rolfing-blog

During Christmas time I was going for long walks in the forest Spreewald every day. Out in the cold, I realized that always my left nostril got clogged, while my right one stayed open. I tried to breath more through my left nostril (it sounds silly, but it is truly possible to voluntarily breath more through one or the other nostril) - and, surprise, at once I got a more balanced vision seeing more with my left eye, too, where normally I am right-eye-focused and have to concentrate hard to change it (see last article). Once exploring, I continued with the ears. And, yes, fascination!, welcoming the sounds of the birds and woodpeckers with my left ear (instead of my usual listening, more with the right side), I had my left-eye-vision broadening again.

I am very fascinated. Opening the senses of my left side was balancing not only my vision, but for the moment also the slight turn of my head to the right I still have (after 8 years of Rolfing…). It’s again about spirals in my body…

And I toppled over trauma theory, more »

I am focusing more with my right eye than with my left one. Voluntarily changing this preference showed a spiral pattern in my body changing with the focus of the eyes. A coordination pattern? Also a fascial pattern? I am still exploring.

The Swiss Cert. Advanced Rolfer Barbara Bettini headed me towards the attention to my eyes. Even in playing the flute, by now a 24-year-old pattern, changing the focus of my eyes immediately had a (structural? functional?) effect towards something more aligned (interesting for other musicians, too, maybe). How much might I be able to change the coordination (and within time also fascial?) patterns in a lasting way by paying attention to the focus of my eyes?

more »

Matt Hsu, San Francisco, offers a lot of information for all Rolfers, Structural Integration Practitioners and clients or future clients on his blog structuralintegration.info.

Todays “top posts” (most visited) were:

• How does Rolfing really work? (the neurophysiology of touch)
• What’s the difference between the Rolf Institute of Structural Integration and the Guild for Structural Integration?
• A visual overview of the 10-series
• Professional Resources
• Who’s been Rolfed? (famous figures)

The class manual Biomechanics for Structural Integration by Liz Gaggini can be ordered by students as well as any other person interested about her models. The table of contents and the introduction chapter can be downloaded as a Word document.

Mike from New York / Los Angeles, a Rolf Structural Integrator certified by the International Association of Structural Integrators IASI, sent me some notes from a workshop with Liz Gaggini (find her website here). Liz Gaggini developed a Natural Alignment framework and further developed types and counterrotational patterns and so on. As Mike is writing, she also developed a play by play on how to get the best results with what kind of structures. (She will come to Europe/Vienna in 2009 for a workshop on Core Integration - visceral work in Structural Integration).

There is an article from 2002 (maybe you have to sign in to see the article) in the Ida P. Rolf Library outligning the story about the types - and at the same time asking for further development of Rolfing theories by testing and re-testing. The theories are around for quite some time, but most probably neither nor are right in all details…

I am interested and at the same time rejecting typologies…
Going with the saying: “put the model behind the client and not in front”, I am happy to get hints of “direction” by the structural types and models - in which direction to work the tissue. But still I will want to further develop my listening capacities in order to find the “right” directions just for this particular client, by listening to the inherent body wisdom.

A discussion in the rolf-forum lead me to the Bones Slide Show by Paul Grilley - “a short series of images showing standard variations in the major bones of the body.”

By the bones G. Hesse brought in to our basic Rolfing training I already learnt about quite big variations and deviations in human bones (as I also knew from animal disections during my studies in biology…). However it is nice to see this collection of slides. I think that even in well rolfed bodies differences in bone shape (as well as many other factors) will lead to very different structure and different functional ranges and possibilities within the various clients coming into a Rolfing practice.

I do not think that it will ever be possible to safely predict a structural and functional result of a specific treatment / technique - just because there are so many variations within our wonderful bodies …

Today, I started rebuilding my rolfing-blog. Be patient and come back to see within the next days (maybe weeks)…

— a cache:search in the Google cache gave me back quite a lot of my postings and links —

Dear Rolfing-colleagues, Rolfing-students and interested visitors,

this weekend my provider produced a big data-GAU… and as a quite cheap provider (1blu… never trust them again!!) they do not have any data-back-ups for their customers…

For my website I had all the data on my local computer and I am online again www.theres-grau.net. However, having built my weblog just online on the providers site (which should not be a problem with a good provider but was a big mistake with 1blu…), my whole rolfing-blog is gone… definitely…

IF ANY OF YOU HAPPEN TO HAVE COPIED LINKS OR QUOTES OR POSTINGS OF MY ROLFING-BLOG - I would appreciate very much to receive them by e-mail to re-build at least part of it…

rolfing@theres-grau.net

Some Rolfers do the first broad bodyreading of clients on the basis of the internal and external structure typology by Jan Sultan. I have been searching the web to find Jan Sultan’s basic article on The Internal & External Type. However, I could not find an online version. In Phase I of the Rolfing Training we just got the pictures of the muscle-men with the transmission lines in internal and external types indicated.

I found an article by Jan Sultan in Notes on Structural Integration, May 1986, 86/1, p. 12, J.H. Sultan, “Towards a Structural Logic”. If anybody finds a digital version of the internal/external-typology, please let me know and I will set a link.

However, on somatics.de I found an online-article summarizing two articles of Hans Flury, where Flury has further developed the typology by differentiating the types in regular vs. locked-knee internal and regular vs. symmetrical internal: “The Structural Typology of Hans Flury“, summarized by Robert Schleip. (The two original articles by Flury are: “Theoretical Aspects and Implications of the Internal/External System”, in: Notes on Structural Integration, November 1989, 89/1, p. 15; and: “Shortness” in:Notes on Structural Integration, August 1990, 90/1, p. 27; - both articles not online available, as far as I know.)

While searching for informations on the internal-external-typology, I also remembered the presentation by Gerhard Hesse he gave in our Phase II in Munich, 2007, about rotational patterns in the legs. He talked about structural “types” with compressed, laxed, bent or hyperextended knees and the according structural patterns within the rest of the body related with those before-mentioned knee-patterns, as well as the according rotational patterns within the legs. Who got interested in those patterns might try to contact Gerhard Hesse, Austria, via the Austrian Rolfer’s Site.

With interest I have been searching for typologies and trying to put those grids behind the structures of my guinea-pigs - after all I agree with my Tutor that such “types” can give first helping frames on what may be going on in a body and on where to start interventions. However, I am still fairly skeptical about “typologizing” clients! I will go on negotiating the extent of using typology-grids for actual human structures (and the histories behind) …

The ERA provides a nice set of articles about research related to Rolfing on her new website.

Via the research links on the same website I found the embarassing Ida P. Rolf Library of Structural Integration with more than 750 articles!! To download them, you have to leave your name and sign in with a password - that’s all. There is a search engine integrated. So whenever looking for some articles in the realm of Rolfing, I will have a look at this library as well…

And on the site of the Fascia Research Congress 2007 are many names of researchers and references  to articles… An even more interdisciplinary bundle of informations.