Supported Sitting
If you have upper back, neck or shoulder pain and spenda lot of time sitting in a chair, you may be sitting improperly. Spend some time right now learning supported sitting. You have nothing to lose but your aches and pains. When you are standing the weight of your body is transmitted to the floor […]
Accessing the Mind Field for Transformation
I want to tell you just a little bit about the beginning of my original research in Rolfing, since many of you are too young to have known Ida Rolf. I was a professor at UCLA. Some of my students were being Rolfed, and they came in and told me these wild things about Rolfing […]
The Lotus Position (Padmasana)
Drawing conclusions about yoga from one yoga asana is analogous to generalizing about Rolfing from the fact that some Rolfers put their fingers up the client’s nose. The value some people ascribe to the full lotus posture (padmasana) ignores the fact that the lotus is just one of countless yoga positions. Perhaps the association of […]
Trends in Darwinian Medicine
Introduction While evolution by natural selection has long been a foundation for biomedical science, it has recently gained new power to explain many aspects of disease. This progress results largely from the disciplined application of what has been called the adaptationist program. This increasingly significant research paradigm can predict otherwise unsuspected facets of human biology […]
My Rolfing Career – Thus Far
Introduction This piece is a description of several aspects of my experiences as a Rolfer at this point in my career. I present it with no notion that my situation is unique or exemplary. Actually, I consider the opposite to be true. While my situation has its idiosyncrasies and my personality its share of peculiarities, […]
How to Ask About Musculo-Skeletal Pain and When It Is Not Safe to Work with It
Introductory Remarks The underlined words below are used in the traditional medical language and should be used or at least known when we inquire about pain. They are very descriptive even if they are often based on Latin and not used in daily speech. They nonetheless are very clear and every well trained person in […]
Getting Beyond Manipulation and Movement Cue to an Integration of Structural and Functional lnterventions
I must preface this article by making explicit my assumption that adaptive capability precedes in importance how a person looks in before and after pictures. This may seem common sense, but most of the Rolfed bodies I have come across are no more adaptable or intelligent than un rolfed ones. In some ways they are […]
Explorations – Somatics
There has been an explosion of interest in “alternative” or “complementary medicine.” Congress established the Office of Alternative Medicine within NIH to foster empirical studies of alternative methods. David Eisenberg’s demographic study of the public’s surprisingly extensive use of alternative practices, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, was widely reported in the press. […]
In Profile… An Interview with Rosie Spiegel
Bill: So what’s this about you writing a book? Rosie: My four year project has come to an end, although I think the end is a beginning of something new! It’s all done and I’m really pleased with it. I think I succeeded in putting together the elements that were really dominant in my own […]
Core – Structure & Function
Jan Sultan This whole idea of core, brings up and important issue for me. One of Ida Rolf’s injunctions in the early days was a whole process that was called general semantics, which was, in essence, a science of the use of language. It was in response to the yellow journalism that was around at […]