BH: Tell me about your training with Anne Wilson Schaef. How has it affected your approach to Rolfing? Have you started doing counseling during your sessions?

SS: One of Anne’s views which I’ve adopted and that I’ve found to really be true, is the belief that the body will innately heal itself. We as therapists, Rolfers, anyone who has that helper way of being, we don’t need to steer someone to help. Basically, innately people go towards what is healthy. It’s like a rosebud that’s tightly wrapped. When it hits the right components of sunlight and moisture and heat, it begins to unspiral. I believe that inv work has taken on, that quality, that if I provide the salt space the arena of some hands on in provoke, that people begin to unspiral and unwrap themselves. Because body / emotion/spiritual healing is not verbal situation, I don’t want people to talk. I want people to go inside and really begin to experience and come out from that experience. And talking is not what does that.

BH: How would it differ from what you did before? Presumably you weren’t really that interested in idle chatting before you did the Wilson Schaef training.

SS: I was interested in my client processes because people’s process has always been, for me, in the forefront of Rolfing. I used to say to my advanced teachers (Jan Sultan and Michael Salveson) that I had this belief that something about Rolfing wasn’t what we did with our hands. It was actually a tine process of being with a committed person, like a guide. At same point in my training I had gone to workshops that said, “It the heel are pulled in and the feet are a certain way and the legs have a certain structure to them, you can bet this person was abused as a youngster. There are some fundamental things that didn’t happen in their development.”

When I started studying with Anne, I began to throw out all of those signals that I had learned, some of the things we were told to use as guide posts, because it seemed disrespectful to people to second guess where they were costing from. Instead, I would allow them the space by lunching them and allowing whatever comes up to come up. So people begin to speak a little bit more about their experience, or actually have more of their experience while they’re on the table in terms of an unwinding process. That process could be anything from, “Wow, I just remembered something about my childhood” or (the client) beginning to cry and then coming out of few seconds of crying and sat, ”this, this, and this happened.”

What Anne Schaef’s work shows is that speaking it someone, or touching someone, changes their process. I might he working on someone’s feet, not thinking,” Oh yes, look at the short heel,” and then all of a sudden this person will sat. “You know when I was voting and then they’ll go into this thing about how their father had done this, or uncle, Or their mother or something like that. If they begin to say something. I stop working, because the Minute you touch someone, or interfere with someone’s process, that’s just what you’re doing. You’re stopping their process. Now I certainly don’t want someone flailing around on the table for an hour, I wouldn’t call that Rolfing, bill I would call the emotional release having to do with sonic physical manipulations, really their own inner process that I haven’t led them to, I’ve just stayed out of their way.

I don’t ask provoking questions really. I do chit chat with people a little bit and if they start on a track of something, I don’t say, “Well stop talking anti pay attention to your both,” but I’ll call them into their bodies a little bit more, like, “Why don’t you lake in a deep breath and heel that.” And as soon as they get back into themselves instead of speaking, which brings them out of themselves, they begin to unspiral their process more. I’ve seen some really interesting things happen with people, of old memories coming up and getting triggered by touching a certain place. Then I’ll take my hand away and all of a sudden, they’ll go through all of those physical things, they’ll speak a little or cry, and all of a sudden that shoulder is different. It’s not se much me as a Roller making file manipulations but that person getting more in touch with “What was that?” ‘What was hiding in my shoulder?” And I would say that that’s Rally different from what I used to do. I think years ago if somebody started in on sonic type of a process or began a few verbal thoughts about, “MY brother hit me in the arm with a bat,” I would continue to work and maybe ask them a little bit about it. I’d take it more into the verbal or get right into their body and Rolf that thing right out of there. But it’s not what I do now. You could Rolf somebody unlit they’re a jellyfish and if they’re not willing to emotionally release what holding them there their shoulder will never get well.

BH: You said to envy in a previous conversation that you have had the experience of having a physical structure that was more evolved, this was my word not yours, than your emotional structure. How did that happen?

SS: I had been Rolfed a lot. I had first gotten Rolled and then had a bad car accident and got another filter’s or went sessions to walk again, and then had advanced work and then became a Roller and had more work so all of a sudden I had racked up around fifty Rolfing sessions. I realized that my body was working really well and was really clear, but I hadn’t yet emotionally caught tip to where I felt I teas structurally. My structure was really sound. I went for an incredible amount of time without any body work, maybe three years. I didn’t have inv injuries, I didn’t have any problems. But there was something that wasn?t happening for me. It wasn’t until I started tapping into some of my own process, my own emotional process, that I began to actually feel like my body and my being wet. together. I’ve worked with a lot of people who have done a lot of psychotherapy and they say, “I want my body to catch up to where I know I am.” And I had often thought of people needing to catch up if they’ve done their emotional work or their spiritual work. And then all of a sudden, Bang! I realized here I was walking around with a body that really wasn’t a problem but there were some major, major things going on… a rage and an outrage of things in my life that were emotionally stuck in my body, even though my body felt very clear. I see it works both ways, that people have to catch up either way. ‘Mat’s why it’s great to work with people who have been doing a lot of work on themselves. They can get more and more clear that they can go to a new level all the time.

BH: So do you have a sense when, somebody walks in the door they might be in that category of having a body that’s beyond their emotional…

SS: I do, but that’s not the important thing. It’s not important what I feel. It’s important that the person on the table begins to unite those two or three aspects of them selves. You know their physical, emotional, and let’s say spiritual aspects. We think we know something and people just need to catch on to what it is that we know about theme. For me to assume that I know more about that person than they know about themselves feels really wrong. I try not to hold myself as a person who knows. Each person comes in as whole as they can he. They begin to get Rolled and experience the space from ate accepting their for where they’re at. Magic happens a lot of times. And I’m not thinking, “Was this early childhood trauma, or was this the divorce they were talking about two years ago?” It doesn’t matter because people actually begin to unwind by doing very little work.

“You could Rolf somebody until they’re a jellyfish and if they’re not willing to emotionally release what’s holding them there, their shoulder will never get well.”

BH: Now when you say the term unwind, that means something quite specific to rile in terms of tissue actually moving in a whirlpool vortex pattern. Does it mean that to you?

SS It means that as sell as looking at the entire body, that all of a sudden, somebody will jiggle live from an old shoulder injury or their knee will begin to shift and in a larger context their whole body straightens. It’s not lust watching this tissue move so many degrees in one way but it’s that that whole piece tits into the bigger matrix. It’s not real pinpointed. It’s not real exact. It’s all of a sudden that person gets off of the table and looks more whole. And as they begin to walk, they go, “Oh wow, my foot is hitting the ground in a really different way.” And also what I’ve noticed Is that it somebody goes through one of these cathartic experiences where all of a sudden their body has unwound they seem to hold onto the work a lot better than it I talk someone through it. It’s like their being, their self, has released something.

BH: How are you using the word cathartic here?

SS Well it’s their own process. It’s no something that I’ve done. I am not the catalyst. It’ that all of a sudden in that line, and in that space, and in that moment, something has unlatched for them.

BH: You could also use the word discharged?

SS: Yes. I tried when I took a workshop with Peter Levine and Bill Smythe. I tried to really pay attention to all the parasympathetic Stuff that was happening and noire the breathing, and notice the color of the skin and all that, and it didn’t really seem to matter to me because that stuff happens, anyway. And does it really matter if I can track it? And then all of a sudden somebody says, “Aha, you know I realty haven’t been able to move this shoulder in years, now all of a sudden hook” and what they did was really go deep inside themselves. I don’t have to know what’s going on, and I don’t have to lead someone somewhere. And as I said before, I would never want somebody to just, all of a sudden an hour later emerge from the table and I haven’t really done anything. I don’t know that I’d think that that was Rolfing. I definitely do do tissue work, but what their experience is, is not important for me to know. They Could he completely nonverbal in going through this process.

One thing I learned with Anne, is that the minute von start talking about an experience, the narration becomes the experience…that you’re out of the experience. Years ago I remember, when somebody was going through this hard time we might touch them to Show support, but that aborts, the experience. Sometimes I’ll take my hands away and let someone do what they were doing, and that loads then into a new place. I’ve seen when I worked with people through that Wilson Schaef network, that sometimes it’s as though their body knows what it needs to do and I’m almost in the way. I think it’s really neat to see that you can have the inner process and the manipulation together and just because someone fixes a neck doesn’t mil an the neck has resolved. I think if the person isn’t emotionally resolved, that the neck is never going to really stay. To me it’s really exciting because my work with Anne was about letting people go and bringing that into a Rolfing room. Allowing people to go, and with my hands being with them. This is really different from saying, “In this session we’re going to do this, this, and this,” and lead then to where I’d like to see them at the end of the session. It’s really about giving them the steering wheel.

BH: Just out of curiosity, Anne is not a body worker so, what would a session with her look like outside the context of body work, it talking gets in the way of feeling the feeling, if narration removes one from the experience?

SS: A lot of times, Anne’s work is done in a group. There might be a group of people sitting around, and all of a sudden somebody begins to relate to something that has happened in their life if somebody sitting across the room gets triggered by something that was said, that person would stand up go over to a mat and lie there. And that person would he accompanied by a facilitator. The facilitator’s job would he to make sure that if this person begins to thrash, or kick, or punch, that there are the appropriate pillows or safety stuff around, and to be then to support whatever it is that they’re going through. And if they need Kleenex, give ‘cut Kleenex, if they need to get tip and go to the bath room while they’re still in this process, to make sure that the person is able to gel to the bathroom safely, without really trying to break the train of thought. A person’s process can always ht’ put on hold for a while so that their body functions can be taken are of. So the facilitator is not there to lead anything. The facilitator is there to respectfully sit there, observe and make sure that person stays safe.

How does it look? It looks like a bunch of people thrashing around. Sometimes it could look like twenty people on mats screaming and somebody buried inside a bunch of pillows kicking, and thin screaming or doing something. At first when I walked into this training, I thought, “My God, this is like hysteria, there’s no control here” and truthfully to the outsider, it looks like there’s no control. Even the person going through the process is not in control …you don’t sit there and say, “Now I’m going to cry” or “Now I’m going to slop crying” or “Now I’m going to kick.” The control is taken away, and my experience when I’ve been in this work myself, is to go deeply, deeply, deeply within that vortex and allow whatever needs to conic out to come out. When I lapped into some rage I had, something in my own life I was raped years ago so I had done a lot of verbal therapy about it. I had done a lot of experiential stuff about it. I’d gone through rape counseling, I’d done the E.S.T. training, I’d done the Forum, all these layers and layers of stuff kept coming oft but it wasn’t until I tapped in to how really pissed I was, that it look probably five people holding up mattresses in front of me and me ramming into the mattresses and screaming and kicking and pounding Io really gel out the rage that I felt on a cellular level. It seas an amazing experience. And no one said to me, ‘Now we’re going to do rage work.” It came up because someone in the group said something, and all of a sudden any brain began to unspiral in a certain way and I started to get pissed. I didn’t even know what I was pissed about. I was clenching my teeth and holding my fist and about ready to kick someone’s ass inn and I realized I better get to a mat. And a lot of the tines when something like that would have happened to me before, I Would have said something either really stupid, or really pissy to somebody, and then l would have covered it over with a little humor, and I would have Ivied to get up and get out of the room. I might of stepped on someone and they would have maybe retracted and I Would have gone, “Well serves you right for being in the way. hah, hah, hah.” And then I would have trounced around being pissed. Instead I respectful removed myself from the group, put myself down on a mat and went wild. Feeling as though I wasn’t losing control, I think there’s a difference between having control and losing control. There’s a lot of gradations there but that I allowed something deeper than my conscious mind to take over. So when all that stuff happened, I never knew that I was strong enough to have five people holding me back from going through a wall but that was the stuff that was really slopping me from going forward. And I think all the Rolling in the world had not touched that.

When I first really experienced all this stuff and then Anne asked one to do body work ill the sessions with people, I was scared because I really didn’t know hoc I could integrate putting any hands on someone’s body and allowing them to respectfully being their process. My contract with people before we’d start was, “You know you´re here to get some information about your body and if something comes up, you have some choices. We can allow that process to happen during the session or you can begin to take that information, put it on hold until we’re clone, and then you can go off and let that information go, unravel, go into process about it.” Because I think it’s very expensive to pay forRolfing session and lie there kicking and screaming. Most people had that sophistication to be able to say “Aha, this is something, and you know what, I’ll put a little reserve sign on here and I’ll come back to it after the session.” And I know that that’s really what Dr. Rolf was talking about, that people would let go of what they needed to let go of when tine time was right. I don’t think that any of us as Rollers were trained to really allow someone to keep doing that for an hour ore the table. We would put a hand on them, bring them back to the present, give them more information, and let them take care of that between sessions. But this gave me a lot more freedom to give people the choice. And the training for time allowed time to step back and say. I was in awe of the human spirit, and people really know what they need to do.

“For me to assume that I know more about that person than they know about themselves feels really wrong.”

BH: If someone were to call oil I of the blue, without the background of Anne Wilson-Schaef but with the knowledge of Rolling and with a certain expectation that their posture is going In improve, or they’re going to have chronic pain somewhat managed, how do you prep them for the Sharon Sklar experience?

SS: I do a consultation with people before we get started. I do a full hour. hour and a quarter consultation to find out medical history, emotional history I ask them to tell one what ever they ever they think is important. I ask them a series of lifestyle questions because I want it make sure that someone is going to get as much as they need. If somebody conies home front work every night and drinks a six pack of beer then lies there eating snickers bars, that’s not someone I really want to work with. I wane to Work with people who are engaged in their own process, and not trying to drink it away, or negate it in some way. If someone came in and had all these expectations, I would need to remind them that, yes, Rolfing can allow you to find new places in your self, but the expectations of managing chronic pain and things like that are really up to them. I can physically do manipulations with people but I never claim the responsibility of getting people well. I’ve seen a lot of people have the right body work, but they haven?t gotten well because they haven’t gone into their depths to get rid of some of the, stuff that’s clogging the way. I need to address with people in the consultation the idea that expectations, can be detrimental. It you Pitt ten people in a room and they talked about their Rolfing experiences, probably nine, if not ten. Would talk about the fact that a lot of their Pam went away. Not everyone that comes in can really look to that: that they have to be really aware of their own inner process. They’re the ones who make the change, within themselves. It” out about what I “do” I’m there to be committed to that person, I’ll do my best to help them in any way, bill they innately need to heal themselves. It’s not about me putting C3 back in. C3 will go in because I have some of the concepts of how to work that, but whether it stays in is up to their experience and their own inner process. Is that different from how you work?

BH: Sometimes yes, sometimes no. I would conclude that there is a lot more “doing” in my sessions then there are tin your sessions; I could be wrong.

“One thing I learned with Anne, is that the minute you start talking about an experience, the narration becomes the experience… that you’re out of the experience.”

SS: I do an hour’s worth of body work with people. I’m a classic Rolfer. In the first session, we work to release the shoulder girdle and open up the breathing, and tooth into the hips and hamstrings to Iengthen out the back. Second session, legs ant] tort and working on sitting, a lot of movement work. So it’s classic in that regard, it’s not a free for all, but within the context of that session, there’s a lot of space hit’ People to release something that’s been buried. It’s almost like if you take a plunger and you keep plunging everything down, one day all that stuff that’s been stuffed clown is going to blow up and you’re going to get all this crap all over the plate that´s what we’re trained to fir, in this society. Every tine somebody says “Oh not now.” or “Please don’t talk about that now or “Be quiet,” or “You don’t really feel that way.” It’s “Oh okay, they know better than I do. I should really be quiet now,” or “I should do this.” All the ‘shoulds’ plug us up, and then all of a sudden one day, bingo, it all cones out. And I think what I do is keep that overview in my room to allow people to unplug that. I am a real classic Rolfer that then allows people to unplug.

BH: What do you think is important for new Rolling training students fit know about this domain? Anything other than your basic, belief s stem you’ve stated, empowering the client, having the client assume his or her responsibility…

SS: I believe that we have to learn a lot about just that: allowing people to have their own in not process. A lot of Rolfers are learning about manipulation and ways to release tissue as it they’re the ones who are really doing it. We need to realize that yes, we have a direct interaction that we created by putting Our hands on, but once we gut that started, it respectful of the person to step back and see that it’s their job to be the one to release things. Anytime we put our hands on and do anything with pressure or manipulation or direction, we nerd to realize that we have to be humble; we don’t fit people. People fix themselves. We can learn the tools of Manipulation but we also have to learn how to step back and allow someone to unspiral themselves. For me, years ago, exploring movement work was really important ill seeing the emotions that get locked into the body. I kept thinking, “If I do this, this, and this to this shoulder or Ibis elbow that person will get well.” I began to see that some of these people with chronic tendinitis, they insist on continuing to do what they do. They’re not getting well. That doesn’t mean that I’m not a good Rolfer, it means that they’re not really ready to take the steps to say. “Okay, I have to change my lifestyle.” We can advise people, but we can’t make them do it. For years I received excellent, Rolfing. But until I was able to allow myself to unwind from the inside, I had a structure that I really didn’t live ill. Now when something happens, I feel it in my gut. I live more truthfully to my own perception of my body. We have to help our clients h’ he aware at their own perceptions of their own bodies.

I credit a lot of the people who have Rolfed me with doing great work. Until several months age, l was running to Santa Fe to get Rolled by jut whenever I had a fall or something because lie’s a real master. I realized I had to do a lot of my own work to process his work. There’s a whole arena that new Rolfers have to learn that’s not just about what do you do your hands. It’s very exciting too me, I wish there was some way I could put this in a Nix and say “Here, here’s something for everyone.” But I think a lot of this experience has to conic from just experiencing it. II someone had said to me that day “You looked really pissed,” I don’t know if I would Have really tapped into that rage. It wasn’t ,anything that anybody said, it was really feeling that gut felling of “Holy’ shit, I feel like I’m going to tear the head off a chicken right now.” Feeling my fingers clenching up, my jaw getting tight, acknowledging that, and taking (lie time and the spa,to lie down and let that (happen. In life, we get so busy, we don’t allow those thing: to happen, to stretch out on the bed and say I’m going to be here (or an hour, and see what shows up. I’ve been guilty for not allowing myself to have that unstructured time to be with myself in a way that allows things to happen.

BH: You are amazingly articulate. I am enriched by your experiences.

SS: I’m still really formulating this tar myself.