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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 Transcripti AUDIO FILE Tape B6 Side 1B MP3 File (aprox. 11MB) TRANSCRIPT (0:10 student) Can I report something? …To your great talent, I couldn’t eat last night. I started eating and kept dropping food all over myself. (0:20) Well if you’d just get your head up! … (0:47) We are coming to our 8 this morning. How did we get there Fritz? How do we look at this? And does anybody see any improvement in Dale? No, I don’t. (1:11 student) He’s got his leg all screwed up. (1:15 student) He’s braver… (1:25) You see, when you’re as tall as Dale, you have an everlasting problem that no amount of Structural Integration is going to really wipe out. What do you do with your legs when you sit on a chair that isn’t high enough? What do you do with yourself when you lie in a bed that isn’t long enough? There isn’t a piece of furniture that really fits that man’s body, and always he’s got to do something with himself. So what he does, and what Eddy Gaheva does, is to wrap their left foot around there right foot, or their feet around the legs of the chair, or something or something or something. They have a problem that is with them 24 hours a day and doesn’t let up. If they are at home in a bed which has been picked out in terms of their height, they’re reasonably well off. If they are at home where they have a chair which is reasonably appropriate to their height, they’re fairly well off. (2:26) Years ago I inherited a very lovely stationary rocker from an old aunt of mine… and I took this rocker, which was really a beautiful old antique piece, and I gave it to one of my sons, who is built like Dale; not quite as tall and not quite as wide, but nevertheless, on of these long legged guys. His waist comes up to here on me, so when the two of us sit at a table together we’re about the same height, but you see he is long legged like so many of this generation are. And I gave him this chair and I said, “Here, Allen, don’t let anybody get this chair away from you, because this is a chair in which you can sit and relax. ‘Cause you tip it back and it gives you the length necessary between your knee and your ankle.” But you see when Dale is set on a chair like that, this doesn’t accommodate itself to him, and so forth and so forth. (3:25) Now in this day and age you find a very great many instance of this problem. And understand that these guys have a problem, and that it’s all very well for your to scream at them, but that there are so many other things that screaming at them so many more hours a day then you can get to them, that you have to expect that they’re going to do the best they can to adjust themselves to make themselves more comfortable. And this makes a major problem out of it. (3:52 student) Automobiles are a big problem. (3:54) Automobiles are another one. (3:56 student) You see, a lot of people who complain about their backs and necks and everything because of the fact they’re in the car. (4;00) Absolutely right, absolutely right. (4:10) I got into a lot of trouble with a guy once, because when he came into the class he could just borrow his wife’s car; he could just get into it. And when he left the class he was so tall that he couldn’t borrow his wife’s car, and he couldn’t get into it. So my name was mud, for a while. (4:34) But at any rate, as I say, realize the problem that these people have, because it is something that is with you forever if you go into this line of habit. It isn’t often, however, that they complain of spilling food out of the bowl. (5:00) So at any rate, Fritz, what have you to say about… (5:04 student: Fritz) …Structural Integration, in a very broad sense, the first 7 hours could be considered dealing with the structure, even though at the end of each hour is a certain number of balancing and organization, and the later 3 hours are devoted to the integration. (5:24) That’s right. You didn’t have a flash. You heard that last session; 7 hour. Yes, I made that point very loud and very clear. That now all the taking apart has been done. And you have to go into a different phase of the work. (5:50 student) It seems now that the horizontal and vertical lines of the body become more important than they have until now. And this is not only in terms of the stance and the movement of the body generally, but each joint is moving in terms of a horizontal and vertical plane. I think this is the emphasis of the latter portion of this, is to deal with larger segments of the body, to try to establish, again, the horizontal and vertical plane and the satchel, the 3 planes around the vertical line. (6:33) I still think that it would be a very good idea to go back, let’s say, as far as the 6th hour, to make it more apparent as to how you pull this together. What was the work of a 6th hour? (6:57 student) The 6th hour is dealing with, ultimately, the sacrum and accomplishing this floating of the sacrum so the lumbar vertebrae can become more posterior and flatter, and the sacrum the tip turns further under, it starts to float and move… (7:23) Well, I like the description of float, however, whether it turns under or it doesn’t turn under, is a question of where it has to go in terms of the balance. So many of these sacrums to which are attached these cocci that have been turned way under – those sacrums don’t need to be turned under, they have to come to a different position. (7:56 student) The sacrum becomes oriented to the rest of the spine in terms of inspired toward movement. (8:00) Now, wait a minute. It does. But you’re taking the wrong end of the stick. The sacrum becomes oriented to the pelvis. The sacrum participates in a more appropriate orientation of the pelvis. You remember we spent a lot of time yesterday talking about the urgent importance of the coccyx in this project. And we spent a lot of time discussing the fact that the position of the coccyx, the relation of the coccyx to the sacrum, all of this determines the floor of the pelvis, determines the adequacy of the relation of the nervous plexi that control the metabolism through that pelvis. (9:17) We also discussed fairly at length the autonomic nervous system, and the fact that the lowest plexus there, is a single plexus, the Ganglion of Impar. And that that ganglion lies in a place, which is quite vulnerable you see. All through your life you’re subject to falling on your little tail end. It’s quite vulnerable. And if you expect to know how to organize a body you have to be very well aware of the problem with the coccyx, the role of the ganglion, and you have to be alert for the role that the ganglion may be playing in the symptoms that this individual presents. And these symptoms may be anything, including heart disease. Because the Ganglion of Impar is not merely an autonomic center, but also receives strands from the central nervous system, and is unitary, that is it’s not a twin center, so that if something goes wrong with it there is no other structure which is going to take on it’s job. And as you know, bodies in general are created with duplicate parts that can take over when something gets injured. Now what happens to that ganglion when they cut off the coccyx I don’t know that I know, do you? (11:43 student) No. I don’t think they remove any ganglia. They remove the coccyx. (11:49) They certainly don’t try to remove it, but you see now it has no span support, and as many of you here know, the person injures the coccyx and is complaining of coccydynia – continuous pain of the coccyx, continues pain sitting and so forth – there is no appropriate therapy for it available, except to remove the offending bone, which is the world’s silliest way of dealing with it. It’s just about as silly as taking off a bunion by taking a slice off the bone instead of turning the bone around to where it was before it turned around to form the bunion. This is so silly there is no use talking about it. (12:45) But you see I want to know, that very clearly in your mind you have this picture of, you are now taking care of one end of that polarity, which you’re going up and taking care of the other end in the 7th hour. (13:11) Now Fritz, what you were talking to me about, this respiratory movement stuff, it is so, but it’s on a more superficial level than, I mean if you think no deeper than that level, you’re not thinking down to the level where I would like to know that you are, conscious of the fact that you are establishing a polarity between the two ends of a field. And you are. This is literally so. And when you have established that respiratory pattern, then what is going on is that you are establishing the span, and through the breathing, over and over again you are doing this automatic spanning and changing and shifting and reorganizing the sacrum on the lumbars, and thereby allowing the lumbars to come back. (14:24) Now you see, not until you get those lumbars back – and the position of the sacrum is going to determine that, but also the position and the freedom and the organization of the psoas is going to determine that. Also the organization of the antagonist of the psoas, the rectus, is going to determine that. And you see, now what we’re doing, we’re backing right down the line and showing you what were the steps on which you had to stand and climb in order to get where you are. So that by the end of the 6th hour all of these things should be approximately established so that the lumbars come back, so that the lumbars are able to have the degree of movement which lumbars are expected to have. (15:30) You all remember Sharon’s lumbars when she came in here. And yet Sharon had had 10 hours, but there was no movement in those lumbars. And I’m not throwing rotten eggs at the processor; it may have been a problem which was too complicated to get done in 10 hours. But in general this isn’t so, unless a man is really in trouble, like Frank here. That certainly isn’t going to be done in 10 hours. But a healthy young woman, even though she has had an accident, shouldn’t have a lumbar that can’t be reorganized. (16:24) Now, only when you get that lumbar back where it belongs with the degree of mobility that it should have, with the energy which depends on a proper chemical quality of the lumbar discs, only then are you going to be able to get up there and really reorganize the neck. (17:10) And, you see, nowhere along this whole system has there been an arbitrary decision. The whole thing is, if you like to call it that, a logical progression. But basically it’s much more important than a logical progression. It is a progression, which you have seen a necessity for, as those bodies stood up there; and one step after to the other has screamed for help. (17:53 student) So really it’s a progression of relationships. (17:55) That’s right. It’s a progression of relationships. But I like to be very sure that the emphasis is in your mind, that in spite of all the yak yakking, and the thousands and the tens of thousands of words that have been battered back and forth between us in an effort to get us seeing the same thing at the same time, that nevertheless it has nothing to do with words, it has nothing to do with logic. It has to do with that thing that has been standing in the middle of this room: a living human being. And what that living human being calls for in terms of its necessities to take another step up. And it’s written on every body that you have seen. And it will be written on every body that you will ever see. What do I have to do next? And it doesn’t always tell you what you have to do next, but it does always tell you what you have to accomplish next. And the hump that’s in the middle of the back might be what you have to accomplish next, but it doesn’t tell you as loud and as clear that the hump in the back may come from some shortened hamstrings, or something like that, you see. Right here you have to begin to sharpen your own eyes. (19:37) So that I want you, as I say, to recognize, the way in which we have, through the logic of the body, not the logic of the words, come to the place where now we have to take heed of the other end of the nervous chain; the big end of the nervous chain. And we have to see to it that we supply for that nervous structure there, optimal conditions. (20:22) And my definition of optimal conditions is defined in terms of your horizontals and verticals. What else can you use? And very oddly, intuitively we know this, and intuitively when we see a picture that talks about the kind of change that Bob Driver demonstrated yesterday, intuitively we know this is right, and nobody could persuade us that the after picture should have gone to the before picture, rather than the before picture going to the after picture. You’d fight that to the last breath in your body. You’d say, “I know this is so. Good god man, can’t you see it?” Of course you can see it. But the fact is, that of course, practically anybody will see it, and anybody will concede that this has to be the place because, some of them will say, because it is beautiful. (21:30) This is a very interesting understanding too; that we see as beautiful that which is functional. There are certain other qualities in beauty too, but yet a real obvious precision of functioning we see as beautiful. And the airline hostesses don’t look that beautiful anymore. (22:04) Then you see, in that 7th hour you are enabled to get the head up and back and horizontal. When you get to the point where you look straight out of your eyes, as Bill Williams is doing right now, and he’s the only one in the room that really is, too. Don’s not doing badly. All look around at these eyes. When you get to that point, automatically you get better vision, unless you’re always wearing the kind of glasses which then anchor you back in your aberration. Because eyes are apparently are also made to perform best when they relate to the horizontal. When they are balanced; when they are balanced in terms of the depth of them, which anatomically speaking is that the sphenoid bone must be the same depth on each side. And you saw what variations you get in that. And the picture of Bob Driver yesterday comes particularly to mind. When we started that sphenoid of his was cockeyed. (23:46) The relation of emotion to this sort of thing, I called your attention to this yesterday. The relation of emotion displacement in the cranial bones, the head bones rather than the cranial bones, and the fashion in which you can organize, to a degree, emotional instability through your organization of that whole head. Now don’t press this too far. There is a place where you can reach into the physical body and affect the emotions, but don’t just think that you press the button and this happens, or you press that button and this happens. God didn’t make it so simple. Maybe someday we’ll discover enough other things that make it more simple. Some of this cranial bone patterning must needs happen. By virtue of loss of tone in a local area resulting from accident or disease processes. As for instance Bob Driver and that funny white eyelid that he had. (25:29) But you see you now you are getting to a stage where you look with much greater precision at the little things that are turning up, and you not only look at them with precision, but you automatically take to fitting them into the picture, into the puzzle, and getting an answer as to what the picture is depicted of, what this puzzle is about. (25:57) Now you see it might, I don’t know, it might in theory be possible to get a head where you had just the heads structure more or less horizontal. And the head was free. I don’t think this is possible, but it’s conceivable. But you see, if you did that, you do not have, you do not get, the relation between these two ends of this field. You must have your horizontal head, and it must be lifted up to the place where you get appropriate and symmetrical spanning. And this calls for the connection through the neck, you see, being appropriate. Now some of you yesterday did some palpating on necks. Who was it? (27:02 student) I did. (27:03) When I said to you “Put your hand here and feel what happens”, as you get the equivalent of a head going up – ‘cause it was on the floor, so the head was being extended horizontally. Get the feeling of what happens in terms of the neck muscles, When you say to a guy, “Get the top of your head up”, and he does get the top of his head up. And then if the converse of this, the recognition of what happens to the guy after you have given him his 7th hour, and you can’t get through his thick skull that he has to get his head up if he’s going to keep it; and there are lots of them. (Several of them in this room.) (28:07) I’ve had my 7th hour.” Yeah, he’s had his 7th hour, but he has not grasped the good that the 7th hour was designed to give him. He’s just let it slip down the drain. And Fritz, I hate to tell you this, but I am talking to you at this point. Get the top of your head up. And as you do it either feel with your awareness, or feel with your fingers what’s going on in your neck. (28:45) Now I know perfectly well that I’m talking as though this were a simple matter of voluntary will. It’s not a simple matter. It is a matter of voluntary will for a while, but you see, as those muscles get to the point where they are balancing; when you use the right side, you are using the left, etc., etc., that’s the time when you reestablish the cervical pattern. That’s the time when it gets in there so that it doesn’t get out of there. (29:21) Now some of you around here, I know, have been in anatomical museums, and you’ve looked at the inside of skulls. And you have seen that the inside of skulls are not necessarily symmetrical. They are asymmetrical more often, perhaps, than they’re symmetrical. I remember my amazement when I first saw this. When I first saw a skull lying in a case, and I looked at it and I said, “But look, this is all crooked”. And as I threaded this whole thing out I realized that I must needs be looking at the skull of the curvature of a scoliotic. Now you are never going to really balance this kind of a head, but you sure can get an awful lot closer to it. And those of you that saw Eric, and what happened to Eric last time, know, have seen that what I say is true. You can get them acting ‘as though’ their heads where symmetrical. And this acting ‘as though’ seems to be all that is necessary for the establishment of physiological activity. (31:10) This is a very important realization and recognition, because you see, we talk in this teaching program, we talk over simplistically. One has to, to convey an idea. But then having gotten that simple-minded, fundamental, schematic recognition, then you have to put into it what you actually see in the actual body. (31:50) We have no bad scoliotic in this group do we? Sherri’s the worst we have. I’m looking for a different type. Well, we’ve been fairly fortunate in this group anyway in having a very great variety of problems come up, and a great variety of structures showing up. Anyway, now we have come to a place where we have prepared those bodies, and at the end of the 7th hour you saw a good deal of putting bodies together taking place. (32:41) Now I call your attention to one very important point in that 7th hour, which I notice some of you are missing in terms of your practice of it, and that is that, it is in the 7th hour that you really take a good look at the trapezius muscle, which is, after all, one of the most important muscles in the body structurally speaking, and you try to get it organized. And you do this by getting this guy sitting down on the floor. And the sitting down on the floor is important for two reasons. One is so you can really get on top of his shoulders. Which you cannot very well as he sits on a chair: it’s too high for you. (Except those of you that are very tall). But the other reason is, that you see, when he sits on the floor his lumbars are necessarily back, where you can demand a spanning necessary to organize his cervicals. Is there anybody that hasn’t heard what I said? (34:19) So you do not go back to the business of his sitting on a chair and you’re taking your elbows and going down his back. This is not what you’re after. You are no longer dealing with the rector spinae groups. This isn’t what you are after in that 7th hour. You are after the trapezius. And the more you look at that trapezius in the various anatomy books - and in a book like Molier, where they put in a picture of the trapezius and don’t realize that they’re putting it in abberated, but where you can look at this picture which they see and may think must be normal because they’ve seen it so many times, there you can get a real understanding of the trapezius, and it’s function, and what you have to do with it. To get it to the place where it’s balancing that head with relation to that back. Because until, and except as, you get a balance between the trapezius and the deep underlying intrinsic muscles, you do not have the kind of head function which you hailed with glee when you looked at the guy turning his head and you said, “Oh, he’s turning on the intrinsic muscles.” But before you can get him to turn on those intrinsic muscles, you have got to get that trapezius out of your way, and you get it out of your way by organizing it. (36:20) And it’s a mighty smart thing to also look at the structure right in here, where some of those muscles cross with funny curves that get stuck. And you’ve never thought of it that way, but that’s the way it is. And you’ve seen this happen, and you’ve seen that as I go down here and I get some of those funny curves unstuck, the guy then begins again to turn his head by grace of the intrinsic, the little, muscles. (37:05) Now, I do not know what the real function of intrinsic muscles is. Maybe some of you someday will get that far along. I do not know why a body behaves more happily, why a body is as a body happy, when it manages to get the intrinsic muscles into the picture and balances it. But that body is happier, and you’ve all seen it. Now it is not a question of intrinsic muscles alone. Every once in a great while, somebody walks in, and low and behold, by virtue of something that’s happened to them, they are basically operating on intrinsic muscles. (38:06) No one was here. No one in this room was present. Last summer when a girl named Cynthia Allen came up from Los Angeles in a wheelchair, wouldn’t take no for an answer, I’d given her at least 12 no’s that I wouldn’t see her, and finally she was so insistent, and I said, “Well if you’re willing to act as a demonstration model for the class, okay”. And she came up in a wheelchair, she was a good deal less competent than Frank. I don’t know if that statement is justified. Anyway this girl also had been in a wheelchair for 20 years, and she managed to, her problem had come as the result of a viral infection, not polio. But that woman could somehow move her bulk around, she could do such a thing as wheel herself into the bathroom and take care of her various toilet needs and so forth. And she moved her bulk around exclusively, as far as one could see, on the intrinsic muscles. And the extrinsic muscles were completely flabby, completely flaccid. And I’ve never seen another person like this girl. Now for her, the road to recovery lay in getting the extrinsic muscles operational. And this she has done in a period of a year, working with Emmett, and as a matter of fact, Emmett got this girl standing inside of 4 hours. ‘Cause after we had given her a first hour here I sent her back to Los Angeles and told her to get in touch, to work with Emmett, who was in this class at this time, and acted as assistant with the work. But you do see this. (40:28) So it is not a question of just getting the intrinsic muscles into the picture, it’s a question somehow of balancing the intrinsic and the extrinsic systems; the inside and the outside systems, if you want to look at it this way. And again, you see, we have got to go and find relationship, and establish relationship, and I’m sure that it is this relationship, which then gives people this feeling of wellbeing and physical happiness. (41:06) And here again, someday somebody is going to be bright enough to take this, and analyze the whole, and manage to get energy readings, energy understandings of the different qualities of these systems. If the intrinsic system works on the autonomic nervous system, and if the extrinsic system works on the central nervous system, one can begin to understand that in order to have balance you’ve got to get both of those systems somehow balanced in terms of tonus, in terms of metabolic well-being, etc. etc. And someday someone will come along in a inner research project, and manage to demonstrate what this is. But at this moment, I see nothing but speculation to give you an answer. All you see is the way it works. (42:12) So, now we get to the 8th hour, and there isn’t a thing left for us to do except put it together, and see what we get when we get it put together. And we’re still in the rather interesting state of mind, where we don’t know what we’re going to get. But we do know that we’ve got to do something about this. Now, how about a line up. [End] |
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