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Big Sur Lecture/Demo
July, 1966

Subject Index

A1 Side 1

A1 Side 2

A2 Side 1

A2 Side 2

A3 Side 1

A3 Side 2

A4 Side 1

A4 Side 2

A5 Side 1

A5 Side 2

A6 Side 1

A6 Side 2

B1 Side 1

B1 Side 2

B2 Side 1

B2 Side 2

B3 Side 1

B3 Side 2

B4 Side 1

B4 Side 2

B5 Side 1

B5 Side 2

B6 Side 1A

B6 Side 1B

B6 Side 2A

B6 Side 2B

B6 Side 2C
 
 

Ida Rolf Audio Tape Transcript
Tape B4 Side1

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TRANSCRIPT

Pubococcygeus, 4^th hour

Letter from Former Student, Jack Downing

5^th Hour

Pelvic Lift, Tent Pole Metaphor

Children and Animals

Epistemological profile, relationships

Pelvic floor

Pubococcygeus, 4^th hour

(0:06) Have you all got very clearly in your mind this recognition of the way in which these muscles inter-digitate, inter-play, inter-balance? Not merely the pubococcygeus, but the pubococcygeus with relation to its next-door neighbors. Way out here is the gluteus maximus, and then you get the next layer in, (what is the next layer in?)

(0:46) But at any rate, you’ve got an iliococcygeus outside immediately adjacent to the pubococcygeus. And then you’ve got a gluteus maximus lying on top of that.

(0:58) And all of these forces must balance; in order to balance the pubococcygeus, in order to balance the center of the body. And now, if you think in terms of this, you begin to get more reality on the thumbscrew that we were talking about yesterday.

(1:30) Now in this book somewhere it speaks of the percentage of people, the percentage of women who are quote “cured” through this exercise of the pubococcygeus. And it’s not that big in terms of the percentage of what you might call “cures”, only don’t let me hear you saying that word outside of this room. I will most certainly get very strong soap and wash out your mouth if I hear that dirty word “cure”.

(2:08) But in here, they talk about (I think it’s 70%, it might be even lower, I was just looking for it and I couldn’t find it.) a response that they get. Now what happens to the rest?

(2:31) What Structural Integration class doesn’t know what happens to the rest!

(2:37 student) They get processed.

(2:39) The trouble, they don’t; the muscle is unbalanced. It’s unbalanced. Now give consideration to what unbalances it. And the answer is everything that attaches to the pubes, the pubis ramus to the coccyx, to the whole area that runs around and defines the edge of the illia. And now you begin to see that what you were doing yesterday is being done in a different sense, and you are now no longer just trying to get just a cosmetic effect on the inside of the legs. And you had an absolutely magnificent demonstration of this here yesterday, (I’ve never seen a better one), of the way in which this whole mass of stuff on one side suddenly let go. And the mass was still on the other side.

(4:01) And where you get these masses, I need hardly tell you, you are not going to have any balance within the mass. Most of you have had your hands into this kind of stuff often enough that you know there is no balance within that mass; it’s an amorphous blob. Only blob sounds more willing to be moved than most of those masses are. And this is where you are going and where you are working and what you are doing in the 4^th hour. 

 (4:45) Now Mack and I have just been having a very interesting private conversation, as to how both of us believe that the state of the pubococcygeus muscle in any given human – male as well as female, (I mean he didn’t add that, I’m adding it.) – is really a very large determinate, well maybe it isn’t a determinate, it may be an index of the personality. But at any rate if you can evaluate the personality, you can get an awfully good first approximation of what the guy’s pubococcygeus is doing.

(5:30) And you get these people who are unable to project themselves. Sharon is a very good example, and I don’t like to talk about her when she isn’t here, and I hope someone will tell her when she comes back exactly what I’m saying. Sharon seems to be quite unable, – I have a great deal of trouble hearing her, because my hearing isn’t as acute as it might be, but she can’t project her voice from her to me. Do you remember Sharon’s lumbar section? And if you remember Sharon’s lumbar section, do you visualize what the positioning of her sacrum was? Of her coccyx necessarily, and it may be worse, it may have been worse than was apparent from the sacrum. You see, here is this whole picture of a failure of support from below. Now when that gal really gets fixed up, she’s going to be quite a gal, because she’s got all the makings but it just wasn’t where it was available to her.

(7:00) This is a very interesting consideration. And you might substitute it for some of your other meditations, this evaluation of personalities in these terms. But at any rate this doesn’t show us. You don’t see the answer until you are able to use it. It’s like an algebraic equation; when you solve for one of the unknowns and then you put it into the equation then you can begin to get the other unknown. It’s got to work out so they’re both working at the same time, or you don’t have the answer, and this same sort of thing goes on in this complex of personality and physical being-ness. Okay.

(8:00 student) The thing you said about the [inner lavatory] projection of voice, this was one of Reich’s big points, that the throat and the anus were very closely linked.

(8:15) You can look at it in terms of Reich that the throat and the anus link, or you can look at it in terms of ordinary physiology; that the cervicals and the lumbars are necessarily linked.

(8:34) I’m glad to look at something else, but what I’m saying to you is that then you can take Mr. Reich in his psychological connotation and you go right back to your physiology. By and by you get where all good rolfers are, that there ain’t no psychology there’s only physiology, as that’s Rolf heaven. Any of you that are going to come to heaven with me have to subscribe to this.

(9:10 student) When you’re interviewed by ‘Psychology Today’, that would be a good opening paragraph.

(9:15) Well I’ve been interviewed and it’s over now. I’ll have to get them [Aunspeed] to get me another interview.

(9:22 student) Just send him that in a telegram. 

(9:26 student) That’ll be done.

(9:27 student) The whole story.

(9:28 student) Or just that one sentence, you know?

(9:30) Why don’t some of you people report that to them, and tell them about the thing of it. No use in having spies around the country if they don’t report back to the major headquarters.

(9:40 student) That 1^st time I meet Sam Keane I must say, “Gee whiz Sam, do you guys know you’re studying something that doesn’t exist?”

(9:49) Well, I hate to tell you, but Sam is a convert.  

(9:51 student) Sam knows, yeah.

(9:52) Sam is a convert, only at this point he doesn’t dare to flog it too widely. And in fact you know what I was trying to persuade Sam to do the other day? I was telling Sam about a scheme we had with Dick Price. (Hey Lee? We’ve got to get a letter off to Sam Keane today, talking about the fact that somebody said that [that kikelac] thing has been before. Okay. Today. Not next week, today.)

(10:27) But at any rate Dick Price and I, we got a good scheme going, only it didn’t work. The scheme was that we were going to have an international some month’s get-together of all the people who were working with body-mind combinations with the particular aspect of the body.

(10:55 student) Wow, that’d be far out!

(10:59) There are a lot of them around. There are a lot of them around and they did have a meeting in 1958, over in Denmark, and they had expected to continue with this, and I suppose like everybody and everything else they ran out of money, and they ran out of people who would do the work, because a thing like this is a hellish expensive, and energy consuming proposition.

(11:25) And Feldenkrais was chaired that weekend over there, and Feldenkrais was elected the president of the group, and this was just before I met Feldenkrais, I mean just; it was a matter of days before I met Feldenkrais. And there are those people, and there are the people at this point over in Japan, and all of these people should be brought together, not in a day’s or week’s convention, but in two months convention where they all have time to get to see what the other guy is doing and how it works in and evolves. Some single concept, it’s a colossal far-out project.

(12:12 student)  Who organized the last one?

(12:16) The people in Denmark, a woman in Demark whose name I do not remember; she could probably be dead by now, 12 years ago.

(12:23 student) I mean, how would you find out where all these people are at this point?

(12:25) You would write to Dr. Feldenkrais. I would write.

(12:28 student) He’s still alive?

(12:29) Oh, indeed he is, in fact I did write to him about it, and he was very enthusiastic about it, but you see what happens with all these Europeans; they all know that, it’s only the Americans have money. So they sit back and they wait for something to get going. Now if they’re not gonna deal with Americans they get themselves moving. But if there going to be with Americans they expect the Americans to pay the bills, and the thing they haven’t found out yet as we’re just as poor as they are.

(12:58 student) Where is Feldenkrais now?

(13:00) He’s in Israel, 26 Nach Monoch Street, Tel Aviv. And he was delighted to hear from us and so forth and so forth, but we’ve never been able to do any more about it. At that time, I didn’t even have a secretary available, and so forth, and so forth, and so forth, and so on.  It would take at least 2 years to organize something like this, before you got into touch with all these people that arrange the dates and all this stuff. So any of you who want to volunteer for a 2-year’s job, unpaid, guarantying you opportunity to approach plenty of people with your begging bowl in your hand, then tell me. Let me know, quick.

(13:44 student) Who’d supply the saffron room?

(13:47) I’ll supply the saffron room. Well the credit card number we still have, it’s Dick Price’s, and I don’t know weather he knows we’re still using it.

 (14:23) Okay. It’s time to get to work…

(Tape break) 

Letter from Former Student, Jack Downing

(14:35) This is a letter from Jack Downing. Is there anybody here who doesn’t know what the significance of that statement is? Jack, as you know, is in Arica, Chile, attending a training program like a lot of the rest of the guys around here, only they’re not around here, in a Sufi group down there.

(15:00) “Dear Ida, I had an interesting professional experience this week Rolfing Oscar Shazow, the master of the school. He was highly interested, having had a description from John Lily and seeing this as wholly consistent with his own views. He is very, very, very, as he talks with Latin emphasis, body oriented. Yesterday, he said, “To be with your body, that is the deep important thing”. (the emphasis is his.) “That is the deep important thing.”

(15:31) “Our society is like our bodies, a macrocosm is like the microcosm. With this we have to learn our society, the real deep laws and the contradictions that stop our society. The training is heavily body oriented. These first 3 months, (this really sends me), these first 3 months; 2 hours daily of exercises drawn from yoga and other sources, a high protein, low carbohydrate diet heavy in natural vitamins, no mention of supplements, plenty of sleep, always first for the general health benefit, secondly for giving optimal energy for the work.  There are people from Big Sur learning discipline.”

(16:18) “There are four areas of development: Developing the body-mind through meditations, the Chakras, the Centers, and the Latifs; numbers three or four haven’t been explained yet. Apparently they’re related to, or similar to, the Chakras. He calmly relates all these plus the Horoscope and Tarot in one system, which he’s now explaining. He speaks well of Gurdjieff, whom he says came from the same school. My small reading of Gurdjieff makes Oscar seem much, much, much clearer. Jack is getting Latin oriented too and less esoteric. Oscar, in fact, talks of teachers like the Jesuit trained engineer that he is. He certainly works as hard.”

(17:05) “Oscar’s 1^st hour was one of those spectacularly fortuitous tissue memory demonstrations. He has a rather slight firm frame most characterized by a marked lordosis and rather barrel chest. I noted a forward downward displacement of the left clavicular head, in typical old injury fashion. He related a fracture of the left humerus at 4 years, treated with a whole body cast and airplane splint. As I worked around the clavicular head he recalled without reaction the entire episode, which was central in determining his entire later life. Including his search for a life scheme based on a mind-body-spiritual-social identity. “Tri-eclectics” he calls it. An additional point, he recalled that his father, a Bolivian general, was so affected by the little boy’s obvious distress with the heavy cast he removed it against the doctor’s advice. The boy was so impressed by the doctor’s warnings that he consciously maintained the same body and arm posture for months afterward, (how do we get that way?), hence the present (lordosis) and slight atrophy of the left upper arm. As the left sternal coastal edge was explored, a knot was found. Working here brought back the memory of the cast binding at the left rib, producing pain and spasm at the anterior point. In general, Oscar is the least tense, least painful person I’ve ever worked with. He had no pain in his thighs, and his leg muscles are relaxed as his arm. Oh, I might add, that he explored for his 4-year-old tissue fixation – and it was the usual – he avoided the pain and hence accumulated karma (his term). In his subsequent self-exploration he never could find the pain, as it was hidden behind shame over having the accident. I’ll go ahead and do all 10, but don’t expect much beyond this.”

(19:16) “If he ever comes to the States, as I expect he will, he hopes to see you, for he has conceived a considerable respect for your method, questioning me closely about how you developed it. I’ll say this, if he continues to produce as promised, he’s an important contributor to humanity and his teaching is completely consistent with yours and Fritz’s work, adding astrology, the tarot, the Kabala, (I’m sure Fritz would love it), and a few other minor points. Best wishes to your new class of novitiates. Peace, Jack Downing. Oh. Could you show this letter to Dick Price and save me writing the same to him? Thank you.”

(19:56) Where is my little pal? There she is. Thank you, mam.

(20:08 staff) You’re welcome.

(20:10) Okay. This is a very, very nice letter and it makes you as though you still had a link, you know. Several of those guys promised they’d write me, but this is the first one that did. 

5^th Hour

Pelvic Lift, Tent Pole Metaphor

(25:00) Now up to this point you did your “putting together” by certain basic methods. What were they? Basically the pelvic lift. Who said it? Oh, you did Bob! Alright, why the pelvic lift?

(25:36 student) Because what you do in each of these hours is 3 different parts from the pelvis, so that the pelvis can move more freely; and so the idea of the lift is to put it in the place where it belongs, because the person himself is not able to do that.

(25:56) This is true, but wait, let’s get the emphasis slightly different. This thing is called the pelvic lift. Naturally that’s what it ain’t, so it really is a good name at the end. Actually, I pinched that name from somebody else who did a pelvic lift, and when I pinched the name it seemed an appropriate name. But at this point, realize that your pelvic lift is not a pelvic lift, it is a pelvic settling; it is a lumbar settling, a lumbar moving back. Any of you got a better name for it, bring it up. Someday we might get a more significant, a more evocative name for this thing. We really need it. But you see this came from a system of exercises which you may someday learn, and that woman used to call it a pelvic lift, and actually she didn’t understand about lines; she was lifting a pelvis, and so it hung on.

(27:06) All right the pelvic lift, now what else? You said it before Bob, now go back to it. You said another method… yeah, the back; what’s the point of that? 

(27:35 student) Well again you’re working with the vertebral column, and you’re trying to get space in there, and you’re having them bend over to give you the opportunity to get in between there and to organize the whole column, and I hesitate on that word.

(27:55) All right stay with it. After all, all of the rest of the world calls it that. 

(28:03 student) That will give you the space and it also helps to lift it off the pelvis and make it independent of the pelvis. Plus it feels good to the man and the man generally feels like it’s an organizing type of procedure. It puts it back in the place where you’d like to be. 

(28:18) It helps if you keep that little simple metaphor in mind here. That spine is after all, your tent pole, and you’ve got to be a very expert tent erector before you can just put that tent pole up once and have it where it belongs. You shift it, and you shift a little at the top, and you shift a little at the bottom, here, there, and the other place to get those two sides better balanced before you’re through. Unless it happens to be one of those modern tents which have the holes poked through, which you have to fit it in there you know.

(29:02) But if you keep that metaphor in mind, you get more of a recognition of what it is you’re trying to do and you see the difference between the tent and the body is, that that body changes minute by minute, second by second, and you may suddenly find that you’ve got a longer right side than you ever had before; and you’ve got a longer right side and you have to balance it against a shorter left side, because even if you try to lengthen the left side you can’t get the left side lengthened as much as the right side. You’ve all seen this kind of situation happening. So then you have to take that spine and sort of balance your tent pole and balance it as best you may in that.

(29:43) And the 3^rd and final?

(29:45 student) Well, the neck is the final, and you have organized the pelvis, the lumbar area, and then you’ve gone down the back, and the cervical area is the other end of the lumbar.

(29:58) The cervical and lumbar are more related than the back and the lumbar. Realize this; that just as soon as you begin fiddling with the lumbar you have got to fiddle with the cervical to balance it. Otherwise the guy doesn’t feel well and he doesn’t know why he doesn’t feel well. And then comes the problem you see of lengthening the tent pole so these two things are held at an appropriate distance apart.

(Tape break) 

 (30:35) You are demanding of the elastic soft tissue that it lengthen sufficiently to balance. And, you see, this is a something which has been going on from the 1^st hour. The other something, which has been going on from the 1^st hour, I hope, (I often find not) is that you are demanding of the body itself that it do this, and from the 1^st hour you have been trying to make these people aware of, “Where is the top of your head? Where is your waistline? Let your waistline come back.  No don’t push it back. Let it come back.” These all sound like very simple words, but they’re a very basic teaching, a very basic teaching procedure; to get that man, that woman, to understand what it is that constitutes himself.  And a little occasional meditation on the development of a human being throws more light on it.

(32:05) See the little 7-year-old rehab here. See the teenagers that are in your family and so forth. Realize how little awareness, let alone understanding, they have of what’s in their skin until such time as they begin to hurt. And then their whole universe is in one uproar. Maybe a very minor hurt, but they are so insulted by the fact that they hurt. You see this under your hands over and over and over again. But if you will try to put yourself into their skin, understanding, getting reality on what a small part of perception the average individual is able to grasp in his teen age, in his early 20’s, when his mind is focused on establishing his economic security, you will begin to understand more of what this problem is about, because this also has lines directly into it.

Children and Animals 

(33:30) If that small sized child had the understanding of there being a goal to his carrying himself, perhaps (probably in fact) he would carry himself that way – but for heaven sake don’t try to give him that goal, or you’ll have a very nice neurotic kid by and by; because apparently the growth pattern is that the attention must be, must be, turned out during the early years. And if you invert that pattern and turn the attention in, you begin to get a quite distorted personality. But if you can project into that pattern, you begin to get a much greater understanding of how they got that way, and some insight into how you get them out of that way.

(34:28) Now on the other hand, as you’ve seen here with Sean, as you’ll probably see with little Sean today, (and some other little young one that’s coming in here today), they have a thorough going perception of how much better they feel when this is established; but they don’t have, and they don’t get – even the quite mature among them – don’t get an understanding of the fact that it’s their business to create this. And probably it isn’t, because if this were really the way normal flesh behaves, creating this sense of responsibility, it would be there, and it isn’t there. But even these very young kids, as you organize them, feel so much better that they no longer put much attention on the fact that you are hurting them. You see this happening. It’s the same way with little animals.  

(35:41) I’m sure that sometime before this class is over somebody will bring in a turtle or a shrew or a snake or a something that will have to be rolfed. And you’ll see the same thing, they’ll squirm, and they’ll semi bite – but never really bite – the hand that’s hurting them. And then when you get to the key situation they’ll give a wild yelp and jump up off your lap, and run to the farthest corner of the house, and then they’ll run straight back again to your hand or to your lap and begin licking your hand. And it’s a very clear-cut demonstration, and it works the same way with little kids.

(36:30) The only problem with little kids is that they have already, no matter how little they are, they’ve already had a cap, a hat, of attitudes set down on top of them long before they’ve come to you and they can only make their adaptation within that framework of attitudes that has already thickened over them. One of the attitudes is that they mustn’t under any circumstances be hurt. You see, we fit this right on top of them. From the minute they’re born we fit this on top of them, and they learn it all too fast; instead of learning that minor hurt is like minor joy, it’s part of the balance!

(37:21) Okay. Now we’ve gone through: 

1. The organization of the external fascial bag.  (I still feel that it would be of so much value if we could get an actual, appropriate representation of that.)  

2. The adjustment within that bag of the various end segments which are going to make possible the verticality of the packages that are being carried.   

3. The organization so that the bag begins to walk. And so that when it begins to walk the things inside aren’t going to fall out; aren’t going to put undue strain on the container. 

1^st hour, 2^nd hour, 3^rd hour is, again, an organization of the packages within the bag; a rearrangement of the elasticity that is in the bag.

(38:55) 4^th hour – Now you’re beginning to get to go down and get to what you’re really running for since the first hour you laid your hand on that individual. You begin to go down and take a precise look at the precise problems involved, at the immediate problems, (is the word I mean), the immediate, the adjacent, the contained problems of the pelvis. How to get it horizontal?  

(39:31) And as you’re working with it, do not start worrying about whether you turned off the gas on the kitchen stove before you went out this morning. Get your mind on what’s going on in the floor of that pelvis. What constitutes the floor of that pelvis? Which aspect of it is pulling? Which aspect has to pull? What is this doing in terms of putting strain on the contents of a pelvis, and on the contents of the abdomen? What is going on? Because these three hours, the 4^th and the 5^th and the 6^th, are your key situations; this is your opportunity, and if you loose them now you’re not going to get them back.

(40:28) In your 4^th hour your hands are in there around that floor of that pelvis, loosening the stuff which is keeping it askew.  

(40:49) Did anybody bring that Kegel machine? Oh wonderful. That big thing you call a machine with you. I thought that probably that little thing was mounted on the big little thing so it was impressive…

(41:00 student) It’s a (paraniometer). It’s a Kegel machine, that’s my name for it.

(41:10 student) There are other names for this machine, but I won’t tell you what they are.

(41:21) Yes I know, we’re very in polite society, don’t mention it. Don’t mention it.

(41:27 student) I got this from a paper that he wrote about the exercise and stress.

(41:22) Some of you have something to contribute?

(41:27 student) Yeah, there was a paper that he wrote about the exercises (in concert with stress).

(41:40) Well some of you spend a little bit of time a little bit later, and sure gonna read this whole thing aloud to you people, some of you spend your “spare time” busy about it, reading. (But I will say, I’ve fallen down on my job if you have any.)

(42:05) But visualize, and even visualize here and now, what you’re measuring with that machine, what is preventing, where is the prevention of the balance; because it isn’t the balance that you’re dealing with, as usual, it’s something else, it’s the thing that prevents the balance.  

Epistemological profile, relationships

(42:45) You see you come over and over again to this recognition, this Rolf work, this whole bit you’re not dealing with the thing ever. You’re going round, and round, and round, and round something that has no reality in free space, but determines the reality in free space, determines the functioning of the reality in the free space.

(43:18) I think I have the time enough at this point. Usually somewhere along the 10 hours I discuss with you what has been named, by the man who put it together, the “Epistemological profile.” And at this point, in view of the emphasis that I’ve just been laying on, you are not dealing with free space. I think it might be appropriate to bring this discussion in here now.

(44:05) There was a man; he may still be an “is” man. He was a French professor in one of the French Universities, I think Leal. His name was, well I’ll think of it in a few minutes maybe. At any rate, he was a member of the group who worked with Korzypski. He was at one time a trustee, I think, of the general semantics group. And he went home to France, and he sat down, and he thought. And what he came up with was the recognition of the open-ended process; which is thinking, which is analysis, which is evaluation, which is an attempt to get the meaning of something you are seeing or you are experiencing, and this he called the epistemological profile. And it’s a very useful tool for looking at what you are thinking about and making up your mind as to where, what level of thinking, you’re doing about it.  

(45:40) And the 1^st level, the very primitive level, represents feelings about a situation. And the metaphor, the simile, that I usually use is the little girl goes down to the water, and she sticks her toe, and then she decides that this is a beautiful place for drama and she says, “Oh! It’s cold!” She doesn’t mean it’s cold. She means it is cold to her. This has never occurred to her.

(46:13) But big brother, who’s in the 8^th grade, or maybe the 6^th, comes along and says, “Ah, you sissy. I’ll get a thermometer. I’ll measure it.” So that is the next level of sophistication in terms of evaluating external phenomena. You measure it.

(45:59) And the great bulk of commercial “science” nowadays is bivalent. It lies in this area. And you’ll hear absenthia weeping all over the place, because there aren’t ways to measure them.

(46:59) It doesn’t mean that I’m so unsophisticated that I think measurement’s good, but it does mean that I am sophisticated enough that I know that I can make those other guys believe me if I can show them a measurement with a machine.  

(47:15) And the vast bulk of the 9 doctors out of every 10, recommend Marlboro cigarettes, or fluoride toothpaste or what have you, this all comes under this thing, all this stuff that’s reported with the white coats and the white pants and the beautiful pictures in the slick magazines, and they pay a lot of money to put those pictures in. This all represents that next door to primitive level of evaluation. So it’s no longer cold to a little girl, it’s now cold to a machine – to a device.

(48:00) Now the level after that is the level where the apple hits Mr. Newton on the head, and Mr. Newton begins looking at things in terms of what controls the apple. There must be a certain set of laws and they must operate, we can evaluate these laws.

(48:25) This is the level of science that we are all taught in colleges. This is the level of science that up ‘till the days of Einstein there was nothing else but. And I suppose the great bulk of science today still operates in that level, although the great bulk of the money that is put behind science is no longer in that level. The great bulk of the money has been going, since the days of NASA... NASA, [ ], have been going into a consideration of relationship. A consideration of the fact that nothing is anything except in an environment, that you don’t know anything about anything except as it relates in an environment. This was the great contribution that Einstein made.  

(49:50) Now actually as I have said to you before perhaps, I think that there was some biological recognition of man and an environment before the early 1900’s, I think that they began getting those ideas back in the 1890‘s, but they were very empirical ideas and nobody took them that seriously.

(50:14) With respect to human beings and the importance of their environment, it was perhaps the second decade of the century before advanced men in educational institutions began teaching their students that people had to be looked at in terms of their environment to be understood, and that there was an internal environment and an external environment.  

(50:42) And a lot of that stuff came through the work that was contributed by that physical chemists of Yale, who made an intensive study of physical-chemical changes of fluids of the blood, and so forth. And all of this stuff you see, has been developing; and people haven’t been aware, really, of the fact that you could separate this out, and what you were really doing was thinking differently now. And now in this department you begin to see that the important thing is not any thing, but that it is a relationship. 

(51:44) Funny, I still can’t think of his name. Mr. Bachelard’s 4^th area. 

(51:49) Mr. Bachelard’s 4^th area calls your attention to the fact that it is the relationship that is the determinate that is the important thing.

 (52:20) There has really been very little, a few translations of some of his original papers that were made by a man named Bois, who is still in there with the general semantics group now down in Los Angeles. At that time he was in Montreal, and he was another typical Frenchmen and he thought like a typical Frenchman, and because of that Bachelard’s way of thinking appealed very much to him. And he published, I think it was in the Journal of General Semantics, 25 years ago maybe, some translations of these one or two [ ] have printed. But oddly enough nobody except Bois has taken a hold of this idea, which I think is a very useful measurement stick by which to look at ideas, by which to evaluate how the other guy is thinking when he begins to present an idea to you.  

(53:50) And then, this is still an open ended system; this is not the last way in which you can look at and get more information about your environment.

(54:10) And the final way is this way of the intuition – the intuitive perception, the psychic perception, the …what’s the name of the other stuff? –  “synchronicity” phenomenon of Carl Jung.  

(54:34) Now this way is not as yet available to most people. Most – even the top level of the generation – cannot control this area, so that they can go into it at will and get information from it. Some people think they can. Most of them are nuts. What I mean to say is they’re the far-out people. They’re the people who are not regarded by scientists as reliable sources of information. And we don’t regard this area as contributing to our scientific information, as of 1970.

(55:28) But you see, what it is doing is beginning to swing the line all the way around on the spiral, ready to come into the 1^st area on a higher level. Because this 5^th area is an “I am perceiving”. When you say, “Intuitively, I know,” there is nothing there except a perception. It seems to me, and it seems to me so vividly that “I know that I know that this is so”, but you can’t go and tell another guy that and have him believe it. 

(56:14) And so the thing is going around in this spiral situation, and as you come out from your 5^th area you are now in a brand-new spaced area. It is to me. And I don’t know what goes after that. Maybe I’ll come back in 200 years from now and tell you, but maybe I won’t.

(56:34 student) The next level is observation with awareness of both observers.

(56:44) Okay. You write it up. But now let’s get back to where we came from.

(56:51) I am calling your attention to the fact that what I have been doing is literally herding you into this 4^th area, trying to keep you thinking exclusively into this 4^th area. Trying to keep you everlastingly aware of the fact that it is the relationship, which is the important thing. That it is the noumena that goes out looking for the phenomena. Not the 3^rd area phenomena looking for the noumena. And if you can get hold of this little yard stick, 12 inch ruler, you can do a great deal to clarify, to look critically at your own thinking and to look critically at the thinking of people who present ideas to you more and more loudly as they’re less and less sure of them. And you have a little stick to measures that here.

Pelvic floor 

(58:01) Okay. So.  How did we get here? Oh we got here, oh I know. Alright. How do we get out of here? How is it that confounded little pelvic floor gets us into all kinds of trouble?

(38:30) So, at the relation of the pelvic floor to something which you can’t measure, like a gravitational field, is what is going to determine the entire well-being of that individual. Now, realize what determines where the pelvic floor is. It’s not those 1/2 dozen muscles which we named the other day as being the pelvic floor. Not at all. It’s the sacral iliac articulation; it’s the articulation between the 5^th lumbar and the sacrum, it’s the articulation between the 4^th lumbar and the 5^th lumbar. See what I’m telling you? Just as soon as you shift any of those lumbars back on any of those lumbars, you’re going to get a different relationship in that pelvic floor.

(59:33) Just as soon as you take on the type of athletic training which shortens and tightens the hamstrings to the exclusion of the antagonists of the hamstrings, you’re going to interfere with that pelvic floor. Just as soon as you do any of these habitual postures that spread the knees wide, thereby shortening the gracilis, and altering the hamstring relationship in there, you’re going to interfere with that pelvic floor.

(1:00:34) So that there is a vast terra incognita in there, for each and every individual, about how he developed these various physical attitudes, and therefore mental attitudes.  

(1:00:55) And what we are doing here, of course, is to take the outer-most layer of those attitudes and sort of organize them and relate them to the place where the attitudes themselves are less constricting, are less compelling than they otherwise had of been. And where, as a result of the lesser compulsion that is in the muscle, you can get a lesser compulsion in the mind in terms of certain attitudes, and you can begin to look around and see some other things.

(1:01:48) Now then. So we have these 4^th hour pelvis, and the question is, at this point, have they been horizontal, and if not, why not? Right here I’d like to have some line-up please…

[End]