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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 B5 Side 1 MP3 File (aprox. 11MB) TRANSCRIPT Mrs. Lee, Mind-Body Coordination, lines, continued Autonomic Nervous System, Energy Body vs, Coarse Body Mrs. Lee, Mind-Body Coordination, lines, continued (0:21) …Alexander concept, that nobody else added, or has added, since their day, and they are the ones who recognize that in order for the head to go up and belong up, there were these other planes which had to determine that. And they didn’t analyze it in terms of the particular words – verbalisms – that I had given and will give to you, but they did recognize the fact that this was the way it had to be if you were going to get real organization of the body, or of the mind-body for that matter. (1:00) And again, they were working with and through suggestion. But their suggestion was so much more related to the 3-diminsional world rather than to a 1-diminsional “up” world, that it was a more lasting contribution to a body, if that body got into the tricks. But you see not even they had any really good idea of how to get this into a body. (1:45) And Mrs. Lee, she died about age 90 maybe, I knew her about age 84 maybe, yes. And she would, even up through her last years, she would teach this; she called it body-mind coordination. She would teach it in a series of 10 hours of work, for which she charged $250 dollars, and by the time she got through with her 10th hour of work the women were crying and the men were still cursing because they were so entirely frustrated; they couldn’t understand what she was trying to say. Now the few people who succeeded in breaking through that barrier were happy, but they were very few and far between, because she was teaching lines. Now you people will be getting into this consideration of lines. Those of you who’ve been auditors before know what I’m talking about. (3:02) She was teaching lines, and these people could not get the lines established because of the actual 3 dimensional material bodies – barriers – that lay in those bodies which prevented the established of the line. And Mrs. Lee’s story was that if you got your head up, if you worked with your head up, that those barriers would disappear. But I’ve seen the boys and girls that did it and the barriers didn’t disappear, and I worked on them when they got through with that; getting those barriers out, and those barriers were right in there, and their spines were still anterior, etc. etc. (3:45) So that what I’m saying to you is, you are going on into a consideration that has its roots in many people’s thinking. But what I did, was to try to understand how a body can go together and utilize these construction lines, and how you can put those construction lines in there, so that they’re free to operate. Now, no one else did that. (4:20) And as I say, Alexander himself never had the understanding that those 3 planes were the determinants of the body. As far as Alexander was concerned, it was the head that did it. And Alexander himself had some tricks, which perhaps were fifth area tricks – “I know that I know” – which he never taught to other people. He never taught any of his students to lay a hand on a body and this made them for legal purposes, though I doubt it. In England they’re not worried about these things. If you lay hands on dogs that’s when you get yourself in trouble, but you can do anything you please – but at any rate, he never did. He himself did. (5:12) He himself as he was working with people placed the body under the head. But you see when this contact between him and you was broken, then it was no longer apparent to you how you could recover this relationship. And the answer was that you didn’t know. (5:28) If you can go to the Alexander people today, they will tell you the same thing that I’m telling you; namely, that you have to keep going with this Alexander consideration for the rest of your life to keep it operational for you. And I’m saying that we’re just too darn busy for that. And I’m saying that if you can get it into that body and working for you, then you can go on to think of something else. So, you paid your money, you take your choice. (6:02) It is certain that the Alexander technique is a nice gentle, sweet little thing compared with what happens in this room. It is also certain that, like all nice gentle sweet little things it doesn’t get very far until it has punch behind it. You know. You’ve seen these nice, sweet, gentle little girls that we have here, but they’re really tough babies underneath. I’m not looking at you Bev. But that’s the story of Alexander, and that’s the story of Feldenkrais and I don't know how we got there, but I think we should come back. (6:44 student) From the last excursion. (6:47) It was fun. (6:48 student) What’s Feldenkrais do now? Is he still alive? (6:52) … He must be in the first half of his 70’s, 72, 73, he’s about my age. I worked with him in England 12 years ago, (1958), and at that time we really had a hassle. He saw me give a demonstration and he came to me and he said, “I have got to have this work.” He’s a huge bear of a man! He is the 2nd most expert Judo practitioner in the world; the first is a Japanese prince. Not bad. He was round like that, and tall like that, and thick like this. And he said, “I’ve got to have this work”. I said, “Alright, tell me some more.” He said, “You’re doing what I always wanted to do.” I said, “OK, tell me some more.” He said, “I’m here for 12 days.” I said, “I can’t give you the work in 12 days.” He said, “You’ve got to give me the work in 12 days.” I said, “I can’t give you the work in 12 days.” He said, “You either give me the work in 12 days or you don’t get paid because I’ve got just that much money from Israel, and that’s all the money I can get and you can have it if you do it in 12 days.” And I said, “OK. It’s a bargain.”…. Who was never the chosen race, I ask? (8:38) So, anyhow, Feldenkrais traipsed in day after day and I just got him down on that floor, and I really pounded that guy! He’s a man almost as big as Stan Kellerman and that general [kind]. In those days I couldn’t be bothered, in these days I say the hell with it. (8:59) Feldenkrais and I really had a wonderful time together and he was so understanding and so utterly appreciative of the whole thing. But you see, here again is a point, now here was this man, the most expert judo guy in the western world, and as a result of his judo, his body was completely round. (9:27) And I have told you… that when you get these round bodies they always have symptoms. And that as quickly as you release that roundness of body the symptom disappears. The symptom may be the way they breath, and it may be that they have asthma, and it may be that they have emphysema, but always they have symptoms because bodies aren’t made to be round; they’re made to be ovoid. The lateral axis has got to be greater than the anterior posterioral axis for a body to work. And this is true in the abdomen, and it’s true in the chest, and it’s true in the pelvis. And a body is an ovoid thing, not a round thing. (10:18) So at any rate, I was taking this great big beautiful round Russian bear, and making him ovoid. And we had quite a time of it. And when things got a little too much for him, he put his arms up, and he put them around me, and he’d rolled me right over under him. As I say, we had quite a time! (10:48) When he got all through and he was leaving, he looked at me and there were actually tears in his eyes, and he said, “I can’t tell you how I envy you.” He said, “You do in 10 hours what I try to do in 200 and I don’t get done.” And he went back, and he was really completely sincere in the matter. (11:08) And I’ve never seen him since. We’ve never been in the same town at the same time again. But I know perfectly well, speaking to you, that if you ever get that thing going, Feldenkrais is the kind of a guy who keeps in touch with everyone in his field. I’m not that kind of a gal. I’m too darned lazy. But he would know how to get that field together again, – this whole mind-body relationship – but as I said to you the other day,… if such a thing got going you would have to focus it around 2 fulci; those who are mind-body people, and those who are body-mind people… (12:02) At any rate, he was, answering your question Mike, he came to a great deal of prominence through the fact that he was the one that took old, – what’s his name the Israel man that was a premier for so long? …He was the one that took [VanGurion] during a time when [VanGurion] was apparently going to pieces very rapidly, and through various techniques of physical education and so forth, he worked [VanGurion] back to a place where [VanGurion] was doing well, and did another 10 years worth of work with his country after that. And Feldenkrais came to a good deal of prominence through that. And actually the story was that [VanGurion], the time he visited JFK down in Washington was telling JFK that he had a man that could fix his back. And I just wish that JFK had swallowed this because, the man who was cleverly reputed to fix his back would have said “You go home”… but that thing never came about. (13:22) Anyhow, somebody gave him a whole city block right down in the middle of Tel Aviv, and this whole city block had an old house on it; presumably one of those great big old fashioned dwelling houses – I never did see it – and he was carrying on there for a good many years… (13:48) For a good many years, he sent us a great many patients and I could pick-up gossip that way. I’ve been in New York so little that he could have sent a lot of patients in to Dick and I’d have not even known about it in the last years you see. But I have not been in as close touch with the situation…he was a very prominent Israeli. He was interested in politics… (14:26) Now, getting down to the 6th hour, which comes up today. Now the 6th hour you see, is still down at the other end, but it is, or it should be of interest to you, to sort of have this coming event cast its shadow before it; that you’re playing with that 6th hour, you’re playing with this pelvis, you’re organizing this pelvis, at this time, in order to have something on which you are then going to organize a cranium; a major nervous plexus that is going to determine the man. And for those of you that don’t have that much background in anatomy and physiology, realize that this is literally what it is; the major nervous plexus of the body – this thing you have up in here. (15:52) And so, what you are doing, and what you are still doing is organizing structure, organizing connective tissue, organizing fascia, organizing collagen; in order to organize a nervous system for the best possible service that that nervous system can give. (16:30) And so, in that 6th hour we’re going to go back again, and look at what’s going on at the other end of the line. Because the other end of the line is the other end of that nervous plexus. We’re no longer talking about the floor of the pelvis – though we might be – we’re talking about the sacrum, we’re talking about the lumbar and the various nervous structures whose integrity depends on their positioning, because this has to do with what’s going on with the top. And don’t think I am putting an absolute pre-imminence on what lives in the cranium. I am not. What lives in the cranium is only the other end of a long structure, and it happens to be turned up. (17:48) So let’s go down to the pelvis again. What haven’t we taken care of in the pelvis? What haven’t we really re-organized in the pelvis? (18:10 student) We haven’t really gotten into that sacrum. (18:15) You haven’t gotten in around the sacrum? Is that what you said? You’re absolutely right. You haven’t gotten in around the sacrum, and in many instances, in spite of all your pelvic lifts and so forth, your sacrum as a whole is still anterior. Now this is understandable, this is highly understandable. The sacrum may be anterior and it may be posterior. The base of the sacrum may be anterior or it may be posterior. The apex of the sacrum may be skewed around, and it should be a lot better than it was when you started. And all your pelvic lifts are really efforts at sacral organization. But you have not yet had the real opportunity of devoting an hour to the sacrum. And you better get it done because you’ve been going around and around and around and around and around it. And you’ve been talking about the floor of the pelvis as being so important, and it is, but you see the floor of the pelvis does not have to do literally with the nervous plexi, which are the important determinants of that body, but the sacrum is. And so now it behooves you in trying to put this body together, to start him by getting that sacrum where it belongs. And this will require some more work on the tail end. (20:36) Now, how can you affect the sacrum? Can you get your hands in front of the sacrum to bring it back? You’ve been depending on your hands to get things where they had to go, all the way along. You’ve been depending on your hands, and because you’ve been depending on your hands, you have decided that maybe I have something when I say you have to start at the outside and go in. One of the reasons you have to start at the outside to get in is because you have your hands, and you want to get your hands somewhere, and by loosening the outside you can get it a little deeper. (21:25) Can you get your hand in front of the sacrum? And if not, what can you do about a sacrum? How can you get to a sacrum? Your sacrum is anterior, how are you going to get it back? (21:45 student) By working with the muscles that it’s attached to…the piriformis. (21:53) What’s the piriformis got to do with it? (21:55 student) Well, the piriformis is the only one of the rotators that attach to the anterior part of the sacrum. (22:02) It’s the only thing that’s on the outside of that body that goes to the inside of the body – let’s make it a lot broader than that. You have the good luck in the rotators that you’ve got something you can get your hands on, the other end of which will do something for you that your hands can’t get to. (22:35) Now, there are several of those rotators. Bill, do you want to go on with that? (22:48 student) There are 5 rotators, the obturator externus and internus, the gemellus superior and inferior, and they attach to the wing of the…they go up under the pelvic ball, and then they attach to the head of the femur - the greater trocanter. And the piriformis goes through from the head of the femur and attaches to the anterior part of the – (23:21) You get me kind of dizzy, because first you’re attaching them at one end and then attaching the end of the femur, then you’re at the head of the femur, then your go sliding up there. Would you please get logical? (23:30 student) Can I use the skeleton? (23:42) Yeah, sure. That’s what it’s there for. Bring it out a little bit. (23:50 student) Well, the origin of the gemellus is in here, and it comes out over to here. And then the origin of the obterators are inside here, and they come out this opening around to over into this area, next to it. And the piriformis comes into right at this point – that’s the attachment – and it comes up under here, and then it has a large attachment on the anterior part of the sacrum. (24:30) I don’t remember whether it attaches to 3 or 4 of those sacral – (24:35 student) Well, the way it’s drawn into here, it attaches pretty much to the whole length of the sacrum. A very wide attachment. (24:46) Now you see, you think of it, you have described all these muscles, as starting in the pelvis and going to the trochanter. This is fine, this is alright. But I say that in terms of the way you can think of it in your approach, it starts at the trocanter and goes in. See you can get to that trocanter, and from there, through your organization of that whole mass around the mess that is those five, and that get glued together and get to the point where they can do nothing individually. You are then able to get in there and get a much more better, (what they call in Washington,) a fine-tuning. And I better stay away from it, 'cause when I think of those boys... But it’s true, it is a fine tune, and you get all of those five organized so that they are beginning to balance within their own field of the rotators, because the rotators as a group have their own function, and then the group of the rotators functions into the group of the adductors or the hamstrings or what have you. But you have to have that organization and tuning within the group of the rotators before you can get that sacrum doing its thing, and because the sacrum is now doing its thing you can now get into the coccyx. Ok, ok? (26:45) Now, if the sacrum is doing its thing properly, that coccyx is going to turn much further under, and the base of the sacrum is going to come further back. And if the base of the sacrum comes back then those lumbars are going to have to come back on their line. (27:20) And this is going to be the job of today. In other words, the relatively final organization of the lower part of the spine; the lower part of the body. But all of these organizations are, as you know, only relative. Now if you’ve done the relative job, you’ve gotta start in on the absolute job of organizing the top and bottom, bottom and top, top and bottom. … (Tape break) (28:15) I am going to have a student who is so useless in other directions that he will sit down and collect all the pictures that are useful to us and Xerox them and get them down in a book. But you see, just as soon as we have students that are really bright in other directions they don’t do this. (28:38) But it would be really very useful to get out of this whole consolidation of books a consolidation of pictures that were particularly useful to us. For instance out of Dunn’s, Gray’s, those 2 foot pictures. Out of somebody else’s, [shparterholtz], there was fascia pictures, and in some one of these books there was a perfect picture of that ganglion of impar, and I wasn’t able to find it in the last class, and I probably am not going to be able to find it in this class. So look in several different books at the pictures of the autonomic nervous system. Open to the pictures of the autonomic nervous system… (31:00) Well, let’s just for fun look at it. You see, we don’t use these things much. I mean up to this point we’ve had no real use for neurology. But at this point when you begin to get into your 6th and 7th hour, all of a sudden you’ve got to think in terms of plexi. Autonomic Nervous System, Energy Body vs, Coarse Body (31:25) OK now, let’s give some consideration to why you are all leafing through your books looking for a brand new set of indices; namely ganglion of the sympathetic system; of the autonomic system. (31:50) Several of you in this room that could do a much better job than I in this immediate discussion here, but at any rate, let’s look in our mind eye at the way the autonomic nervous system lies on the anterior surface of the spinal column. And recognize and realize that the nervous tissue, necessarily, is directly influenced by the position of the spinal column. It can’t be otherwise. And that, that which contributes to the well being of the tissues that wrap the spinal column, necessarily contributes to the well being of the autonomic nervous system. (33:10) Ok, why… well I tell you why I think. And you can’t say it, and I couldn’t say it outside this room maybe I ought to shut my mouth, I think there are more flows in a body then the fluid circulatory flows that run in blood vessels and seep through membranes. I mean the kind of flow that we recognize. I think there is a flow of energy field. I think this is what we are demonstrating. And don’t ever let me catch you saying this, Mack. (34:00 student) Not very likely. (34:01) But I think that maybe these occultists know what they are talking about when they talk about a finer body, and that that finer body is the body which determines – and supplies, energizes – the material body. Now when you come right down to it, this is the fundamental premise on which psychology is based, metaphysics is based, all of these far-out notions as to what you can do with thinking and with speech and with so forth, is saying that there is a finer body. It doesn’t have to be a formulated body, but yes it does have to be a formulated body. And it is saying that in your appropriate thinking you can influence that finer body. And that that finer body is a causal body for the coarser body; not the coarser body from the finer body. Now this is the premise on which modern psychology is based; really. (35:20 student) It’s the whole Chinese idea. (35:24) Oh it goes back for thousands of years, all metaphysical techniques, and all metaphysical techniques go way back to before Christ. There isn’t any of ‘em that doesn’t have its roots in the east. Some of them have been resurrections of the old systems, like Mary Baker Eddies was a resurrection of the old Vedic system, but they’re not new systems. (35:57) Now if this is so, if you will take that coarser body, which can get itself into too coarse trouble to be influenced by the finer body, (as for example, that body of Eric what’s his names in the last class,) no finer body, no thinking, no psychological approach is going to straighten that cockeyed spine. It’s too cockeyed. And if you want to get such a system working, you have to place that coarse material-ness on top of the finer body, which does not really loose it’s shape seriously. It’s the 3-deminsional body that goes haywire. But the finer body stays there, I think, and energizes the 3-deminsional body, but often is unable to change it because of the coarseness of the BBH. And I think what you have seen in this room here, many times, really is the visible part of replacing that coarse body on top of this pattern of energy which can energize it. (37:32 student) So in a sense, the symptoms that we see, the manifestations of the physical body, are really, in a sense, are manifestations or indications of something going on in the finer fields, but they’re too far out – (37:47) Yeah, the symptom is the disharmony, the strain, between the coarse body and the mind body. It’s the measure of the strain. The symptom is the measure of the strain, I think. And you see, you can approach the problem from either end, but what I’m saying to you is that so much of this problem is a something that has gone very seriously wrong with that very coarse body and that fine body hasn’t quite the punch that’s necessary to take and do it. So it takes somebody’s elbow, somebody’s fist, somebody’s knuckles to give it that coarse punch, and then it’s ready to go. And that’s what I think you’re doing here. (38:37) But you see, you are using indices that are coarse enough to belong in this measuring stick that we are talking about here. You are using the index of the fascial organization. And that fascial tissue is a heavy, coarse tissue. Sometimes a very slow metabolizing tissue, sometimes somewhat faster, but you’ve all had your fingers in these deteriorated fascial messes that speak very loudly of the fact that it’s going to take a long time to change them. But always you can get some change. Always you can get some help. Always you can bring something a little nearer to where it belongs, and having gotten it a little nearer to where it belongs today, tomorrow it can take over and do a little something, and the next day you can do a little more pushing and shoving and heaving and hauling. Now this is what I think is the relationship of the various levels that you are dealing with; you are not dealing directly with the nervous system in one sense, and you are dealing directly with it in another sense. (40:14) I am sure Mack, I am sure, that to the extent that it is possible to measure nervous energy, and it is, as you know, the flow of nervous energy along a nerve. I am sure that if you could take many of these people who come in here, and measure the flow of that energy along the nerve before you start, and at the end, not of 10 hours, but of just 4 or 5, you would find a very marked difference. You will see it if you have luck, and you’re not going to have luck in this group. (41:03) To a certain extent you saw it in little Sean. I have seen, not once but many times, children. I remember specifically one kid that was brought into a children’s clinic in Chicago, and she was about 3 or 4 years old, and I no longer remember what was the genesis of her problem, but among the other symptoms that she had was her slowness of speech. You’d say Mary or Jane or whatever her name was, “Good morning,” and that didn’t register, and that was all right. But then you’d ask her something that really meant something to her, “Do you want so and so?” And it would literally take that child seconds before she could put that question into the machine and get the answer out. And everybody sat around quietly waiting for the child to answer, and it might take 20 seconds, it might take 30 seconds after you had put the question into the machine before you got the answer out. And I saw that child given one hour, a 1st hour of work, and you asked her the same question, and you got the answer in a normal length of time. (42:55) And you’ll see the same thing in an index of the size of the pupillary reflexes. You’ll see them come in with big black pupils that practically take up the eye, practically are the same size as the iris. And they’ll go out with a pupil half that size, and at the end of another hour the pupil begins to come to what is really a normal size. But you see this over and over again, and you’ve got to tell some sort of a fairy tale to account for this. (43:30) So that I am very sure, that it is possible in some way to measure nervous function, the functioning of the nervous system, in such a way that will shows this out. Answering the question that theoretically was asked by Mack 5 minutes ago. Not answering the question. (43:53 student) I think that one of the difficulties people have to scientifically turn is that – and I remember my first reaction when I started looking at a diagram of the charkas, the various centers, and I started reading a book on yoga…I don’t remember which one. But the concept of Indian philosophers and Chinese and so forth; they were willing to put what they saw and what they felt into a certain context, which was, as they understood it in their day, was a description of the way things functioned, and it was a useful description, and really all scientific theory is a description of works. (44:50) At a time. (44:53 student) Whether it’s valid or not is related to whether it can be established to be true or not. So it really doesn’t matter… (45:00) No. But you can’t tell other people. (45:05 student) Well, because other people are not aware of the fact that – (45:10) They haven’t got the background you have either though. That’s part of the story. (45:13 student) If you come from that point though, I mean I’ve talked to other people in science from strictly that point, and you know, there’s nothing you can do that can see, or that they do that can see that these things are possible, and it is possible that we don’t have all the models that are useful in yet. (45:29 student) If you talk to somebody like a theoretical physicist who will tell you that there is no such thing as matter, and that everything is energy, which everything is energy, and matter is just another form of energy. Even time is energy, so for these people who understand you, if you talk to a neurophysiologist who’s been sticking pins in spinal [cards], and measuring how the velocity in nerve deduction and so forth, he just doesn’t understand you, because he just doesn’t have an overall view of the thing. (46:04 student) That’s right ‘cause physics is already undergone that change, that revolution of extracting from the gross the physical – the thermodynamics. (46:14 student)…There’s a book published by a man I almost got to study with, on the history of science and civilization, Joesph [Neadermus], … and this is one of the leading biologists in the world, and he points out how, this is where a hell of a lot of his ideas were reading, Joesph [Neadermus’], ideas. (46:41) Is that a recent book Mack? (46:45 student) It’s published; it’s 7 volumes. Each one is about this [fact]. But the most important one is Volume 2. Joseph [Neadermus], professor of biochemistry, the originator of the field of chemical embryology wrote several very interesting books, really revolutionary books, because he’s the first biochemist who really went into the question of form and chemical structure. Wrote a book called Biochemistry and Morphogenesis, published by Cambridge University Press in 1935… and he went to China and learned the Chinese language and wrote the definitive history of Chinese science at the age of 55. And he’s still writing a 7th volume. It’s the definitive work on the subject of Chinese scientific culture. It’s a fantastic book. But he attempts to show that in China it was possible to develop a science, and that they have a very highly developed science, but that this science was not understandable to western people, and I think this is probably one of the reasons he did this mind analysis study. (48:13) Well, it’s lots of fun to go and look at Chinese systems, but actually what you’re engaged in is American systems, a different sense of systems, and you see the stuff there, because it’s the same phenomena that you’re looking at that that old china man was looking at 3000 years ago. And sometimes it’s useful to use his map, and sometimes it’s essential that you say, “Well, in terms of what I see, this must be the map”. Which is after all what western science is about – supposedly about. On the other hand we face the fact that 9 out of 10 doctors smoke Camels…well whatever it is. You all know what I’m talking about. (49:18) Now, when you look in 1st hours at what is happening, you know that it’s happening too fast to be a fluid circulatory phenomenon. It can’t be. It has to be something else. And at least in your own mind, you have to formulate a something else that it can be. Don’t talk about it too loudly or we’ll all be in the jailhouse, and they’ll be burning all of us at the stake. Some of us need to survive for a while; carry on the good work. (50:02) All this that I have been talking about has been an apologia for my notion that the positioning of the spine is going to have a heck of a lot to do with how the autonomic nervous system works. (50:26 student) Are you acquainted with the concept of reentry? (50:30) No, not really. Tell us about it. (50:35 student) Well, the basic concept for the cardiac physiology and analyzing disturbances of body and movement, and what it says is… if you take a piece of muscle and you compress this piece of muscle, then the conduction of the impulse through the muscle will vary between one part of the muscle and the other… (51:27) Well, this seems a reasonable assumption. I mean…this has been done. (51:33 student) You take a piece of muscle, just diagram it like this, and you compress the muscle here, you develop different conduction times, this can be nerve tissue also, you develop one velocity of conductions for this part, one velocity of conductions for this part, so that what happens is that an impulse may go through here, and this may be the slow one, and this may be the fast one. So it goes down here, it may reenter, and be conducted in a retrograde direction until it gets to this end and then it reenter here. And this is the basis of what is called circus rhythms and so forth and so on. This occurs in cardiac muscle. It occurs on an individual cellular basis, if you have one cell damaged next to a cell that is not damaged, the impulse may enter and reenter from the normal to the abnormal tissue. I’ve never seen any work done on this on the skeletal, but it’s been done on the heart because it involves circus rhythms. (53:02) I would think that on a much grosser scale you’d get very interesting data out of a muscle like the recti abdominea where you have the [origin] through the inscriptor. (53:15 student) So what happens is you may get very inefficient muscle contraction from the normal muscle because the normal muscle may be over stimulated. It may be stimulated during its relative refractive period, and you may have an inefficient movement of the muscle, because part of the muscle is compressed. The nerve impulse to the muscle may be abnormal. … (53:53) We’ll do some thinking about reentry, but I can see for example, that the level on which we’re dealing, I mean on this very gross thing, you would have seen a great deal of this happening in terms of this long muscle of the rectus which varies so much in theory between piece and piece, but in actual practical fact, as you get your hand in there, the rectus up here, and the rectus down here and the rectus down there, have apparently no similarity; you can’t recognize them in terms of your fingertips in the same muscle. Yet in the anatomy books they’re supposed to be the same muscle, and in the physiology books there supposed to. (54:38 student) The point I was trying to make was that quite possibly the flow of energy to a muscle is not a straight linear thing. It may be [flonged] to the muscle and become dissipated because of the fact that certain elements of the muscle are conducting impulse at a different rate, and this may result in a total disorganization of the impulse going to the place. (55:03) But what I’m trying to do is to take, on a much grosser scale than what your measurement is, and extrapolate this whole concept out, and see where so much of our problem comes from, on this very gross scale – it’s been studied on a fine scale but if you take this into a gross scale – you see why we can’t get balance for instance, between the rectus and the psoas. (55:42 student) What happens to a hypersensitive carotid body … (55:10 student) Well you get a reflex stimulation. A person that as soon as you get a strong, big ole tone, you get a strong – (56:12 student) I was just wondering, because you see some people who are pretty sensitive, and other people who are pretty insensitive and they’ve done studies to differentiate what goes on at a cellular level. (56:17 student) They are probably all, some are less than others, but I don’t see that very often. This doctor down in San Diego was implanting stimulators in carotid bodies so that people could take a switch when they have angina, and press the switch, and stimulate their central nervous system. (56:37) It just affected the upper parts of their arms. He could sell us with a second hand and make money. (56:55 student) I thought there were some chemical things to people who had a super sensitive spine… But that there’s a differentiation in function if you do. (57:00 student) I don’t think so. (57:01) Well, at any rate you see what I am trying to say. And I am trying to present you with an overall picture of that flow of nervous energy that goes down, not all the way, through the sacrum presumably, but that goes down the front there, and goes down the front of the sacrum, the front of the lower lumbars, etc. etc. (57:25) Now, I doubt that there’s anyone in this room who hasn’t been exposed to and interested in these eastern ideas of charkas and centers. And I doubt if there’s anyone in this room who wouldn’t, so to speak, jump the chance of equating chakra with plexus. And I’m not at all sure that this is so. You know, it’s a nice simple idea. It’s something that you can talk about down at the table at Eselan, and everybody says “Yes”. But it’s not something you can talk about up in the lunchroom where Mack comes from without having 6 people jump on you. (58:17 student) They’d probably get up and leave. (58:18) Now, somehow or another, you see, you have got to do something about getting a hypothesis which allows a recognition of the fact that physiological function and anatomical structure are not necessarily co-terminal so to speak. (58:47) And you see, as you come down, looking in terms of what we have done to that spinal column you begin to get another understanding of the way in which the change of the actual position of the plexus in space may be giving you a very different functioning of that plexus in terms of the energy body. These are all simply ideas, as you realize. I have no proof; nobody else has any disproof either. We’ve got more proof in what we see right on this floor of this bed here than anybody has any disproof. Their disproof is simply an emotional fighting against that which has not been demonstrated. You can’t argue with emotional fighting anyway, you might just as well confess yourself beaten before you start. (59:51) But take a look at this. Now, see what happens. Your 1st immensely big plexus, your solar plexus, is right up there being literally dragged on by your psoas and diaphragm strings. Your 2nd plexus down the line in order of magnitude, in order of importance, is your lumbar plexus, and the well being of the psoas – and you all have seen what percentage of psoases in this room have not had well-being. They have not been called on for the kind of exercise which induces well being. And exercising the psoas does not mean doing push-ups; exercising a psoas means that when you walk you walk properly. When you breathe you breathe properly. By proper I mean in accordance with the physiological design; the anatomical design. Now that is what evokes the activity and therefore the well-being of the psoas, this whole idea is honored in its absence not in its presence in this culture. (1:01:30) As you go down the line from there, you begin to get the pelvic plexus down on the sacrum, and then finally you get that plexus that is adjacent to the coccyx: This Ganglion of Impar, which possibly several of you had relatively good anatomical backgrounds have never taken a look at. And I was taught by my yoga teacher that this was one of the most important ganglia in the body, because you get the transfer of energy between the central nervous system and the autonomic nervous system in that plexus, and that it has unique properties in this sense. (1:02:38) Now go and look at the pictures in the book as to where that ganglion is and what happens with that ganglion as you get cocci and sacra out of position. [End] |
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