Rolf Audio Tape Transcript

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Ida Rolf Audio Tape Transcript
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1^st Hour

2^nd Hour

Energy Fields of Organs, Abrams’ Black Box

(0:04) – and they’re thinking of putting in Rolf work as one of the elements, but what they want first –and I don’t blame them – is a statement of what has already been demonstrated. And in order to get this compilation of MDs together they’ve got to have something like the actual statement of what Julian has to offer there. This is understandable. So that all of this is what is keeping me sitting on pins and needles.

(0:35 student) He doesn’t’ have a blood chemistry report.

(0:37) Of course he does. Yes he does, this is, as I say, what’s making me foam at the mouth…

(0:56 student) Just the transcription of the tape would probably irk some of the MDs more than anything.

(1:04) Well I realize all this, and I’m not interested in sending just that, I’m interested in getting the whole bit. Now Julian said to me a month ago, “I’ve got so much stuff here; I’m going to turn out 2 or 3 papers in 2 weeks”. He says, “You don’t know how fast I can turn these papers out.” Well I know, what’s the matter with the guy; 17 more people are sticking pins into him, and the people that are nearest with the sharpest pins get the first attention. I understand this, it happens to me too.

(1:34 student) But part of the thing is he doesn’t know how to state it.

(1:35) That was set up long ago! This whole cupluffel we went through last spring.

(1:44 student) does he have a blood chemistry report?

(1:49) Yes he has a blood chemistry report.

(2:00) You photographers, please hustle along, we’re very late.

(2:20) He’s not going to give you the actual data. He has the blood chemistry, and he has made the connections and the interpretations in his own mind of what this blood chemistry showed. And then, you see, he sent that blood chemistry to the computer up there in Sacramento and it was away for 6 weeks, 2 months, god knows what, and in the meantime day after day I called Julian, and nothing happens, nothing happens, and a lot of that didn’t really have to do with Julian, it had to do with Sacramento. But I can’t call Sacramento; they never heard of me… this is what all the culpuffel is about. Nothing has come together; everything is around the edges, including the [humpback]…we have got to get this stuff together. Not that it makes any difference to the people that are in this room now with the exception of [Vil Williams]… but you see it is the opportunity for expansion here. And they’re going to put in several new departments over there in Albuquerque as I hear, and they are considering putting a Rolfer in there as the head of a department. Now this would be a great big beautiful break. And in the meantime we can’t get what it takes to apply for the job, so to speak…

(4:32) It’s the correlation of the data that must be done.

1^st Hour

(5:53) Now, let’s get back.

(6:17) How many of you here present do not feel secure in that 1^st hour, the understanding of it, the background of it, etc.? All you need is the ideas. Have you got them? Both of you? Mark, what do you know about the ideas?

(6:52 student) Well, one of the basics of the idea is that a major thing about the Rolf technique is it leads toward the freeing of the pelvis. And the 1^st hour begins this process by freeing the breathing first of all, which is a necessary thing in order to really free the body at all. And this freeing of the breathing, and freeing of structures attached to the pelvis which would help to bind it, for example the chest in its own way helps to bind the pelvis [ ] in their own way since they’re really hinges of the thorax, and then, the other major place worked on is the femur, the top of the femur which is an attachment of the lower limb, of course. And since the pelvis is a basic block between bodies it can’t be freed of itself, you have to free things which attach to it, and that’s one of the many, that’s basically the major objective of the 1^st hour.

(7:56) I wouldn’t exactly say that, but uh, what you have latched onto is the how to do it. But that isn’t the objective of the 1^st hour really. Would you like to take that and amend it, Fritz?

(8:14 student) The 1^st hour is involved more with the fascial layers, which are the outer wrapping of the body, and as you approach the body and approach the superficial fascia, then you are able to – Dr. Rolf uses the analogy of an onion – take off one layer at a time to get deeper down toward the pelvis and horizontalize the pelvis, and the superficial fascia is like the top layer of the onion, the paper layer. This is the 1^st layer you have to deal with. So I say the emphasis of the 1^st hour is on the fascial layers, and as you indicated, you’re aiming indirectly at the pelvis, but the 1^st hour you –

(9:05) But he hasn’t really aimed at the 1^st hour.

(9:08 student) That’s the 1^st hour problem; it’s the fascial layers. The 10 hours are aiming at the pelvis, the 1^st hour is only at the–

(9:14) Would you also like to correct an absolute misstatement from our point of view that he made.

(9:21 student) The breathing, I thought was a – that the – freeing the chest you can improve the breathing, this kind of goes along with raising the chest and changing the structure. I think this is the structural change to me, which is basically we’re aiming at, and breathing in the physiology helps tremendously when you’re doing this to raise the chest, raise the rib cage off of the lower trunk. So it’s a structural change that you’re looking at, rather than doing this because of the breathing.

(9:53) While we’re talking about breathing, Fritz, would you also like to put in a small discussion about the other function of breathing which everybody here experienced yesterday afternoon; the excretory function of breathing.

(10:20 student) Certainly that’s one of the prime organs of excretion; the bowels, the urine, and the breathing, and the skin. The skin is another organ. I think there’s four basic excretions. And certainly improving the ventilation you are improving mobility of all of the metabolism in this way.

(10:42) Well it isn’t only that you are improving the capacity for it, but that actually there is a very great big, immense, big excretory function going on in the 1^st hour as a result of that respiration. And you all were aware when I was complaining yesterday about how Owen was subjected to this excretory flood and flow. And it becomes a very major primal movement, and it’s something that you people should know about in the sense that you are expecting to be practitioners yourself. Especially in this 1^st hour, this excretory function is overwhelming. And you people need to be aware of this and you need to be aware of the fact that very often you have to handle the situation in such a way that you’re not going to be overwhelmed by it.

(11:45) There was another complete misstatement that Mark just made, when he talked about arms being the appendages to the chest. Are they?

(11:L54 student) No. No. It’s a girdle, a yoke; where the arms and shoulders are riding on the thoracic cage. And the use of appendage is not a direct extension of the trunk, it’s a structure set on the trunk, which can function independently of the central part of the body. It’s more of a yoke than it is a true pelvic growth.

(12:22) This is also true of the legs and this talks to you about in a nomenclature about the body, the pelvic girdle and the shoulder girdle tell you that these are not appendages at all. They are entirely different structures. And what I’m underscoring at this point is the fact that you’ve got to learn to look at the body in a different way. That if you’re going to look at it in the same old way, you’re going to get the same old answers. These answers have been thoroughly unsatisfactory –no, not thoroughly unsatisfactory – but at any rate at this point you people are looking for different and more answers. And in order to get different and more answers you have to ask different questions.

(13:22) Peter Levine, would you make a contribution as to what you heard in the 1^st hour discussions, and how your mind would carry on with that, because you’ve got some different and interesting ideas, and I think that the rest of us should hear it.

(13:35 student) To me, of course, the critical point is that manipulation is doing something to change the superficial fascia. Now the fascia, as Dr. Rolf said in the beginning, what we’re dealing with is a system of energies. When the body moves, when someone walks, we see the reflection of a multitude of energy sources – of energy oscillators if you like. Like the weight on a spring, bouncing up and down has a certain energy, and you can see this in a person when they walk. You can see whether a person has energy or whether a person is dead. Now, the element that connects and couples all of these energy sources probably has a good deal to do with the fascia, and probably the superficial fascia in particular. So in the 1^st session, I think, the subjective feeling is that before the 1^st session the subjective fascia is very inflexible, is wooden, metallical. And if you have a substance like this coupling all these energy sources they can’t possibly come together, they can’t possibly function together, because a highly dense substance doesn’t transmit energy, it absorbs it. And if there is going to be any coupling between these energy sources, the path of coupling has to be made more elastic or else the energy will be lost, no matter what else is done, that the energy can’t flow, there’s no sense in going on. So I have a feeling, or an intuition that one of the important things that’s going on is that there is a change in the superficial fascia that allows for energy to flow throughout the body. And then as the deeper muscles are being worked on – that is to say the individual energy sources – that now they can be integrated by this new structure which is elastic plastic, and not damped out and lost and deadened by a fascia which cannot transmit energy.

(16:15 student) And anyhow, this is a concept that sort of just gelled in my mind in the last few days, and helps me a little bit to understand.

(16:25) That’s really a beautiful presentation and I thank you, you’ve added a very definite contribution to our thinking around here. Now let me throw in a little something into this pot of stew.

(16:40) As you know, colloids, all colloids exist either as sols or gels. A gel is, as you know, semi-solid, a sol becomes more fluid and flow is greater. You get from a gel to a sol by the addition of energy. Whether you add it in the form of heat, or whether you add it in terms if any other type of energy source, you get from a gel to a sol by the addition of energy. Now, my suspicion is, you see, adding to your suspicion, that what is going on in that 1^st hour is that you are adding mechanical energy to the gel of the superficial fascia thereby getting a sol, whose properties of conduction, etc., are different. How do you like that?

(18:00 student) I think, you know, after Urich that’s the most likely possibility. Cause that’s at least transmission you understand.

(18:08) I know, it’s simple minded so to speak.

(18:11 student) Yeah, which is always the best place to start.

(18:14) Well, you’ve got to start somewhere.

(Hypothesizing on Physio-chemistry Between Students)

(18:15 student) I think that the root for going about this, and I think we can make measurements on these changes, just from considering a model connecting the joints with the springs and motors and so forth and then making a model of the fascia, and seeing the numbers, and you can actually get numbers, and see the coupling constants, the elasticities, we will predict the changing this much, and that at least will give us a ballpark. We’ll say well, we can look for sol and gel transformations and so forth.

(18:58) Well, we could if we had somebody that would make the model, Peter.

(19:03 student) There might be an even simpler way of making the model, because the spatial arrangement of making a model is going to be tremendously complex. You could run a vector analysis, and run that through a computer.

(19:20 student) You would certainly use a Fourier analysis anyhow, which is a vector thing. Oh yeah, that’s the kind of model. It would be an infinite model essentially.

(19:26 student) I don’t think we need to do that since Dr. Kayler back in the ‘20’s working at Stanford has written about 7 papers on this very subject of physical constraints interrupting universal processes and how they limit the system, and he refers to 3 other physicists who are working on this problem. The papers are available. There’s about 7 of them, over this very subject. What you’re saying about the physical constraint of fascia limiting the process of energy flow in the body.

(19:58 student) I’ll have to see those. I don’t know those papers… and again these are things that eventually could be done experimentally directly on animal subjects.

(20:21 student) He did them in terms of perception more than in terms of motion of the body, however you’re dealing with the same thing.

(20:25 student) Oh I see, you’re dealing with more of the Gestalt kind of fields…

(20:33 student) Yeah, the Gestalt phenomenon that he first described.

(20:36 student) But what Dr. Rolf is saying is that it’s important for us to find out eventually the physiochemistry.

(20:41 student) What I’m saying is that he refers to 3 physicists that have written papers about the physiochemistry.

(20:56) Now this discussion this morning, those of you who heard the discussion on the second morning last seminar, realize how different this has been, and yet it has very definitely, I think, added to the concept that are available to you. And this is the way it goes here. It is very interesting to watch the growing edges of this thing. And it is not necessary that we solve these problems in order to be fairly good Rolfers. But it is necessary that we solve these problems if we’re going to go on and really understand more about human personalities. It just depends on where we want to fit ourselves. Do we want to be a bunch of mechanics who are doing very good mechanical job, or do we want to extend the limits of information. And I think you all know where I would stand on that, you people have to use your gifts in the directions in which you have them.

(22:20 student) This point in science and certainly in psychiatry, established in psychiatry, even the biochemical view is dealing strictly with things that are going on in the mind and if we could find out more for example, of what these energy sources were in the body, and we know that you can’t separate the mind and the body, that it make no sense – that you’re dead as soon as you do that – that we also have to be looking for pharmacological approaches on body levels, and so forth.

(23:00) Well you see, by the concept we have just outlined here, Peter, we have a mechanics whereby we can understand more of the biochemical changes that are going on at that deep cellular level. Because what we are actually saying, you see, is that we are literally adding energy to the fascia. Now we will be having a tissue which is operational on a different energy level, and which can therefore and thereby contribute to a changed chemistry, which gives us an entirely different chemical groundwork for operations.

(23:41 student) But we can always ask the question, why is it that one person responds better than another to this manipulation. Do they have a deficiency or something?

(23:53) I’m agreeing with this. I’m thoroughly agreeing with this. But when we ask that question too loud we settle back and say,” Well this is a situation that I can’t deal with. It’s too far along, or it’s missing,” or something. And I fight all the way, every step of the way when I see any of you people loafing behind that rationalization. Now I’m perfectly free to confess that there are situations that I certainly don’ expect to “cure”. I certainly don’t expect on Frank here, who will be in shortly, I certainly don’t expect that the day is ever going to come when we are going to be able to get that man into a shape where he can dispense with his catheterization. But I certainly do expect that that man is going to be operational on a very different level of energy, I expect that his attitudes are going to change, and that these deficiencies of his, which loom very large in his mind right now, are going to settle back and no longer annoy him psychologically, as they do now, as a result of the different chemical level that he will be operating on.

(25:31) Now, this is the addition that I want us to be able to put into the therapeutic concept. The guy will be thinking differently by virtue of the different energy level, that the energy that is within that body expresses itself with a different level of thinking, as well as a different level of doing, as well as an ease of handling, as well as an ease in doing here as Don here expressed as doing 5 hours work in 2 hours. But in addition to that it’s what’s going on up here; in terms of hopefulness, in terms of optimism, in terms of easiness, in terms of a sense of “I can do it.”, in terms of a sense of “This doesn’t matter to me, but I can do that.” All of this stuff.

(26:31) And you see, we have given lip service, many people in the therapeutic culture, have given lip service to such an idea. But I really and honestly do not know of any workers who are immersed, identified, with this idea, thinking in these terms. They are always thinking to outside of themselves. They talk about it, it’s in their head, but they haven’t identified with that concept so that they’re really going through riding on that concept.

(27:04 student) Hans Selier says in his autobiography, that you can’t do any science until you feel it in your whole body.

(27:12) Well this is right, and you see, the therapeutic community is not feeling it, it’s doing it. And this is what I would like us to be able to escape from. And this is why I keep nagging, and nagging, and nagging about this understanding of energy and this understanding of relationship.

(27:39 student) That’s not going to happen until their elbowed literally and figuratively.

(27:43) Don’t you believe it’s not going to happen, it’s going to happen.

(27:51) Anyway, it is urgently important that you people see that that whole first hour bit which you will presently understand is really an abstraction of the whole 10 hour bit; very little that’s going to be done in the 10 hours that hasn’t been foreshadowed in this first hour. But that you begin to see that you are dealing with the man as a whole, that the man as a whole can almost be mathematically expressed in terms of energy. And that it is this figure that expresses the man that we’re dealing with in this first hour.

…

(29:00) Alright. So that in that 1^st hour through what I believe is a change of energy of the entire human being, which in turn, if we had the money and we had the devoted people, could literally, Mack, be explored in terms of a change in the actual biochemistry of that body at the beginning of the first hour and the end of the first hour. We have done this; we did it 20 years ago. Nobody has listened to it. Nobody will listen to it. If I managed to publish it today they still would look at it and say, “Oh well that’s old stuff, it was done by the old measurements, therefore let’s not look at it.” You see, always this necessary repetition, repetition on a higher level, so that at this particular level we are going to have to repeat it. But I know that it happens because I saw the whole thing gone through 20 years ago, (or 15 certainly).

(30:09) And so, you would find that every one of the human beings in this class that was worked on yesterday would be showing you different cellular chemistry as a result of that first hour which was really dealing with the man as a whole. Now then, having done this, and having literally kicked the guy upstairs, now we have to organize him so that he can live upstairs.

(30:40) And again we may not, we are not permitted, ever, to forget that we have a man here operating in a gravitational field. So that we have to look at how the man is organized within that gravitational field. You see, in that first hour, in spite of what I’ve just said to you, you have done something to the guy. You have literally added energy through your elbow through your fist, through your hands, and sometimes through your words, as you made him understand differently. You have done a lot of draining off of toxic material in that first hour. There is no question of it. You have done a lot of putting in of oxygen in that first hour, there’s no question of it. And it is because you have put in that additional oxygen that the man is now operating on a higher chemical level, because as most of you are aware, the oxygenated compound are compounds are at a greater energy level. As you take away oxygen you drop the level, as you add oxygen, you heighten the level.

(32:12) So this is what you’ve been doing that first hour, but now having gotten there, now you’re going to have to look at how the man fits in the gravitational field in order that he may now maintain himself at that level and go forward.

2^nd Hour

(32:29) So in this second hour you are going to depart from your stance of “I’m going to kick this guy upstairs”, and you‘re going to start thinking in terms of “on the floor upstairs how can I keep him on his upright?” Because maybe the floor upstairs is very stony, maybe it’s tipping, and so forth and so forth. But now it becomes your job to help that man get himself where he can maintain his higher level and work with his higher level to go to a still higher level.

(33:11) So, we’re going to look at these people, and we’re going to be aware of the fact as we look at them, that we have to be fitting them into the gravitational field. Now our minds are going to tell us something; they’re going to tell us that for all the work that we did, we haven’t worked below the knee. And so we’re going to say, “I wonder why this has happened? This can’t go on.” Because you see, if you understand the problem of compensation within the body, you then become aware of the fact that that second hour –and I’m sorry you don’t have your pictures. You should have the pictures posted up there, and at this level you should have looked at those pictures and seen what you saw. What you are able to see. At this level you begin to see that that man is sliding in terms of his contour – off that beautiful contour that he had yesterday

(34:32 student) Speaking of contour, when they took my pictures afterward, they put my head up afterwards, and I resented this. That I should have stood, been able to stand the same as I did in the first picture.

(34:46) You could have stood the same as you did in the first picture, but let me tell you something, in the first picture you were not able to stand with your head up.

(34:55 student) Well ok, but I should have been able to stand without somebody telling me where I should put it.

(35:00) No you shouldn’t have been, not necessarily

(35:00 student) ‘Cause this alters the picture.

(35:02) No, it doesn’t. You just sit back, and settle back, and stay a while and you’ll get some of these ideas. I admit that this is a complaint that very often comes up from the layperson. It has no business to come up in the class, because here we would like you to realize the fact that what we are asking you to explore. We’re not only asking you to explore what you are now able to do that you were not able to do before; but we are in the process of training you to be aware of lines, which in the beginning you wouldn’t have been able to feel at all. This is part of a whole training program.

(35:40 student) This may be so; I would like to have seen him place me before in the same position.

(35:47) He couldn’t have done it and we cannot waste – and you will not be able to waste – that much time on an individual when you’re working with him. You have one hour to get through that man, and when you take 1/2 of that hour trying to talk to him, and tell him “Now put your head up,” and he does this, and he does that, and he does that and he does that and he does that, and he can’t feel his head up because he hasn’t got the mechanism, you have then shortened your available time for therapy to a place where you can’t get it done. All of these practical details, you will learn, I hope, in the course of these 10 hours.

(36:24) In that second hour you are going to see that those unregenerate legs, from the knees down, those unregenerate legs, are now demanding compensation from the regenerate part of the body, the regenerated part of the body. And so now you have to go along and start regenerating the legs, take the strain off the rest.

(36:55) Some bright boy one time said that the whole of the Rolf technique consists in decompensating the compensations. And in the spine of yester-year, when he said that, he said a mouthful. This is almost literally what you are doing: You’re going after one compensation after the other. You are getting the most superficial, which are probably late compensations, first, and you’re turning back the picture, as I said yesterday. And as you turn back the picture you’re apt to get symptoms. But it had been the symptoms of that old level of compensations. It’s as simple as that.

(37:55) So today we have to finish the superficial fascia, which after all does run from the knees down and around the feet. Anybody like to suggest why we didn’t even try to do that yesterday?

(38:20 student) …I think the most practical reason is there’s just so much you can do in an hour, and just so much any individual can take in an hour.

(38:28) That is the reason.

(38:30 student) It’s just a question of time, of how much you can handle.

(38:40) It’s not a question of time, it’s a question of how much you can handle. Now as you go on in the second hours, you’ll find several of these people will give you almost as much brew-ha-ha as we got in some of those first hours.

(38:54 student) Because we’re really finishing the first hour.

(38:56) Yeah. Well, because, because, let’s not because too much.

(39:01) But that is the reason. They can’t handle all of that at once. And if they could, it would be logical of course to go through the whole body.

(39:15 student) Isn’t it also because the lower legs and the feet have to bear the brunt of…literally have to bear the burden of the compensations?

(39:25) I don’t know that they do always. I’m thinking in terms of – We don’t have one in this class do we? – You know what we had with some of those people with those spindly legs, but the compensation was all up here. Who was that? It was some great big guy…right. Jimmy Johnson.

(40:10) Jimmy Johnson had a cause in his legs, and the compensations up here, didn’t he? I mean wouldn’t you see it that way? Jimmy Johnson was the man I was really thinking of, and oddly enough I didn’t sketch him in black.

(40:38) Anyway, this time round we’re going to have to finish up this “Once over lightly”.

(40:48) Now, I will not continue with this discussion until you have taken #4 “2” pictures, and come to some conclusions. I am not going to hand it to you on a platter, because if I do you’ll forget it.

(Tape Break)

Energy Fields of Organs, Abrams’ Black Box

(41:30) We talked in the first hour about the general idea of energy fields, and of integrating them. Is there anyone in this room to whom an energy field around an individual organ is a strange idea? Who else?

(42:10 student) I’m not saying I don’t buy it.

(42:17) I understand, but, I personally do not think that it is an idea which is in orthodox, or acceptable medicine. It certainly is not. It is in unorthodox medicine, and maybe some of you know that, and maybe some of you know the history of that; and if you don’t I’ll quickly fill you in, because I think it’s important to know where these things stem from.

(42:44) How many of you know who Abrams was? (Oh my lord.) The guy that invented, the guy that discovered, the guy that applied radionic medicine. (I don’t think he was [called on much]). Anyway he was a guy that lived up in San Francisco, and the precise history of his discovery I don’t really know, but this thing went on I would say, oh, before 1920 and after 1910; the second decade of this century.

(43:40) This man was a way out left guy, and he probably had the idea that there were energy fields that indicated certain organs; that there were numbers that indicated fields that indicated certain organs. Thus, a liver for example, he said was represented by a wavelength of so and so many micrometers.

(44:20) And he devised a something which came to be known in the mouth of it’s friends and of it’s enemies as the Black Box. He put together a machine, if you like, in which he was able to detect the resonance of fields of certain lengths. It was an electronic device. Whether it was actually plugged into the electric circuit or not, I don’t remember; there were those that did, there were those that didn’t. There were many variations made on this, and these variations were made between the years of 1915 and 1945. 1945 they were being persecuted fairly heavily.

(45:06) This worked this way. You took a sample from a given person. It could be a sample of hair, it could be a sample of urine, it could be a sample of blood; and irrespective of if that person was near or far – and this is what pitched him almost into jail – you mounted the sample in front of your machine. There was a little funny leather or rubber plate down here, and you did this with the rubber plate. And you turned the knob of your machine, presumably to give you a different wavelength, and when you got to a certain place on that dial your finger stuck. It didn’t stick hard and fast, but there was just a very definite change. If you could use the machine, not all people could. And then you looked at the dial, and the dial said 875, and this was a field, which indicated the field for the liver, and this was out of order. It didn’t tell you what was wrong with it, it simply told you that it was operating on the wrong wavelength, and after that there were various things that could be done. Many of the chiropractors used chiropractic treatment. Some people who knew how to use homeopathy put in homeopathic remedies by putting it onto the plate and reversing the process, doing the same thing backwards. Very interesting things happened, very interesting things happened.

(46:48) The homeopathic medicine job for instance, which you would be able to get a wavelength on before you did your reversing, you could no longer get a wavelength on after you did your reversing. Some “virtue” had gone out of this homeopathic medicine.

(47:09) The commonest way of using these machines was to reverse the flow of them so you were, as they said, broadcasting the wavelength to the individual, and his sample was still set in front of the box. And this seemed to – in many cases – I’ll do more than that. I’ll say, “Did” – give them a great deal of help. Many cases. Some cases not, surprisingly.

(47:50) Now this went on over a period of years. Those boxes were built, and they were built, oh, a tremendous number of them, there were 4 or 5 different groups that built them and they all had salesman on the road. And they all went out and they all sold them to chiropractors, and these chiropractors all bought them, and only about half of them could use them. This went throughout this country and throughout Canada. And practically every chiropractor in the two countries had these machines, and as I say, only a few could use them.

(48:26) Then the next thing that happened, somebody who was interested in invalidating this proposition, went up to Canada one day, and while a Chiropractor was out he took all the innards out of the machine. And the chiropractor came home, and he worked his machine for Mrs. Jones, and he got the answer all right. And now the fat was really in the fire. But you see what really happened was that the man was using psychic methods. The operator was in the circuit with the machine, and he was detecting what was going on. So I have told it like it is.

(49:24) After this fibacal all kinds of things happened. In just about every state of the union the officials got after the owners of these machines and confiscated them. Some of the chiropractors went to jail for their “rights” to use it. Some of the chiropractors put it in the darkest cupboard in the place (and got their wives super crazy because now she had no clothes closet anymore), some of them put it out in the barn, and still continue to use them. Many of those chiropractors and osteopaths, and no MDs that I have ever met, were threatened with having their licenses taken away if they continued, etc, etc. It was the whole trip, and all this was going on in the 1940’s and the 1950’s, and by and by a whole lot of them got to the place where they figured it was just too much trouble, and the whole thing died out.

(50:28) Now I am bringing this up, only and nearly, to say to you that if you are willing to accept far-out evidence, there is a certain amount of evidence here.

(50:45) There was also another machine on the market that measured the energy of certain organs by putting electrodes on top of the skin. What was the name of it? That’s right: Microdinometer. Now this also was a machine which was not accepted by the medics, and for a very good reason. This was an honest machine; it had nothing to do with plugging in the operator. Yes it did, in the sense that you got different indications of the value of a liver let’s say, by putting the electrode on top of the liver. But now the thing is outside of the skin, and it’s outside certain layers of fat, and its outside certain tissues full of water and so forth, and you would get a variable reading in accordance with did you make the reading or did you make the reading? You see, you would impress differently on the machine, on the electrode, so that it was not reliable in that sense. However it did show – if you’re inclined to go out on limbs – it did show very definably that you got different readings and different energies over various organs on the skin. Actually I have had, in a Texas class, had one person measuring this thing right through the whole class, [for the experiments]. And you get all these measures and you go through and you give all these ones, and you go back and re-measure it, and the part of the body which was lacking, the gland or what have you, organ, that was lacking in energy has now come up very markedly, much nearer to where the reading is which the manufacturer says is normal.

(53:00 student) What are you actually measuring?

(53:02) I don’t know. I agreed with the MDs that this is not a satisfactory measurement, in the sense that it was not reproducible. Mary Smith didn’t necessarily get the same response and the same figure as John Jones. But on the other hand, if Mary Smith showed the thyroid low, with measuring literally on top of the skin, then John Jones would also show the thyroid low, though the measurement might not be the same. What the actual measurement was, I’m sorry I can’t tell you.

(53:38 student) They were probably resistance bridges, Wheatstone bridges

(53:40) They were Wheatstone bridges.

(53:43 student) …distance of heat to measure. Heat sensor…

(53:46) Do you think that was a heat thing?

(53:50 student) I don’t know. There’s so many of those different kinds of things.

(53:54) At any rate, what I’m trying to say to all of you is that there is a certain amount of evidence, which seems to indicate that the field around individual organs is real. And I would [guess] that it becomes less adequate and more adequate in accordance with what you do to an individual.

(54:24) Now those same devices, microdinameter no, but the radionics measurement yes, also gave you what it called normal readings, normal readings, for individuals of certain ages. Very interestingly the readings went up from childhood to about age 25, and then it started down, and gradually it deterior-, it slipped down the curve until you got a 60 year old indicating much less energy than a 25 year old. And interestingly enough, the peak there was at 25. It wasn’t at 40, where you’d expect it to be. And this is not necessarily in accord with what we have to think. We would think of a man as being in the real prime of his life 35 to 40. This said no, a man is in the prime of his life when he’s 25.

(55:38) This also could give you one very interesting reading. It could read and tell you, who could use the machine. It was right too! It was right. (He, he, he), that I could use it. And it said that John Jones couldn’t use it, and John Jones couldn’t use it. You see it was a psychic measurement, the man was plugged in psychically and it was somehow a psychic reading on the part of the individual to a machine that was basically a schlock machine, and into which he was plugged into himself.

(56:12) But as I say, I’m bringing it out at this point only to show you that there are certain “way out” indications that this is actually so in the sense of, the individual organs have there individual fields, are creating there own individual energy fields in terms of there adequate response. And maybe Peter Levine over there someday will devise a method, which will be acceptable to measure this stuff.

(56:45) Now this was very useful in terms of the chiropractors for instance, in terms of diagnosis, and it was a very useful machine, now, and so on, for those who accepted it. But you see it makes it more likely, that what you really, it gives a slight weight of evidence that the claim is true, that a body is the algebraic sum of these various energy fields.

(57:20 student) You don’t have to look that far for way out evidence you just have to look at Don, for example.

(57:28) You’re talking about plugging yourself into the field. I am living in 1970 and know that practically any other American in America wants a machine plugged in.

(57:43 student) That’s true. But anyhow, you just have to look at working around his ankle and above his knees at gross change.

(57:47) I know. I know. But you people are seeing the mountain from a different side. And when you get through, I hope, 20 years from now, there are going to be a great many people on your side of the mountain. But in the meantime, they all get together down in the dinning room in Esalen, and some of them believe, and say help thou my unbelief, and some of them say, this is a hell of an out. It’s you that have to fight it. I live up here at the river house, thank god.

(58:27) But at any rate, it is true, as far as I am concerned Peter, I look at Don or anyone else that’s been worked on in this room; Sharon was an outstanding picture of this, an outstanding picture. Had you been using one of those machines on Sharon you would have found a low reading on the spine. You would have gone down the spine and you would have found a very low reading in the lumbars, etc, etc, and it would have given you this kind of diagnosis. Who needs it? Not you people. But for those that like it, they like it.

(59:04) Anyway. So what we are saying is, that if this is true, we are looking for a different way of changing the level of operations of the body as a whole, not by plugging in a machine down in Carmel, or over in Texas, to broadcast waves to Sharon’s second lumbar, or fourth. Because we say is that if you broadcast waves to the second lumbar or fourth, tomorrow morning, or even 5 minutes after they start broadcasting she may say, you know, I’m feeling better now. But this isn’t going to do the job. Because that same thing that broke down that second lumbar, mainly the failure of the stacking of the blocks, is going to be there tomorrow morning and it’s going to break it down. So what we are looking for is a different approach, which will be solid. Which having built, does not fall apart and we claim that if we stack those blocks according to the laws of the mechanics of physics, we get the result.

(1:00:30) Now, you must not forget that you are literally working with gravity as a tool. Many of you people come to me and you’re complaining bitterly every step along the way. So and so got me at the table last night and he said, “So and so, what is Rolfing? What do they claim? What do they do?” And he said, “I didn’t know what to say about it.” So then somebody with a little more enterprise tries to tell him about those blocks. But you see, what fails to be represented most of the time is the fact that it is this gravity operation that you are dealing with. You are failing to take those people with whom you’re talking and stretch their minds to the place where they realize that they are operating in a gravitational field. These people are not, they’re still operating in the good old Aristotelian field of that a man is a man is a man. And he’s a little animal, and he grows out of some woman’s womb and he grows and he grows, and he grows, and he grows up to here, and then he slides down like that. And this isn’t what you’re saying.

(1:01:50) I’m making myself very tiresome repeating and repeating and repeating this. But you go watch yourselves, and see how when you try to talk about this you will go back to your old field of expression. “I am going to fix his liver.” No you’re not. His liver is going to fix itself. What you can do is fix those blocks, and you fix those blocks by virtue of the fascial body. You are working in and through the fascial body.

[End]