “a web of relationships.” The aim of the intervention becomes regaining the order and harmony of the whole, not of the part. (For details, see “What Is Holistic Healing? — Reexamining Through the Lens of “Paradigms”: Relaxation / Corrective / Holistic“)
When a Place of Ease and Safety Is in Place
What the practitioner sets in order is not “changing it for them.”
It is an environment where it is all right to change with a sense of ease. When ease and safety are felt, it is fair to say the fascia begins to move of its own accord.
As a result of that movement, space (an interval, a space) is born in the body.
When space is born, excess tension comes undone. The armor comes off little by little, and the body gradually becomes free.
When the Armor Comes Off, What Happens
As the armor gradually comes off, there is no longer a need to defend the self with the mind (the head).
Then the heart (emotion) and bodily sensation come forward.
Words grow fewer. Silence is born. But that silence is not a time when nothing is happening.
Rather, it is the time when the deepest adjustment is occurring.
The Process of Sessions 1–3 and 4–7
In Rolfing, from sessions 1 through 3, the outer muscles that guard the body rigidly (the armor) are approached, and the sessions are done so that space is born.
From sessions 4 through 7, the inquiry advances into the deep muscles in order to set the central axis in order. Within this process, along with the body’s armor, the mind’s armor also comes off.
Then things come to be grasped not by the head alone but with emotion and bodily sensation. The silence that arrives in between — I have watched over it many times.
That time, and the unforeseeable change of the body, are deeply mysterious, and fascinating.
When Force Begins to Release, the Way of Using the Body Changes
At the same time as the change in the lower back and shoulders, voices like these are heard:
“Standing is easy.” “My shoulders feel as if they’ve dropped.” “For the first time, I noticed that force had been entering unconsciously.”
This is not a story of pain alone being removed. It is a sign that the way of using the whole body is beginning to change.
For force to release is neither slackening nor collapsing of posture. It is a state of being able to use force where it is needed, only as much as is needed.
When Words Disappear
Words organized in the head and the words of experience are not the same. When the body says NO and it is being ignored, words are many.
But in the moment the body begins to move, words disappear.
Explanation becomes unnecessary.
At that moment, judgment becomes not something made in the head, but something that rises up from within.
Conclusion
The moment words disappear in a session is not the moment the practitioner did something.
It is the moment the client’s body chose to move on its own.
I am in the position of watching over that silence.
The body, if there is ease and space, comes into order of its own accord. By that fact, however many times I am present for it, I am astonished.
For anyone in whom, right now, such a state continues —
- wanting to release the force in the lower back or shoulders, yet not knowing how
- not knowing why there is tension, even for the person concerned
- repeating the same pain again and again
— checking the reason from the body’s side, once, is one option.