Have you ever wondered whether, as a trained and experienced Rolfer, you can properly deliver a normal Rolfing® Structural Integration (SI) series to a client who appears to have mental or emotional problems? The answer is yes, especially if you understand the true basis of mental health, which is in the body – a realm in which you have much to offer that client. I say that from my background as a practicing clinical psychiatrist.

Since finishing medical school in 1955, I knew my life’s calling was to help others to mental health. In 1959, at the University of Washington in Seattle, I completed the training required for board certification in psychiatry. Even then, I saw that I did not yet have what was needed to help my patients as I wished to; and two years later I went off to Scotland, to the University of Glasgow, for another year of psychiatric training. My eyes were opened further, as I saw that the interestingly different British approach to psychiatry came no closer to my dream than did the American. As valuable a credential as my 1964 board certification was, I knew by then that the orthodox practice which it represented was like a slow inner death for me.

No longer willing to follow the crowd and do what most other psychiatrists did, I trusted the adage “Seek and ye shall find.” I kept seeking, and found part of what I sought in family therapy and Gestalt therapy. That excited me to find more. In 1968, I went to Esalen Institute, where I took a “Body Awareness” workshop with Ed Maupin. He had recently trained with Ida Rolf, and each time he mentioned Rolfing SI, I felt an inexplicable excitement. When I went through the Rolfing series with Ed, it changed me so much that I knew I had to become a Rolfer. In 1971, I resigned my career position as the director of a state hospital psychiatric residency training to be trained myself by Dr. Rolf.

Perhaps the highest compliment of my life was Ida telling me, “Karl, you are one of the seeing ones.” I guess I must have been; that’s how I got there, to her training. I was able to see instead of to explain, diagnose, analyze, and medicate people. Unfortunately, most practitioners in the mental health field misperceive the nature of mental illness. As a result, most mental health treatment is inadequate.

Over the years, I have become convinced that the essential cause of mental and emotional difficulty is disconnection from our conscious sensing. We have senses that should connect us to external phenomena (e.g., vision, hearing, touch); but especially important for mental and emotional health is to connect to visceral and other internal phenomena. In the mentally ill person, the movement and flow of sensory energy is blocked from his consciousness. “Chemical imbalance,” while it does at times accompany some mental illnesses, most certainly is not the cause of any of them, and interminable treatment of mental patients with drugs profits everyone but the patient. Similarly, psychotherapy is so much less effective than we wish it could be is simply because of what it is – a method to better organize the client’s thoughts, when what is needed is to better organize the client’s bodily structure, energy flow, and awareness. While there are many treatments for mental health problems, in my experience the only ones that lead to healing are those that restore lost awareness of these connections. Keep in mind that a poorly connected client’s bodily awareness might be blocked by toxins, such as drugs, ambient chemicals, or even yeast1 metabolites. The presence of toxins will limit clients’ ability to connect with their senses – and with your ability to work with them.

What can you do, during a regular Rolfing session, to support your client’s healthy inner sensory connectedness? First, when it feels right to you to do so, suggest that the client notice where in the body he feels something – where, not what – and simply allow the feeling to continue. This alone will do more good than one might expect, as most people automatically (without really paying attention) try to escape much of what they start to feel in their bodies. Second, do the same yourself. It’s catching. Your clients (like your children) are more likely to do what you do than do what you say.

As F. M. Alexander said, “You can do what I do if you do what I did.”2 After forty-five years’ practice on myself, more happens when I instruct others to locate and allow their bodily sensations than when an inexperienced person offers the same instructions. In other words, the essence of helping in this dimension is wordless; as with Rolfing SI, our best work is the result of silently communicating patterns of energetic and structural organization from within our own bodies.3

Of course, our work is effective only to the extent that the client is available. If a client expresses great interest in the work, but fails to finish a basic series for no obvious reason, let him be. Often, these clients desire the benefits of Rolfing SI but are not ready to receive the full inflow of energy and feeling that can and should come with it. Just as no client can be required to yield to your touch and follow the lead of your fingers, no one can be required to look for his own internal feelings and choose to endure them to the end – the way that some of the greatest blessings come. Yet, as many of you already know, there is no satisfaction greater than helping a suffering person to healing, using your hands and consciousness to lead them toward that bodily blueprint of perfection – including mental health – where he was always intended to be.

<i>Karl Humiston is and has been for eight years the chairman of the Rolf Institute’s Ethics and Business Practices Committee. This article is based on his presentation at the Rolf Institute®’s October 2011 Membership Conference.</i>

Endnotes

1. The best information source I have found regarding the effective clearing of yeast toxicity is www.candidamd.com. (Disclosure: this is my son’s website, but it is not out of family allegiance that I recommend it.)
2. Quoted in The Resurrection of the Body: The Writings of F. Matthias Alexander by Edward Maisel. New York: University Books, 1969, page xxix.
3. Anyone who wishes my help to improve his skills in this area is welcome to join my online coaching classes. No payment is required for participation. Register at www. HumistonWellness.com.