Rolf Audio Tape Transcript

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Methodology Structural Integration

Emotional Response

(0:11) - smoothly with you, where as the other people will take seriously the emotion that is freed by your manipulation. If they are angry they are angry at you. If they’re resentful they are resentful at you. You shouldn’t be doing this. I remember Adele Davis, for instance, who I can’t say hadn’t had a-, she’d only had 8 years of Reichian therapy, explaining to me at length, and with a diagram, and in a tone of voice that simply split the roof how, “Neither Ida or anybody else had a right to put anybody through this! And you don’t, Goeffe don’t, nobody does!” I mean you see, she had all of this anger and frustration had been released in the woman, but she directed it toward me

(1:01 student) Did you ask her whose legs brought her into the room?

(1:06) I knew she’d get over it. I knew she’d get over it. She now calls me the slave driver. She wrote me a card at Christmas time, and said, “I worked on two books this year. I hope that satisfies you slave driver!” She said, “I wish you a Merry Christmas.”

(1:27 student) she hooked into your tough [act]...

(1:40 student) So what’s so funny? The truth always hurts

1^st Hour Continued

(1:54 student) Lets see, I haven’t’ mentioned that we also have to work on the shoulder girdles to some extent while we’re working on the thorax too; free it

(2:00) Yea. It again is superficial fascia stuff

(2:07 student) Yea. And I see it as an extension of the fascia on the chest rather than just as a separate place to work

(2:15) That’s right. That’s right. Sometimes you do have to get into the arms, because of the way the arms are being pulled in by the fascial envelope, or the pectorals, or the latissimus. But it’s basically a trunk hour rather than a girdle hour

(2:35 student) And the next-. Oh, one of the other reasons that we are working in this area on the thorax at this point becomes clear later when we get to the pelvis but I’ll mention now, that we are beginning to lift the thorax off the pelvis so that later on we’ll have the freedom we need when we want to do the job there. And the next area that’s got to be freed from the pelvis so that we can do [some of this] is the legs below it; the lower extremities. And I think we started on the side, but anyway we tried the relative freedom by having the client put both knees up and pump them back and forth, and then began again to release superficial fascia layers. We didn’t do anything medially. I think mostly on the outside fascialata; over the fascialata posteriorly over the hamstrings. I don’t remember any other area we worked on

(3:41) You see, all this time you were working really with the trunk; you were working with the stuff which ties up the trunk. Now at this point let me ask you people a question: You and you and you. There isn’t anybody else likely to know the answer.

(4:06) Have you ever in the course of your professional reading seen any place where the actual location and attachments of the superficial fascia were gone into at any length? No. I haven’t either. And the only man whom I would know would know about that is that osteopath down in-, is Paul Kimberly. And I don’t think he’s ever committed it to writing. And I hope someday we have some money and we get him on here and get him talking about it

(4:47 student) Where is he?

(4:49 student) St. Petersburg?

(4:50) Florida. Yea. And if you go back to Florida I’ve got half a mind to entrust you with the job of going to him and trying to find out whether I’m just investing him with a coat of glamour

(5:08 student) I’d like to do that

(5:13) He’s getting along in years now

(5:21) So, see this for what it is. That whole first hour that seems so big, and seems so complicated, is really simply one thing; a loosening, an energizing and therefore an organizing of the fascia that invests the trunk. This is what it amounts to, and this is what makes it a ‘once over lightly’.

(6:05) So, what happens next?

(6:08 student) Well I think freeing the superficial fascia on the trunk, both thorax upper part and the parts that are connected to the pelvis through the legs and large muscles posteriorly. The goal of the hour has been to reach the pelvis and do a pelvic lift to begin the leveling of the pelvis.

(6:32) Right

(6:37 student) And, I’m not sure if there is a ‘why’, or what the significance is, but it seems to me we did the neck after the pelvic lift, and I don’t know whether that’s just kind of for comfort and balance?

(6:45) Yea, it’s for comfort and balance. You can’t go around holding your head up this way for an indefinite period.

(6:53 student) It’s uncomfortable

(6:55) Its uncomfortable, it’s inefficient, it isn’t beautiful, and it’s not good advertising. mostly that.

(7:01 student) And you’d be even more out of balance after the pelvic lift than before it. Correct?

(7:09) Probably; It’s just a question you can pay your money and take your choice. Do the pelvic lift last if you like.

(7:18) But you see the pelvic lift is more than just an organization of what you get, what you’ve gotten, what you’ve freed. It usually involves a repositioning of even the 3^rd or the 4^th or the 5^th lumbar, and the sacrum. And when you people have done enough 1^st hours, you’ll know that that is so. Something down there is really going to give. It’s not just movement. It’s a shift, plus movement.

(8:04) And almost invariably you will be aware of this; you will have this experience. And then you see, you move it with the newer organization. And then, as I say, I hold no grief for, you do the pelvic lift first, except that you have been working in the pelvis. It seems to me reasonable that you finish it up and then go and try to organize that neck.

2^nd Hour

(8:45 student) And since in the 1^st hour we’ve created some freedom of the pelvis by freeing the large structures connected to it, we then in the 2^nd hour begin our real work in earnest, so to speak, from the ground up; since the ground is the plane of reference that we’ve got to work from for the rest of our lives, waking and sleeping.

(9:06) Golly you’ve learned your lesson. Go ahead

(9:09 student) It seems to me the place we’ve got to start to really reorganize things. So the 2^nd hour is primarily concerned with working on the hinges and stance of the feet and legs. You want to make the ankle joint both free and as functionally horizontal as possible. Maybe I should say functioning horizontally period, not as possible, although I suppose-

(9:39) Well at that point you can’t get functional horizontality in most people in the 2^nd hour. If you could then the ones with whom you could, they’d be in pretty good shape

(9:52 student) I was saying in terms too of people with real disabilities, severe deformations, perhaps in congenital changes or something. Probably never get them back, though I don’t know. I haven’t seen that many long term hours.

(10:10) Well you see, a thing like club foot for instance it’s ordinarily regarded as a pathology of the foot, or a perverted physiology of the foot, but it isn’t at all. That club foot goes right up to here; All the way up and down that spine. You just look at that spine and you know it. Do you have that experience Fritz?

(10:34 student) Not with club feet but I have with other types, like knee pathology

(10:40) Its not just a question of by accident these feet are off. It’s a question of I don’t know what, whether it’s a genetic determination or what it is, I don’t know. But I do know that it’s a problem of the whole body, no fooling. Those kids, their back will be tied-up and you just cry for them. That doesn’t say you can’t get them out of it. You don’t ever get them normal, neither does surgery, in spite of what any surgeon tells you,. but you certainly get to a place where they are doing a darn sight better

(11:10) And over and over again, see we’re talking about it, this problem will arise some harried and harassed family come to you and they say, “well you see little Johnny’s feet now, our doctor proposing to have surgery. Shall we do it?” Now you’re cue at this point is to not say, “No don’t have surgery.” Because there is a good chance that surgery will be the ultimate place you’ll go to get final help for that kid, but to try to get the rest of the body in as good shape as possible before you let them cut in, and make another predicament for that body

(12:06) And this is about the way you have to explain it to the parent. That it will be very worth their while to let that child have the advantage of as much mobility as possible. See that family doesn’t have the foggiest idea that there is anything wrong except some displaced feet. And of coarse it is easy enough, just to take a knife and fix that. And they don’t understand that the problem is not in [talk].

(12:40) Ok

(12:44 student) Ok. The goal of 2^nd hour is to work from the knees down to begin to establish mobility and I like the word ‘relatedness’ to the ground, so that the-

(13:04) I do too, but you find when you use it with people who haven’t been sitting and thinking about relatedness to the ground that it’s a word that throws them off. They can’t quite understand what you’re talking about, and you’ll have to be careful with it.

(13:19) So we work on the arch of the foot, extensor and flexor functions of the foot, we work with the arch itself, the toes, and the ankles [above it]. We begin to try to free up the leg above the ankle, working back and forth around the-, it seems to me the focus of this hour is the hinge of the ankle. we kind of work back and forth below it, below it above it, below it and above and around it, to reorganize the whole structure

(13:48) And finally up to the knee also as much to organize the ankle as to organize the knee

(13:57 student) Yea. To me the whole focus of this hour is that ankle

(13:59) Is that ankle. To me it is too.

(14:09) Don’t forget, in your own mind at least, and it’s important for people like you, rather than for someone like Hector, but what goes on on the sole of the feet can give you the key to the back door of what you have to fix-up. Or do they have these reflexes to the heart very sensitive and so forth? Maybe they don’t know that they’ve had a heart condition, maybe you shouldn’t tell them, but you get their feet so that there are no further heart reflexes in there or else. you see all of this is important that you realize that you have a very precise tool, and a very useful tool in terms of those foot reflexes, and I suggest that you go and buy that book or borrow that book [nelvin by] and take a look at it. It’s a practical tool. It’s not an end in itself, but it ‘s a practical tool

(15:09 student) Kind of a road map for where to look for trouble here

(15:11) That’s right; where to look for trouble. And it’s particularly important to you people who are not MD’s, and who are not using the MD’s road map. But keep your mouth shut, because you are not allowed in any state of this union to make diagnosis! You’re diagnosis is for your own use only. And don’t be trying to show off to your patient how smart you are ‘cause you know this. ‘Cause sooner or later you’re going to be in real trouble with that.

(15:56) Ok. Keep going

(16:00 student) Let’s see. I think I’ve fairly well gone over the 2^nd hour

(16:05) No…

(16:29 student) I am blank right now. I don’t remember what the next step was. I remember distinctly seeing the leg work done.

(16:40) Do you recall that you’re ear mark for the 2^nd hour was that the back was too short? You’re ear mark for the 2^nd hour wasn’t how terrible the feet looked, though they did, but your ear mark for the 2^nd hour was that the back seemed too short

(16:55 student) That’s right. We somewhat extended the front of the chest in the 1^st hour, and in the 2^nd hour we found again that the back was too short. Well, this was the 1^st time we had them sit on the stool and did the back erector spinae structures. Again, the 1^st time the back was entirely while they were horizontal

(17:20) No it wasn’t. you sat-, before you finished your 1^st hour you sat them on the floor probably. Or you might have sat them on the stool, but the floor was a good place for them, and you went down their back to stretch it. But in the 2^nd hour-, that 1^st hour stretching was only a matter of making them comfortable, so that the places which you had not gotten to in the 1^st hour got some attention. Otherwise there would be little points here and there which were stuck. And then they’d come back to you and say, “Oh yes, no I haven’t really felt very well since that 1^st hour, because my back has been stiff,” and so forth and so forth.

(18:10) But in the 2^nd hour you really get to work with those erector spinae, and you expect to get them where they belong and you expect to start them functioning. You except to get an enhanced physiological functioning in those erector muscles.

(18:32) And you see really, you are taking over something which is very significant, very pertinent, because the mechanism of your adjustment to gravity is a balancing between flexors and extensors, and in the random body you always have too much contraction in the flexors. You always have. This is a part of our cultural pattern. Everything you do you do in front of you with the muscles on front side, on the anterior side of your body. You carry bundles that way , you take the sink apart that way, you carry the baby that way, you do any and all kinds of athletics that way.

(19:54) Nobody calls to attention the fact that if you preserve the wellbeing of those extensors from the time the kid starts to grow up, that you’re going to have a body that has good functioning usage; That you’re going to have a body that can do what the body cannot do if the body is only using half it’s equipment. The kid isn’t taught that. He’s taught to do sit-ups so as to get the anterior half tighter, shorter. And then they scream at him to throw his shoulders back.

(20:45) And you see, when you look at it this way you begin to see how the pattern emerges, and you begin to realize that if you are ever going to really stop yourself as a changing cultural pattern, you have to understand exactly where it comes in. you’ve got a big job coming up. You can be a little two by twice cult if you want to, but if you’re really going to get in and push this culture around a bit, you’ve got a big job

(21:28) And you see in that 2^nd hour you start getting those extensors operational. And again I call your attention to something I called your attention to originally back in that 2^nd hour. Mainly what Feldenkrais first called attention to: That all negative emotion results in shortening of the plexus, and deteriorating the extensors because the plexus became chronically short.

Cultural Patterns

(22:08) You people here, everybody here can take it practically, have been exposed at length to psychological attitudes. And you have looked around at your culture and you know the extent to which the average individual is bound into negative emotion. As you look back you understand that this is a predominant emotion; not joy but fear, worry, and out of fear, resentment. And so you get it from both sides; you get it from the cultural pattern of how the muscles have been used, but you also get it as the body expression of the emotional expression of our culture, which is fear.

(23:15 student) Who would you attempt to influence culturally to enhance the use of the extensor?

(23:25) The first thing I’d try to do would be not to enhance the use of the extensor but make these people realize that there is an imbalance. Yea, I’d bring that from the top down, as I say to you before. You want to do the job, ok, but that’s where it’s going to come, it’s gonna come from the top down, a different thing about it. It’s going to be started on some elite group and then be the obvious. It may be football teams, or it may be astronauts or what have you. But that’s how it will get in there.

(24:14 student) Yea. You can’t start at the ghetto I suppose

(24:18) No. it’s all very well to have bleeding hearts, but if you want to get something done, you stop the bleeding of your heart and get your brain to working

Methodology Structural Integration

(24:30) Now, let’s see. We’ve got to get into the 3^rd hour. In the 3^rd hour once again we look at the body.

(24:41) If I were writing an examination for you people one of the questions on that examination would be, “How is the technique developed? How has it been developed? How is it being developed day by day in this room?” And the answer always is, “By looking at the body.” It is the body that presents it. Not some symbol in your mind, good and complicated in order to blow up your ego, and then you go out and you try this on to somebody. Now I want to insist on the primacy of this concept; that this has been developed and will continue to be developed, and is developed every time you give an appropriate hour of work through the looking at and the understanding of what you see in that body.

( 25:56)And it is very interesting that you see them if you bring them along according to that particular road map. You always pass the same towns. You pass first the lengthening of the front, and then the lengthening of the back, and then the lengthening of the sides, and then the lengthening of the middle. And the need for these various lengthenings are apparent to you.

(26:26) And this doesn’t matter about the age, or the stage, or the previous conditions of servitude, or the color of their skins or anything else; it’s what’s wrong with that body, and that body – if you follow this map- will come through these various stages and will get to such and such a goal.

(26:54) Now you hear me screaming over and over again about people who have taken a technique and deviated from it. I know people think I’m terribly rigid concerning it. But the answer is, “That if you follow that map you know where you are going and you get there. And you get there not in 99% of the cases but 100% of the cases if you do your work properly.” But when you [don’t] deviate from that map, you don’t get there. So, should I be screaming or shouldn’t I be screaming? If they don’t call it Rolf I don’t care. But if they do call it Rolf I do care. If they do call it Rolf they’ve got to keep to that map because it’s the only map that takes them to the town. They can go off in the hills, and they can stay in the hills, and they can not get to the town, and it’s all right with me. But you see it’s just a question of getting the whole pattern clarified. It’s the realization of, if you do 1-2-3-4-5 then you get that done.

(28:07)And seemingly ‘that’ is worth doing; the ‘that’ that I’m talking about is worth doing. You all are here because you have heard people tell you how worthwhile it has been and how much it has given them and etc., etc. If you hadn’t heard that you wouldn’t be here.

3^rd Hour

(28:30) Ok. So. Now. We’re getting into the 3^rd hour?

(28:37 student) When we look at the body, number 3 standing in front of us, if we’ve done our-, if we’ve been on the map right, follow the road we should have been on we should have found that the side of the body – the thorax especially – is gonna be a short area, and this is going to command our attention in this hour; The lateral aspect of the thorax involving the shoulder girdle and the side. And all the time we’re working in this area we’ve got a beady eye trained on the pelvis just down below, which is where we’re going this hour. Again, this will be the first hour where we do any deep work, when we start to work with the intention of the quadratus lumborum into the pelvis and the 12^th rib, not only to lengthen the side that is now short relatively since we’ve lengthened the front and back in 1 and 2, but because we again want to do everything we can to free up the pelvis.

(29:36 student) And the quadratus seems to be one of the keys. I haven’t got this real clear in my head yet, but it’s one of the keys of really getting the pelvis into a position where we can work with it and place it in a functional position

(29:53) Well wait just a minute. That word relatedness that you liked before, it also comes in here, only here your relatedness gets to be between one segment of the body, the trunk - the thorax – and the other segment of the body, the pelvis. And this whole quadratus bit has to do with establishing that relatedness through establishing the appropriate span of the tissues. Does this add anything to your idea? Clarify it? Alright

(30:34student) Yea. Almost every hour so far ends with some major structure which connects the two body segments together

(30:41) right. Right

(30:43 student) and in hour 3 it happens to be the quadratus and the crest of the ileum and the 12^th rib connecting at the quadratus. And I think we spent some tome working around the-

(30:54) Now, one other point. That quadratus that connects the crest of the ileum and the 12^th rib, you get it spanned out by your very effortful work there. What else happens?

(31:26 student) The thing that I’m thinking about is it begins to do its function of supporting the 12^th rib instead of hanging onto it

(31:35) something else very important comes in there. Fritz, you want to help him out?

(31:46 student) In my thinking I’m still caught in this 12^th rib too, where it frees the 12^th rib so that-, which is so important in the abdominal function and in allowing the trunk to lengthen

(32:03) How does the trunk lengthen? What is the mechanism?

(32:14 student) In organizing the quadratus, the 12^th rib becomes more elevated

(32:22) And then?

(32:25 student) Let’s do this together

(32:31 student) The trunk lengthens by straightening the spine

(32:35) Yes. You see you stretch the soft tissue, and then the hard tissue – the tent pole – can go into place. Now if the tent pole is in place then you begin to get an entirely different functioning in your autonomic nervous system, which is dependent on the tent pole; as well as the central nervous system.

(33:03) But you see, the functioning of that whole autonomic chain is going to be affected by where those lumbar vertebrae are, and how happy they are in their awareness.

(33:20 student) That’s far out for me

(33:22) But you made it!

(33:25 student) No, I was thinking of the autonomic nervous system is going to be happy depending on what the vertebrae are doing, and I-

(33:30) The autonomic nervous system runs down right in front of the vertebrae

(33:33 student) Yea, I know that

(33:36) Alright. So the vertebrae are all jammed up, and one is in front of the other and so forth, it’s putting strain on that autonomic nervous system. It’s interfering with the metabolism to the nervous system.

(33:54 student) That’s an entirely new concept for me. I mean this class, not just today, but-. In learning, I learned that there was skin, there was fascia, there are muscles, there are bone, there was nervous system, etc., and they were like envelopes – one around the other. And now I’m beginning to see that-

(34:09) That there ain’t no such envelope

(34:10 student) That there ain’t no such envelope, and there’s lots of communication level to level, structure to structure, where there’s no physical communication perhaps as such

(34:18) That’s right. That’s right

(34:20 student) this juxtaposition makes it seem to be related

(34:24 student) yea. Yea. I have lots of experience with this kind of relatedness, but not so much with in and out layer to layer. And it’s a whole new thing

(34:34) I [invite] you to find the man is one. [currently] by and by

(34:48 student) is this where we’re going?

(34:49) That’s where we’re going

(34:54 student) Ok. Let’s see. We’re in the 3^rd hour, and we’ve talked about the quadratus, freeing the pelvis, straightening the spine, we did a pelvic lift. We did a little mechanism too, in beginning to achieve some balance and some comfort after the pelvic lift.

(35:14) Well yea. This you do regularly right along. And you see, if you are readjusting lumbar vertebrae, you have to look to the neck and reorganize the neck, because the cervical vertebrae balance the lumbar vertebrae, and the minute you start getting into one, you have to consider getting into the other.

(35:51) This is again where the manipulative schools up to this point have stumbled and fallen, because they’ve never recognized this fact. They’ll punch it here, and punch it there but they don’t try to get their punches relating it, they haven’t understood relatedness.

(36:06 student) That rises up another area. While we were working on the quadratus, although we weren’t specifically focusing on the abdomen itself at the moment, we did begin to work on stuff on the iliac crest and the anterior superior spine. I have a hunch that we are getting ready for hour 5 at that point.

(36:20) you aren’t; hour 4

(36:27 student) I also see it relating to hour 5

(36:29) Alright, but you’re not going to skip over hour 4.

(36:31 student) No, no

(36:32) You are getting ready for the-

(36:37 student) He’d like to

(36:45) Take a breather and I’ll be back

(Tape Break)

4^th Hour

(36:55 student) - So far, and it should be apparently neglected, is the midline of the body, which is the area from the medial arch of the foot to the inside of the pelvis. And then the road map depends again on the body where we’re gonna start, whether you start at the ankle to free up, or the knee to free up, or both, working back and forth, but the goal none the less is the rami of the pelvis and the floor of the pelvis. So now we’ve worked a little bit on the spine attachment of the pelvis[ ], on the lateral aspects of the pelvis, and now we’re going to work on the inferior part of the pelvis and the rami attachments.

(37:43 student) to do this, to get into the ramus we’re going to free the adductors, the big adductors of the leg, as I mentioned work on the arch and the ankle where necessary, on the-

(37:58 student) We’re [ ] spend a heck of a lot of time on the gastroc,

(38:00 student) a little bit too on [ ]

(38:01) We did the gastroc in the 6^th hour

(38:03 student) Yea, Ok. Spend some time around the hamstring insertions on the knee though

(38:12) Leigh, have you got a kettle of water on? Yea. Go ahead.

(38:16 student) Uh. But again, it was related to freeing up the adductor group, and getting into the pelvis itself rather than working specifically on the knee as a structure.

(38:28) That’s right. You’re job is with the pelvis

(38:35 student) The job is with the pelvis. The job is with the pelvis right from when the guy walks in the door

(38:38) Your job is with the pelvis from the first moment you take that guy on to the last moment when you kiss him goodbye. Ok.

(38:50 student) It’s like [makin, your] fixing the pelvis

(39:01 student) I never got my kisses, but I-

(39:09) I hate to tell you, but you boys are going to have your minds predominantly focused on the pelvis for the rest of your lives

(39:15 student) full breath now

(39:19student) I think it works

(39:24 student) You don’t have to focus through all [ ] though, you can work around it

(39:29 student) find your way out

(39:30 student) start at the periphery

(39:35 student) It’s like an onion, remember?

(39:40 student) Ok. Again, at 4 we did go down the back, and not so much-

(39:50) at 4 you certainly did a pelvic lift

(39:53 student) We did a pelvic lift. I was trying to remember which order. I think we did the lift first and then the back

(40:02) The back isn’t that important in the 4^th hour, but the pelvic lift is, and it’s the pelvic lift that is doing the back. You see this

(40:05 student) is the back thing more comfort and balancing again rather than –

(40:10) You can tell by looking at it

(40:14 student) yea. The goal again is the pelvic lift, which having freed up the rami and having freed up the quadratus previously should again begin to-

(40:22) don’t forget to free up your hamstrings.

(40:25) The hamstrings. Oh yea. Deeper-, hamstrings at a deeper level. But again, they are attached to the tuberosity, the ischium, which is connected [fortunately to] the rami attachment [again], so all of those structures have to be freed to really get into the pelvis.

(40:48) That’s right. That’s right. This is what I want to make so clear in your mind that you can’t forget it.

(41:02 student) yea. And then the pelvis was to organize the [spine] again, the back of the neck for comfort and balance. I don’t recall doing it

(41:15) That’s right

5^th Hour

(41:20 student) Then in hour 5 we begin to focus on the pelvis, which started peripherally, this time on the anterior part of the body, working predominantly with the rectus abdominus and it’s attachments. And as far as I know we started everybody fairly high, or at the [manuvrium], the 4^th 5^th and 6^th ribs [precious] insertions. I remember some excursions with people out [into the vector splinius] more to free their ribs to get here rather than to work around the girdle

(41:54) That’s right. That’s right

(42:00 student) And then we gradually worked our way down the rectus, freeing it at its insertions and its sheath, with the goal in mind of getting to the synthesis of the pubes, and finding that we couldn’t before. And when we found them, to lift them so that the pelvis would rotate on the head of the femur and bring the sacrum down, creating more of a plane than a tipped position

(42:27) Mm hmm

(42:32 student) We also worked to some extent around the inguinal ligament, and the anterior and superior [strustagen]

(42:39) What did you do that for?

(42:44 student) I have the feeling that we were freeing the obliques and the transverses really to free up the rectus there.

(42:52) Well, always keep in mind that one of the places where you’re going is to get the psoas doing its stuff. And in all-, more than half the population, you’ll find that psoas hasn’t been working in years. So you can’t just go in there and go, “come on, lets get this thing working.” You’ve got to bring it up, bring it up; more lift in the area, get more metabolism going, etc.

(43:27 student) So again it’s a case of working on [virtual] structures with the goal of going deeper later

(43:30) Yea, but it’s the idea-. Well actually, in that 5^th hour, if you’ve done a good job you can usually get right down to the psoas by going in under the rectus. But you see you’ve got to do a lot of work in here first just to free that psoas as it goes across the pubes.

(44:08) All part of that picture of getting the psoas and the rectus working together, which they haven’t been able to do

(44:24) See every time a kid is put through push-ups and so forth, he is shortening and thickening the rectus. And in shortening and thickening the rectus, he is throwing the psoas out of the picture and permitting, encouraging deterioration in the psoas. And along about the time he does that, you are permitting and encouraging deterioration in that whole autonomic system, which is intimately bound up with that psoas, and one or two of its plexi. So you’re really going after that psoas all the way along the line, from the place where it crosses over the pubes to the place where it attaches on the diaphragm. But you can’t get in there until after you’ve got the rectus [ ]

(45:46 student) So the 5^th hour we worked on the structures of the psoas, and then finished by again, working to organize the pelvis down the back, and the neck

(46:01) and you see all of this has to do with the front part-, lifting up the front part of the pelvis. Ok. Now

6^th Hour

(46:14 student) Hour 6. The area of the legs and the pelvis that we’ve done so far is the post-, real posterior [ ], including the sacrum, the coccyx, and the back of the legs. Again we started peripherally working with the Achilles tendon as necessary [ ]the heel. There was a bit of ankle work here and there where it was necessary

(46:37) Just depends on what you see

(46:43 student) Freeing up the gastroc, both heads, freeing up the insertions of the hamstrings, working on the hamstrings deeper than we have before, and then going medially posteriorly to the sacrum [and] the coccyx

(47:00) Wait a minute. What is the structure in the 6^th hour?

(47:07 student) The rotators

(47:12) Right. And you see you touched on this back there in the 5^th hour. You touched on it and talked about the necessity for getting the rotation of the pelvis around the head of the femur. I said to myself, “He’s out of order, but let him alone. But see to it that he shoves this forward.” Because what is it that allows the rotation of the pelvis around the head of the femur?

(47:37 student) the rotators

(47:39)predominantly. Preeminently

(47:40 student) So this hour the real goal of working on the back of the leg is to get under the gluteus and the rotators

(47:50) That’s right. That’s right

(47:55 student) This then, is going to be the first hour where we have some hope of getting at the anterior aspect of the sacrum by working externally where the insertion of the rotator, which arises here

(48:04) That’s right. And you see all of this, once again, is a positioning of the pelvis.

(48:19 student) Let’s see. So we worked on the gluteus and

(48:24) Piriformis and obturator. Piriformis will have you-, have the inside of the sacrum, the obturator will have the inside of the pelvic, the ilia - ischial aspect of the ilia. But the whole thing then makes a brand new position of the pelvis

(48:54 student) We also worked on the outside of the sacrum, or the posterior aspect of the sacrum. In some cases freeing up the insertion of the gluteus maximus and the fascia underlying it, and the sacral coccygial ligaments, and that material where necessary

(49:06) its true

(49:11 student) So this hour again we did a pelvic lift and the back of the neck for balance.

(49:21) and you observed? what was the mile post along the way?

(49:32 student) I also spaced out [ ]. I don’t know if there is any mile post or not.

(49:37 student) that’s the mile post

(49:45 student) you can’t see

(49:48) What did you see on Wednesday? We saw that mile post on Wednesday

(50:01 student) Oh. The mile post was getting those three hours back together again

(50:08 student) Breathing, but down into the [place that-]

(50:09 student) The sacrum

(50:09) The movement of the sacrum in breathing. And you see this cannot occur until you’ve’ got reasonably good relatedness all down the spine. Cannot occur. It cannot occur until you’ve got reasonable function in the psoas. It cannot occur until you’ve got the whole lumbar area spanning in terms of its soft tissue, in terms of its bone. You’ve got to have the lumbar vertebrae back where they belong, relating appropriately to the sacrum before this can occur. So that this really is almost literally a milepost. You can’t have too much kyphosis in the dorsal area either, ‘cause if you have too much kyphosis in the dorsal area you have too much lordosis in the lumbar area. So that this whole thing depends on getting a reasonably good relatedness from one end of that body to the other.

(51:41) Alright, has anyone happened to look at the pictures today? If not, why not? Now, if the coffee is ready we can have the coffee, and you can look at the pictures while you’re having the coffee and discuss it, and then we’ll come back and see what we think is the logical next place

(52:18 student) I feel it

(Tape Break)

7^th Hour

(52:30 student) – organizing; the neck organizing hour. But it seems to fall-

(52:40) Well it’s a neck organizing hour. I would think that the key, probably, is the position of the muscles under the jaw. Wouldn’t you suppose so? I would have sat down and really thought this thing through, because nobody happen to ask that particular question before

(52:55 student) You mention the other hours; the quadratus lumborum or psoas, [ ]

(52:57) I know. Well, I think these various what-you-call-it muscles, hyoids, probably are the key to that 7^th hour, because until you get them in order you don’t get the 7^th hour organized.

(53:23) I think however that maybe we should go back, say to the 4^th hour, and come along from the 4^th hour, taking a look at the sign posts along the road. And the first mile post is that whole business of the pelvic floor

(53:53) Hector, do you want to literally name them; the structures that compose the pelvic floor?

(54:20 student) The major muscle group that we’re concerned with is the one called levator [head on]

(54:30) This is true

(54:33 student) Now known as the pubococcygeus which essentially comes-, inserts on a line, the whole muscle sheath, inserts on a line that goes from the spinus process above the [ischian] across the middle of the obturator [rami], and continues forward to the back of the pubis. So if you keep that line in mind by going here -right? - and comes around here, across here, and up to here. Ok? Keep that line in mind and then [ ] sheath and bring it from that point posteriorly across the midline, and do that on both sides, you then have the situation. Ok? Now the fibers that come some across in front of the rectum, some across behind it, and some across into the [recti], or that connective tissue structure that comes between the coccyx and the anus, and will insert there. So that’s the pelvic –

(56:28) Well. I would like to see to it that everybody here is very conscious of the fact that the pelvic floor is a more complicated thing then simply the pubococcygeus

(56:42 student) Right. Well that is the diagram-

(56:45) That is the basis of it. this is true

(56:47 student) Now around that we have other things going on. First of all, take the obturator, that covers the obturator rami and [ ] is to leave the pelvis to below the level of the pubococcygeus, circling around the ishium under the spinus process to be inserted and into the notch of the greater trochanter. Then, off the spinus process in a fan like shape are two structures, which is the spinal coccygial ligament, spiral sacral also, and also the equivalent muscle. And then we have a, of coarse a sacral tuberous ligament. (58:11 student) But anyway the coccylgius muscle, which in animals moves the tail of the animal. And man was thought, until we studied structural integration, a residual a-tropic, worthless muscle

(58:36) I wonder whether there are any residual structures in the body. I really doubt it.

(58:44 student) At any rate that’s there. And then of coarse the Piriformis, which starts on the sacrum hyoid, and leaves through the greater sciatic [feramin]. Now, I don’t know how to practice that, but there’s a plane there that goes below the-, should I talk about that?

(59:05) sure

(59:10 student) Ok. You see this plane below the pubococcygeus, below that level, if you took-

(59:24) Why don’t you take a piece of paper to represent your plane. Somebody give him a piece of notebook

(59:38 student) If this were where the pubococcygeus goes, ok? Across that way. Now between here and here, this little room right? Between here and here there’s room. And this-, between this place and this place, this is the perineum. and if you took a-, if you drew a line across here this way, Ok? Then you could divide that as an anterior part and into a posterior part. Now. If you took another sheath, and you put it here, ok? then that’s what’s called the urogenital diaphragm. Between here and here in this new sheath-, well actually, the story gets a little more complicated. Here’s the anus, ok? There’s the anus. Here’s this transverse muscle. In both the male and the female there are muscles which attach onto a central point behind this transverse thing, which is the [paranial] body; connective tissue structure between the rectum and really at the point of this transverse as I remember it tissue there, and so the rectal sphincters insert onto that and the ischial cavernous, well the [valvo cavernous] goes back onto that point too. The iscial carernus actually come there. And at that one point, in the meeting place for several muscles, I’ve forgotten them all now. Anyway. The valvocavernous and the rectal sphincter muscle [ ] there, and do this transverse thing. So there’s another layer here, in the female the vagina goes through this point, ok. The urethra in the male, and that’s about as simple as I can say it; about as simple as I remember it. around here, on the inside of the incumbent, the congenital arteries, then congenital nerves from inside out, down there, of coarse underneath

(1:02:41 student) Could you trace the direction again?

(1:02:46 student) Well, what they do is they lead through the greater fan side notch and they come back down this way. They come around and come around this way. But at any rate, there’s a diaphragm here and another layer here, ok? You can see that. And through that the urogenital diaphragm passes the urethra, the vagina, and in the male. Now the other things like, you put a uterus in here above the floor of the levator, from the neck of the uterus an example, there are ligaments that go on each side. Bands, you can almost look at it that way. Four directions that hold it up. That’s part of the force

(1:03:44 student) They’re almost slings aren’t they?

(1:03:46 student) Almost slings, yea. That’s about all I know to say

(1:03:57 student) To visualize the true and the false pelvis what happens to the structures? There is a division across in here, there is a true pelvis down beneath this rim. And then a false pelvis –

(Tape End)