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San Francisco Rolfing: 7 Easy Steps to Order in Your Life

Tuesday, January 5th, 2010

monitor


Experiences of Order: Mental, Spiritual, Physical, Emotional

Have you ever been in a conversation with someone in which the issues being discussed became more clear? If so, you have experienced the manifestation of order at a mental level.

Have you ever sat in front of a spiritual master and had your worries dissolve? If so, you have experienced the manifestation of order at a spiritual level.

Have you ever gotten up from a massage or chiropractic session and felt like it was easier to walk and breathe? If so, you have experienced the manifestation of order at a physical level.

Have you ever emerged from a haze of anger and frustration into the clear space of good cheer, passion, creativity and optimism? If so, you have experienced the manifestation of order at an emotional level.

[To get straight to the 7 steps, scroll down to the end]


What is Order?

Order has to do with moving to a place of clearly seeing where we are, where we’ve been, and where we’re going. It is the introduction of information to any situation in which the past, present and future are not manifesting clearly.

Imagine you are going to get on an airplane. You are at the airport, you have already purchased your ticket, but you don’t know what time your plane leaves. As a result you are nervous so you look at the monitor that lists departure times. The monitor says that you have two hours before take-off. Appeased by the information, you relax. There is plenty of time before the flight will be boarding.

The information communicated through the monitor has brought order to the situation; and consequently, relative peace.

Communication Breakdown = Disease

If you take a close look at the body and mind there are all kinds of communication breakdowns. There are fragmented bits of past, present and future floating around all over the place: maybe it is a physical trauma that is being held in our musculature to protect the body from pain. Maybe we are suppressing emotional trauma in our cells that our ego is not ready to handle. Maybe our cell walls have too much “bad” fat in them to be able to communicate with the cells they need to to do their job well. Whatever the case, many of the monitors that transmit information that we need to integrate our past, present and future are shut down on a number of different levels.

Now, imagine an airport in which not one person, but most people don’t know what time their flight is leaving and all of the monitors are broken. The pandemonium would be tremendous; the same goes for your body.

Rolfing as Information Medicine

What is so difficult to communicate as a Rolfer is that Rolfing is a process whereby we turn the monitors back on. Once the monitors are on again everyone in the airport can relax, breathe a sigh of relief, and the overall vibe relaxes. People are receiving the information that they need to connect their past, present and future. As a result, they move to a higher level of order, or what we call integration. Everyone is getting along better with everyone else and the business of the world goes on in a happier way.

7 Easy Steps to an Order in Your Life

If you don’t believe that attaining a sense of relaxed well-being is really this simple try this:

The next time you find yourself anxious or upset–

1. Take a moment

2. Ask where you are coming from, where you are and where you are going.

3. Look to see if there is anything getting in the way of you either receiving the past or flowing into the future. (This could be a lack of information on any level. Maybe you are driving a car and looking for a destination without a map, so you get lost, and being lost before an appointment you begin to get stressed out.)

4. Identify the piece of missing information that keeps you from moving fluidly between past, present and future.

5. Trust that everything that you need to link your past present and future is immediately available (maybe you pull into a gas station and ask for directions).

6. Get the information that you need to reestablish the flow between past present and future.

7. Apply the new information to your situation.

Keep Us Informed

Congratulations, you now have the 7 step formula for manifesting order and moving to a higher level of integration.

Let me know how it works for you—or how it doesn’t. Feel free to send in your stories, your difficulties, your triumphs and travails.

Posted in Emotional Healing, Favorites, Healing, Holism, Meditations | Comments Off

The Rolfing 10 Series: Free the Line that Connects You With the Universe!

Friday, November 20th, 2009

The Rolfing Line is that which connects your body to the universe—an actual energetic structure that acts as an antenna: receiving information from what some people call “God,” and transmitting that information directly into your being. (To feel this for yourself, try the meditation at the end of this post).

To be clear, when I say “God” I do not mean the guy with a white beard sitting on a throne in Heaven. We are talking here about what Buddhism refers to as dharmakaya, or what some people call the “source,” “origin,” or “absolute foundation” of the manifest world. Buddhist logic explains the relationship between the manifest and un-manifest very well, but that is more than I want to get into here.

The information that the Line receives and transmits from “God’s” world is the information that your body needs to exist and function in the human one. This information—which some people call blueprint information—is the information that lets your liver be and function as a liver, your heart a heart, your brain a brain, etc.

But you are more than just body parts; you are also a mental, spiritual and emotional being. The blueprint information that comes to us from God’s world via the Line is information that supports and nourishes all four aspects of our being: physical, mental, emotional and spiritual.

Just like a broken car antennae: when the Line gets crushed or dented by trauma, (and this can happen on the physical, emotional, environmental, or karmic levels) it can’t transmit information from the source—the information exists, the source is broadcasting it, but there is no way for your being to capture it. Think of it like this: if your Line is not clear, your whole being is informed by bad A.M. radio—scary.

You could also think about the Line as an irrigation ditch—without irrigation ditches, water from the source would flow haphazardly all over the planes—it would not get to the trees, and they would die.

Same with us: without the line, vital information from the source has no way of getting to us, so we die of thirst (or other things), just like the trees.

The Rolfing 10-Series

One way to think about the Rolfing 10 series is the process whereby your irrigation ditches are cleaned up, which gets you the information that you need to be what you’re supposed to: a radiant, joyful thriving being, enjoying life and making positive creative contributions to the world.

The line is an energetic structure in your body. You can feel it, experience where it is healthy and where it is stuck.

You can catch this experience. You can embody the Line yourself. Try this:

The Line Meditation

In a standing position with your spine straight, shoulders down, muscles relaxed:

Imagine a line of gold light running just in front of your spine from a point just above your head to a point in the earth just below your feet.

Imagining that gold line, how do you feel? Are there places that you can feel it more clearly than others? How do you feel after having imagined it? What happens if you imagine it while talking to someone? Does it change the feel of the interaction?

Practice it, let me know. I look forward to your report.

Posted in Favorites, The 10 Series, The Line | 1 Comment »

The Purpose and Essence of Rolfing

Friday, November 13th, 2009

After studying philosophy, living in poverty, and starving himself on one grain of rice per day, the Buddha decided to stop. He gave up on all of the traditional rules about how to get enlightened, took a forbidden bath in the nearby river and was scandalously given milk by a young woman who saw and felt sorry for him. After that, he began to think of a way to forget all of the teachings that he had accumulated in his wanderings in an effort to find some unspoiled ground to begin his spiritual efforts anew.

What the legend tells us is that as he contemplated this unspoiled ground, he remembered sitting contentedly as a child in the shade of a palm tree, happy without cause, sinking deeper and deeper into his contentedness, losing all trace of time and worry. It was this memory that gave him the idea to sit under a tree, without austerities and punitive practices, just as he had in childhood. Thus he began the contemplation that would bring him to enlightenment.

I like this story because it speaks to my own experience. My memory is of sitting in a room with Sanguran cloth wallpaper, redwood shutters and our first color-TV. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon. It was summer. The light outside was soft and forgiving. I was twelve and I had just finished reading Siddhartha by Herman Hesse. I had been told the story of the Buddha: how he had contemplated the “twelve link chain of causation” and become enlightened.

Having just finished the book I found myself in a state of very deep peace, and in the midst of that peace I tried to imagine what the Buddha must have been contemplating that led to his enlightenment. I remember getting as far as visualizing a chain when, like a secret river, a voice bubbled up that has not left me since.

When I contemplate this moment and this voice, even now, I am filled with love. I forget about the people that I’m angry at, my worries about the future. All of those things simply do not exist. In fact, I do not exist. There is no source, no voice, no “I”. And afterward, there is a sense of order, clarity and peace about the world.

Eventually I entered high-school and then college. I became utterly confused chasing philosophy. I ignored this voice and its source and found myself in pain.

I’m sharing this story because Rolfing as I see it is a way to bring you back to your voice. You have a voice that you know is you. You know when you’re connected to it and when you’re not. When you’re connected, life flows and you have a greater capacity for love; you embody more patience and compassion. When you’ve lost your connection, life sucks. It is dark and scarce. The Rolfing equivalent of this inner-voice is called the Line.

The Line

The Line is your fountain of youth. You can live from it. You can feel it, but you cannot see it. You can manifest it, or not. It gets obscured by going for other things in the way that I went for philosophy, but it can also be recovered, cleaned up and maintained.

The Line is not anatomical, but it effects your anatomy and your anatomy effects it. If you have ever felt really lost or adrift, the chances are—in Rolfing language—that you have lost your Line. If you are having one chronic pain pile up on top of another, there’s a good chance that you’ve lost your Line. If you keep injuring yourself, the chances are that you’re off your Line.

The Line is like a hinge for the door through which your being travels between the manifest and the un-manifest. You want the hinges oiled and working so that they don’t make a lot of noise when you enter and leave the world, or so that you don’t get stuck on one side.

The Line gets obscured in many ways: intense sports injuries, whiplash, breaks, sprains, poor nutrition and toxins in our environment. It is a vital piece of energetic health, fundamental to your well-being on the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual levels.

Of course there are things that you can do to maintain the health of your line: meditation, yoga, live a happy vibrant life, spiritual practice, eat properly. But sometimes the Line is buried beneath so much emotional, mental, physical or spiritual stuff that it needs extra help.

Of course Rolfing can help you to get rid of aches and pain. But in the simplest terms, the purpose and essence of Rolfing® structural integration is to help you get back on-line.

Posted in Favorites, Healing, Holism, Rolfing & Buddhism, San Francisco | Comments Off


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