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Ida Rolf Audio Tape Transcript AUDIO FILE Tape B1 Side 1 MP3 File (aprox. 11MB) TRANSCRIPT (0:10) …Have you people who are coming in for your 2nd going, have you checked your walking pictures with your first walking pictures? … No excuse, no rationalization, you know the old lady, she’s an old, you know what. The 1st walking pictures are coming up. This is the first order of the afternoon. Go and see those walking pictures, and see whether you have changed, and if you haven’t, get your money back. (0:57) This afternoon is going to be 11th hours, and what you are going to see tomorrow is going to be 1st hours. And you people who are new on the job are going to have to shine up your eyes. This is not easy. You are going to have to shine up your eyes to see the difference, and you’re gong to have to shine up your brains to always keep that difference in mind. To realize that what you are going to see this afternoon is not a 1st hour, and that this is extremely confusing. But I don’t know of any other way that I can run this combination group, and you need a combination group, because you people have to sit and look until you see, and I don’t know of any other way to handle this. And if any of you get real bright ideas, just tell me about it. So remember this, and when we talk about 1st hours on senior days, which are the Monday and Wednesday combinations, we’re not really talking about 1st hour. (2:05) Now what we saw this morning was really a 1st hour, and what we are going to see tomorrow all the way along are going to be really 1st hours. But what we are going to see this afternoon are going to be 11th hours. (2:25) Now, have you got those pictures Lee?… (2:40 student) I don’t even have to see the (pictures), I do walk differently… (3:21) At any rate, those of you who did have your before one walking picture, and now have your before 11 walking picture, go and look at them, and hand them around to your neighbors, and some of you – just to cheer me up say “far out!”… (3:42) …do a 1st hour on these 11th hour pictures. And you cannot do a 1st hour twice, anymore than you can teach a child to read twice. When you’ve taught him to read, he reads! He can go on to more sophisticated reading, but you can’t teach him to read “ABC” twice. When he knows it he knows it; and it is the same. This is really a very difficult idea to get sorted out in your own mind. It takes a while, (I’m talking now particularly to you auditors,) it takes a while to sort this idea out in your own mind, that for example what was done on Frank this morning, Frank is now going to use. And the Frank of this afternoon that is now driving back to San Francisco, in no sense, at no point in his body, is acting like the Frank that drove down this morning. It is a different man. (4:57) You are working along a gradient scale, and he is in a different spot on that scale. And this is, as I say, one of the difficult things that you have to struggle with, this recognition of the everlasting necessity for understanding relationship. Places on a scale. What has changed? What is now emerging as something that is apparently the problem? And this is all part of the deal. (5:35) Now this afternoon we are going to have these people who are senior students give each other 1st hours, so that they get in practice to work on the rest of you tomorrow. (5:48 student) It’s called a deck of spades. (5:53) So long as it’s a spade and not a goddamn shovel it’s alright. (5:59) Anyway, Fritz how would you like to take on this guy? And how would you like to talk about what you are doing when you are doing it… (6:34 student) What I see mostly Dr. Rolf, looking at Don, I think in the chest and shoulders, across the chest I see a lot of horizontality there. I see less down in the feet and ankles. (6:53) But you’re letting him get away with something that you shouldn’t let him get away with. Mainly keeping his pants up so high that it disguises the top of the pelvis. (6:57 student) Ok that does change; it does take a parallel, which I didn’t see beneath the pants. (7:03) Now this business of keeping pants on people is a great help in seeing them. I really mean this. You see much more as you get used to looking at people with pants or with pants and bras on. You see more about them as those lines of the clothing go…then you would. (7:23) Do you remember Don’s pants the 1st day? Do you remember how they just had no contour to the relationship of the hip structure? (7:37 student) There’s less parallel down in the pelvis area than there is up above. In through here and in through here you see the lines coming across it… (8:00 student) I also see still a tightness in the shoulder binding, in where the shoulder girdle joins on the trunk, in here… Turn to the side please. (8:19) See that pelvis is still turned too much. And it is turned much more than is quite apparent as you look at the front… It’s still tipped considerably too much. It still needs to go very considerably under. And as it gets under, it will ease off the strain in those legs. But do you remember particularly the symptom, Fritz, that had me much concerned when Don first came in here? That circulatory blanching – (8:55 student) – of his face, which primarily is gone. (9:00) You have to remember this. You can’t see it anymore. (9:04 student) It looked like a different head; was not related to the body at all. Had a lot of power in the body, but – (9:08) And you see what a wonderful job we’ve done for you Don?… That’s a pretty good job. Now. What are you going to do with the guy? Now there is one thing more. Stay up there for a minute… Turn around. (9:48) As you get people organized, you can take a piece of cardboard and lay it against their back and have their back touching all across that shoulder section and down. You don’t have to fit the cardboard on. Now this has not yet happened with Don. It is there more than it was there when we first started, but it still is not so that you could lay a cardboard across those scapula and have the spine approximating the cardboard. (10:29 student) The upper dorsal seem a bit flat and the groove along the left shoulder is….. (10:35) Yes, but realize that you couldn’t possibly have a pelvis like that, and have an upper dorsal such as we’re looking for. You cannot do it. And those of you who are new here, get this idea and meditate on it, because this is the problem. (10:48) Is Bob Landon in the room?… You see this is what Bob doesn’t understand. Giovanna, will you carry this message to him?… That in order to get that spine back, he’s got to get the pelvis under. If he gets the pelvis under he’s got to get the spine back. If he gets the spine back he’s got to get the shoulder blades together. They have to come together; there is no other way to get a spine back. Now if somehow or other we could get that so much into Bob’s eyes that he would do it, we’d have it made. (11:47) And because this is true, and if you doubt it, (some of you juniors), you ask some of the seniors, and they’ll tell you how they worked last time. Because this is true, we keep going over these premises, during this first week or two, so as to reinforce your changed understandings, and what we were talking about yesterday was the fact, it seems to be a fact. Certainly it is a workable hypothesis, that a body is a summation of energies. (12:30) That that which we call a body in terms of energy is the summation of the energies of various areas and various organs of a body; that the organs are energies. And so the body itself becomes the algebraic sum of these various energies, and so the body, if and as and when, you can change the individual energies by virtue of freeing them, or putting them into a place where they operate more clearly, etc. When this happens, you have a body which represents, or is the outward invisible evidence, of a different summation. (13:30) Now if you’re really going to deal creatively with this material here, you have got to get yourself into a reality about this. Now the energies, the summation that is the body, is not only a summation of those various individual energies, but is a summation of what those various individual energies have succeeded in maintaining within the gravitational field. Because, you see, as you set these together differently, as you set these small fields of energy together differently, you can never escape from the fact that the large field of energy which is the earth’s field, is acting on them; and that what you as an individual feel as my energy, my vitality, my being, is what is left after gravity gets through pulling these things around. Consequently, it is within this framework that you must do your changing. You cannot change gravity. You have to change the human being. (15:17) Now it is possible to abstract the situation as I abstracted it yesterday, in terms of those blocks. In terms of simpler mechanical systems which you have all dealt with and understand. But what you are really dealing with is something vastly more complicated. Something within which there is vitality, within which there is life, within which there is response, within which there is feeling, etc., etc. So this becomes the problem that we are trying to solve. How do we reorganize that body so that it can stand and work in a gravitational field without that gravitational field breaking it down? And it can be done. Or, at least, a very definite, a very marked, a very real approach to this goal can be made – as you have all seen, or you wouldn’t be here. (16:35) Now your keys lie in the fact that a body is a segmented unit. You have another key in the fact that there are many joints within the body, or the outward invisible signs of this segmentation. And that at each joint there is a situation, which either enhances the organization of the body within the gravitational field, or it prevents the organization of the body within the gravitational field. (17:15) So that each one of these joints becomes a something to look at, becomes a something to understand in terms, not of bony surfaces, but in terms of how bony surfaces are dragged by soft tissue. Obviously if the soft tissue is around that bony joint asymmetrically, that joint is not going to work as that joint was designed to work. A man designs a hinge for a door, and one of the screws works out; the hinge is not going to work as it is designed to work. And just as soon as you get something trying to work in a pattern where it was not designed to work, whether it was designed by a man, or shall we say metaphorically, a god, the same thing happens; the whole system breaks down. And so this is your problem. (18:31) And I do not want, – I am not satisfied with, I will not be satisfied with –, a routine approach to it. We take a body and we do this first, we do that second, and we do that third. It’s quite true. You’ll hear a lot of the word ‘Recipe’ flung around here, meaning that there is a route, there is a map by which you approach this, but I will not be happy if that’s all you know about what you’re doing. To me it is absolutely necessary that you really think in terms of these energies within the body, and the organization of them, and the changing of them, and what you can do with them. Because there is going to be a day when there has to be a program of research and a validation, and a measurement, and all of this sort of thing coming, and you cannot think in terms of first you let his arm go round, and you test it. You have got to have a better understanding of how the thing fits into the general cultural patterns. (19:50) So, having really firmly gotten a hold of this in your hot little hand, then it’s time to go and see, how can you validate it? How can you use it? How can you make use of it to change a situation which you do not like, as for example, Frank’s situation yesterday? And then the answer is that you go to the mechanism of the recipe, and you follow that along; and the recipe you saw used yesterday. But those of you who are juniors here, I do not think really understood the pattern. (20:45) So. Don, you’re being too comfortable. Would you like to tell them about the pattern? (20:46 student) Sure. This is the pattern of the first hour, the beginning one. (20:56) That’s right. (21:00 student) The whole focus – well the 1st hour has a double focus, as every hour does. I’m going to speak about the most superficial focus, which is unwrapping the segmented, plastic body that we are presented with; the body that’s gotten into all kinds of hassles and hang-ups, both emotional and physical, is bent and twisted by gravity and bombardments and falling off bicycles and so forth. So the 1st hour is going to be to unwrap the superficial fascia on this body, so that following hours can then begin to work in more depth and more specifically. I’m going to switch around kind of from area to area, because there are three or four things happening at once, not only 1st hour but all the other hours too. (21:50 student) In this hour we’re unwrapping superficial fascia, were unwrapping the body by loosening superficial fascia, paying specific attention to places where it’s tight, since that indicates greater problems underneath. And at the same time we have our eyes and our heads kind of pointed towards the whole job of the 1st hour; which is to begin to get the pelvis into a more satisfactory alignment. To do this now, I’m going to back track again and go back to the superficial fascia, we start doing that on the upper part of the body; the thorax. We do it to – (22:28) May I interrupt just a minute? I don’t think some of these people understand what a more satisfactory alignment of the pelvis is. Other than that I think you’ve been doing a [ ]. Much better than I am. I’m going to take a couple of days off. (22:42 student) The pelvis as a structure, this now includes the bone itself and the muscles and ligaments and fascia that comprise the pelvis, forms a bowl; forms the bottom of the vitality, if you will, of a man. And if it can’t function as a bowl, then things spill out of it. If it’s tipped on its side, the soup goes all over the stove. You’ve got to have the stove level, you’ve got to have the bowl level on the stove. When it’s level you can make nice soup in it and everything will come out brilliant. (23:27) You’re a son of my own. You’re just coming along magnificently – twice as good as the old lady. Go ahead. (23:39 student) So in other words the pelvis has to be flat so that it can function as a basin. (23:44) The pelvis has to be horizontal. As a unit, the pelvis has to be horizontal. (23:44 student) Horizontal, yeah. I agree with that. OK, so that’s what we mean by proper alignment, or satisfactory alignment. There are degrees of perfection attainable in any given series of hours and any biologic system, perfection isn’t possible but we try and get as close as we can. Now, to free up this pelvis we’ve got to get a lot of stuff off of it from both directions. And we start by freeing the upper part of the body from the pelvis by loosening the fascia across the chest, especially the fascia which is binding the ribs down. This doesn’t work exactly directly on freeing the pelvis, but what it does do is increase oxygen flow and cardiac output concurrently to the whole body, which makes future work a lot easier, and also gives the client a sense of well being from the 1st hour. The increased exchange of oxygen just makes his life a little more pleasant. (24:57) This is true, but I can’t agree with you that it doesn’t work directly on the pelvis. It does work directly on the pelvis when you consider that after all is said and done that thorax is connected through the recti abdomonea and through the obliques and all this sort of thing. This is the wrapping which has kept it immobile. And as you’re opening that fascia you do get a mobilization of this whole business. So it does work directly on the pelvis in addition to the respiration. (25:31 student) I see that I was trying to make the distinction that your hands aren’t in the pelvis at that moment, but someplace else. That’s what I meant by indirect. (25:35) Alright. Okay. This I thoroughly agree with. (25:44 student) But also the ribs go up; the pull on the pelvis is increased. Isn’t it? (25:48) Well, no. It isn’t as simple a mechanical system as that. This is a biological system. And where as you can put mechanical models in there in the hope of understanding your biological system more than that, nevertheless a biological system you move this up, this moves that way, that moves that way, etc., etc. Okay. (26:12 student) Yeah, I think the distinction is working on the front of the chest, and the pelvis changes. Not this and that, because that they happen to work together. (26:26) Right, right, right. Because you are changing the level of energy of the whole body. You see, you’re adding energy to the chest, to the thorax, and in so doing you’re changing the energy by way of, perhaps, the oxygen, but how do I know by way of what? You’re changing the energy of the man as a whole. If you doubt it, watch these guys as you begin to open their chest…and therefore that energy of the man as a whole is going to be expressed in the pelvis, which is one of the keys to the man as a whole. (27:00 student) Yeah, I don’t think it’s just purely oxygen exchange. (27:04) No, I’m sure it’s not. (27:06 student) There’s another paper to be written. (27:07) Yeah, that’s right. (27:10 student) So let’s see. We’re in the process of unwrapping the body through working on the superficial fascia. The first task is to increase the oxygen exchange, cardiac output, and lift the thorax off the pelvis to give it a degree of mobility, which will help us later in giving it a more satisfactory alignment. In doing this task we not only work on the thorax, we have to go out in the shoulder girdle and out into the arms to free whatever constraints they have placed on the thorax so that it can lift and be in it’s proper position. (27:50) And this is much more apt to be necessary in the 11th hour than it is in the 1st, ‘cause you see you’re getting down to deeper hook-ups. (28:02 student) Yeah, I think that at this point it would be important to make a comment about the kind of little dance we do around the body, where we’re working superficially, but every time we get a chance we take a dive for the center, so that everything we’re doing, or much of what we’re doing, is really preparing for that big step to the center of the pelvis later. And if we’re working out of the arms, and maybe the 11th hour is really going to do the work, nonetheless, everything we can do in Hour One to pave the way will make it easier later on. Like Dr. Rolf says, unfinished structures are like Karma, they catch up with you sooner or later, and things that are left behind are there, and I think probably those of us who’ve had 10 and were starting yesterday, each of us got into little things that didn’t get done the first time perhaps, or weren’t complete – (28:55) Well there’s something else that needs to be brought out in that connection I think, and that is you see, that as you begin, in those first 10 hours what you did was to release, to mobilize an outer level, and as a result of that you begin to get a rising; all kinds of material which had been suppressed. So that what you found in those bodies yesterday was not what was left after those 10 hours, but what reconstituted itself after those 10 hours. And after the loosening of the 10 hours, what reconstituted itself, and what probably is a map of how they got there in the beginning. So that what you get is a picture of a man at an earlier stage. And you very, very often get them saying, “Well, I have a pain now that I had when I was 20. I haven’t had this pain in years.” And you see, what you’ve done is turned the situation back to the place where the pain was the symptom of that particular balance, and now you’re reconstituting this particular imbalance, and this is what happens. (30:15 student) And that’s amazing. That simply dumfounds me. (30:18) It is amazing. You see, take for instance as you brought Frank’s ribs back and out. This is somewhere where they were shortly after his accident, and then little and little they’ve lost energy and they deteriorated further and further and on into other positions. Now they are retracing their steps, and of course some of you here who have been through other natural methods of healing, know that osteopaths, chiropractors, and so forth, have seen this same thing which they have called “retracing”, and which they liked very much and sometimes they – for my money – overdo it; every time the patient comes in with a new pain they think it’s a retracing pain, and it may not be a retracing pain. It may be that they didn’t do the job properly and they’ve given them a new symptom, but that we will not take up or we’d start a war there. (31:20 student) Is this retracing in reverse step? (31:24) Yeah, it’s just a 10, 9, 8, 7 job instead of a 7, 8 9, 10 job. OK? (31:35 student) I think it’s almost as though one has to take away the present pathology to recreate the past pathology to cause this present thing. (31:40) I don’t like that word pathology! (31:45 student) Well you said that was the definition of physiology gone haywire. (31:49) Well it is, but it’s got to go a lot haywire before it’s really pathology… Yeah, the word is physiology, perverted physiology, because perverted physiology is what you know you can deal with, and pathology maybe you can deal with if you can get the perverted physiology turned back. (32:09 student) Pathology is irreversible. (32:10) No, it really isn’t. Such a thing as, for example, an emphysema is a pathology. But we can handle emphysemas very well indeed. (32:25) OK. Go on. I got out on that limb, right square on it. (32:31 student) Every time. (32:34 student) OK. We haven’t mentioned the diaphragm yet as being part of the thorax. I talked about, no I haven’t talked about the rotation in the ribs yet either. Ribs should have 4 actions, and we’re trying to achieve them; an up and down, a fore and aft, a sway, and a rotational function. (33:04) That’s like a Venetian blind. Let’s quote Shutz. (33:12 student) I haven’t really seen that concept very well yet, and I’m not sure where it fits in. I only know that you said that should be there. (33:19) Well, you very often see these four different movements coming out within the first hour, but sometimes you don’t. (33:33) I was going to ask whether any of you have looked at the before and after “one” pictures… so what did you see? (33:45 student) Well there’s a marked difference in everybody’s thorax. A great deal of elevation. I’m talking about filling. (33:57) How do you get that way? (34:00 student) In other words, after rotating. (34:09 student) What are the 4 movements again? (34:11 student) Up and down, this way, fore and aft, and rotation around their axis. (34:19 student) Sideways? (34:20) No. Well. Can you stop the side if the fore is coming and the aft is coming, can you stop the side? (34:25 student) But fore and aft is two different movements? (34:28) It really is. Much of the time you will find that people have a fore movement, but no aft movement, so it is different. And if you’re any good as a practitioner, and the patient’s any good as a patient, you’ll get your aft movement in that 1st hour, but more than that you’ll get your rotation in the ribs coming in the 1st hour, and this changes the chest. (35:02 student) Getting that motion is part of the general unwrapping and freeing of the thorax. It’s a specific thing in itself and it’s also part of a larger freeing that’s going on. Then, we haven’t talked about the bottom of the thorax, which is the diaphragm. In general, we begin by freeing along the coastal margin; scraping, cleaning I think is a better word. Sometimes it’s scraping. Down here on the crest it’s scraping. (35:45 student) In general, just simply cleaning up all of the margins so the diaphragm, directly where they are available, like on the coastal margins and indirectly, like where the crura go on the back on the spinal column. That has to be done relatively indirectly by– (36:04) No. Generally you don’t get to that in the 1st hour. You get to that in the 11th hour, or you’ve got a problem. See what I’m talking about. These people don’t know about crura yet. (36:16 student) Anyway the diaphragm has to be freed as much as possible – the part that’s available to you in the 1st hour – to not only help with the respiratory function but also to free the thorax so it can lift and be in a better position. I think that about covers the waterfront if I’m not correct. Fritz, did you remember anything else? (36:38 student) Well I do. The presentation was beautiful though. (36:43) Yeah, wasn’t that a beautiful presentation? Beautiful. (36:45 student) I think the elevation of the ribs make a very good guide when you work on somebody as to where you are. And you begin to see this with the elevation, and if its occurring or not occurring, I think is a good guide step as to what needs to be done. And when you’re ready to progress from one area to another. It’s very evident change is occurring. (37:10) There is another point that might be made in here, and that is that over and over again people call you on the telephone. They would like to come in for an examination. And I say, we don’t give examinations, but if you want to come in for a 1st hour you can, or else I don’t have time to give you a 1st hour. When I say I don’t have time to give you a 1st hour, well they only want an examination. But you see it is their behavior under this kind of work that you are doing that constitutes the examination. This is the only thing that tells you where they are in terms of the energy level. Again, get this clear in your mind; you’re doing this in terms of relationship, in terms of an energy level. You don’t give a hoot if their 4th rib has come down on there 5th rib. What you give a hoot about is, is the 4th rib going to respond as you help it get off that 5th rib? That is what is going to constitute the diagnosis. But you can’t tell them that, they can’t understand that. But you better understand it yourself. (38:29) And there are no bodies that don’t respond. I have never seen one, and god knows I have seen thousands. (38:40) Okay so, then what do you do with the guy? (38:40 student) So then we have to focus on the other thing that’s hooked up to the pelvis, which is the lower half of the body. And again with the focus of getting the pelvis freed up to put it in a better position. We begin to work on the legs, especially that portion of the legs which has its attachment around the head of the femur and the ischii; those two areas are major post [sight] for us. The fascia latae, the – (39:13) Well hold it a minute. Why do you pick the head of the femur for your first work, and for the bulk of your work really? (39:25 student) Well I think there are a couple of reasons. One is that there are a great number of attachments of both muscles from the pelvis and muscles from the leg, which either insert there, or cross there, or are around there. (39:38) You still haven’t put your finger on another – (39:43 student) The rotational point that you’re going to organize the pelvis around. (39:45) That’s right, and you have to free the pelvis to rotate on the femur. Because the femur – the leg – cannot change its relation to the earth. You see, the only place that you can begin to change the relation of the body to the earth is around the head of the femur. And you’re blessed by the fact that the head of the femur is the junction for all of this stuff. Now this is a piece of velvet that god gave you as a Rolfer, you see. (40:25 student) So we free the legs from the pelvis by working predominantly around the head of the femur and with the hamstrings, in order that we then can go directly to the pelvis and give it it’s first taste of alignment, which is the pelvic lift that you saw going on yesterday. (40:50) I’d like you to expand on the word alignment there; it’s first taste of alignment. What do you mean? (41:00) By alignment, I mean not only giving it as much horizontality as we can at this point, also alignment by dropping the lumbar spine back as much as possible in this first hour, so that the lumbar begins to take up its job of weight bearing, which in many people is lost because of its anterior displacement. So I see alignment not only on the horizontal, but also letting the lumbars drop back in place so they can begin to do their work. And then free up other misalignments. (41:37) Yeah, well you see, you’re once again into the relation business, the importance of relationship; you can’t get horizontality, except as it’s related to a verticality. (41:52 student) So the lumbars have to go back. (41:55) The lumbars have to go back, there is no other way to do it. And just as long as the lumbars are way forward, you get the joint of the 5th lumbar and the sacrum relatively incompetent to do the job that they’re lined up for. (42:14 student) Did Bill take our skeleton down? (42:18) No. It’s in the other room. Let’s get it. Annie? That’s a good thought. (42:29 student) Yeah, ‘Cause she has about the worst pelvis I’ve ever seen. (42:31 student) The worst anterior [going]. (42:35) It’s so bad you can’t tell if it’s a she or a he. (42:59) What we have done, the goal of the 1st hour, the goal of the 2nd, the 3rd, the 4th, the 5th, the 6th, the 7th, the 8th, the 9 th and the 10th hours, is to organize that pelvis so that it knows where the horizontal is. (43:25 student) The remainder of the work that we did in the 1st hour then, has again, a double function. The work in the neck and then going down the back, it’s to give a person… (43:35) Yeah, but wait a while, and let them really see how that works. You or Fritz, go up there and talk to that pelvis in a way that you-he-she-it understands. (44:02 student) I think everybody could see, no matter where you’re sitting, that the flat surface of this inner space between the last lumbar and the 1st sacral is on a plane, which is roughly like this. It’s about like that. And what we want to do is bring as much as we can to this kind of a thing. (44:35 student) Now as Dr. Rolf mentioned, the ground is fixed. We can’t do anything about that, so with the weight transmitted through the boney structures, the first place that we can do any rotation is right there, at the head of the femur. So the whole task is to free this structure off the pelvis, free these ligaments and attachments as much as possible to let us get the rotation, and then with the pelvic lift begin to rock these back and let the pelvis – (45:08) Put your hand there in the same position that you would do with the pelvic lift. (45:20 student) To begin to actually rock it, pull it down, let the lumbars fall back. (45:22) And you see when that skeleton does its own voluntary bringing of his lumbars back, then you begin to get lengthening between the individual lumbars, and you very often feel how the sacrum will reorganize itself on the 5th lumbar. And this is what happened yesterday with Frank when Don here became quite lyrical about how differently his whole lower half was feeling. (45:56 student) Yeah, that was “far out”. (46:05) OK now, you still have a problem in that body. You have gotten the ribs – the thorax – to climb up off the pelvis, you’ve gotten the legs to free themselves down off the pelvis, you have taken the pelvis and made it as horizontal as you can. But you still have a problem in that body, in that you have not changed the cervical organization. Now those of you who have worked with manipulative methods before know that you do not get the cervical curve and the lumbar curves. The secondary curves are related. That your cervical curve talks about your lumbar curve, that your lumbar curve talks about your cervical curve. Therefore, if you aim to change the one or the other permanently, you have to change the twin, the two ends of the stick. (47:14) The anatomy books, the physiology books, talk about these curves being secondary curves. But I have yet to see any anatomy book or physiology book really discussing the necessity of balance between the cervical and the lumbars. But this is so, and this is obvious to you as you start working with bodies. And so here, in order to complete the work of a generalized reorganization of that body, you now have to go up to the cervical spine. (48:01) And remembering that you are doing once-over-lightly in that 1st hour, you are dealing primarily with superficial fascia. You are not dealing with individual muscles. You cannot get to individual muscles in the 1st hour. Remembering this, you realize that you cannot deal with anything in the neck in that 1st hour really, except the unwrapping of the sternocleidomastoid, or the unwrapping of the trapezius. Now, it is these two muscles, which most superficially have held the cervical area where it has been held to balance the lumbar, and it is these two muscles, the releasing of which, will permit the area to go back and balance your new lumbar. (49:13) And you see the difference between this method as a method and all other manipulative methods that I know of is the following; that you do not let an individual get away from the mat until you have done the best you can to integrate him – hence comes the name – to integrate him each time you work on him. Consequently it would be completely out of order to do your 1st hour without doing a pelvic lift to try to organize the pelvis, without doing something to balance the change in the lower part with the upper part; without making the man or attempting to make the man conscious of the fact that he is going into a new alignment. This business of simply taking your hands and manipulating this is not what it is about. What it is about is making the individual conscious of the fact that there are relations within his body, which make him feel best. And it is his responsibility to move himself along toward those places. It is his responsibility to start getting an awareness of “Where is the top of his head”, and “Where is his waistline” – in other words his 1st and 2nd lumbar – to move them back. So that as the man goes onto this new relationship he begins to try at least to make it possible for him to get a changed pattern of movement. Not merely a changed pattern, but a more integrated pattern. (51:19) Anybody and everybody can put hands into a body and change a body. And have mercy, good lord, on you if you come and say to me, “Well I know I did a good job ‘cause I changed the body. All you have to do is get your fists into somebody, you’ll change that body; you can change it very unhappily. It’s just as easy to take a body apart – in fact it’s almost a lot easier – than it is to put it together. But the reason you call yourself a worker of structural integration is because you put it together, and if you don’t put it together, you’re doing something else; you’re not doing what is being taught here. It’s very, very important to realize that. (52:12) It’s very, very important to realize that the 1st law of manipulation as we teach it here, is to get the materials of the structure into the direction; the muscles, the units, whatever unit you are dealing with, towards the place that is the place where normally it was designed to work. Because the problems in bodies arise because units of all the parts of that body, organizations within that body, get out, get away from the place where the design calls for their working, and it doesn’t require a great deal of out-ness; an 1/8 of an inch will do it. And you no longer have possible the energy pattern which is the most economical energy pattern. Now you have a new pattern, and while the man is young and vigorous, he can handle it. He can take his vital energy, and he can force himself to do this, that and the other thing, but as he gets older and he looses some of his vital energy, he can no longer force himself as satisfactorily to him, and a little, and a little, that body begins to break down, until all of a sudden it comes to a crisis, and then it breaks down a lot. Because you see you do not have the reciprocity of pull, the reciprocity of energy field activity. Which makes it possible for it to spontaneously restore itself. (53:53) So that your 1st law, your 1st manipulative law, is to take the structure, and bring it toward the position which it normally should occupy. And I don’t say you averagely should occupy; which it normally should occupy, which it’s designed to occupy. Which an examination of a skeleton, which the physiology of a human say it has to occupy if it’s going to work best, work most easily, work with least energy expenditure. You bring it into that direction and you demand physiological movement. (54:40) Now, in working in that 1st hour as you worked on the thorax, over and over again we said, “That’s right, breath please. Take another breath please.” This is physiological movement for the thorax. And while you are holding that fascial sheath toward the position where it should be, ideally speaking, you are demanding physiological movement; in this case, breath. When you get into the arms as you are holding the restrictions in the upper arm, you are demanding physiological movement of the arm. And what is physiological movement? There you have a big motor pattern that goes out from the elbow. And the same is true with the leg. Etc., etc. (55:44) You cannot reorganize a body with your hands. You can only help that body to reorganize itself through movement. Now this is the basic difference in concept between what you are going into here and the other much more orthodox manipulative techniques. Their assumption is that they can replace something that has been displaced. You can, but you can’t make it work there. He has to make it work there (56:35) And as you go around Esalen a lot of people are going to pitch to you the nice little negative of, “Oh well, I want something that I can do myself.” Then you get them in here on the floor, and they lie like a cloud of dirt, waiting for you to do something for them.
(57:01) This is a system that demands the participation of the individual who is being worked on, for best results. Obviously if you’re working on a deaf and dumb 3 year old, you’re not going to get very much participation. And you can do a lot about it. But this isn’t what you are taking on, I don’t think, most of you. Obviously if you are working on a brain injured child, like this picture I showed you yesterday, you have to do it, most of it. But this isn’t the trip that we’re on right here, right now. (57:42) Who hasn’t got a clear idea of what’s going on in the 1st hour? (58:00 student) Did you finish the legs when you were talking? (58:04) Of course I didn’t. You weren’t interested in finishing the legs. (58:06 student) No. Did you finish what you were going to say about the legs? (58:10 student) We left out the hamstrings (58:12) Yeah, we left out the hamstrings… (58:18) You see in that 1st hour we’re not dealing with legs as legs, we’re only dealing with legs as anchorages of the pelvis, so that your interest is really basically only at the head of the femur and what attaches, and that ishial tuberosity and what attaches. You are interested in starting that pelvis on its way. (58:46 student) Yesterday you said that Sharon’s lumbar spine was anterior. What did you mean by that? That it was curved anteriorly. (59:05) That is, in theory, a normal position for the lumbar. But in our fact, it shouldn’t be anything as far anterior as Sharon’s lumbar was, nor should it be unreachable. I mean, there should be no part of that spine which you can’t reach by your own voluntary will, and say, “Come on back, 4th lumbar I want you to come back, and you can get it back.” Etc, etc. … [End] |
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