When Ida Rolf devised the ten-session series of Rolfing, there was no scientific theory behind it; it was built on her own experience in yoga, osteopathy, the Alexander Technique, and the like. The one who gave Rolfing its scientific grounding was the French Rolfer Hubert Godard. Last time, I touched on Tonic Function (see “Body and Mind (2) — Tonic Function (1)“).
How do the muscles work against gravity? And why is Rolfing effective? Pursuing these questions to their roots, Godard arrived at the idea of Tonic Function.
Godard divided the muscles into two — the Phasic, which work transiently, and the Tonic, which work continuously — and sought to explain the body from the standpoint of how to activate the gamma motor nervous system and make the fullest use of the energy-efficient Tonic Muscle within the body.
In this post, I would like to consider what kind of change needs to occur within the body in order to maintain the quality of the muscles under the environment of gravity (“keep tone” of the muscle).
The key is bidirectionality (Palintonicity) (see “Bidirectionality (Palintonicity)”). The idea is that by giving the body two directions, the Tonic Muscle comes into order.
I would like to give a few examples.
To walk efficiently, two directions are needed: the lower body feeling gravity (downward), and, on that foundation, the spine of the upper body extending and moving freely (upward).
When sitting in a chair, too, the most fitting movement arises when the feet rest on the ground, the chair supports the sit bones (the feet and sit bones going downward), and there is an awareness of extending the upper body upward from the base of the sit bones (the upper body going upward).
Also, as taken up in “Letting Go of Tension (3) — Awareness of Gravity and Space,” I described how the body has up and down, front and back, left and right, and how holding an awareness of widening the space in each of these is what Rolfing is. This, too, is an example of holding two directions.
By giving the body two directions in this way, we can come to know — including — where we are headed, what kind of beings we are, and how we move. I was taught that this is what makes it possible, in English, to determine one’s Orientation (the positioning of how one moves) in relation to Movement.
Of body and mind, Rolfing is distinctive in that it brings order chiefly by way of the body; but Tonic Function is also influenced by coordination (how the body moves), perception (how the world is seen), and meaning (how meaning is assigned to the world).
Ninety-five percent of human activity is spent gathering information from the outside. When the volume of information received is too great (heartbreak, an unexpected accident, violence, and so on), it comes to exert a serious effect on the body. As touched on in “Body and Mind (1) — The Deep Layers and Trauma,” the body becomes unable to cope with the excess of information, and it remains within the deep layers in the form of trauma.
According to Giovanni, the body stores such things within the interior of the mind and body. Rolfing, by bringing the body into order, comes to release these as a result; but how to settle oneself in the space between the new pattern gained through the work and the old pattern of the past (see “Old Patterns and New Patterns“) is a process that takes time.
That said, a Rolfer who performs Rolfing is not a therapist. The idea of Tonic Function seems to teach that there are many approaches to body and mind.