My Rolfing experience (so far)

This new developement has given me an great amount of extra energy.

On the weekends, I'd been working on the front lawn, digging and mixing dirt and such, but could only do it a couple of hours until the sun got too hot, and I'd be stiff and sore.

This weekend, on Saturday I worked out there 4 hours, and today, for 3. No soreness, no stiffness. On top of that, a lot more got accomplished.

Earlier this week Mr. Tea looked at me and asked "Have you lost a little weight, or is it just getting rolfed off?"

I know my weight hasn't changed, I'm carrying it differently.

Sounds like Wally wants to get laid.

Well his clever little plan worked too.

I had plenty of energy left over.

Rolfing sounds so.... dirty.... I've no clue what that is (will read from page 1).... but whenever I see the thread title I get startled a little.

I have to admit that I got a little excited myself.

Ok, how about it I use the technical term...Structural Intergration?


of course, that'll just take gus over the edge.

i'm sure it will!

I would happily settle for just becoming self actualized.

5th session - Wow...what an education this session was. A lot of food for thought.

Forearms and chest

On the forearms, opening the structure between the 2 bones allows your arms to rotate out more freely. We all to a lesser or greater extent have the pattern of turning our arms inwards.

That, in turn, effects your hip area. It feels like when you can turn your arms outward, your hips follow.

As Sandy's working on different areas, I can actually feel deeper layers moving.

Next part, the chest. This is really difficult for me to discribe. If she hadn't been discribing to me what she was doing, and showed me how much pressure she was applying, I would have been saying it was painful.

Ok, she was working on my rotor cup, right side. I winced and grimaced and it felt she was just pushing one of her fingers really hard into a bone. She stopped and said "let me show you something. I'm going to do the eact same thing at exactly the same resistance on another part of your body." Then, she put her fingers on my side and pushed....I said "No! Really?"
What she was doing on my side felt like nothing. Just a gentle push that you might give to someone while talking to them and reaching out a hand.

She said my upper body was really tight. Tighter than the average of people she works on.

Then, she taught me was was happening. She said when she applied pressure to a spot, like on my rotor cup, she felt a knot of facia. Without moving, she will just apply this steady pressure, until the knot begins to "break" under that pressure. Then, as it breaks, the muscle starts to move away from the pressure, further breaking the tight bond it had formed.
She emphasized she was not breaking it herself, just applying enough pressure for it to slowly move on its own.

I said "Like a glacier moving...slowly, but on it's own?"
yeah, like that.

Hey, I have more to say on this session, but I gotta go right now...I'll be back.

so yeah, I'd think if you were the type of person who feels a pain somewhere in their body and just thinks "I have to take a pill for this so the pain will go away" you may not be trying to figure out what is the cause of this pain, and what you can do to get rid of the root cause.

Sandy was talking to me about how different people come to her, and which ones present different challenges.

She said that people who come to her with a specific complaint and say "fix this part" without wanting to relate it to their entire structure will either be surprised when they see how they improve as a whole, even if the area they started treatment for isn't 100% improved. Others show up for 1 or 2 sessions, and never come back.

She said the hardest people to work with are bodybuilders. The type who have really developed muscles, but in reality, not a strong core. She knows I row, and said she thought I was using extraneous muscles too much, and not using the strength from my core. As she's working deeper, this makes sense to me. If your core gets stronger and stronger, the branches and twigs will naturally be stronger too.

We've all seen body builders who can't seem to bend over to tie their shoes. They've sacrified flexibility for the bulk. It's physcially harder to separate their facia from muscle and also to educate them to change their patterns. It's all about flexibility.

Anyway, today, while in my underwear brushing my teeth, I could see how my shoulders ARE more, um....back, I guess you would say...like when you tell someone "shoulders back"...but, it's not forced looking, it's just where they are placed.

Before yesterday, if I held my hands behind my back, it wasn't altogether comfortable, I could feel a pulling in my arms.

Now, I can grasp my wrists behind my back with little or no effort.

cool.

Chai, I may have said this already, but, you're a wingnut.

whoops.

skipped writing about the 6th session, which was my back.

Not just my "back", but the entire back of my body, from stem to stern.

Now she was getting deeper into the bound up areas....yeesh....

Things I thought were good for me to be doing all these years, were actually making things tighter.

Like, when standing, I'd hold in my butt, contracting the gluts, thinking that they were supporting my frame.

No...what I was doing was throwing my hips back and jerking my pelvis backwards.

I asked Sandy "aren't the gluts supposed to be the biggest muscle group?"

"well, they are large muscles, but if you're moving properly, they don't have to be as firm and developed as a lot of people think they need to be."

go figure.

anyway, she worked on the backs of my legs, gluts, hips and back area. Surprising, she really didn't spend a lot of time on the actual back.

**********

This leads to the tie in for the 7th session...and how the fact my gluts were too tight not only threw back my pelvis, but to compensate I'd draw up my shoulders (this I knew I did), which in turn tightened the front of my chest, causing me not to be loose in my upper body....whew....

OK, back in the 6th session...I will admit for the first time that WAS painful. But, that said, it would be intervals of let's say 20-30 seconds. It was not only bearable, but considering what it lead to this last time, completely worth it.

Session 7 again worked on my chest, and also arms and the sides of my body underneath my arms.
She worked on my shoulders from the front, and again, I had that feeling of a drumstick of a turky just naturally falling away, like there was suddenly more room in my body...well, not "like" there was more room, there was.

Working on the chest was weird feeling, almost like an emotional thing. Those chest muscles are right there by your heart and lungs, and I never thought about it, but I guess we all protect that area because of those organs. To feel the muscles moving around and feeling like they are, um...moving around your heart muscle and lungs is very very disconcerting. You know how you can have a emotion well up inside you, and you don't know whether you want to laugh, cry, puke, curl up, whatever? That's what it was like.

However, it really made something amazing happen.

As I said, I always had this thing of raising up my shoulders. Didn't matter if I was really relaxed feeling, if I thought about it, I could always lower my shoulders from where they were, and inch or two.

Now, my shoulders are down, and simply don't rise up. I just tried to make them go lower than they are right now...and there's no place for them to go. They are in position.

This whole thing is just so amazing.

Well, somehow I skipped recording on #8, because I just finished #9 last week.

This was a very difficult session, both physically and emotionally.

I'd read in a couple of places that when a particular area is rolfed, it might release various emotions at that moment. I think it has something to do with what was going on in your life at one time, that may have caused you to tighten up there.

As I've noted before, my upper body and chest area were very very tight and bound up. I do remember for years when my life was full of stress I was always clenching the muscles there.

It's because of my upper body that I've decided that after the initial 10, I'm going to take a break for about a month, then do one or 2 more, a month or so apart, so work on this. I feel there's more to be done.

Anyway, she worked on my forearms my side up near my armpit, across my chest, and although it was a very unpleasant experience, I'm glad for it now.

Yes, this last session was painful, but, not the kind of pain that lingers. I knew I had to get the work done, so I just gritted my teeth and rode it out. Mostly was hurt was doing the forearms and under my arms.

The most unpleasnt part was doing my chest. It was not so much physical as emotional.

As she was applying pressure, I was overcome with the most intense feeling of grief. I mean REAL grief. I told Sandy and she asked me to describe it. I said "It's like if someone just told me that the person I loved most in life just died. The moment before you start wailing, like being in shock and disbelief".

I think the only reason I didn't start to sob or moan was because I knew no one had actually died, and this was just part of the process.

Anyway, she said she's had a number of people tell her they experience strong emotions when a certain part of the body is rolfed, like anger, or dispair.

Yeah, that's what I felt, dispair.

But it's like now it's released, not from my mind, but from my body.

Very interesting.

Muscle memory.

fascinating...
I just read this thread for the first time.
I'll have to think about this... I have all sorts of muscle and joint issues.
Going off to read your previous thread...

Is Mr Tea still thinking about trying it?

not that my opinion will sway anyone, but I had to say that I just saw Chai last week, for the first time in almost 2 months and I'll be damned if she didnt LOOK diffrent.
She was straight ( as we all know she is a bit off anyway.. but..)

She seemed taller, and just more steady.

It was odd, because you dont typically notice things like that about a person until it is a drastic change. And since I have not seen her in a while before then, it was really diffrent...

Chai--

I'm glad you reminded me about relaxing tight muscles and re-living grief.

Yesterday the chiropractor found five muscle knots on my back. She could feel the tightness and hear me squeaking in pain.

I spent much of yesterday close to tears for unspecified grief.

Thanks.

I ended up going for more than the 10 original sessions, more like 15.

On the last one, I asked Sandy, jokingly, if she could rolf my face.

"Sure" she said, the muscles there are like anyplace else.

So yesterday, a couple of months after I finished my body work, I went back to her and had my face structurally integrated.

Normally, my face is quite animated, eyebrows moving with my thoughts, lips pursing, one side or the other moving up or down according to my feelings, narrowing eyes at something, etc.

Now, my face feels unusually still, I actually look better I think, partially because of that. Also, around my mouth, there's more lift, and the area between my eyebrows is definately smoother.

Wally has finally started going for the series, and has just completed #3. It's helped his pain so far to a moderate degree. He says he feels lighter on his feet too.

Keep us posted on Wally's adventures.