Introduction
Hello, everyone! I’m Hidefumi Otsuka, offering Rolfing sessions in Shibuya, Tokyo.
What It Means to Organize the Central Axis — Cultivating the Power to Judge by a Personal Axis
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 it polishes “bodily sensation” while organizing the body, the body’s troubles (stiff shoulders, low-back pain) improve as well.
In Rolfing — in the first session, organizing the breath; in the second, organizing the soles of the feet; in the third, organizing the front-back balance — by polishing bodily sensation, the way of seeing the mind and the world shifts. All of these treat the superficial, visible muscles.
What is interesting is sessions 4–7. Because they treat the central axis (on the inside of the body), they treat the invisible deep muscles.
The procedure is as follows:
- Session 4: organizing the lower body (the adductors to around the pelvic floor)
- Session 5: organizing the front side of the spine in the upper body (the iliopsoas, the viscera, the diaphragm)
- Session 6: organizing the back side of the spine in the upper body (the shins, the gluteal muscles, the sacrum, the spine)
- Session 7: organizing the shoulders and the whole neck in the upper body
Drawn as a figure, it might look like this.
I myself believe that the meaning of organizing the central axis is that it makes it possible to acquire — through “bodily sensation” — a personal standard of judgment for deciding things independently.
This time, I’d like to take up session 7.
Three Senses — The Visual, the Inner-Ear, and the Kinesthetic Are Involved in Posture
In looking at “posture,” three elements are mutually involved:
the kinesthetic sense (kinesthetic system)
the visual sense (Visual system)
the inner-ear sense (Vestibular system)
Rolfing holds that balance is organized only when all three elements are present.
Session 2 awakens the “kinesthetic sense,” and session 7 awakens the “inner-ear sense.” When these two are awakened, they influence the visual sense and organize posture.
The “inner-ear sense” is the sense needed for balance. It lies deep in the ear, invisible and hard to grasp. Can the “inner-ear sense” really be awakened? In session 7, this becomes one theme.
First, among the three elements above, let me explain the “visual sense.”
Is the Visual Sense Organized? — A Desk-Work Society
The visual sense is information seen with the eyes, and human beings rely on the eyes for 80% of their external information.
When there are eye troubles such as (1) declining eyesight, (2) advancing presbyopia, or (3) a difference in how the left and right eyes are used, the visual sense can no longer be used well.
In fact, the body tries to compensate for the missing portion by using the other two senses (the kinesthetic and the inner-ear).
Present-day society is a desk-work society. There is an aspect of overusing the eyes. Organizing the visual sense is by no means the exclusive domain of bodywork; by using “glasses” that correct eyesight, the visual sense can come to be used well…
However, even when such measures are taken, if the other two elements (senses) are not developed, then even with the intention to improve posture, the effect is halved — this is what I feel from my experience with clients so far.
Below, I’d like to explain the “kinesthetic sense” and the “inner-ear sense.”
The Kinesthetic Sense — Are the Hands and Feet Used Freely?
The kinesthetic sense means whether the “external sense organs” — including the hands, feet, head, and face — firmly catch information from the outer environment, and whether it is taken into the body as five-sense information.
In Rolfing, this is expressed with the words Palpatory and Haptic. Palpatory derives from Palpation — touching an actual living body, as when studying anatomy and asking “where are the muscles and bones?”
Haptic, on the other hand, comes from the Greek ἅπτω, meaning “to touch, to apprehend by touch.” Both meanings point to “organizing a state in which information can be received when the hands and feet touch.” Unfortunately, the body is not always in such a state.
In the case of the feet, there are three arches of the foot; by building the foundation of these arches, and by space opening between the lower limb and the foot, the lower body can firmly receive the ground, and the degree of freedom of the upper body increases.
To express a foot in a Palpatory/Haptic state: it might be thought of as a state grounded like a gecko, or a state in which information can be received as if eyes were attached to the feet.
In the case of the face and head: rather than a state crushed by gravity, with the head suspended in the sky, the body organizes against gravity in two directions. The two directions mean that, because the lower body grounds and forms a foundation, the upper body can move freely upward.
As a result, with the head moving freely as well, the five senses are sharpened, and information from outside becomes easier to obtain.
As a yoga instructor, before conveying poses, I convey the importance of “warm-up exercises.” These are warm-up exercises called “Sukshma Vyayama,” which slowly move the joints — including the hands and feet — one by one. (For details, the book below may be a useful reference.)
It is moving the joints of the hands and feet “in time with the breath,” “slowly,” “carefully,” “while feeling the body” (for example, opening and closing the fists, moving the heels and each toe one by one). Done this way, the hands and feet come to be usable as if they suction on.
What benefit comes from being able to use these?
When the hands and feet are firmly usable, the muscle groups deep in the spine stabilize. For example, when the whole palm rests on the mat “suctioned on” without effort, the serratus anterior and rhomboids of the scapula, and the deep muscles connecting the spine, come to be usable.
As a result, in yoga terms, Downward Dog, inversions, and backbend-type poses become easier to take.
The point is to move the hands and feet consciously, rather than putting “force” into them.
In Rolfing, session 2 for the feet and session 7 for the hands and arms polish awareness, bringing the body to a state in which the deep muscles are usable.
And the last of the three elements is the “inner-ear sense.”
The Inner-Ear Sense — Awakening the Sense of Balance
The “inner-ear sense” is the sense of balance. What feels gravity is the inner ear, deep in the ear. It holds the balance organ and works together with the cranial nervous system to sense the direction the body faces, its tilt, and its movement. Through this, the body tries to recover its balance.
An easy example of the sense of balance is seasickness. Seasickness occurs because the sense of balance is lost in the waves of the sea. The ear is part of the face and head.
In session 7, by organizing the fascia of the face and head, the inner-ear sense can be awakened. In session 7 — which has become a signature of Rolfing — the fascia inside the mouth and nose is sometimes approached, including the jaw and its surrounding muscles, the muscles around the nose, and the muscles of the tongue.
The Session 7 Approach — To the Mouth and Nose — Its Relationship to the Bite
Session 7 proceeds in the order of the hands, arms, the area around the shoulders, the spine of the upper body, the face, and the head.
To put it by way of analogy: through sessions 4–6, the central axis has come to be organized up to around the chest, so the session is carried out with the sensation of placing the neck on top of that.
Because the head is at the summit of the body, in a sense session 7 becomes a session for recovering awareness of the central axis.
What distinguishes Rolfing from other bodywork lies in the point that “treatment is also carried out inside the mouth and nose, releasing fascial tension.”
Furthermore, working inside the mouth is also important for organizing the balance of the bite inside the mouth. Even among (1) people who have had their teeth aligned with orthodontics, (2) people who have had wisdom teeth extracted, and (3) people whose teeth have been over-filed in cavity treatment, many are seen whose balance is disturbed, depending on the bite.
Between the head (the cranium) and the neck (the cervical vertebrae) is the AO joint (the atlanto-occipital joint). In Rolfing, by organizing inside the mouth and the neck (the cervical vertebrae), the AO joint is approached indirectly, releasing the tension of the whole body.
In fact, there is a bodywork method that, by attending to the relationship between the head and the spinal column, notices the body’s unnecessary automatic reactions, learns to stop them, and teaches the body to release effort. This is the Alexander Technique, developed by Frederick Matthias Alexander.
I once studied it for six months, and I remember being surprised at how, by releasing the AO joint, the body’s tension fell away more than expected.
It is said that, as Ida Rolf developed the technique of Rolfing’s session 7, this Alexander Technique exerted a large influence.
When the Inner-Ear Sense Is Awakened… — The Direction of Life
When the inner-ear sense is awakened, together with the diaphragm and iliopsoas (session 5), the pelvic floor (session 6), and the area around the sternoclavicular joint (session 7), the horizontal planes become organized, so the central axis becomes organized.
When these horizontal planes are organized, the body begins to work toward its natural healing power.
As the meaning of organizing the central axis, I wrote: “acquiring, through ‘bodily sensation,’ a personal standard of judgment for deciding things independently.”
When the sensation of the central axis sprouts, within gravity, posture changes toward the position of least burden. I hold the hypothesis that, with personal latent potential brought out, room arises to consider “in what direction can this life head?”, and a standard of judgment for deciding things is acquired.
Conclusion
This time, I introduced — including the influence on the mind — what kind of change occurs within the body when session 7 of Rolfing approaches the hands, arms, scapulae, spine, neck, face, and head.
When session 7 ends, the work heads toward the integration sessions. Going forward, I’d like to take up the integration sessions.