Whole-body Blog

In ancient India, people called shramanas wandered the countryside selling medicines and wares. They were respected for their deep knowledge, full of wisdom and lore. At one time prince Siddhartha, before he became the Buddha, was in agony because his mother had died. He missed her and could not overcome his grief. Thus he approached the shramana who told Siddhartha that the only solution was for Siddhartha to love his dead mother with his Whole Body. At once the Buddha-to-be slapped his knee, sat upright and—overjoyed—cried, “That’s it!” The shramana predicted that the young prince would become a great teacher and then disappeared into the band of travelling merchants from which he had come.

In the Zen I study, the word for “Whole-Body” is zenshin. We are told, as the Buddha was, to practice with our whole body, and that such practice is the path to true contentment, to freedom—not just from our aches and pains—but also from our deepest suffering. There are many theories about how to go about such a practice and why it works. As I see it, the goal of Rolfing is not only to alleviate aches and pain, but also to give people a glimpse of the flow and lightness that are possible when we realize that our center of gravity and the cosmos’s center of gravity are the same, that fundamentally there is nothing that we lack; and from this standpoint, to heal.