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7^th Hour Muscular Structure

The Tongue

More on the 7^th Hour

Intrinsic and Extrinsic Musculature

7^th Hour Continued

Medical Referral

7^th Hour Muscular Structure

(0:07) I’d like to know what you know about the 7^th hour, and what you think the rest of us should know about the 7^th hour and what should be pointed out about the 7^th hour

(0:18 student) OK. [I’ll still look the] end of the 6^th hour we have to a large extent accomplished one of the major goals of the entire technique that we’re [into relay is], that is to lengthen and place the pelvis into a more horizontal position with the legs under this structure; so to a large extent we align the torso and place the lower extremities under it and also free the upper shoulder girdle. So this leaves us at this point with the neck and the head, which indeed as we look at someone going into the 7^th hour we can see the gross mal-alignment, so it’s logical that we approach this at this time, since we have a base for it. To approach the head and neck at the end of the 3^rd hour for example would be irrational.

(1:56) Do you suppose if you didn’t approach the head and neck at this hour that you’d be able to keep what you have below it?

(2:04 student) I don’t think so

(2:06) I don’t think so either

(2:08) Right. The reason being that the head and neck with gravity acting on it in its anteriority - generally its anteriority - would tend to decompensate again the lumbar and dorsal curves.

(2:30) You see, when the head and neck are carried forward, or when the head, (lets not consider the neck), when the head is carried forward you have a weight - which, oh I don’t know, runs from about 12 to 16lbs. I think - being carried forward, and this literally you are carrying just as surely as if you were carrying it with your two hands in front of you. And you’re carrying that every hour, every waking hour, every hour that you’re not flat on your back on a bed; you’re carrying that 18 pounds in front of you. You could be awfully tired if you carried that 18lbs. in your hands throughout the day. But you are carrying it.

(3:19) (blank)

(3:24) …4^th, 5^th , 6^th dorsal, and you are literally carrying it there, just as much as though you were carrying it with your hands.

(3:30 student) Right

(3:37) so that all of this-, in other words there’s a negative factor in there. You want to get this off the guys back but that probably is also a positive factor there that you have to establish a spanning polarity between the top of the head and the persons sacrum. This is probably necessary in order to organize one inside the gravity field, which is itself a spanned situation. You see here what I’m trying to say I hope.

(4:22) Ok Hector. Yours.

(4:24 student Ok. So. We have the rational for doing this. The connections just generally; the neck and the base of the scull are connected via muscles to the shoulder girdle and to some extent also to the torso itself; mainly the sternum and the upper 1^st and 2^nd ribs. Briefly, the muscles that are involved there in these connection are the trapezius the [postal] levator scapulae, and the sternocleidomastoid, as well as the anterior middle and posterior scalenus muscles. So, in order to allow the head to, I’ll use the word rise, rise up-

(6:00) you should use the word rise; that’s what it is.

(6:07 student) It’s necessary for us to free these basic muscular groups. I make a note of the platysma, which though not a big powerful muscle is certainly an emotive kind of muscle; it comes a lot into emotion as I see it.

(6:30) Yea, but I wouldn’t call it a powerful muscle.

(6:36 student) It’s not is what I said, but it’s so involved with expression.

(6:40) Right

(6:43 student) And it does go and expand from the mandible to the clavicle to the 1^st rib, so that that too has to be freed, as I see it. So now, that’s one layer; one level of looking at this.

(7:00) Yea

(7:02 student) If we look at just the muscle mass in front of and behind the vertebral column it seems to me that the muscles that are posterior are far stronger than those that are anterior. In other words the trapezius and the splenius and the levator are very substantial muscles, where as the anterior sheath, the whole anterior part is kind of soft in a way; soft structures all go through this anterior plane - the plane before the vertebral column. And the muscular structures around it are relatively flimsy. We’ll just look at them for the moment. If we deal with that area within the triangle formed by the two medial margins of the sternocleidomastoids, what we find is that coming from the sternum to the hyoid bone we have the sternum thyroid and the sternum hyoid, and the [strat] muscles of the neck - they certainly don’t compare with those big heavy muscles in the back - as well as the omohyoid coming from the scapula on a sling and coming up forward. Those are the three muscles we meet in the middle

(9:21) It seems to me it might clarify the thinking here a little bit if you call attention to the fact that if you look at a man in terms of his place in the animal kingdom, those 4-legged animals had to have very strong post vertebral muscles in order to hold that head. And they needed practically nothing under here. And I am still of the opinion that this has something to do with the case.

(10:00 student) Well certainly there’s this obvious difference. So, shall I continue with this?

(10:02) Yes. And also call attention to the fact that, you see, there’s this crossing up at the neck. At the neck it’s the prevertebral muscles which lack strength, lack tone, where as our back it’s the post vertebral muscles, the extensors that are the ones that fall by the wayside. I think it’s important that you have that feel of this different quality

(10:39 student) I think that a simple thing to think about is that when people approach the back of someone’s neck they are much more aggressive than when they approach the front of the neck; you wouldn’t go grab somebody here, but you’d do it on the back of the neck. That’s the big difference of something so fragile. Anyway, in this area spanning between the hyoid and the sternum, these little muscles cover over the thyroid gland. Now just above it, going from the inside ramus of the mandible and from the tongue you have a series of muscles. You have, right medially we have the genial hyoids, which can look as kind of like the strap muscles below - come from right underneath straight down - and the myohyoids on each side

(11:58) you can look at most of those as just strap muscles

(12:00 student) you can look at it all as just strap muscles. And from the tongue medial to the myohyoids are the hyoglossus muscles; go from the hyoid bone into the tongue. And just to keep on with the tongue for a moment since we’re there, kind of at the base of the tongue; from within the mandibles, anterior aspect, just that we have a geniohyoid bone, and we have a [genioglosus] going back, so now we know we have a [genioglossus] and we have a hyoglossus here; if you will, extrinsic muscles of the tongue. And just to continue, talk about the stylohyoid process and we have going from the stylohyoid process to the tongue the [styloglossus] muscle, kind of see the tongue suspended all these muscular groups. The genioglossus and the hyoglossus –

The Tongue

(13:15) Do you have any thoughts about the relatively unique character of the tongue? You saw that that statement was justified yesterday. What are your thoughts about it?

(13:40 student) I don’t quite understand. There are many unique things about the tongue, but I don’t know what-

(13:48) Alright. You go and name some of them.

(13:54 student) Some of the unique things about the tongue? Ok. Well first of all the muscles are intrinsic and extrinsic, and do various things. Project forward - as various motions - can roll, move up and down, back in the throat, moves up in swallowing - contracts so that you can swallow

(14:32) I think that for our purposes the thing that is so important about the tongue is realizing that there must be a very rapid metabolism going on in there or we couldn’t produce the changes as rapidly as we can, and the fact that the tongue necessarily is a sort of connecting link between psyche and [solar] sort of thing, you know

(14:58 student) definitely

(15:00) And the fact that you can take a tongue and reduce it to half it’s size by putting your fingers properly in on that inside limit, that tongue becomes much smaller or much larger; this is the sort of think that makes it unique, and it puts that tongue not that far away from considerations of glandular structures you know; muscular structures, like the liver for instance. You bring that liver up by appropriating mechanations, and bring that liver up by a whole-hand-spread inside of 5 minutes. It’s unbelievable. It’s not that the liver [rides], but that the liver consolidates

(15:40 student) well I think the great mobility of the tongue, and its great activity, reflects its metabolism.

(15:55) its true

(16:00 student) Can I clear up one thing? Are you saying that the tongue is similar to the liver, or you manipulate the liver by working on the tongue?

(16:05) I didn’t say either of those things. Yes I did. I said the tongue is similar in the sense that some of these glandular structures you can affect so quickly, and presumably the reason you can affect them so quickly is because they are [sancted] with such rapid metabolic change, and I imagine it must be very rapid metabolic change going on in the tongue. And we know this; we know that the metabolic exchange in the liver is, I guess is the fastest in the body.

(16:45 student) the tongue has a fairly complicated innervation to it that is interesting. It is innervated in a gross sensory way by the lingual, which is the branch of the 5^th [trigeminal], and it has sense-

(17:14) the innervations is mostly cranial nerves.

(17:16 student) Yea. And it has, in a sense, specific sensory receptors in terms of taste, which I believe are from the [glossal foringel] and the [seventh]. Is that right?

(17:34) is there anything [accept cranial] there in the tongue? I don’t think so

(17:38 student) in the tongue? Extra cranial. Anything that is extra-cranial, I don’t thing so. The only thing I was thinking about is the sympathetic that goes up along the blood vessels might get some of the glands in the tongue. That would come from below.

(18:02 student) I was under the impression that there was some extra-cranial autonomic intervention

(18:05 student) That’s all on the sympathetic. The sympathetic climbs the carotid and as it climbs the carotid it goes within the cranium and I’m sure it goes along the lingual arteries also to give a sympathetic innervations to the tongue.

(18:34) the tongue will also be concerned I think with those three, with some of those three cervical plexi.

(18:45 student) And, of coarse, the other motor nerve is the hyoglossus, so that the innervations in the tongue is very complicated; the 7^th, the 9^th, the 12^th and the 5^th. That’s a lot of nerves, one. And I think the sympathetic probably snakes in there with the blood vessels, though I don’t remember reading a description of the sympathetic nor the lingual, but chances are it does; ‘cause the sympathetic goes along the carotid, and fans out with the branches of the internal maxillary [ ]

More on the 7^th Hour

(19:45) I think that sometime before really terminating this talk of this material, we should underscore for those of you who are not very trained, a fact which people in general don’t really take into consideration. That this face which we think of as something very different, our face [our face] our face, that this is really nothing but the other end of the neck. This is constituted of muscles that connect to the cervical vertebrae. You see we don’t think in those terms. We think about the face as being something entirely different. We think about the head, the scalp for instance, and the muscles on the head of the scalp as being something entirely different, and it’s under the hair and like under a rug, you don’t have to clean; but some of you here were here yesterday when poor old Don really went through the ceiling because somebody had swept a lot of dirt up into ridges under that hair you see. And you’ll find a lot of this sort of thing going on, and it’s important that you realize and recognize that that scalp also is the extension of muscles, which through the face connect to [that too]

(21:31 student) there is a very [cereal] ganglia [fetes] post the hypoglossal and the [glossal paragial]. There is sympathetic innervation in the tongue.

(21:45 student) I would like to make a few comments from a different view point. As I see this, the ribbon muscles - that you describe very nicely, of the neck coming up to the hyoid or the hyoid to the temple, in both directions, are muscles really connected with swallowing basically, and are not muscles primarily concerned with flexion and motions of the head, although they are involved in this. I think they are more involved with the function of swallowing. Then there are the deeper muscle groups behind the trachea and the esophagus, which are the pre-vertebral groups, which are kind of ribbon muscles along right in front of the vertebral column, which are part of the intrinsic neck structure, which comes into play with this very fine rotation which is possible. And I guess the main thing I wanted to bring out; this idea that highly possible [desire], we’re not major motor muscles of the neck

(22:50 student) I agree with that. We hadn’t gotten to that plane yet, but I agree that’s true. That’s absolutely true. I think the scaleni, this is a hunch that I just had, are somehow important in this whole business that we do with the neck.

(23:13) Of coarse they’re more nearly our kind of muscles that we’re aware of and working with.

(23:20 student) they’re more nearly our kind of muscle and the thing is they span a space that goes to the vertebrae and to the upper rib cage. They do this – they connect. They’re actually there, so on some level I think when we move that 3^rd and that 6^th back we may be influencing the tone of the scaleni in some way

(23:45) well I don’t think there is any doubt but that you are. Your fingers will tell you

(23:53 student) Yea. And what we’re doing is allowing them to span in a sense; to lengthen in a sense. The other idea, or concept, lets continue a moment with this thinking; between the mandible, if we looked at it this way, from the margin of the mandible going around to the entire base of the scull, pursuing this margin all the way around, and coming down enveloping the neck and enveloping these first layers of muscles that we’ve talked about. Mainly the trapezius and the sternocleidomastoid, basically enveloping this first, and hanging suspended there is the superficial cervical fascia. So, changes in this fascia are going to certainly be significant in how the neck can place itself. I think of Owen, and I think that that must have been to some extent largely involved with Owen’s inability to really bring his head on.

(25:20) But I think it’s important also to sort of plug in at this point the recognition or the importance of the superficial cervical fascia, in terms of the superficial general fascia. You know, I mean this is part of the integration process.

(25:48) Up to this point we have been taking things apart, but for the next 3 hours we are going to put things together, and this again is what distinguishes our way and our thinking from that of other manipulative groups. This is what has made us a unique group; that we always are thinking in terms of the integration. And I think that cervical fascia is a -

(26:09 student) That superficial cervical fascia spans that space between the head and the [body]. And then deep to this, we have a middle cervical fascia, which you can I guess look at this way, the middle cervical fascia has spanning between the two omohyoids, (do you have that picture?, the two omohyoids coming up?) covering that area, that space, and going from this and enveloping the great blood vessels on each side. In other words, enveloping the carotid and the jugular and the Vegas nerve right there, enveloping that on both sides. And the middle cervical fascia dips way down into the chest; goes retrosternal, far as I remember.

(27:03) It’s really one of the things that holds that neck down into, you know, the beginning of the 7^th hour; all those bits of [B E ]

(27:10 student) It dips down; it probably goes down behind the sternum.

(27:15 student) As I recall, doesn’t it have some kind of ambiguity with pericardial structures on this level of fascia?

(27:25 student) it probably goes down in that level-, it goes down into the [mediostine], and I was thinking that it’s wrapping the thymus and doing that kind of thing. The details I don’t remember, but I know it dips down into the chest

(27:36) There’s one think when-, we’re going down to the deeper fascia now? The three layers of fascia? There’s one thing we haven’t brought out and we need to, and that is what relates to the thyroid, because the thyroid is such a very important gland in terms of personalities

(28:04 student) Well the thyroid lies under the strap muscles has a fascial sheath which I think continues laterally with the vascular sheath. I don’t remember, is that correct?... (28:35 student)They’re underneath. I think it does that kind of thing on either side; it’s a fairly independent sheath. It’s enveloped in its own sheath. But the same [dependent is/depends] really so accurate here, because if you dissect I mean everything is connected really. The [sheath] just is interconnected

(29:00 student) [Grey] says that the lateral border of the fascia is connected to the carotid sheath

(29:15 student) It is attached. That’s what I thought, it went around and goes into the-, connects with the two sheaths on the side. And then deep to all this are the prevertebral muscles which Fritz mentioned and they have a fascial covering which continues down into the pre-thoracic sheath, etc. So there’s a very definite connection. Look at all these things off the base of the skull when they come down, those are the 3 basic layers that one can visualize.

(30:00 student) Now the hyoid. The hyoid kind of serves for the root of the tongue, (kind of look at it that way); hyoid related to the trachea, to the tracheal cartilages (as far as that function). The hyoid also via the digastrics muscle connects in a sense the base of the scull with the expression of the jaw, (in a sense, look at it that way.) and moves with that. And there are muscles that come from the base of the scull. The spinohyoid muscle coming off the stohyoid process, fanning out to go down to the hyoid bone.

(31:28 student) There are so many things in the neck. The other thing is the shape of the discs, in other words how the disks are wedged in the neck in terms of the curvature; the uniqueness of the atlas in carrying the scull. The atlas has no body in a sense; carries the scull on its lateral bodies. Not on the anterior like the rest of the vertebrae carry the weight on there bodies to a large extent [ ]

(32:15 student) The intrinsic muscles that run between the 2^nd vertebrae – the axis – and the base of the scull: These are short muscles, and you can look at them as going from the spine of the 2^nd vertebrae of the axis, going laterally to the lateral process of the atlas, and then from the lateral process of the atlas going back onto the scull, (like so). These are intrinsic muscles. They have names: greater oblique and lesser oblique, greater rectus. I don’t know the names, but they are a set of about 6 muscles there. 3 on each side, approximately

(33:15) you get into them as you go around the base of the scull

(33:22 student) We could find the names in the book if you want, but anyway-

(33:24 student) That confuses me. Too many names

(33:27 student) Anyway there are these little muscles back there basically, at the neck, between the axis the atlas and the base of the scull. And they’re very deep. They’re right from the vertebrae themselves

(33:40) It may be of interest to you Hector, in case you’ve never heard it, there is this school of chiropractic called The Sacral Occipital Technique which operates by virtue of reflex points on those muscles. And they have a very well mapped out set of reflex points

(34:05 student) Reflex through what?

(34:09 student) That come from another discipline

(34:10) Oh you [use them up], yea. Same as in the foot

(34:17 student) These small muscles, in a sense, these are the ones that we ultimately free in our work on the 7^th hour.

(34:30) Now you see, if that medial fascia is still pulling that head down, you can’t get relationship with that [outfit]

Intrinsic and Extrinsic Musculature

(34:40 student) By freeing the greater muscles on the outside, and the fascia within-, or enable these small muscles to really work, and-, ‘cause generally they’re so overpowered by this other motor dominance]. I don’t know Dr. Rolf, but I just wonder if-, I don’t know if anybodies ever really studies those fibers carefully, but if the concept of the slow 5 muscular fibers are innervated by the autonomic nervous system, where as the rapid, or fast fibers by the motor system, cranial motor system, I wonder how-, what percentage of those fibers would be innervated by the autonomic. Unless that’s more an autonomic function than, lets say, the deltoid

(35:51 student) You say there are insertions in these small muscles from [receptor] systems?

(35:54 student) I don’t know. That’s what I’m asking. I don’t know. Because one of the things that I’ve learned since getting into this Don, that we were not taught in medical school as far as I know, (at least I didn’t remember being taught), was the concept that of muscular fibers, red and white muscular fibers, rapid and slow acting muscular fibers, that the slow acting are innervated by the autonomic nervous system, just as the parts that are in our gut are relatively slow acting also. And I hadn’t learned this. Had you?

(36:38 student) I have a memory of that from someplace, but where I learned it I’m not sure

(36:42 student) But any rate, it would be interesting to know what the input is there

(36:45) Well you people remember as you go through life and your professional observations, somewhere or other, somebody must have done some work on this kind of innervation. And I think I told you in the other class, but I repeat it here, that somewhere there was a paper which called attention to what they claim was an antagonism between short muscle and long muscles, which – an antagonism in the sense that one is innervated by the autonomic and one is innervated by the-, but I haven’t seen the-, I can’t lay my hands on that, and I really wish I could. It was a paper that appeared in the early 1940’s, about ’42 or ’43, and it was-, the work was done out here on the west coast. I do not think it was an osteopathic paper. I’m almost sure it wasn’t; it was done by a couple of young men who were working down in Los Angeles in the early years of the war

(38:08 student) When you say the long and the short muscle you mean the individual spindle length within a muscle bundle?

(38:12) No, I don’t think I do. I’m talking about-, the thing that interested me at the time, and I don’t remember whether this was in the paper or whether it was in my head. At that time I was interested in spastics. I had several spastic children, and I was just starting to study it to the extent that this could be useful to spastic children. Now where there for instance, you get obvious imbalance between the short joint muscles, this is what I’m talking about, versus the long muscles that connects from joint to joint. And I think that there is so much evidence that we just look at and sweep under the rug, that this is so, but I would like to find if I could, something in the literature to which I could point and say, “Well, these guys knew it.” And I know it’s there, and I can no longer find it. It was not in any of the major publications; it was something put out by some small foundation or something. But it was an orthodox job, I mean it wasn’t the dream of some chiropractor

(39:44 student) These directory services, or subject services for publications are good, but sometimes articles in lesser journals don’t always get into them. It might be worth your while to-

(39:58) Well, on the other hand, how am I going to describe what it is I’m looking for? Because I don’t recall, I don’t remember what of what I’m talking about to you right now is my contribution to the concept, and what was theirs. I don’t know what this thing is. They would assume what I was –

7^th Hour Continued

(40:18) That gives you a fairly good indication I think, Hector’s given a magnificent presentation drawing into your attention the diversity of what’s going on in the neck. And what you are necessarily dealing with under your hands. Because you know the neck just isn’t that big that if you’ve got two hands on it, there’s much that is going to get away from you.

(40:49) So you are literally handling under your hands, the stuff that makes all of this tick.

(41:00 student) There is another separation that I find valuable of structure within the neck, and that is the separation between those structures which are simply transmission structures and those which are production structures; for instance, the difference between the esophagus and the thyroid. And the difference between the major portion of the spinal chord in the neck, which is simply transmitting to lower areas or upper areas, and the products, or some other gland that is locally there doing some other job rather than simply passing material back and forth

(41:35) Yea, this is an important concept. You could spend a half a day just passing back and forth these ideas, and it would be a half a day very well spent.

(Risk in the Neck)

(41:45 student) I think one thing we might mention for everybody here on trained physiology, would be, the carotid sinus reflex, I think is important. And that is if you press on the carotid at the level of its division - which is just about the level above the thyroid cartilage larynx, ok, [the throat back], and you press on that level, you can induce a [vagal] reflex, a reflex mediated by the vagus nerve, which can cause a person to faint. And the mechanism for that can be none other than stopping their hearts. So I would just bear that in mind when you make an approach at this level. If you’re going to exert force, to do it with some -

(43:10) Well, the story goes in reference to the level of the neck as goes to reference at any other level. You don’t just push on it, go in and go deep sort of thing. You move it in the direction in which you know it should go, and that’s what you are here for, at this point, to find out what direction it should go in.

(43:30 student) But I think the fact that this is so superficial in a sense, in some sense

(43:40) Says the [fishel gared]. Personally I don’t think, I’m not-, my experience with that particular reflex has never been extensive, where as my experience with all of these pre-cervical plexi is very extensive in terms of interfering with the heart and pitching them out into unconsciousness and this sort of thing. There’s [ Starka Knotty’s] husband for instance, who I’ve been working on, on and off for 20 years, I can still put him into unconsciousness anytime just by putting my hand on his neck. This, apparently is some-. And there was somebody else around here that this was apparent. Someone in the last class, Hector?

(44:36) But at any rate, this was probably some particular idiosyncrasy of this in particular man and the way the superficiality of the plexi or something of this sort. There was somebody down in Los Angeles that was coming very close to this, but not that close. so that these necks and things that you need to know about, you need to know what’s going to protect them and protect yourself

(45:09 student) And all the nerves that go thorough the neck and all that you know

(45:12) Oh. Another thing I thought again that you might find of interest. There was another school of chiropractic that put a lot of attention on those cervical plexi. And they used to think, claim, that when they put pressure on some plexi, and the man went into unconsciousness that they were over the top so to speaking, and the situation was very well under control, and I’m not signing my name under this statement, but I’m calling your attention that there have been and possibly still are at this point, a great many people who are using this very deliberately.

(46:10 student) Well I’m sure that they’re going to induce in many American relatively young men, coronary problems because they’re going to start some fibrillation in their heart, and have some dead people

(46:24) Don’t be too sure of that. We’re not going to this fibrillation either [ ]

(46:33 student) I mean to deliberately go there, you know –

(46:38) Well again, it’s not a question of straight pressure in I presume. I mean, these people have sense too. You’re talking about carotid or you talking about cervical plexus?

(46:49 student) What I heard you say, Dr. Rolf, is that there are people that are inducing unconsciousness by pressure on the neck. Ok. I’ll stay open

(46:54) That’s right. On the cervical plexus; specifically on the cervical plexus. I do assure you that if they were inducing fibrillation and dead people; one, they would be in jail, and two, they would stop it pretty quick. And they have had this form for several years now. Now I don’t know how or why this is, but I just offered it to you in terms of [ ] . so [when other words] done at all when something happened such as happened to Fritz for instance. Oh yea, Fritz was the 2^nd one. Dorothy Nolte’s husband was the first one, Fritz was the 2^nd one, and then there was a 3^rd one. So that in all these years there haven’t been that many of these people who have been pitched into unconsciousness here, but on the other hand, don’t just get a hold of those plexi and push! Keep an eye on what’s going on with your hands, or you won’t as they say [ ] this sort of thing, reassure them and ease your pressure and so forth, ‘cause it’s the reassurance I think more than anything else that’s essential there

(48:10 student) There is some-, I just mention, this has very little application to most of our work, but I just mention it as kind of a curiosity. There are situations – and I have had patients this way – where they’ll have complete occlusion of the carotid artery, and be dependent only on the vertebral arteries, when you turn their neck they conch out on you.

(48:35) By the 7^th hour that shouldn’t be so, see what I mean? That occlusion business should have been changed. And the guy who turns his neck in the 1^st hour and conchs out on you, shouldn’t be conking out on the 7^th hour. Yea, I’ve had patients like that too

(48:57 student) Have you?

(48:58) Oh yea, and I’ve had people who came into me for the specific symptom of, “When I try to back out of my garage, I black out.” And it only took one or two hours to change that. And the place where I had trouble getting them in again is they came from somewhere off in the sticks you know and it was quite a jaunt to come in

(49:25 student) Yea, I think Victor’s worry is not so much, “Be careful, it could happen to anybody,” but it’s something to be aware of. I think if we stimulated all the sinuses in this room, probably nothing would happen, because I think most of us are in fairly solid shape, but there is the occasional person that may be in some sort of marginal status, and it’s a possibility.

(49:40) I think it’s very important, especially for those people who don’t have a full medical background, to understand that there are all kinds of pitfalls that you can trip and fall into very hard. And you see, they tend to not have this thing; they tend to just decide that , “Oh well, all things [dance through] the ages, and come on lets Rolf and I’ll find out where it hurts and put our elbow in the point, and that’s it.” Well as I say, for you people it’s a joke, but for me it’s no joke when I- , when somebody comes and says, “I said to so and so, have you heard about Rolfing?” And he said, “Oh sure. You find out where it hurts and then you put your elbow in and push.” To me this is no joke,[and] you can believe it very shortly

(50:32 student) As I recall with the carotid sectors, the real danger is stimulating both sides simultaneously. If you do one side or the other there is relatively little danger.

(50:44 student) You can on one side

(50:45 student) Yes, but the incidence is much less than if you did both sides

(50:47 student) What if you do both sides you tend to not give any circulation to the head. There are 2 dynamics: There’s a neuro reflex one

( student) That’s that vagal stimulation

( student) The vagal. and then there’s an actual mechanical vascular obstruction. You know, you stimulate both actually –

(51:05) You see when you do this kind of thing, just your basic neck movement, you are not so much pressing on the points as you are taking the tissue and stretching it passed the points, which is a stimulation rather than a-

(51:24 student) Right

(51:25) And it’s important that you know this, and that you are able to have it so much in your consciousness that you can argue with people, or you do argue with people who don’t know about this, because basically what you are doing with flesh is stimulating it by stretching it. The basic physiological stimulus to flesh is stretching.

(51:50 student) Right

(51:55) And it doesn’t make any difference where the flesh is, or how, or anything else, that is the basic stimulation; stretching it. The other basic stimulation is rapid alchemation of pressure. This sort of thing. And this is why I’ll get at you every so and so often, and I’ll say, “your moving too fast. Your not relaxing it, you’re stimulating.” and you have to realize these two very fundamental differences

Medical Referral

(52:30 student) Dr. Rolf, I just-, do you feel-, this is again a little outside of-, that at a certain point in the development of our whole group, that people after a certain age that they should have medical clearance? Let’s say people after 50, or do you think that that’s not necessary?

(52:50) Yea I think that - do you mean our people or people that come into them?

(52:55 student) The practitioners, right? As people come into them, after a certain age-

(53:00) should Demand medical?

(53:02 student) Yea. Clearance.

(53:04) I think it depends on the practitioner. I think this depends exclusively on the practitioner. There are a great many people who will form really the backbone of any Rolf practitioner’s practice, who won’t go to a medic, and I understand why, because they go to this medic-

(53:27) When Mary Jane went into Los Angeles, [she/they went kay] had a lot of trouble in her shoulders - not a lot of trouble – she had suddenly gotten into trouble in her shoulders during the New York [haruput]. She claimed that this was psycho somatic, and that she had gotten it as a result of having been on the stand to do some testifying about something or other that day. That was her story with which John Lily brought her to me and said, here’s the woman that will fix it. so I was sitting next to her in the course of Julian’s [ own] talk, and watching what she did with herself. She was sitting next to Lily, and Lily was holding her hand, and she was looking at Julian this way, and she was bringing her whole shoulder back because Lily was holding her hand this way, and I said to myself, “It isn’t all that kind of psycho somatic, it’s a different kind of psycho somatic.” So at any rate, recognizing, feeling how much pain the woman was in, you see I put my hand on Lily and I fussed around with her shoulder and her neck, and a lot of times Julian was up there looking at what was going on, and about 150, 200 other people in there, and I said to her, “Now look, if you’re going to hold onto Lily’s hand, you’re going to hold it so that your shoulders balance.” Well, anyway.

(55:09) So she was all steamed up. She wanted to come to me quick, quick, quick, quick, quick, quick, quick. But she was going down to the millionaire’s club, as some of you know, went down to the Bahamas or the West Indies, and so she had to go there, and so she finally got to me toward the end of the Los Angeles.

(55:30) So she comes in to me and she gets her 1^st hour of work. And she goes out on air. Now I’m telling you that she’s going to a gynecologist the next day for a check-up. The gynecologist says to her, “Do you have a cardiologist? There’s a certain something about your heart rhythm that I just don’t like,” or something of the sort. So the next thing, my telephone is ringing, the woman is absolutely hysterical, she says, “I can’t keep that appointment with you this afternoon, I have to go to a cardiologist,” she gets the recommendation, she runs over to the cardiologist, the cardiologist has her dying in no time flat. I say to her, “Go and get another reading.” So she does, she takes it somewhere else, and of coarse by the time she gets it somewhere else - another clinic - they tell her there isn’t a thing wrong with her heart. And 2 weeks later she gets back to me, but by this time you see, I’m ready to leave Los Angeles, and she could have had 6 hours worth of work in the meantime. This isn’t so far out, I mean it’s happening all the time. So that you have this thing to look to too.

(56:54) If we could get these people examined by a practicing physician who understands our point of view, and our roles in what it is we want, than we would [go ahead and do it]

(57:04 student) And here you are. People are coming

(57:10) Well, we shouldn’t waste you people. You people get to work, but one should get just friendly outsiders who-

(57:20) and then again, there is also the financial aspect of this. By the time these people paid your bills, they’re rather cleaned out. And if they’ve got to pay some medical bills and the coroner, there is a problem. But if you could arrange with understanding medics, who would for instance – most of these people have health policies. Much of this work could be done on health policies by the advice of the medic who sends them for such and such work, but if you people could sign these policies for someone who9 is willing to do that.

(58:00 student) Most companies now have a routine medical thing, for instance a man who’s employed , you can suggest to him that he do his next 6 monthly or yearly examination shortly before he comes into you. You know if he’s with Bell Telephone or something, you know they have a regular [ ] examination thing.

(58:16) This is a thought too, that I would like to put into the mind of several of you here, is that much of the cost of this thing can be handled through insurance, if you will be careful to work out the insurance. Now several, many of those-, certain percentage of insurance companies will for example accept chiropractic, or the signature of a chiropractor, and pay insurance on it. But a great many others, Blue Cross for instance will have nothing to do with anybody that isn’t a medic. And there should be medics you see who will sign this patient’s slip, and advise them, “Well you can work at $350 dollars worth of commitment to work. All of those are problems which should properly be worked out within the guild organization itself. A great many people within that guild would be very wise from that experience.

(59:25 student) While we’re sort of on general claims, one of the things that I repeatedly embarrass myself with in my practice is neglecting to ask people who else they’re seeing and what kind of drugs they’re getting. I’ll be treating somebody for depression, and find out their on barbiturates or something.

(59:40) That’s right. This is absolutely so, and when you take on a person, and you give them a 1^st hour, or a 1^st and 2^nd hour, and you’re not getting your results, then is the time to scratch very carefully under the surface. They figure they’re on barbiturates that some medical doctor prescribed for them 5 years ago, and forgot to un-prescribe for them, it’s none of your darn business. They think they’re on thyroid that somebody prescribed for them 3 years ago, that’s none of your darn business either. But of coarse, what happens is, that from the 1^st hour that you get working you’ve got that thyroid going, and now by 2 weeks, they’ve got a high parathyroid situation, a high parathyroid symptoms, or else, you start the thyroid, and then they are putting the thyroid in through their mouth, and the thyroid says, “Why should I work?”, and it lies down and quits again.

(1:00:38) And all of what Don says is very important, very important.

(1:00:40 student) Fortunately recently, in California the long term problems have been erased. They passed a law that all prescriptions expire at the end of 6 months if they are not renewed. So it will be current medicine that’s the problem

[End]