Rolf Audio Tape Transcript

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Ida Rolf Audio Tape Transcript
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3^rd Hour Continued

4^th Hour

5^th Hour

Review up to 4^th Hour

3^rd Hour Continued

(0:08 student) - the anteriority of the spine. There are a number of muscles that hook into this particular area, and as a territory procedure for getting into the pelvis in the next hour, it’s a matter of freeing up these structures - or beginning to free them up I should say - along the anterior spine.

(0:28) Now actually you have answered my question which said, “Take the second half of the 3^rd hour.” There’s one point in there which I-, which is a key to the 3^rd hour, which you haven’t brought in, and actually my question didn’t ask for it, but I want to be sure you understand it as a key to the 3^rd hour. Al, don’t you want a chair that isn’t wobbling all [around] you?...

(1:03 student) When I think of the 3^rd hour I try to think of the key you might be asking for. I’m thinking of the girdles in terms of the 12^th rib

(1:15) Ok. That’s right. Alright. Right in there. Go on

(1:21 student) And in terms of freeing up the pelvis in-

(1:29) OK. You’re doing too abstract an abstraction

(1:32 student) I’m not coming up with “a key”

(1:34) You’re not coming up with “the key”. You are talking about freeing the girdles. How can you free them? What is it that’s holding the girdles? What is it that is sailing to support the appropriate length of the girdles?

(2:01) Again the 12^th rib comes to mind, the [temporal/temple] action. But I don’t think that’s what you’re after

(2:06) Go ahead. It doesn’t hurt any of these people to be stretching around in their heads for the answers either

(2:1`4) Freeing the deep tissues at their anchorages to lengthen-

(2:23) Like what?

(2:26 student) quadratus lumborum

(2:29) Yes! The quadratus lumborum particularly, because the quadratus is the key to that whole business of whether you can get the shoulder girdle up and the pelvic girdle down! And it is the key through the mechanism of the 12^th rib, plus the 11^th rib, plus the 10^th rib; because the 11^th and 10^th aren’t going to be where they belong if the 12^th isn’t where it belongs. You see it establishes the kind of spanning which gives you the length you need! And it is the first time that you’ve really gone deep into that body. You see you’ve taken that body and like an onion, as I’ve said before, you have peeled it from the outside. But never have you peeled very deeply yet. But in the 3^rd hour you begin to peel more deeply.

(3:22 student) Now you emphasized the depth you need to go to along the iliac crest to really free up the gunk which is on that-

(3:28) That’s right. That’s right. And look at your skeleton there and realize that you have got to get the whole depth of that crest clean, and by clean I mean the flesh so organized that it can stretch as it is demanded. As you make the demand on it to stretch, it is able to stretch. And this is what ‘clean’ is in terms of any of these. You’ll hear me saying over and over again, “Clean off the bony surface. Clean off the bony surface,” of the coastal arch for instance.

(4:06 student) I visualize this cleaning off with my fingers as losing the knotty-ness and loosing the strand-ness, where you can move your hand along and have a free flow.

(4:19) That’s right. And each one of those muscles as you get to it and you are putting pressure on it, is able to do its own individual giving independent of its neighbor. This is what cleaning off means. Not that you go in there with a knife and scrape it. But that you go in there with your finger and scrape it and all of a sudden you have a different quality of tissue. Now those of you who have-, the senior students here know what I’m talking about when I talk the different quality of tissue. But those of you who have never seen 8^th and 9^th and 10^th hour work don’t know what I’m talking about. This is one of the reasons why people can’t learn this thing in once through, because they have got to have gone through and see where they are going to get, and then go back and take another look at how they get there. Otherwise you are handling the situation blind.

(5:24) now does this present a different emphasis for that 3^rd hour? Ok. Go along.

(5:37) Now I would suggest to you Fritz that you call attention at this point to the need for the 3^rd hour as proceeding the 4^th hour. Then I’ll know that you have seen the light.

(5:58 student) The 4^th hour is, in terms of the pelvis and lengthening the medial line of the body if you would, and the pelvic floor.

(6:09) Yea. It isn’t an ‘and the pelvic floor,’ if you really establish the medial line of the body you really will have established the pelvic floor. It’s quite true the pelvic floor is your goal, but it’s not a separate goal, it’s just the end point of a road. And if you go along that road you can’t help getting to that end point, if you go farther

(6:37 student) and a part of the organization of the pelvis and the medial line, or a good part of it - in terms of the ishial spine and the ramus of the pubes - and in order for this to be free in the 3^rd hour, we’re freeing the anterior iliac spine which makes the next hour possible by bringing up the posterior aspect. so how one leads into the other, my feeling is that you’re beginning to free the anterior and lateral side, the front and side of the pelvic structure, so the 4^th hour gives you the ability to organize the ishial spines

(7:20) That’s right. And you see the 3^rd hour has done sufficient organization at the edges of the pelvis, that as you get to the places that really hold, those edges are now ready to allow that pelvic bony girdle to take a new position.

(7:40 student) Yes. You mentioned starting away from the center portion of a problem-

(7:46) Always. This is one of-, the 4^th rule of Rolfing or the 5^th

(7:48 student) I think the 4^th

(7:54) I had a perfectly wonderful about 17^th rule of Rolfing last night. By George, I’ve forgotten it

(8:12 student) the remainder of the 3^rd hour is working on the back. Do you want me to go on to the back? Or do you want me to stay with the pelvis?

(8:24) the remainder of the 3^rd hour. Yes, well actually you see, at this moment we have been discussing ideas rather than mechanisms. And I want to be very clear that the ideas are clear in your mind, as well as the mechanisms

(8:40) Oh, listen. What is Jack coming up for? 3^rd hour? Do we have anybody coming up for 3^rd hour this week? Irving. Whose Irving?...Oh, good, because, yea, I remember I made that date, but I didn’t realize his name was Irving – but you see I’d like now to be able to get back to the 3^rd hour so as to let you people see it, and then Hector is coming up for the 4^th hour, and we’ve got to get into Fritz [ ]. Hector I never forget you. Yes?

(9:25 student) my father has got two hours. Although you’re going to be working on someone different- ...

(9:31) Yea. He’ll be a little further ahead. But you see I try to organize the class this way so that always you are weaving back and forth in the territory that you have known, and that we don’t get into unknown territory with models, or people that come in for work and so forth, until such time as you have gone back and forth and back and forth and do it thoroughly. You’re father was coming in the end of this week, is that right? Ok. So now we have gotten that far along

4^th Hour)

(10:19) Did it occur to you during the 4^th hour that there are many alternative patterns through which the rami get themselves balled up? Is the pattern of the actual disorganization of one side, which may come in as a fellow falls off a horse and he hits on one hip, rather than the other hip, rather than sitting down squarely. There’s the disorganization that really comes from the coccyx itself, which has suffered injury of some sort.

(11:10) There is the disorganization which comes from a child with bow legs - and most kids have bow legs when they start to walk - who doesn’t get out of his bow legs, and obviously these bow legs have to be compensated for at that ramus. There’s nothing else possible.

(11:40) There’s the individual who falls and disorganizes his knees, there’s the individual who through some accident has a disk taken out of his-, or injury to the cartilage of the knee, and surgical interference.

(12:02) All of these things are going to refer into the structure at the ramus. And all of these things you have to, as you get more and more expert, you have to have in your head, running from your head to your fingers, as you’re doing this, “What have I here? Alright, if I have so and so here, what else am I going to find?” Because if you release one situation and you haven’t released the “what else I’m going to find?” the guy’s going to have disorganizations that he feels as, “I feel terrible. I wonder, what is the matter with me?” So that you are not merely working with your hands but you are working more and more and more and more with your head, understanding the body.

(13:10) And I do not mean accepting the body. Because if you gave me this story the other day that Fritz said understanding is accepting. Somebody here-

(13:17 student) That’s a Tom [Watson] quote. I forget who said it

(13:22) But you see this is the place where it isn’t accepting. This is the place where defiantly you’re not accepting. You are looking to see, and you’re seeing what you can’t and don’t accept, and you’re organizing it so that you can accept that body.

(13:45) But you see the great temptation is that you just put your hand in such and such an area, and in such and such an area, and oh yes, it’s just fine. Now, what I’m trying to make you people understand, because you are an exceptional group in terms of percentage of people that have come into this work and really have been trained to use their heads with respect to their bodies, what I’m trying to get you people to understand is that there’s a tremendous opportunity to use your heads right in here.

(14:28) ok. So what did you want to get done in that 4^th hour Fritz?

(14:36 student) The 4^th hour is basically to lengthen the medial line of the body, and organize the pelvis – from a random pelvis – through the rami

(14:57) Yes. In order to?

(15:05 student) strengthen the floor of the pelvis

(15:07) organize

(15:09) organize the floor of the pelvis

(15:12) Which is another way of saying strengthening, but people’s ideas of the word strengthen are so widespread. They want to make one side tough, and they think they’ve strengthened the floor of the pelvis. They haven’t at all. In terms of this class, what goes on in this room and its derivatives, you haven’t strengthened anything until you have balanced it. And when a guy says, “I feel so weak,” even though it be a question of a dose of flu, he is actually saying, “I am feeling a failure of balance somewhere”

(16:00) I have had, and you have had I’m sure, the patient who comes to you in the midst of the flu epidemic and says, “I’m as weak as a kitten.” Or maybe you have to go to their house. “Ok so you’re as weak as a kitten. What did you eat today?” “Well I was so weak my wife insisted that I have steak and so forth to make me stronger.” And you say, “Alright. Let’s forget the steak. It didn’t make you stronger did it?” “No. I’m as weak as a kitten” “Ok. So lets make you strong.” And all you have to do is organize the muscles which through the toxic, pathologic process have distorted. And they feel a great deal better. And now you have a brand new problem. Now the guy is going down to his office this afternoon because he hasn’t been there for 2 days. You can’t win.

(17:12) But at least you hear what I’m saying about strength. Now I suspect that someday I’ll get enough light on this subject that I’ll be able to integrate the concept of strength in which, let us say Hal was brought up and Don over there was brought up, with this concept that I’m giving you. There is something in there that needs integration and that I haven’t seen yet. But I’m saying to you that in the way-, in the terms in which strength is used in this room , and the terms in which you can use strength and get results, it is this other idea of balance. So you are strengthening the floor of the pelvis when and as and only as you are balancing the floor of the pelvis around that central axis. Yes?

(18:17 student) this sort of, from our point of view, cockeyed way of looking at strength is something that sort of came home to me last week, or the week before really. I was really down with this cold; My head was really heavy, and I really felt weak. And I didn’t think I’d even begin to do any work. But I noticed putting out the energy and doing the work just tremendously strengthened me. I mean, afterwards I just didn’t feel that weakness, that-

(18:45) I would think Al, that part of what you did, as you were going around here your head was literally way out here. Bare me out, some of you that saw him. And I would think that in the course of your actual working with your hands and with your body, you went back toward the organization of the body which you knew would create the effect that you wanted on that material universe. And this was nearer to the actual thing. You remember the day that I really got in there, and couldn’t stand it anymore, and dragged your head back by the hair of your head. It didn’t stay all the way back, but it stayed further back. And you see this distortion is part of the pathologic, the toxic process.

(19:39) Anybody that gets into a problem with a virus or a bacteria or anything of this sort, is going to show you these marked distortions. You say, “why I passed John on the street. He looks perfectly terrible.” What do you mean when you say he looks terrible? You mean literally that he’s all off his line. And this is a part of this mystery that is going on in the body. Now as you bring the guy back towards his lines, he is feeling better and he is more capable of dealing with the toxic situation that has arisen locally in this, that, and the other tissue as a result of the invasion of the virus, or whatever. He is more capable of doing it, but you, when you lay your hands on him are not being able to do it. What you are being able to do is to see to it that there is a faster flow of nutrient media - blood, lymph, etc. - to the blocked area. But again, it is a gradient scale. And you have an awful time making these guys understand this.

(21:02) They expect you to push a button, and they are going to be so well they can do anything. Of coarse they can go down to their office this afternoon. And then after they left their office, they really had a date out on the golf club course, and this is important to them, so they keep it. But you see in the meantime they are again distorting that body by overtiring it, overdoing it, carrying the weight of emotional problems in terms of what they find at the office and so forth and so forth. And it’s a very great job to make them understand this.

(21:43)Ok. So what is the story about that floor of the pelvis?

(21:54 student) The story I think is just that it is the containing element which actually holds that sawdust in, or-

(22:00) Yea. Alright. There’s more to the story than that. I mean, this is the basis of it

(22:09 student) and it’s again just, you know, supporting structure of the visceral abdominal cavity

(22:23) Alright. Hector, so you know what I’m driving for?

(22:25 student) I think you must be driving at the neurologic aspect of it; the emphasis on the ganglia in the pelvis

(22:36) Well Yes. A little more basic than that. A little less differentiated that that, in the sense that that floor of the pelvis really organizes itself, realize that it has to organize the coccyx and the pubes. Therefore it changes the way the sawdust is held in; not merely that the sawdust is held in but how the sawdust is held in. And now you get to a neurological mechanism Hector, by which tone comes into the viscera of the pelvis and of the abdomen.

(23:26) And now you see, you begin to get a very, very different individual. Because he is an individual with an entirely different tone of visceral tissue. A very different tone organized through that autonomic nervous system. But very different.

(24:01) And you see you have to recognize this for what it is. It is literally the cock or the key with which you turn on the flow of the vitality. Now this is not metaphysical, and it’s not occult, and it has nothing to do with-. It has to do with [yoga] centers yes, but it has to do with them just because the [yogic] centers are talking about the neurological process, not you are talking about the [yogic] centers.

(24:40) And you see I really fight my way in some of these groups to try to put that across, because except as you have a fundamental understanding of the mechanism of the body, this reaching out and finding some name to say it happens because of this and because of that. Name; they get you so involved in the ‘what was it?’ name and form aspect of it. And they don’t have the sense of the reality of what is going on in there. And I don’t think I need to stress that as much in this group, because so much a larger percentage of you here really have a definite understanding of the motive that makes a body work.

(25:49) So the fact becomes the port of entry; that 4^th hour becomes the port of entry to this harbor of greater tone.

(26:04) Now. What did you see in your pictures today? I mean, the way we’ve been talking today you’d think we’d gotten to-, the way we have been talking, you’d think we’d gotten to the end of the line. Actually you’ve gotten slightly less than half way along. By this afternoon you will be halfway through. So you can begin to cry and I can begin to cry.

(26:35) So what did you see in your pictures today? My golly.

(26:46 student) I haven’t had the chance to look at them

(26:48) Go and look at them. Those of you who haven’t had a chance to look at them, go and look at them. Tell me whether I should send you all home, you’re all perfect.

(Tape Break)

5^th Hour

(27:08) - that are around the base of the object. There is something that is not balancing with what is behind, what is along side, what “can it be?” and the answer is very simple. It’s in that abdominal wall, and what is in that abdominal wall? It is basically a something patterned by the recti. So that the next job on hand-. (Oh. Fritz, I would be taking you normally, wouldn’t I? Yea. I’ll take you next.) So that the next job on hand you see, is going to be the question of getting organization into that rectus, because those of you who really know what a rectus looks like, and those of you who don’t – some of you may know what flank steaks look like, but others of you don’t – realize that that rectus is made up differently from other muscles.

(28:47) If you have to look at pictures in the book, ok…

(29:02) If you don’t have any literal experience with the meat that comes from the butcher shop and is called a flank steak, with it’s striations and it’s cross-striations, which are able-, which the function of the cross-striations is literally to hold the rest of it in place to maintain the length of it, to maintain the width of it. You see if you had a pair of muscles without these inscripta you would have a something that was too long to be practical in terms of controlling the abdominal contents. It just wouldn’t have the strength.

(30:00) And realize that the Good Lord, or whoever was responsible for the job, recognized that he had a very special job for these abdomens to do - these abdominal walls to do - and developed a tissue accordingly that was capable of a changing degree of tone and of tension, and of what once was called ‘strength.’ And you, all of you know to the extent to which men are proud of the rigidity of that abdominal wall.

(30:49) But according to the ideas we are developing here, rigidity is not a something to be proud of, in the sense that it limits what you can do. It makes you do certain things perhaps better than you are ever able to do them before, but it limits the number of places in which you are competent.

(31:23) And what we are doing here is developing a system which makes men more competent in more fields. You will not be competent to carry around a suit of mail. You will not be that competent to fight as a pugilist, but who wants it?

(31:50) What you are needing in this veil of tears now, is a system of some sort which enables you to adapt quickly and easily to the many different-, to the variety, to the great variety of demands that are made on you mentally and physically.

(32:16) Now when you come right down to think of it, this is a remarkable idea; That you have in human bodies something that is so plastic that you can develop it. That it was developed for something that was shear rigid strength, so called, and that now you’re trying to develop it to the polar opposite, and you can do this. This is an unbelievable thought if you just get right down into it and look around at it. Now the human condition is such that it can be shifted at will to meet various demands.

(33:18) So, what we are proposing to do today is to do something to make the recti abdomini more competent. Now, greater competence is going to mean greater sliding ability, as you’ve seen in other muscles. It’s going to mean a different relation of those tight inscripti, and the more adjustable areas between. It’s going to mean a difference in the way the recti abdomini are attached to the rib cage. Because if you will look at those pictures you will see that those rib cages are still tilted down, and this was what was keeping all those other men who didn’t look as though they were being built around the line, this was what was keeping them from looking as though they had a line; There rib cages where tilted. And if there rib cages are tilted their shoulder yokes are going to be tilted, and their head, their neck, is going to have to pitch forward, and they’re going to have to do balancing with their heads.

(35:00) And so we are going to go into those recti with the view to organizing - horizontalling if you like – the rib cage, as well as horizontalling the pelvis. Now look back at what we were talking about in the 4^th hour. Look back at the notion that we have to get the floor of the pelvis balanced, and see how this different pull on the pubes is going to be reflected into the balance of the floor of the pelvis. And there again, those of you who know about the mechanics of bodies realize that if this happens then you get different strains put upon the various nervous centers – plexi – that are in the lower pelvis, and in the lower abdomen, and all along the line. And this different strain – lessened we hope, we believe – is again going to reflect into a different sense of wellbeing.

(36:44) And so here we have the job of the 5^th hour, and we’d better get on with it.

(Tape Break)

Review up to 4^th Hour

(37:12) I take it that at this point everybody understands how to get into the 4^th hour. Now the question at this point becomes how do we get out of the 4^th hour, and where are we going after we get out of the 4^th hour?

(37:31) This being the 5^th hour, the practical 5^th hour coming-up today. Dan [Soundscrub], would you like to discuss this maybe?

(37:38 student) getting into the 5^th hour?

(37:40) No. Well, start at the beginning of the 4^th hour. And I would look back at what the preparation for the 4^th hour had been so I know that we know how we got into the 4^th hour

(38:02 student) I’ve been in-, general I’ve seen the first three hours as kind of circling and preparing the field to go to the core; which is the pelvis

(38:10) That’s right

(38:16 student) And the -

(38:17) The direct path into the core led through?

(38:22) We started the 1^st hour with superficial fascia-

(38:24) uh uh. The direct path into the core from the 3^rd hour

(38:28 student) But we want to go into the pelvis

(38:32) We’re going in to go into the pelvis, which is part of the core. But how did we get into-, what is the particular key that we used to open pelvis?

(38:39 student) Oh. We, in the process of lengthening the sides in the 3^rd hour of the thorax, we also freed up the 12^th rib and the quadratus lumborum

(38:52) yea. That’s what I’m trying to say. Be very clear in your mind that at that point you are beginning to get deep, as you haven’t before at all. At that point you are beginning to get to a deeper level. Up until this point you’ve been dealing with levels of the lumbar fascia for instance, when you went down the back and lengthened the lumbar fascia. But you never got quite as deep as the quadratus before. So now in order to get to the core situation in the pelvis, you go in as far as the depth of the quadratus. And that’s the 3^rd hour you see

(39:36) Then there is another element of that 3^rd hour that you need to be quite sure of in order to have things prepared for your 4^th hour. What is that?

(39:57) I haven’t put an awful lot of stress on it, but its right in there, therefore I’m stressing it now

(40:05 student) I remember you saying something yesterday about the, “oh yea, that’s getting ready to sort of-”

(40:13) Yes Eddie?

(40:15 student) We’re nibbling on the edge of the anterior spine?

(40:18) Right. Exactly right. Exactly right. And you see you have to do this in order to get that pelvis to the point where you can begin getting to the [core] of the pelvis.

(40:34 student) this is my concept of kind of circling in the field. Each hour is a circle with a little bit of a different-, the next -

(40:40) A little bit of a further in

(40:41 student) a little closer circle a little further in

(40:43) That’s right. And you see instead of a spiral going this way a spiral goes this way.

(40:55) what hour is that?

(40:58) I don’t think any of you are going to forget that. Ever. And that’s the way it goes you see. And as Eddie said, nibbling on that you see is the second you went in, in order to freedom to get into the 3^rd ring in. Right.

(41:24 student) In previous hours there have also been occasions where you worked in the inguinal area in the groin

(41:26) Well mostly-, yes, there have been, but a lot of that groin stuff you see is again getting stuff ready to move along that anterior superior spine, because there’s where you have to get a complete re-organization. There are 5 muscles there you remember. Anyone want to name them? Just those, to be sure you know there are five?

(41:49 student) The tensor fascilata, the sartorius, the rectus femoris…

(42:11) The gluteus medius, the iliacus. The iliacus is right over the corner

(42:18 student) actually you can [actually] the iliacus a little bit too in that-

(42:19) You bet I do. You just bet I do, because you see that iliacus and the psoas are the two-, next ring in, that determines where your pelvis is going to be. It’s not on the same ring with the quadratus. That’s a more external ring. But as your ring closes in and gets deeper, the thing that’s going to determine how that psoas, or the way that pelvis sits, is the psoas and the iliacus.

(43:00) And you see with each ring you are opening something so that you can get your finger into the next deeper area. And a lot of your finger really works on that guy over the weekend when you don’t see him, but the tone is changing, the chemistry is changing, the thing which has been deteriorated is being reteriorated,, and that sort of thing, and it’s going on while he is away.

(43:31) And keep him far away. Otherwise his head is on your shoulders, and he’s telling you how bad he feels. And don’t get steamed up about this. Realize that it’s part of the progression picture. Because the guy can’t progress until-, the guy can’t get where he wants to go until all [sagaral] material has been changed. Literally this in terms of chemistry. Every cell in that body has to be reached and changed. And there are going to be various places where the progression is slower, and various places where the progression is much faster than you think it’s going to be. And where the progression is slower, if you have bad luck, you get yourself hung-up you see in a place where there are symptoms, where the man feels symptoms. He doesn’t merely feel tired, he feels symptoms. And they can be any kind of symptoms, though of coarse they are apt to be the exaggeration and the exacerbation of presenting symptom that’s more then [in there]; presenting symptom will be cardiovascular poverty, respiratory problems, in the women reproductive problems, etc. etc. you’re apt to get the exacerbation on the point of weakness of course. And then you begin to have trouble with them at home because they are going around with their famous headache or whatever there symptom has been before, and their papa says, “Well what are you paying all that money to those guys for. You see, I told you so.” And so does Aunt Mary, and so does sister Sue, and all the family is enjoying camping on the neck of your patient, who will then, if he can, camp on yours.

(45:49) Leigh, will you be good enough to get me one of those wipe things for over my shoulders.

(45:54) So that then this is the thing that as I said to you yesterday that seems to come absolutely to a head then between 4^th and 5^th hour. And you see, after all that 5^th hour, by that 5^th hour you’re half way along where you’re going, and it’s not past understanding that at this point you should meet with your karma and his; you’re karma if you haven’t done a good job, (thank you very much), and his if you have. Yea? Can’t win.

(46:34) Alright. So then you’ve prepared for that 4^th hour in your 3^rd hour from the quadratus and from all of those 5 muscles that hook-up there at that anterior superior spine, any one of which can get you all balled up with respect to the tone of the iliacus. Now visualize this in your mind’s eye and see what I’m telling you.

(47:14) Now you can get yourself called a quack anytime. There are lots of ways you can get yourself called a quack, and I have some that are sure-fire. And one way is to tell anybody that you can widen the pelvis; the pelvic bowl. The fact of the matter is that you’ve seen it; You can, and you do. And you do it largely through freeing the iliacus that lets the bone come wider to the surface. Now do you make more bone? No, of coarse you don’t. but you do get a longer line between the anterior superior spines.

(48:08) It’s just like legs. Do you straighten the bone of bow legs? no of coarse not. But it isn’t the bone of the legs that is crooked, it’s the soft tissue. And again this is a sure-fire way of being called a quack. We can straighten bow legs? Nobody can straighten bow legs. But the bow leg is right in there, and some of it up here.

(48:40) So. Alright. Now were ready to get into that 4^th-, we’re really ready to get into that 4^th hour. And how we gonna do it?

(48:51 student) Well hour 4, examining the client, we’ve pretty much agreed that the next area of most shortness, or the disproportionate area because of the previous work done, was the inner aspect of the legs

(49:02) This is true, but now let’s look at it from the same vantage point that we’ve been looking before. The next place you are going to try to go is to organize the floor of the pelvis. Now the other thing that determines the floor of the pelvis is what-, is how the ramus will effect; What is the distortion on the ramus that is giving you abarrative spanning on the floor of the pelvis?

(49:40) Ok. But to get into that area-

(49:41) Alright. But to get into the floor of the ramus then you’ve got to start on the inside of the legs. .

(49:53 student) Peripherally. At the ankle.

(49:48)That’s right. To get in anywhere you’ve got to start peripherally

(49:53 student) 6^th law

(49:57) You know that would be fun before this class is over. Lets get a nice big printed thing out on the wall; 1^st law, 2^nd law, 3^rd law and on

(50:13 student) One of the keeper of the laws…

(50:27) You see when you look at it this way the adductors on the legs are simply the peripheral aspect of that pelvic ramus. And you can look down as far as the knee and see that this is the direct line, and then you see that the knee is determined also by what’s below the knee. And in point of actual fact, you are going to find that the attachment of the hamstring at the inside of the knee manages to get itself more balled up than you can imagine. And I’ve had women who commonly refer to this as “ my pineapples”. Actually this is almost what it is.

(51:24) Everything seems to get balled up with the hamstrings, because they’ve been forcing that hamstring all their life, because they haven’t had proper balance in there legs. And so the hamstring, being one of the strongest available muscles to them, they will have tries to use that hamstring to substitute too many other muscles which just weren’t available to them. Adductors for instance. You’d be surprised at the poor structure of adductors in women – more women than men, but not that many more to tell the honest truth – now with the women and with the wider pelvis that you have, you see that hamstring attachment at the inside of the leg gets into more trouble than it does with the men with the narrower pelvis.

(52:34) Ok. Now, you’ve got that rami. The position of the ramus is dependant on the adductors. It’s dependent on the hamstring. It’s dependent on the coccyx. Well not the coc-, well. The position of the rami determines the coccyx, and the coccyx determines the ramus; that goes back and forth. But you see the position of the coccyx and the position of the pubes determines the spanning of the floor of the pelvis. Therefore in order to insure the spanning of the floor of the pelvis, you are going to have to take a good look at the coccyx and at the pubes.

(53:49) Alright, now, does anybody see where we are going?

(53:00 student) Yes, I-. The central point that we are going towards that I see is the-, actually the sacrum and the lower lumber vertebrae and the area immediately in front of that-

(54:18) You’ve got that too fast

(54:19 student) Oh. I thought you meant the ultimate.

(54:20) No, not the ultimate. The next step along; which is determining the 5^th hour

(54:24 student) Oh. Ok. I was going too many others

(45:26) Alright. I just said to you, the position of the coccyx, and the position of the pubes determining the 5^th hour, determining the floor of the pelvis. Now we’ve gone around the sides, we’ve gone around the ramus, we’ve gone into the hamstrings, and now we’re going to the pubes, and what attaches to the pubes?

(54:49 student) The rectus abdominus. Some other minor [fascialata]

(54:58) Now. This is the odd thing about this. You have just listened to me doing a very nice intellectual analysis of what we’ve done, and it’s all come out. One card lies on top of the other card, and it’s beautiful. But that isn’t the way I devised it. I devised it by watching the body. You are seeing it by watching a body, but because you have always learned in terms of your intellect, in order for you to learn it has to be translated into an intellectual set of progressions. But the thing that inevitably, and every time I present this, amazes me is the fashion in which you look at the experience, you experience the experience and then you translate it into intellectual concepts, and they fall along perfectly logically. This is unbelievable, but you have all seen it happening here, and you will continue see it happening here.

(56:18) So that in this 5^th hour you see, you have to organize all the stuff that is going to attach to the pubes, is-, whatever you haven’t done first on those adductors, you haven’t already taken care of, round on the ramus, and some of them come all the way around to the pubes. But in that 5^th hour basically, you have to go into the pubes by way of the recti. You have to give a fairly good look at some of your obliques that determine how the strain is put on the abdominal contents by the abdominal rectus. Maybe it’s the other way around. I don’t know

(57:18) You have to be conscious of the fact that part of your pubic structure is determined by the psoas. You have to be conscious of the fact that the psoas tendon is common with the iliacus so that anything that affects the psoas affects the iliacus. [Grant], if you read [me], calls attention to the fact that he thinks of the psoas as an extension upward of the iliacus. I think of the iliacus as an extension outward of the psoas. You can pay your money. You can take your choice.

(58:12 student) There’s really a nice way of seeing that in this book. Take a minute to show that, but, these are cross-sections, and here’s the psoas, and here’s the iliacus, and here a cut through the belly

(58:26) Yea, go down a little further

(58:29 student) And as you go down you see this very next cut, the psoas and the iliacus join each other and-

(58:32) the psoas and the iliacus are one. That’s real nice, that.

(58:35 student) then it moves towards the front. Here it comes through the [actable] and here’s the ilial psoas. And there [inside is] the femoral nerve, if you want to see what that’s doing, its right-

(58:58) That’s real nice, Al

(59:00 student) Just going back one, you see that the psoas attached onto the lumbar, and so on. Yea it gives a sense of how the two join each other

(59:12) That’s mighty clear. You have to sort of develop a sense to put that together though. We’re used to looking at it the other way. But that’s beautiful

(59:27) Anyway, as I’ve said before, you can pay money and take your choice as to which you choose to see as the primary determinant of pelvic space.

(59:47) Now, you see Don, you were talking about 5^th lumbar in the sacrum, the positioning of it, but you become aware here of the fact that if you are going to pull upward on the psoas, on the rectus, that you are going to pull downward on the lumbars. And you are going to through your pulling downward, you are going to thicken the discs, and in thickening the discs you get a more flexible lumbar. You also get a lumbar back where a lumbar does belong.

(1:00:34) It’s a perfectly absurd thing, what we do with those lumbars. These are the biggest vertebrae in the body, and we fill them entirely out of the gravity line, so that we transmit the pull of the gravity not through the vertebrae - bodies of the vertebrae, which were designed to take it - but through the “soft tissue” of the binding around those lumbars; The quadratus, the lumbar fascia, the iliacus. And we use that to transmit the weight of the upper part of the body down to the floor. And this is crazy

(1:01:33 student) There’s a nice mechanical advantage there too, if we take the [Ashtabula] as the fulcrum point, it looks like it’s almost three to one that the pubes go up one increment, that the sacrum goes down two and a half or three.

(1:01:48) Yea, that’s right. That’s absolutely right.

(1:01:54 student) That doesn’t take much on the front to really get a lot of action on the back. I see it right now, looking at it

91:01:58) Yea, you’re seeing it right now there, but you’ve seen it in the living specimens

(1:02:04 student) I wasn’t aware of it before

(1:02:07) Now, there is a very interesting observation to be seen here. Has nothing to do with logic or anything else, but it is this; if the man whom you’re working on, or the woman, has been through an extreme emotional catastrophe with any number of years; 5 perhaps. you will find it in the attachment of the recti. And freeing those recti may well pitch them into all kinds of emotional vomitings. It also does something that you don’t understand at all; it affects the cardiac function. And a guy whose heart rhythm you’ve been monitoring, from the first day he’s laid on your couch, just suddenly gets his heart rhythm into a pattern, and there it’s going to stay. But until the attachment of the rectus to the pubes is organized and balanced left and right, this is not [gonna happen].

(Tape End)