Beneath The Surface

You are the original manuscript from which your business is written. It can be no other way. This manuscript includes everything that is wonderful about you. It also includes your belief systems, likes and dislikes, childhood conditioning, business knowhow, structural integration skill, inherent gifts, savvy, and ingenuity. Then, too, it includes your rationalizations, fears, biases, and varied shortcomings.

Organization development consultants who work with family-owned (?mom-and-pop?) businesses know that the predispositions of mom and pop, as well as the function and dysfunction within their marriage/ family, is woven into the very fabric of the organization?s systems and processes. This can be quite challenging, because most of the material upon which the organization resonates is the subconscious and unconscious material of its founders, and most business owners are unaware that this dynamic even exists.

The internal map of who you are becomes an architectural blueprint to your business. For example, if you have issues with integrity, honesty, respect, feeling worthy, saying ?no,? asking for what you want, or problems around charging or accepting money, your business will produce some dysfunction that stems from these patterns. No marketing strategy or business tactic will save you from generating your patterns. What resolves this is finding, acknowledging, and changing the dysfunctional material within your own psychological architecture. This is why one?s personal process is so important to attend to throughout a Rolfing® Structural Integration (SI) career. You don?t need to have your less-than-optimal issues solved in order to run your own business. You do, however, need to: 1) know what these issues are; 2) clean out the most obvious dysfunctions before they take root in your business; 3) work your personal process on an ongoing basis; and 4) seek out your causal contributions to discord and problems.

We Rolfers are a bit unique from most other businesses in that we are not manufacturing widgets or developing end-use technology. Our work literally stirs up and challenges the subconscious and unconscious material of our clients and ourselves. Therefore, we are in a business where the skill to work one?s own process is crucial. Peeling the veil off our own psychological dysfunction is not an easy task. As Rolfing clients, we have all probably accomplished some degree of this work. As Rolfing practitioners, pushing further is a necessity. In addition, our skill in personal processing can inform us when we?ve erroneously absorbed material from our clients. It can also give us greater confidence in supporting and facilitating clients through the psychological material that arises for them during their Rolfing process.

The great thing about this psychological work is that if we don?t deal with an issue, it will become quite a nuisance; and if we still ignore it, it will become ardent about getting our attention. The two most valuable qualities to doing this work with yourself are the willingness and courage to ferret out whatever you have been mistakenly holding as true ? no matter what it is. Still, you are not alone with this task. You can talk with a trusted friend who speaks truth to you, broach the subject with other Rolfers, or work with a licensed psychological professional.

The more you develop your skills for sleuthing within your own psychological architecture, the more skillful and timeefficient you become in identifying underlying patterns/belief systems and finding solutions. In the human being, our patterns and belief systems literally operate just like a computer application program, dictating who and how we get to be and what we get to experience; that is, until we delete them or find the way to alter, rewrite, or transcend them. Some additional qualities that are useful here are: curiosity, a lack of agenda, a lack of attachment to outcome, the persistence to collect data rather than apply a quick fix, asking questions, and getting precise and clear about what your question is asking.

When working with self, with a client, or with one specific aspect of self, I very rarely ask a ?why? question. A ?why? question will generate a ?because? answer. There can be dozens of ?becauses,? very few of which are the truth. ?Becauses? are usually explanations or excuses (mental constructs). To get useful information, along with more opportunities for revelation, one needs to use questions that begin with ?what,? ?where,? ?when,? and ?how,? as well as the question, ?Could you explain how ?xyz? makes sense for you??

There is a balance that needs to be found here. While your business is you, you are much more than your business, with many other interests, commitments, and diversions. It is all too easy to let other things distract us from the time and self-reflection needed to work our personal process. Fortunately, when we get distracted, the triggers persist as reminders that there is something to attend to. It is also easy to focus on the Rolfing work, clients? needs, or our need to generate cash flow, so that we neglect our other interests, commitments, diversions, and the need for downtime. It is important to remember that our other activities contribute to the wholeness of who we are.

Throughout your career, your business will generate something, someone, or some circumstance that triggers you. You can view this as a frustration or seek out the material in your psychological architecture that is reacting; insecure; injured; hurt; threatened; scared; or hooked on an agenda, the ego, or a belief system. The general rule of thumb is that a circumstance that arises three times, in any aspect of your life, originates from a pattern. Many years ago, a vignette of images came to me. I saw a person walking, stumbling, cussing, and then carrying on as if nothing had happened. The next vignette was the same person, a week later, stumbling hard enough to get injured, and focusing on the injury. The third vignette was the same person, two weeks later, stumbling so hard that the person lost balance and tumbled down a flight of stairs. Then, landing at the bottom of the stairs like a rag doll, hurting and dumbfounded, the person looks up to the sky, as if talking to God, and says, ?What was it you wanted me to notice?? I decided the message was to pay attention to blips and information the first or second time so I don?t have to land at the bottom of the stairs.

Rooting Yourself Securely

For your clients, Rolfing SI is you. Everything your clients experience; everything you say about this work; how you conduct yourself and your business; the actual work you do with clients to help them achieve higher levels of structural integration: these are what your clients use to define Rolfing SI. Since you are the direct experience of Rolfing SI, the who-and-how you are defines Rolfing SI for the public.

Read our Standards of Practice (SOP) and Code of Ethics documents with the intent to fully digest the definition of Rolfing SI, its context, and its implications on how you do your work. If you are a new Rolfer, read the SOP, and then read it again in ten years. I suspect you will be surprised (perhaps even shocked) with how much more you understand, in depth and meaning, after ten more years? experience. Our experience in this work, over time, educates our thoughts/ intellect about it.

One task I gave myself early on was to come up with ten different ways to begin to describe this work to others. For example, how would one describe this work to an architect, an engineer, a computer programmer, a financial analyst, a dancer, a five-year old child, a hairdresser, an athlete, and a physician? What aspects of another person?s experience can be used to form analogies, associations, and similes, which will help the other begin to understand what this work produces?

We know it is challenging to help others understand Rolfing SI. There are three inescapable factors within this challenge. First, just as Ida Rolf said, we come to understand what this work is through experience. We know this is true for us as practitioners, but it is also true for our clients. A second factor is that Rolfing SI causes new dynamics to arise within a person that one can?t imagine or believe possible, until one experiences it. As a result, clients? perceptions are literally altered, over time, about what it is to be physical and about the body?s real capabilities. Perhaps the most pervasive factor in why Rolfing SI is hard to understand is that our society is predisposed to a mode of thinking that breaks things down into parts and pieces in order to find understanding. Rolfing SI is exactly opposite to this mode because it relates everything into larger and larger contexts and systems. Each part or piece exists (or persists) within a larger whole; and it is from this vantage that we Rolfers inquire, analyze, engage, strategize, and change. What can you come up with as ways to help others understand the large scope of Rolfing SI and what this large scope produces in a physical body/human being? Because we are what Rolfing SI is for our clients, we need to clearly state what this work is and to produce it authentically, in accordance with our SOP.

Revisiting the Basics

When I am working my personal process, I am fierce about uncovering patterns that my subconscious and unconscious hold to be true. This has little to do with what I think. These patterns operate behind my thoughts; dictate what I can think and can focus on; produce subtle changes in physical-body responses; and generate circumstances in my business and life. When I began this work many decades ago, physical-body responses were the first guides I used.

Physical bodies are impeccable. They are constantly negotiating conscious awareness, the subconscious, and the unconscious. Bodies know our truth and falsehoods, regardless of what we would like to think. To use body responses as a guide, look over these questions and take note of what triggers you; what you want to discount or ignore; what activates ego or righteousness; and what produces a deflating sensation.

What drives who and how you are? What drives who and how you are under stress? What are you most afraid of? Most insecure about? Most confident about? What do you expect will be no problem for you?

What are your strengths and weaknesses for handling conflict, confusion, and miscommunication? When you make a mistake? Get feedback? Are confronted? What inhibitions do you have about saying what you need or saying what?s true of you?

What do your clients want or need from you: as a Rolfer; as a professional; as an educator/ facilitator; as a human being? What boundaries do you maintain and what strategies do you have for when a boundary is overstepped?

What activities require your time? How do you handle time? What drives how you use it? What are your time weaknesses and strengths? It is wise to build much time into your schedule for administration (you will need it).

How do you handle money? What are your handling-money weaknesses and strengths? How will you deal with money stress when things are slow?

What patterns or beliefs can you oust because they no longer serve or are not the truth? What patterns or beliefs do you need to explore in more detail in order to collect more data or uncover the true root?

Needed in Rolfing SI: How do you handle not knowing? What resourcefulness can you find in ?I don?t know?? How can you cultivate, within yourself, the abiltiy to trust the process, trust your hands, trust your intuition, trust the client, trust the tissues, and trust the structure?

Remember, above all, that your personal process is a process, as are you; so both evolve over time. To make progress with this process, you are looking for tools and methods that produce reliable, accurate, and dependable information as to: what your issues are; how to work through them; and how to find resolution to them.

Using the Right Tools

Some of the questions above can be analyzed with the thinking mind, but this approach will get us only so far. If the thinking mind were set up as a contender against feelings, the subconscious, or the unconscious, the thinking mind would lose nearly every time. And yet, the thinking mind is such a constant presence that many believe it is what and who they are, when it is, in fact, only a tiny piece of who we are.

The thinking mind?s greatest gift is that it is a fabulous analyzer, synthesizer, and processor. We need to use it for these tasks. The thinking mind is the only part of us, and a very small part at that, that is rational and logical. While logic and reason can be a great help, these can also become a great hindrance because all the other aspects of who-we-are don?t respond to, or organize around, logic. The thinking mind regularly distorts, deletes, avoids, and generalizes our human experience, so it doesn?t have the data or tools to override feelings, the subconscious, or the unconscious in a lasting, functional way. It has no idea about patterns and belief systems that act upon us like an operating system in a computer. Since it is a processor, the thinking mind has absolutely no capacity to choose or decide. Given all this, the thinking mind?s ability to comprehend, discover, and heal dysfunctional patterns is quite limited.

When we?ve done all we can with analyzing, planning, thinking, and insisting, and dysfunctional circumstances continue to arise in our businesses, there are some Band-Aid®-type tools available. We can use meditation as a tool to quiet the thinking mind and affirmations to direct its attention. One Band-Aid approach I used quite often was to imagine I could talk directly to my mind (which, since it is an aspect of me, I can) and tell it: ?Thank you for your opinion, but it is only opinion, and I?m here to tell you that you hold no monopoly on the truth,? or, ?I may not fully understand it all yet, but I do know that message is not my truth.?

The indicators that point the way toward finding our own patterns and belief systems are the messages one hears regularly within one?s inner world; the not-so-pleasant circumstances that arise multiple times in our experience; the feelings that don?t seem true to who we know ourselves to be; and any ideas we hold about ourselves that inhibit, prohibit, oppress, or contain. Anything that triggers and activates is also an indicator. Situations and circumstances can give indicators to our patterns; but there is no solution, and no healing, to be found at the situational level of ?he said/she said,? ?he did/she did,? and then what happened is ?xyz.? With indicators, we need to get quiet within ourselves, get curious and courageous, resist quick fixes, and realize that what is needed is data collection and soul searching.

To begin to ferret out the dysfunctional patterns in our psychological architecture, one needs to shift to the pattern and belief-system level (realizing, too, that this level can contain many layers). One clear example of this was the new client who triggered me the minute he arrived at my office. He arrived late, strode past three of us in the reception area without any acknowledgment; and, as he went down the hallway, he yelled over his shoulder, ?Well, are we going to get started?? I was so triggered that I couldn?t address what had just happened. I knew, however, that my triggered state had little to do with what just happened.

I grappled with what was up for me in the weeks across three sessions. This client repeated his behavior at the beginning of every session. In the morning before our fourth session, I was, once again, sitting quietly and striving to soul search for a solution. It became brilliantly clear ? as some belief system dissolved into nothingness ? that I get to ask for what I want. I don?t have to explain it. I don?t have to justify it. I don?t need to rationalize it, and I don?t need to figure out how to change another person?s behavior. I just get to ask for what I want. Then, the other gets to decide to opt in or opt out.

That day again, the client arrived late, walked past me in the reception area, walked into my room, and yelled for us to start. I stayed at the reception desk and yelled back to him, ?I want to know what needs to happen for us to start on time.? He informed me this is the way he is and it?s time to get started. Again I yelled what I had yelled the first time. He stuck his head out of the doorway of my room saying, ?You need to accept it or are we going to dicker about this?? I told him we were going to dicker about this, that I want to know what needs to happen for us to start on time, and please don?t go back to my room until invited to do so. An irate client headed for the reception area saying how dare I treat him this way. I continued to ask for what I wanted. He said no one gets away with treating him this way, and he stormed out of the office and slammed the door. Surprisingly, two minutes later, he returned. He said I was so out of line that he was going to pay me for the session just to make sure I knew how out of line I was. He wrote a check, threw it at me, and slammed the door on his way out.

That morning I got to ask for what I wanted, allowed the client to opt in or out, and got paid for it. I also used the empty session time to go to the bank so he wouldn?t have time to process a stop payment.

Over the course of our practices, circumstances will arise that trigger us. Sometimes we need to address those circumstances directly and immediately. Sometimes, however, like my example, the circumstance arises from some subconscious or unconscious material that is running like an operating system and producing dysfunction in our business. I like to think the universe puts circumstances in my experience so I can find the material within me to be healed. In any event, in these cases, it is important to drop our focus on the circumstance. Next is to recognize how intimately invested we are in our ego attachments and depower these. Then we can begin to do the soul searching and data collection to ferret out the subconscious and unconscious material that is operating in our systems.

This is not easy or simple work. The complexity, layers, and original causes can be challenging to identify. It is also challenging to muster the willingness to pick apart our own psyche on a regular basis. Some don?t do this work because they didn?t know it was possible to change these aspects of self. There are two qualities that arise as we acquire more experience and skill in this work. First is that our intuition and/or our higher selves become more present and reliable. Second is that the information we receive is more accurate.

I hold this work as crucial in a Rolfing practice because, as I said before, no marketing strategy or business tactic will save us from generating our patterns within our businesses. I hold this work as highly valuable because, like Rolfing SI, it releases old dysfunctional patterns, produces change, and lets us find new ways to be. When we undo ego attachments, belief systems, misinterpretations, and those falsehoods held as truth in our psychological architecture, our businesses fare better and operate more cleanly.Your Business Is You; However, You Are Not Your Business