Writing an article about a non-linear experience fits the definition of an oxymoron! Just as the description of a drunken sailor?s walk must be linear and logical, the event itself is neither. Having said that as an introduction, I now propose to write a story of how in some ways my Rolfing® Structural Integration (SI) practice has taken a non-linear circle back to the beginning. Writing about this journey requires some significant measures of linearity, though the events and thoughts of the journey are not linear. They fit in where they fit, not necessarily in the order they occurred, nor in the importance I now attribute to them.

One of the early stories regarding the development of the ten-session Rolfing format was that Dr. Rolf originally created a series beginning with work below the waist, specifically the legs and feet. This was done to emphasize the importance of our connection to the earth and our relationship to the universal gravitational field. She later became dissatisfied with that beginning and replaced it with a session focused on the chest, upper body, and breathing. Rolf stated that it was necessary to establish enough energy and vitality to help the body integrate the significant changes that would be introduced in the subsequent sessions. This early emphasis on breath and vitality established a systemic basis for my work that carried me through the early times of my practice. It worked well.

Another element that came in was that I had been playing around with neurolinguistic programming (NLP) and Ericksonian hypnosis and was beginning to notice how my work was taking on the feel of nonverbal communication with the body. More importantly, it appeared that the body was communicating to me in ways that were anything but logical, linear, or linguistic. At the time this nonlinearity didn?t seem to be getting in the way of the physical manipulation aspect of my work. The work was fun and challenging, and since it was neither verbal nor linguistic, I just enjoyed the nonlinear part of the work as a side benefit to keep me interested. But I was paying attention.

Around that same time, I started hearing more about working with the skull in the way some osteopaths had been doing since the beginning of the twentieth century. I was interested enough to get the training required to be competent in two separate but probably related forms of body work, both systemic with fairly well-defined treatment protocols. Thus, Rolfing SI and cranial work carried me through my mid-practice life, and worked well.

After taking an advanced Rolfing training, I began to think more about non-formulistic series. I was already paying enough attention to the above-mentioned nonverbal communications to have a rudimentary understanding of its vocabulary and syntax. Then in one large conceptual leap, combining attention, nonverbal communication, and the systemic concepts imbedded in energy and vitality, I concluded that all I was doing was one session, over and over. The physical manipulations of the sessions changed in relation to the client?s structure and circumstances, but my focus and intention were consistent. I began to use the metaphor that each session was like looking at a gemstone through one of its many different facets (same gemstone, different perspective). I never did get to the point of the bone manipulators who only adjust one bone (e.g., the atlas); my deep intention was not manipulation, but rather the systemic organization of the person in three-dimensional space.

I had some friends and clients who liked what I was doing and wanted me to share what I knew with them. At the time, I thought that teaching the details of cranial work would be more straightforward than teaching the basics of Rolfing SI, and that I could create a small training in that. But by the time I got around to organizing a training, I was disillusioned with teaching based on mastering treatment protocols. Instead, I thought I would introduce the material exclusively through awareness and touch, allowing what you feel to guide what you do. Easy, right?! Just put your hands on the head and notice what you feel. Some of the glib statements that came from my lips included, ?Do this and it will change everything that you are already doing with bodies?; ?Enter into this learning with a beginner?s mind, do not let your prior knowledge get in the way of what there is to learn?; ?This is intended to advance your skill level beyond what a didactic training would.? It did all that and more, but mostly to me. My students, on the other hand, were confused and overwhelmed.

You may recognize some of those thoughts coming from the realm of General Semantics (Alfred Korzybski: ?The map is not the territory?), awareness meditation, and epistemology (how we know what we know). I was, and am, deeply interested in how our mind filters the raw information of the universe into something that we can make sense of without going bonkers. The problem is: once we become familiar with filtered information, we no longer have as good a grasp of the unfiltered universe. A consequence of familiarity is that we see, feel, and experience what we already expect to see, feel, or experience. Unexpected information is either ignored or, more likely, not even on our radar; it just doesn?t exist! The set of blinders we create as we filter raw information gets in the way of perceiving and acquiring new knowledge.

<i>Enter Rolfing SI.</i> Once I began to think about filters of experience and awareness, everything was subject to questioning. What would the stuff under my hands feel like if I didn?t already know that it was fascia, it was plastic, and I was in charge? The more I considered this, the more uncertain I became. At first it was easy just to expand the model to include bones, muscles, fluids, nerves, and everything else in the physiologists? handbook. But ultimately it led me to the realms that I think of as multidimensional chaos. What if the stuff I?m working with isn?t fascia, and what if it really isn?t changing in the ways I?ve always thought? How dare I have the hubris to think that I know what a balanced, functioning system would look like for this client? In the grip of this confusion, only the solid grounding of my work based in feeling and sensing with my hands and, ultimately, what I call my whole ?sensorium? (there is something under my hands; it moves, and seems to be happier in the new position it attains) allowed me to continue working un-befuddled.

<i>Enter cranial work.</i>

By this time, in addition to the above questions regarding Rolfing SI, I was having serious questions regarding the cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) theory of movements of and within the skull and began looking for other explanations or theories for these cranial movements. In brief, I no longer accepted that a 0.05 milliliter (0.06%) change in the CSF could overwhelm the 25% output of the heart that was channeled into the skull and back into the vascular system through the cranial sinuses. Then I read about the Traube, Hering, Mayer (THM) waves of the cardiovascular system (Schleip 2002). I knew that John Upledger, D.O. discounted them in his first book, but there are more recent studies that are not as easy to discount. One by Patrick Botte (2010) used Fourier analysis on multi-variable data to show correspondence between TMH waves, breath, and the three primary cranial waves that cranial therapists monitor. (It is not clear how the CSF model can explain the existence of the three tides they talk about.) At this point I am intrigued but not convinced by the THM model. However, I suggest spending enough time with Botte?s paper to begin to get a feel for the complexity of the relationships uncovered by his mathematical modeling. Regardless of the theories, I feel what I feel, and use that to initiate changes; it still works well.

<i>A few more thoughts on this topic: </i>

In chiropractic Sacro-OccipitalTechnique (SOT), the generating impulse for the cranial rhythms is the breath. The mechanical gymnastics that convert that impulse to skull movements is not germane to my thinking, but I do think it is a valuable thought.

I recently read some osteopathic thinking regarding the effects of holding the base of the skull and the sacrum. It is considered a calming hold for the autonomic nervous system. (Remember Rolf and pelvic lifts.)

Just as I was editing this article, I was reminded of Rolf?s comments regarding Emanuel Swedenborg?s theory that the breath was the causal source of the circulation and pulsations of the CSF.

One more diversion and maybe I can get back to talking about Rolfing SI, although I have been talking about Rolfing SI all along. Somewhere in my explorations of THM waves, I was attracted to reading about polyvagal Theory (Porges 2007). In trying to make sense of this dense theory regarding the autonomic nervous system, I was reminded of the vagal effects ? heart rate variability (HRV) and respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) ? of breath on heart rate. By looking at these effects as relational rather than a causal, I could see how breath, vagal stimulation, heart rate, and, possibly, vascular tone are connected. The feedback loop in these relationships most likely occurs in the brain stem, where changes in the blood flow and blood pressure influence, among other things, the vagus nerve. Thus, variations in our breath are reflected in vagal patterns, which are reflected in vascular tone and heart rate, which most likely are related to pulsations throughout the body, including the cranial system. These complex relationships show no distinct division between cranial movements and those experienced in the rest of the body.

This brings me full circle to where this article started.

<i> Rolfing SI . . . Session One . . . Breath . . . Vitality. </i>

I have returned to the beginning. The first element of Rolfing SI requires the establishment of an environment within the body that is amenable to receiving new information and changing in response to that information. In order to create that environment I began to think in terms of a complex three-dimensional space determined by the shape, fluidity, density, responsiveness, and relationships of its component parts. That space and the relationships among the many components are a reflection of vitality! Every time we put our hands on a client, we are interacting with that environment and his body?s ability to accept and sustain change. The effectiveness of that interaction is determined by how well we listen and communicate within that nonlinear systemic space. The success of our efforts shows in the new balance of the system ? physical, neurological, emotional, and probably some other undefined (read occult) ways.

Bibliography

Botte, P. 2010. See papers at http://www. saintphonie.be. Click on your language of choice to access the papers.

Porges, S. 2007. ?The Polyvagal Perspective.?<i> Journal of Biological Psychology </i>74(2): 116-143. Available from www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ pmc/.

Schleip, R. 2002. ?Neurobiological Aspects of the Cranial Rhythmic Impulse.? Available from www.somatics.de/ articlesprof.html.