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San Francisco Rolfing®: Getting in Shape for Real

Monday, December 21st, 2009

Yoga In Ancient Times

Even in ancient times Yoga was not an end in itself, it was developed to help strengthen both the body and mind for deep contemplation about the nature of the self and the world in which the self arises. It would be great if all of the things that we did today—the yoga, Pilates, massages and Rolfing served such ends—that is, a path of inquiry that led to the profound contentment of enlightenment.

But they don’t.

Technology and the Healing Arts

How the healing arts—or any technology—serves our lives is up to us. They are the gifts of great innovators and healers; handed down to us from people with profound vision and ingenuity. But technology—in any field—is no guarantee of wisdom or inner peace.

A Life of True-Love Is Not Something That Someone Can Give You

A life lived in true-love is not something that someone can give you. It is not an item to be bought or a land to be conquered. Rather, it is a goal that you must put before yourself and set to work on with passion enough to overcome the many obstacles that you will encounter on your way to achieving it.

If that is the spirit with which you come to a Rolfing session—then, in the hands of an adept healer, you are practically guaranteed the self transformation that will be required of you for attainment of your highest goal, the backbone that will be necessary for you to recognize and forgive your mistakes, process trauma, and everything else that has pulled you off your line.

Don’t Short Change Yourself

If you are in agonizing pain then by all means, get to your local Rolfer. But don’t short change yourself. Realize that when your pain is gone you are in the position to elicit the support of a healer that is now available to help you get your life’s work done.

Therefore, before your session, do a little soul searching, a little work. Contemplate your purpose in life—your unique contribution to the world. If you do that, I almost guarantee that a world the likes of which you could probably never have imagined will open up for you. Your life will present possibilities and an easiness that had remained hitherto unknown.

Let’s Get in Shape for Real

My 103 year old Zen Master once told me that it is important to realize that we are never enough. There is a lot of work that needs to be done. We need to find new sources of energy, creativity and wisdom—in our bodies and minds. We need to begin gearing up for some serious change.

Our planet is in desperate need of repair. So why not start with ourselves? Let’s get in shape, for real.

Support for Transformation That We Need

Rolfing, massage and the other healing arts are not just ways of feeling better—they are resources for a better life and better ways of living, which combined with noble intentions, may yet—despite what embittered skeptics say—find their rightful place in the world.

I believe that the healing arts provide the support for transformation that we desperately need, if only we can learn to use them before it’s too late.

Posted in Healing, Holism, Massage, Meditations, Rolfing & Buddhism, San Francisco, The Line | Comments Off

San Francisco Rolfing®: Getting Closer to Love

Tuesday, December 15th, 2009

I take off my shoes, my jeans and my coat. My body is gently pressed by comfortable heavy blankets into a warm table, sinking into it like sand; dried-out tired knotty muscles loosen beneath slow deep strokes of hot lavender-rose oiled hands—now drifting and scattering into the chirps of birds. I disappear into the high clouds of oblivion.

But now it’s over. The massage ends—the bliss fades into a din of children asking for video games, a boss that wants thirty new animations by tomorrow, a spouse nervous about the cluttered closets and how there is not the time for all that needs doing.

The Healing Moment

Has it ever happened to you. . .

That in that moment of deep relaxation, as your ego lets its guard down, you catch a glimpse of your life—the unedited version—and are walloped by the realization that it is not joyful and thereupon vow to change it?

It would seem that such a vow marks the beginning of a life suffused with love.

Those Who Live Cheerfully Do So For What They Love

Of course no one can escape the claims of old age, sickness and death—but the free ones meet these challenges more gracefully than others. Maybe it could be said that those who live cheerfully do so for what they love.

What, for example, would you as a mother or father not suffer for your child’s happiness?

When you connect with your highest purpose, your highest potential as a human being, aches and pains don’t go away. They become less significant in light of the love for which you live.

Try This The Next Time You Are Cranky and In Pain

So try this—the next time you are cranky, in pain, deeply troubled or suffering, ask yourself: what is this all for? Then dig deep until you find that within you which cannot be broken.

That Within You Which Cannot Be Broken

If that is not possible, get help; because guaranteed, that within you which cannot be broken is there. It is your home—your real home—and you must find somebody somewhere that can help you to recognize it.

You cannot lose, and you cannot escape the innate health and vitality that is always with you—this is the standpoint of Rolfing.

Debilitating pain in your back, joints and nerves is usually effectively addressed with Rolfing, but this is just the first step in a process of radical transformation. The path of a truly happy person requires a shift of attention from pain, suffering and scarcity to creativity, courage, and generosity.

Rolfing and many of the healing arts available here in San Francisco are breathtaking opportunities.

Rolfing is certainly a way to feel better, but it also provides you with a map of inroads to your highest potential as a human being.

The Logic of Rolfing

The logic goes like this:

Shifts of your fascia, muscles and bones = shifts in your heart and mind = shifts in your spirit, which brings you closer to love—the vital ingredient: available to anyone who is willing to work for it, essential to our happiness; paramount to cultivate for the survival of our race and the planet’s health.

Is Your Life A Reflection Of That Which You Love Most Deeply?

So take a moment to reflect and write down–what is it that you live for? What do you love most deeply? Is your life a reflection of that? If so, how could you serve it better? What does your love demand of you that you cannot fulfill? And if your life is not a reflection of love—what is getting in the way?

If you can’t figure it out give your local Rolfer, healer, Zen Master, priest or shaman a call. They are there to help you. Their job is to cultivate the practice of love.

Posted in Healing, Holism, Massage, Meditations, San Francisco | 1 Comment »

Rolfing Touch at the San Francisco School of Massage

Friday, November 27th, 2009

This Thanksgiving, reflecting on some of the things I am thankful for I realize that I am greatly honored to have been able to assistant teach with Certified Advanced Rolfer® and world-renowned deep tissue massage specialist Art Riggs at the San Francisco School of Massage. Over the past two weekends I spent three days with some of the most positive, inspired, curious, passionate and dedicated San Francisco body-workers that I have ever met.

Helping them to refine their touch, one of the things I learned is that the standpoint you take as a practitioner will have a big effect on your client, as well as your ability to work.

Rolfing Touch

To teach Rolfing  touch as I was taught it by my mentor Dr. Jeffrey Maitland is to teach how to contact a person in such a way that both client and practitioner disappear into a singular fundamental reality and reappear changed. It is a unique kind of touch deeply informed by phenomenological philosophy and Zen Buddhism. What was exciting to see these past two weekends at the San Francisco School of Massage is that this profound way of contacting a person can easily be taught.

A Personal Account:

This personal account from CMT Frank Lopez explains more than I can say:

“I am indebted to you for teaching me a different, gentler means of penetrating the body for deeper work. I accept rather easily the clearly mechanical means of making adjustments: in this case, to rib alignment. That you were able to help me follow the subtle movements of the body to satisfactory resolution of a compromised rib really blew me away. It did, in fact, require me to take a leap of faith. That I have been able to replicate this approach on my own has really had an effect on me: it has altered my approach to massage. So, again, thanks for helping me see this option to working with the person on my table.

Last night I did back-to-back massages of nearly 2 hours each. And through a fair portion of the massage I just let my hands follow the body. I felt to some degree like I was just along for the ride as knot after knot melted to my touch, ribs settled themselves into place and vertebrae gently eased into more natural positions. What’s more, I was able to “work” those longer sessions last night because I felt no fatigue due to this new approach.”

Mirror Neurons, The Physiological Explanation

There are actual physiological explanations for the effectiveness of this kind of touch, especially as explained by the recently discovered function of mirror neurons. But that is more than I have time to go into now. (For more information about Mirror Neurons, either send us a request with your email address and we’ll hook you up with some terrific links, or stay tuned, as this will be a topic that we treat in great depth in an upcoming blog).

San Francisco Tutorials

Also, many of the students at the San Francisco School of Massage were interested in having more practice with this way of doing massage, so we are now providing two-hour tutorials for up to 4 people. If you would like more guided instruction or want to learn more about what goes into this kind of touch, feel free to give us a call. We will also keep you updated about upcoming tutorials and other events.

Learning a profound way of touch is an opportunity for you and your clients to be greatly transformed. Introducing Rolfing touch to your practice will most likely bring a lot more enjoyment and ease into your hands, body, and life.

Posted in Massage, Rolfing & Buddhism, Rolfing Touch, San Francisco, Teaching | 2 Comments »

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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