Interview with Tom Shaver, D.O.
INTRODUCTION Tom Shaver graduated from the College of Osteopathic Medicine and Surgery in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1979; interned at Saginaw Osteopathic Hospital; and was recruited to teach Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine and family practice at the West Virginia College of Osteopathy. From 1981 to 1996 he was chairman of the Department of Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine. […]
Landscapes of Spirit in Rolfing
During the last six years, I have experienced living and Rolfing in Guatemala, then being asked to apprentice to Elena Avila, a Curandera of 20 years in New Mexico (whose book on Curanderismo, Woman Who Glows in the Dark, in which Rolfing is mentioned, will be printed in the spring). From her teaching, I was […]
Some Thoughts on Body and Spirituality
Spirituality is a meaningless term by which I believe we refer to a perception of “connectedness” with what feels like the absolutes of our existence. We sense a relationship which continuously exceeds the trap of object relations, the love and hate of the captive and captor, the separation and merging of the Stockholm syndrome. To […]
The Body, the Cathedral, and the Kiva
The night before I began training in Rolfing in the summer of 1971, I had a dream in which I was presented with a large leather covered folio entitled The Design of the Temple. The first pages were opened to reveal line drawings of a Mayan like temple. The following page consisted of my being […]
Integral Anatomy, Part II
Bill: Just to go through some of the Rolfing® models that we are dealing with on a day to day basis, and how our concept of these models is affected through dissection-You know the party line is that there is a build up of connective tissue as a result of habitual use patterns or trauma […]
Remarks About Structure Starting from an Aesthetic Point of View
When I first began working as a Rolfer, it was in a center where, as well as doctors, there was a beauty department. So I often happened to work with women who had difficulty in accepting their physical aspect. While I tried to motivate these people to feel and to perceive their bodies and not […]
Windows into the Neuraxis
[:en]In the classical view of Rolfing®, knowledge of the nervous system doesn’t seem to offer much for Rolfers. “It’s that other system.” We know it’s there but we don’t have to talk about it. The sheer complexity is daunting, and most books on neurophysiology leave the reader still very far from useful clinical application. I […]
The Rolfing-Sonata Metaphor Reconsidered
In a previous article1, I considered several relationships between formal structures in Rolfing and classical sonata form. At the time, I was aware of certain problems inherent in my melocentric (melody based) approach. To simplify my presentation, I opted to sidestep this issue, although I was concerned that members of my audience familiar with sonata-form […]
Interview with Les Kertay
Bill Harvey: So you’re a clinical psychologist as well as a Rolfer? Les Kertay: Yes. BH: Do you just break it up half and half time wise? Or do your practices overlap? LK: Well, the answer to that question is still forming. I do some fairly straightforward Rolfing®, probably between 30 and 40 percent of […]
“Let us go then, you and I”
This is a most curious book, a personal journey of discovery rather than a theoretical treatise. We might more properly say that we have here a most curious pair of essays that the author sutures together rather loosely and with inexplicable haste. In Anatomy of Potency (Stillness Press, 2000), author Nicholas Handoll covers considerable ground […]