Editor?s Note: Over the years, this Journal has published articles by Will Johnson and reviews of various of his books. This past spring Johnson led an eight-day Buddhist retreat that focused on the application of Dr. Rolf?s vision of the ?Line? to the practice of sitting meditation. As an integral part of the program, all participants received four sessions of structural integration (SI). The following article shares observations from three points of view: Johnson?s perspective as teacher of the program, Rolfer Diana Newby?s as a member of the SI team, and Jackie Ashley?s as a retreat participant. (Jackie is on the faculty of the Somatic Psychology Department at Naropa University.) Johnson will be teaching two more of these retreats in May and June of 2014, one in Colorado, the other in New Hampshire, and he is currently assembling his SI team.</i>

Part 1: The View from the Teacher?s Seat

<i>Will Johnson</i>

Last year I received an invitation to teach a sitting meditation retreat high in the Sangre de Cristo mountains in Crestone, Colorado at the beautiful, recently completed retreat center of the American body-oriented Buddhist teacher Reggie Ray. I share with Reggie a passion for dharma teachings that are highly body-oriented, and in conversations we?ve had over the years, I?ve always told him that, were I to teach at his center, I would want to bring a team of Rolfers with me and for regular Rolfing® SI sessions to be an integral part of the retreat. To the best of our understanding, integrating deep bodywork with Buddhist practices has never before been explored or undertaken in this way.

The retreat took place from April 26 through May 5 of 2013 and was, in a word, extraordinary. First of all, let me talk about the bodywork team. When I was first given the green light to go ahead with the retreat, I decided not to actively publicize my need for a bodywork team, but instead simply spoke with one person who spoke with another person who . . . you get the idea. Within a few months I?d received passionate emails from SI practitioners who had somehow heard about the retreat and really wanted to be a part of it, and our team came together quite effortlessly.

And what a team! Diana Newby, Robyn Midori, Kia Satterfield, and Theresa Zordan had all received their basic training at the Rolf Institute®. Ben Hanawalt and Arisa LaFond were graduates of the Guild for Structural Integration. Each of these bodyworkers, without exception, is strong in presence and sensitive in touch, and all of them resonate with the notion that Dr. Rolf?s vision of the Line may contain some kind of transformational mystery. We all bonded very quickly as a unit, supporting one another beautifully, and during the retreat ? in the spirit of the bands of Wild West outlaws who would hide out in these mountains ? we gradually became known as The Gang of Thieves (as in ?we steal your pain?). The Gang participated in the morning and evening meditation sessions and worked on participants in the afternoon.

We all met in Crestone for two days prior to the start of the retreat for a pre-retreat training. During those days I spoke at length about how my approach to the practice of sitting meditation is a direct reflection of Dr. Rolf?s teachings about the Line and her implications that an embodiment of the Line would stimulate

what she would refer to as ?evolutionary energies? which, in turn, would result in some kind of evolution of human being. What we also did during that pre-retreat training was to explore a four-session series that I?d put together specifically for this kind of gathering that would allow participants to receive a hands-on session every other day throughout the retreat. The first session was a sleeve session combining elements of hours one, two, and three of the Ten Series. The second session was a core session combining elements of hours four, five, and six. The third session was an integration session of sorts combining elements of hours eight and nine and finishing up with a seventh-hour focus on the head and neck. The final session, from bottom to top, was done with the retreat participants sitting on their cushions in upright meditation posture continuing to explore the practice of ?breathing through the whole body,? which the Buddha presents in all the earliest sutras (but which is rarely, if ever, explored or taught in any of the current schools or lineages).

The multiple, body-oriented focus that I bring to the practice of breathing through the whole body consists of the alignment of the upright torso, the relaxation/ surrendering-of-the-weight-of-the-bodyto- gravity that alignment allows, the awakening of the felt vibratory presence of the body, the understanding that every joint in a relaxed body can move ? constantly, subtly ? in resilient response to the force of the breath that wants to pass through the body like a wave passing through water. By paying attention to these somatic potentials, tensions in the tissues of the body and contractions in the patterns of the mind can begin to let go and come undone, revealing a deeper, more open dimension of being that has been here all the time (that place in the very center of our center that feels so right when we?re able to connect with it), but that has been blanketed over by those very tensions and contractions. Breath by breath, body can come more vibrantly present. Mind can become significantly quieter. And like Alice dropping through the rabbit hole, transformations to our awareness of self can begin to occur. And all of this results from the simple application of the principles of alignment, relaxation, and resilience to one?s sitting practice. Hmmm . . . sounds to me a whole lot like what Rolf was suggesting would be possible for someone truly exploring the Line.

As the retreat progressed, and as the practice kept deepening, I was able to sit and watch, often with amazement, as people returned from their SI sessions and resumed their sitting posture in the hall. Cross-legged knees that had been at the level of armpits for decades came down to the floor. Heads that had hung down and far in front of the central axis of the body came back up and over the torso. Bodies that listed to the right or the left came back over center. And, of course, it wasn?t just a shift at the level of body. As bodies kept relaxing into an upright sitting posture, as holding patterns softened to allow more and more of the body to remain in motion in response to the breath, the practices ? and the experiences and releases that the participants were having ? just kept going deeper and deeper. The most common response I received, over and over again, during private interviews with participants, was along the lines of ?why, WHY wasn?t this taught to me thirty years ago?!?

So . . . where do we go from here? I?ve already been tentatively invited to teach two more of these eight-day retreats next year, one in Colorado in May, and another at a Buddhist center in New Hampshire in June. I have long believed that the Buddhist dharma and Rolf?s vision of the transformational dimensions of the Line hold a missing key to each other?s path of inquiry, and certainly the Buddhist world is starting to open to and embrace this possibility. As there may very likely be an increasing demand from the Buddhist world for this kind of retreat, the Gang of Thieves will need to grow. Perhaps this may evolve into an eventual training for ?Buddhist Bodyworkers.?

What it certainly currently entails is an invitation to the greater Rolfing community to contact me ([email protected]) if you?d like to be on one of the teams at an upcoming retreat. In the meantime, I encourage you to contact any of the bodyworkers I mentioned above if you?re interested in exploring this short series, especially the final session seated in meditation posture. They can also guide you in the application of alignment, relaxation, and resilience as you explore the dimensions of the Line through the posture of sitting meditation.

Part 2: A Rolfer?s Experience

<i>Diana Newby</i>

It was an amazing honor to have these meditations practitioners come through the door each day from the silence and allow me to work on their bodies. I couldn?t believe that although none of my group had ever experienced Rolfing SI, they each took to the work like a fish in water. Simply put, they came into the session room knowing how to be ?Rolfed.?

Their body awareness was tremendous. They breathed deeply into where I was working, they shifted and moved and stretched to enhance the work, and they had a sense of their Line far beyond the limitation of language. They had an implicit understanding of uprightness, and how to rest into it. In the initial sessions, they came to me with a number of aches and pains that are common in the context of a meditation retreat. However, as the week progressed, each retreatant began to give his or her body life with subtle waves of motion as the breath flowed through. They let go of the ?shoulds? of the dharma and honored that to be blissfully alive is to move. And they quickly caught onto this concept. By allowing the subtle shifts and movements while meditating and breathing with the entire body, they could communicate to me so clearly what was happening in their experience. It was truly a rewarding experience since it was an authentically collaborative effort. They came into the sessions each day with the desire to deepen their practice.

As a result of the context within which we were providing the SI sessions, many transformations occurred during the retreat.

People were ready to resolve some of the pain in their spiritual lives, utilizing body, mind, and soul. When coming from a place of such openness and vulnerability, it took very little guidance, and they transformed. As mentioned, it was an honor to be with them in their process and fascinating as a Rolfer to have clients accessing their Line as a result of their dharma practice.

Part 3: A Retreatant?s Experience

<i>Jackie Ashley</i>

I have been waiting a long time for this retreat. Years . . . maybe a decade?

Will Johnson is somewhat of an icon for me. I have been teaching from his book The Posture of Meditation for many years to students in the first year of the Masters in Somatic Psychology program at Naropa University. And I am finally in his presence and beginning an eight-day retreat to deepen, from my own personal experience, meditating with my body with his guidance.

I have expectations, hopes, excitement, and trepidation. And from my first journal entry ? gratitude; the retreat is silent; it is a small group of people of whom I know ? no one. It is all ages and genders, its schedule is full days of practice, and it is in the most beautiful of shrine rooms at Blazing Mountain retreat center in Crestone, Colorado, with the vast view out across the San Luis valley. One of my favorite places in the whole world. And, as part of the schedule, regular bodywork sessions. I don?t actually get the profundity of this until I show up for one.

I bring with me, as I begin to sit, a familiar aversion to people and a self-judging state of mind; embarrassment, jealousy and coming off of a deep hurt by a family member; very familiar and rather disturbing. Some things just don?t seem to change all that much. That, and the pain in my mid-back and right hip; here I am, again, practicing being with these old friends.

I move about the first few days, trying to find my place, indulging in my aversion to wiggling, coughing, nose-blowing, and crying. As well as the beeps and hums of the sound system. And this is OK ? really? Lots of people are moving their cushions around the room each session, and as we move about, we all collect more cushions, benches, and various things to support our bodies and our practice. We are encouraged to move and support ourselves, as moving is our nature as humans. ?We are perpetual movers, we humans,? Will reminds us. Though physically moving about the room is not what I think the instructed intention was, this seemed to be what is happening. We finally settle, for the most part. I have an image of us all, our hunter/gatherer ancestors? blood still coursing through us, this little tribe, finding our place within the community, collecting what we need to be comfortable as we go along, finding our place to rest within the space where we could commit to being. But we are stuck with this tribe, this group, like our ancestors, we need to work it out. I have never had this freedom in any of the many retreats I?ve experienced. Here I was able to choose my seat, my place, gather more than I had brought with me and within that spot, I found and experienced even more freedom in the realm of ?stillness.? I had space.

Settling in, the teachings deepen into the profound challenge of relaxation, letting go, and listening to the body speak its needs, express its shimmering sensations, and allowing the ?primal contraction? to release its hold on our being. ?Primal contraction? . . . I wrote this down numerous times. I explored this phrase with Will?s initial set intention for our time together: ?We will find the places we are holding/resisting and play with their release.? This came to me as a subtle sense of deep embarrassment in being a human being, of being who I am. And the effort that takes in our culture. Many humans get to this question in their lives, but we who practice meditation often come to it and explore it in retreat. It?s hard work. Will jokes with us, reminding us that ?nobody throws us a parade for doing this . . .? And in this retreat, I experience and witness the Herculean effort it takes to allow ourselves to surrender to our bodies as the primary teacher and guide in this quest.

The Herculean effort manifests, for me, in the invitation to lie down when my body aches or is tired. I always start my students on the floor, on their backs, but to just lie down when my body wanted to in a formal retreat? It?s embarrassing. So many years of retreats where I was told or expected to work with my body?s painful sensations through breathing, exploring, or just tolerating them until they transform into something less uncomfortable. It often works, but another sensation arises to replace it (and the chorus of emotions and commentary on it all). Discipline and perseverance in your practice were how you would arrive at a state of emptiness or freedom from disturbing emotions. This was the litany. It wasn?t until Will spoke of how meditation practice adheres to the culture within which it lands that I was able to expand my attitude a bit and contemplate this more deeply.

Our culture asks us to work hard and accomplish, to push through the challenges that confront us to be able to succeed. And this is how we, here in the West, practice meditation for the most part. But what about surrender, allowing, and curiosity? Where do they fit within that act of discipline? Like the breath that moves between the hard bone and soft striations of muscle. There is space there. Can discipline mean taking care of ourselves/bodies? I had to be shocked into relaxing/allowing by Will simply asking, ?Why be in excruciating pain when you can choose not to?? This resonated so strongly, not just with how I relate to my body in practice, but with my emotional states as well. Will also reminded us that it is a cultural condition to be lost and absorbed in thought and thus not present to our bodies.

As a somatic psychotherapist, I know that our experiences and memories are held in our bodies, especially those that are extreme and trauma-based. When we try and ?just talk it out,? session after session, things don?t change that much or our experiences turn into debilitating illness or chronic health problems. These things have been documented and confirmed in the studies on neuroscience and the biology of emotion. And this is why a body-based meditation practice is so important at this time, in this place. Because as I, and those around me, began to lay down and surrender, healing happened. The body, when allowed to relax, can release long-held emotion. It just began ? the crying and shaking of many of us. We were held and allowed, in the silence and support of flooding sunlight and Will atop his huge pile of cushions, to rest. To experience the ?unified field of sensation,? where there is no separation between our experience of body/mind/emotion/feeling. My tears were often those of humility and gratitude, acknowledging the simplicity and power of this simple act of meditation and the invitation to its supine version. The simple act of allowing ourselves to rest. It was a hard paradigm shift, from the rigid, static, upright posture we are instructed to hold, to laying down. Despite my earlier attempts to move within the posture and my instructions to my students to move within the upright posture, there is nothing more profoundly releasing than allowing ourselves to fully surrender to gravity and rest.

We walked in beauty outside, exaggerating the bobbing of our heads to loosen that holy sphere from its rigid attachment to our necks. Our eyes were invited to view vastly and in an unfocused way what was in front of us. As we did this, we could not get absorbed in thought. As with our experiences of sensations, an unfocused view allowed for our experience to be present-moment-based ? the basis for the experience of emptiness and selfrealization. Merging the fields of sensation, sight, and movement. We were introduced to some of the ancient Tibetan practices of Kum Nye, as taught by Tarthung Tulku. These practices were created to help and support the body in long-term retreats. And we had four bodywork sessions. Here, again, I surrender to gravity upon a table, where a Rolfing practitioner lays her skilled hands upon my body to physically release and elongate the muscles that were holding me back and resisting my desire for further freedom. During these sessions, I would go into dream states that took me though the rooms of my childhood home or on the back of a running sorrel mare across the vast expanse of Mongolia. After my body sessions, my journals were dream entries.

As our last day neared, I clearly deepened into Will?s reminder of the eleventh-century Tibetan teacher Tilopa?s original words about meditation: ?Do nothing with the body but relax.? When we can do this, we naturally feel the dharma and we have the foundation for a full experience of our own true nature. ?Allow, notice, let go, and relax? ? these are the pointing-out instructions of the great Tibetan masters. Realization can occur through the body in these simple yet challenging instructions. It happens without effort. And we often miss it. Since this retreat, I now live in a different place of understanding when I practice. I live in that place where I trust those shimmering moments of subtle body sensation as the potential to awakening, and that surrendering to gravity and to rest is a gift not to be denied.Eight Days in the Mountains