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Audio Files and Transcripts From Classes with Dr. Rolf Big Sur Lecture/Demo |
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Ida Rolf Audio Tape Transcript AUDIO FILE Tape B3 Side 2 MP3 File (aprox. 11MB) TRANSCRIPT Shopping Bag Metaphor and 1st, 2nd and 3rd Hours (0:00 – 32:12 students) (Continued growth institute community planning talk) (32:12) A horizontal pelvis. You remember where we have hunted. We have hunted through the fascial planes, through superficial fascial planes. That’s where we started first. And oddly enough we did get some response, remember? Sometime that anyone of you that hasn’t got anything to do, and has an artistic talent, can go and get us pictures of that whole wrapping and sling that is the container for that body. And you, know I think, I feel, that if one had an adequate illustration of this it would do a great deal to make the realization and the teaching of this, and the acceptance of this, clearer. But you see, we are dealing with a fascia which is so unknown, that a teacher of physiology says there’s never anything wrong with it and [ ] . And you see it’s para incognita. If we could get some way [out]. So I bid you all, you are going out into a fairly sophisticated world, and maybe you will meet somebody who would be able to take on this assignment. It would be of very, very great value. (33:47) It would be of very, very great value. Alright. Enough. Shopping Bag Metaphor, 1st, 2nd and 3rd Hours (33:50) So we have our shopping bag of fascia. And this is an amusing metaphor but it’s a very useful metaphor, because it really is so. The good god didn’t trust your common sense to keep your blocks stacked. He was very wise, and knew his boys and girls. And so he put all those blocks into an elastic shopping back so that they wouldn’t fall apart. Now to the extent that they do fall apart they put strain on the shopping bag, and you can see what’s happening. (34:33) But you see to the extent that he takes these cubes and he puts them squarely into the bottom of a shopping bag, and you don’t monkey with them, you get a stable situation. We were talking last night, those of you that were here, about the Rolf quarrel with the law and concepts; and it is really right and exactly here. So you take and you literally force the second block in that shopping bag forward, and it has to topple off the bottom one, and nothing else for it to do. It has to have the fourth lumbar tend to slide forward on the 5th lumbar. There’s nothing else that can happen. Now the only people who can resist that are people who are darn good physical specimens and I don’t mean athletes. I mean well-balanced elastic bodies can do that and then come back to where they belong. But you’re not going to meet those guys. (35:58 student) You’re referring to some of the stress positions that we have? (36:00) You mean the [ ]? I’m referring to this business of putting them over a chair with their feet down one side and their head down– (36:06 student) That one. (36:06) That one. Don’t you do it! (36:12 student) It tilts the pelvis forward. (36:14) Yes, it tilts it exactly the wrong way. If you believe what you have seen in this room, you can only draw the conclusion that that tilts it the wrong way. (36:24 student) I’ve seen difference in energy. (36:26) Of course you have! Everyone in this room if they hadn’t they wouldn’t be here. They’d be sitting at Lowen’s feet. And this is alright with me. (36:35) I think that the reason Lowen does this is so it will look different than what Reich had people do with just regular breathing. (36:42) Well, I don’t know why Lowen does it, but my idea about Lowen is that he doesn’t understand physical bodies. I am not criticizing him as a psycho-therapist, but I am saying that I do not feel Lowen really understands physical bodies in the structural sense. And I don’t care who repeats that to him as my opinion, and as I said before, every last one of you sitting in this room is evidence of the fact that this is what you believe! (37:18) So, getting back to where we started; the shopping bag. (37:23) So the 1st hour, if you like, is the hour of the shopping bag, and what you are really doing is kind of taking your shopping bag, which is stretched around these various cubical blocks in there, and you’re sort of pulling it this way and pulling it that way, and it let’s the conical blocks sit more squarely, each on each. (37:55) Now it says a great deal for, why you name it, the vital force, god, life, what have you, that you can take very maltreated blocks and release them from the strain and have them come back and take hold. It’s like that little fuscia out there. Where is Owen? The fuscia is growing. (38:30) But there it is. This is the picture of life you see. You give it half a chance and it’s off again. So there you have it. And you remember we called attention to the fact that in that 1st hour what we were interested in solely was the releasing of the pressures which kept the pelvis from turning itself, organizing, squaring itself, in the shopping bag. So one of the pressures would have been the pressures of the thorax. One of the pressures would have been the pressures of the legs. Many of you here have felt… (39:35) If we get our blocks sliding properly on each other, and freed, and in this shopping bag, so your shopping bag shows no strain, then from there on, the guy is on his own. Then he’s got to get busy and he’s got to put himself on his legs in such a way that he’s not going to again displace the pelvis. And you see this takes a while. (40:11) But some of you saw here yesterday, (Don? Yeah, it was Don. There was another one.) Where you had a whole wad of stuff suddenly becoming ordered under that pelvis, so that you could see how a pelvis should be working on a leg. You could see how that joint should be working through. How that joint was designed to work through. And you see this thing is the object of the exercise. This is what you are doing the 2nd hour. But you cannot get up to the pelvis the 2nd hour. Because as long as the periphery is in trouble you can’t get the center organized, all logic to the contrary not withstanding. And the reason you can’t, I imagine, is inherent in the quality of the shopping bag, the laws which govern that elastic envelope. (41:34) And so in that 2nd hour you apparently have an entirely diverse picture, and you have a picture there of – , I’m hammering on this because of the tendency of people to simply say, “Well the 2nd hour is an hour of the legs, yeah the feet. You start down there.” This is one way to put it. But why do you do it? And I’m trying to get within you, all of you, so firmly implanted the why’s and the wherefores and the background and the perspective of this thing. That you don’t just go arbitrarily go into a 2nd hour in terms of the feet. See it isn’t what you do, it’s how you do it that counts. And so in that 2nd hour this is what you have to do. (43:46) And once again then you are going back and again shifting your blocks by virtue of dissolving the glue a little bit, and letting them get back. You see, this calls for a readjustment of the part of the spine that’s going to readjust. It calls for a readjustment of actual vertebrae on vertebrae. Particularly in the lumbar section because the lumbar section is the one that bares weight, and then it calls for readjustment in the cervical section, because the cervical section and the lumbar section necessarily interplay. Necessarily interplay. And if you’re going to leave the cervical section where it was, it’s going to drag on the lumbar section again. Now that makes your 2nd hour. (44:14) In the 3rd hour you go to the sides of that shopping bag, and you take a look at it and you say, oh my goodness this stuff got stuck and it hasn’t been unstuck. And you’re going to have to unstick the elastic material, so that it can take on a new position. And the new position is beginning to get you a deeper organization. It’s going to take you out of the metaphor of the shopping bag and put you onto the recognition that you have a something which is a spontaneous, self-creating, vital something here… (45:15) And it’s no longer an accidental, being knocked around, being an effect, unit. You are now getting it to the place where it can begin to be a cause of its own wellbeing. This is an interesting philosophical concept. The reason it can be “cause” is by virtue of the actual energy reorganization, or organization that is coming through; where you have organization, and where you have order, there is the opportunity for a creative cause. (46:08) And so you see this comes in, as you begin to let those large weight units start to relate to each other, the thorax to the pelvis, start to relate to each other in such a way that they are now becoming a unit within the gravitational field, not simply bits and pieces thrown together that happen to stick. And now this actually becomes a unitary situation, a unitary field within the gravitational field, I imagine. Peter’s going to measure it for me sometime. (47:00 student) Just take an apple. (47:04) This is my apple dropping. Mr. Newton can have his apple. Anyway, I call your attention, Mr. Levine, to the fact that my apple isn’t dropping. My apple is rising! And that’s the difference between Mr. Newton and me. (47:27 student) And if you can measure that one, I take my hat off to you. (47:32) Well, you never know. I really think that before you people go onto another world, somebody will be able to so organize energy and so deal with energy, that you can measure that one. I really think so. (47:42 student) I think so too. (47:46) But we don’t have to wait for that day. We can use it right in this room, this week and next week and the week after. (47:55 student) That’s what Dick Tracy says. (47:57) What? He’s my authority. (47:58 student) He who controls gravity, controls the universe. (48:03 student) Maybe my generation, or perhaps the one right behind me, will see structures without the necessity of supports into the ground. (48:25) I’m glad I’m not going to be around. (48:20 student) It’d be exciting. (48:22) Confusing. I may know how to spell, but I wouldn’t know how to be able to handle that one… (48:45) Anyway, we’re now in that 3rd hour. Yesterday we noticed that in terms of those supports, which Don is going to dispense with someday, those supports were still very wobbly and very crooked and very disorderly with reference to the pelvis. This was perfectly apparent as we looked at the man, as you look at anybody coming in for a 4th hour, this fact is betrayed by the line down the medial aspect of the leg. You don’t need to ask him what hour he’s had. If those medial aspects look like all the medial aspects you saw yesterday you simply starting giving him a 4th hour. (49:50) And if they don’t look like that, you don’t give him a 4th hour, because you’ll find that he’s forgotten that he’s had a 4th hour from Dick Beverly in New York. He may tell you he’s a 4th hour, but if his legs don’t look like that don’t believe him. Look further. (50:10) And what you are doing still is the same old stuff. You are taking that thickened mucky mass of stuff that immobilizes the pelvis into a certain position which has been dictated by the way the kid has walked from the time he stood on his feet, and possibly by some other emotional considerations, like he liked to show off how he could sit in the lotus position. Things like that. All of these things will be determining how the legs fit into that pelvis. (50:50) Now, having done all this, where have we gotten? And why are we doing it? We say we want to make the pelvis horizontal. Why do we want to make the pelvis horizontal? (51:20) Alright, now I want this answered in terms of physiology, not in terms of gravity. Not explicitly in terms of gravity. (51:35 student) There’s a lot of stuff that’s resting on the floor of that pelvis, a lot of viscera, a lot of physiology. (51:42) No. Yeah, there is a lot of physiology but they aren’t viscera resting on the floor. (51:43 student) Supporting. (51:48) Supporting by virtue of the integrity of the floor. Now we have to define integrity as well as define the floor. What is the floor of the pelvis, and what is the integrity of that floor? And this is the crux of the whole situation. This is the key to the key. So what is the floor of the pelvis? Come on some of you physiologists. (52:30 student) The pubococcygeus, which is giving support to the structure, which then allows the function to occur. The key is in organizing the pubococcygeus which surrounds the direct inflow of the genital organs on the floor. (52:55) The pubococcygeus certainly. It’s not the sole and the only reason. (52:58 student) The levator. (53:00) That’s the pubococcygeus. (53:08 student) You’re also dealing with the autonomic nervous system, the ganglion. (53:09) That’s right. This is what I want to lead into. This is the thinking that I want to lead into. And basically the key of the pelvic floor is the pubococcygeus. Now, the pubococcygeus must needs, according to its name, from the pubes to the coccyx, and its down there like a sling to serve as the floor of the pelvis. But on its integrity depends what’s going on in the pelvic organs and the abdominal organs. And Peter was off on a bad trip when he talks about their resting on the floor of the pelvis. When they rest on the floor of the pelvis the guy crawls in here and begs you to do something for him, he’s got such “symptoms”! That’s where they mustn’t rest. (54:28) In fact, nothing must rest anywhere. Everything must be suspended, somewhere. Now, this is going to be the difference in your thinking and the thinking that’s going to overwhelm you on every side from these other well meaning, and in their own opinion, well informed people, because they know gravity is always pulling everything down. Everything has to rest on something. It just ain’t’ so! If you organize the field of force, it doesn’t rest! It swims. (55:10 student) That’s what I was talking about. (55:15) Oh, go on. You’re too bright. (55:23) Now, here’s what happens when things rest. Can you come over here and see this? There is the line of the pubococcygeus, and when that pubococcygeus is not able to balance itself and the stuff upstairs rests, it isn’t supported; it comes down through. When the pubococcygeus is balanced, then you get the kind of balancing of forces, of physiological forces within that body, which enables this to happen; and it doesn’t rest. (56:25) Now the story of how this has been developed in the medical concept is an interesting one. And it doesn’t have a very long history. There was a man, who still is pretty healthy at this point. His name is Kegel, and he works in Los Angeles. And he got concerned about the problem of incontinence in women, particularly after childbirth. And he started trying to find out what it was and why it was. And the thing that threw him was the fact that in trying to do dissections on cadavers he couldn’t find any muscle which would control as he could see it the physiological function of bladder. (57:27) And I don’t recall precisely the sequence with which he recognized the fact that there was a muscle there, but after death it was so fine and it was so precise, that after death the thing just sort of disappeared to the point where you weren’t getting dissections going about. And as I say, I don’t recall exactly the sequence in which he came to this recognition, nor the sequence in which in he came to the realization that apparently this problem had been recognized as far back as the days of the ancient Egyptians. And that the ancient Egyptians not only had a word for it, they had a cure for it. And they sat women on chaise [percez] and they had hot stones, they had previously heated stones which they had under there, then they took herbal infusions, and they spattered them, spurted them onto the hot stones, and when the liquid hit the hot stones it spattered upward to the bottom of the gal, who then did various things like this to escape from it, and in so doing, strengthened the muscle. The Egyptians knew something about it too! And he found this in one of the papyri over in the British museum… (59:24) At any rate, there is a book which we have ordered here talking about some of the old systems of medicine, and they don’t talk about this particular aspect of it, but they do give an aspect of the Egyptians papyrus. (59:44) But thereby, you see, this man got the clue to the fact that he had to find out some sort of a system to get these gals to work on this muscle. So he did something simpler than hot stones and herbal mixtures. He just told them to sit on a toilet and constrict the muscle to the place where it stopped the flow of the urine. And sometimes this took them a while to do. And having done it this way, where they have the outward visible evidence of it, he could tell them to get busy and do this thing 3000 times a day and as they were going about their business. And this business worked, and he was building up a muscle. And this business worked and it worked as a cure for incontinence, but it also began to show up all kinds of other functional improvements. Functional improvements in sexual activity, in sexual adequacy, and so forth and so on. (1:01:04) A gentle improvement of the health. Why? Because this was no longer coming down through the bottom, but was coming up where it belonged. (1:01:16) Now, it is interesting to really go through some of these pictures, and look at the actual…, this of coarse is very schematic, but go to your own books which are less schematic, and see what constitutes the floor of the pelvis. [End] |
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