‘Meta’ refers to a higher-level abstraction. We Rolfers recognize that the power of our work extends beyond the limitations of a client’s structure; that is, the changes that Rolfing Structural Integration (SI) facilitates in the body are more than physical. Our understanding of that creates a richer experience for our clients. The bigger our container of what is possible and why, the more we can surrender into a deepening of our clients’ Rolfing experience.

When I started Rolfing SI, I was fortunate that I’d had a lot of bodywork done on myself as well as training in the psychological aspects of it. Yet I was naïve to the impact Rolfing SI had on clients’ lives. My biggest limitation was often not my skill, but my mind. I didn’t realize the impact of the psychological response, nor did I have a way to explain it to a client. In the beginning, there were times when I would hold my breath hoping nothing would come up during or between sessions that I could not explain.

Slowly – through experience, training in non-manipulative approaches, and my own growth – I exchanged my limited beliefs for a set that invited in a larger number of clients (an unintended consequence). These clients were more fun to work with; they were willing to go further with their change, gently pushing me to do the same personally and professionally. They taught me mindfulness better than any teacher I had. They inspired me to take comparable risks in my life.

Why Meta Mind?

An expanded Meta Mind of Rolfing SI affords us the ability to become more inclusive while maintaining the core principles of Rolfing SI. When we embody the principles Dr. Rolf gave us, we can use those principles as the scale to judge the value of other input. Does a new system enhance our goals as a Rolfer? Does it increase the change we are going for? Does it make our work easier or more fun? Does it cause us to grow? Often the biggest gains in our effectiveness as Rolfers come from not learning more manipulation skills, but learning how to hold a bigger space for our clients.

What the Client Gets

As we expand how we frame Rolfing SI, we allow for a fuller range of experiences to show up for clients. Our unconscious minds are powerful. When we don’t believe in something or don’t believe it’s possible, we limit not only our experience, but also that of our clients. The studies of how a physician’s mindset affects her patients are just as applicable to Rolfing SI, given the intimacy of our work.

So much of what we are doing as Rolfers is catalyzing the incomplete to complete. To achieve a higher state of order, the client will unlearn his old pattern as he stumbles, completing what he didn’t get to complete when the stress or trauma first occurred. I’ve had clients come back to me after a few sessions to tell me that their therapist told them to stop their Rolfing SI because “they’d already dealt with these issues.” My response to the client’s question of what they should do was always, “Do what you feel is best.” In every case, the client quit the therapy and continued Rolfing SI to the end, reporting that they got more psychological change out of ten Rolfing sessions than they had from years of therapy.

The more the stress and trauma is released, the more the past is not determining the client’s future. In addition, the resources he was using to survive can be allocated to healing. A client can only heal to the extent that his body is not in a hyper-aroused state. We are hardwired to survive first, and that need to survive must leave the body/mind before full healing is possible.

As a client travels this path, he learns a higher level of functionality and adaptability. The rigid structure that protected him and confined him is now more open to life. We can help him create a larger conscious and unconscious frame to hold a richer experience of life. His past orientation towards survival or fitting in can transform into increased awareness and appreciation. Self-regulation replaces control.

We focus on achieving the highest order possible for the client. To the extent his life doesn’t match the order we help create in his body, he will be at risk of not sustaining the work. There will certainly be the chaos and its collateral effects in his life, which might appear to risk maintaining the structural integration you both achieved. The chaos of deconstructing a person’s world is not the restraints that prevent sustainability or further growth, it’s believing that his only problem is his back pain.

Timeline of Change

Our first inclination is to see Rolfing SI as ten sessions. But our clients teach us that their Rolfing SI is just the beginning. Telling them up front that the change will continue to integrate for up to a year sets a larger context. I tell them half-facetiously, “Anything weird that happens, blame it on the Rolfing SI.” Because they have no reference for what I mean, most clients will forget I told them that. That’s fine. This is one case where I’m speaking more to their unconscious mind. I’m planting a seed of what is possible and planting an ‘embedded command’1 that there will be more change.

When my clients ask to continue seeing me but there is not significant work to be done, I explain that their bodies need time to integrate and rebuild. In our instant-gratification lifestyle, we don’t allow for downtime or rest. With a longer timeline we need to look at what support the client will need beyond her Rolfing SI. Will she need to continue eating meat to build more muscle tissue? Will she need emotional support to integrate her change? Is her exercise regime helping her Rolfing SI? What is her structure of support?

The body is the ultimate biofeedback machine. Through Rolfing SI, clients learn how to relax. A relaxed body does feel stress; in the moment of feeling stress, it hurts. That negative feedback is telling the client to relax or do something different. If she doesn’t change, the pain will get worse. Quickly the client learns that holding her shoulders up, something she’d never noticed that she did, is now teaching her how to relax.

Over time, a client learns what limits – and what supports – her continued change. Our challenge is how can we instill in her a new meta behavior pattern that will reorient limiting behaviors to be supportive behaviors. I first reframe many psychological issues as physiological or stress issues. Right there people relax. What once was an emotional issue is now an adaptation to stress. That reframe always relaxes the client. You can foster sustainability by teaching a client the basic skills of breathing and walking in a natural manner. It’s teaching her how to discover for herself how to know when what she’s doing is right. Is she relaxed from doing it? Over time, does she lose or get more energy from it? What is her body telling her when she’s doing it? I tell my clients that I’m teaching them so they don’t need me.

Beyond the Mind

Our limited view limits our clients’ Rolfing SI. We have the opportunity to expand their model to include everything from the autonomic nervous system to mindfulness. In the course of their Rolfing sessions, we can teach them how their symptoms are just that: symptoms of chronic issues in other parts of their bodies. We bring out with our hands and our words what was hidden so it can be experienced, accepted, and released.

We also get to challenge the limits of our cultural models. I explain to my clients how our genome is 99.9% the same as it was 10,000 years ago when we were in tribes. Our instincts are the same. Our bodies have not come close to keeping up to how our lifestyles have evolved, though. We are cavemen running around with smart phones.

Thanks to Descartes and the Catholic Church, we grew up in the West believing the mind and the body are separate. There is no more powerful way to burst that belief than Rolfing SI. For some clients, we may need to give their conscious mind a new model that allows for the connection of the mind and body.

The Power of Indirect Work

We are oriented to work directly. Certainly as men in the West, we learn to get in there and fix it. We aren’t taught to listen, learn, wait, respond, get in sync, guide, or support. The urgency and importance of the situation drives us to take action.

With Rolfing SI, we have the opportunity to apply the best of both worlds. You apply the direct pressure causing the body to respond. Then with the body’s response, you guide your pressure to catalyze deep change. The precise input of your direct pressure causes the body to go into its habitual stress response, even if it’s on a micro-level. Once the stress response is activated, you get to gently enhance it so that when the release or relaxation phase occurs, the body releases more than it ever would have on its own.

Cranial osteopaths taught us how to use the subtler rhythms of the body. Homeopathy teaches us that “like cures like.” Applied to the body, when we apply firm pressure on a restriction, we recreate what is there. We take over that restriction, as Ron Kurtz would say.2 Because we are doing the work of the restriction, the body can begin to let go.

T h r o u g h Pe tr Lv ie ’s S o m a t i c Experiencing® work, we learn to tackle the subtle cues of the body as we encourage it to slowly release. As he says, “we titrate” – measure out the release not to overwhelm the system. Again, we stimulate – then allow for the release.

As we indirectly name and touch what is missing, we give witness to what was not allowed or encouraged. As the body and the emotions release, your presence is saying to the client, “you and your experience are acceptable.” This quiet compassion and courage cause the client to surrender deeper into unfelt and unexpressed experiences. As this continues through the sessions, you teach her nervous system not to go to the sympatric response as a default. You are releasing old stress and recalibrating the nervous system to return to a relaxed state.

Milton Erickson was a psychiatrist who developed indirect hypnosis as way to utilize a person’s own unconscious to reorganize the patient’s world. Rather than directing the patient into a trance then telling him what will happen, Erickson would tell a story. We all like stories. Stories entertain. They naturally put us in a light trance. From there Erickson would carry on a conversation with the unconscious, with the conscious mind fully aware of what he was saying.

The day I was scheduled to meet Erickson to set up studying with him, he died. Undeterred, I found his best students to study with. Being a dyslexic like Erickson, I immediately understood what he was doing. He was using his dyslexic, illogical mind to guide another’s unconscious, which is certainly not logical. Immediately I started using stories, indirect suggestions, and metaphors to create new frames for clients. It was fun seeing how I could tell a story ‘out of the blue’ about some other client, not directly implying that this former client was like my current client. Then weeks later, my current client would come in for a session telling me about a dream, an experience, or a new plan that was seeded by my story.

If there is one place where we can significantly expand our Meta Mind of Rolfing SI, it is here: it’s how we speak to our clients’ unconscious minds. We know that the body is the physical analogue for the unconscious, so why not engage the unconscious mind indirectly? One benefit of working with the unconscious is that you are much less likely to limit your client. If what you are guiding isn’t useful, it won’t take. You are planting a seed; whether or not it grows is up the client.

Your presence with your touch and words takes over the coping mechanisms that were your client’s limitations. By being that pressure that is always in his IT band, he gets to feel how tight he is. He gets to choose to release it at his own speed. Unconsciously he starts to feel how you are his ally, willing to ‘inflict discomfort’ for something better. That new experience evolves for some to be a new strategy. Rather than avoid pain and possible rewards, you are teaching the unconscious that the pain of release is temporary and produces new possibilities.

Much like Rolfing SI, this indirect approach quickly evolves to be more art than science. You learn to apply key principles in the spontaneity of the moment. Step back to see what happens before you take the next step.

The Body Is a Literal Metaphor

One of the more advanced processes we do in the men’s groups I lead is where each man stands up in front of the other men naked. The group then speaks to what his body is saying that he’s not saying. We wouldn’t do this with our clients, but we can ask ourselves the question, “What is our client’s body saying?” Creating a story that his body is saying gives you the depth of understanding that the story he tells you won’t.

Here are some of the specific questions you can ask yourself. (If not sure of an answer, assume the client’s posture or imagine it, then ask yourself again.)

• Where is the client’s support coming from?
• Is he leaning on someone?
• Has he created an exoskeleton?
• Is he collapsed? Or is he jacked
• What is his body saying that he isn’t saying, and to whom is he saying it?

• What is he hiding or protecting? What’s not safe?
• What is he moving around, through, towards, or away from?
• If he were in a play, what role would he be playing?
• What response is waiting to happen?

Go beyond a client’s structure to observe the quality of his tissue, his macro- and micro-movements, and see what is missing. There is always something missing or not being spoken. Use all the information of your unconscious and intuition to craft your indirect work with your client. All this information is his unspoken biography, and you are going to help him rewrite it.

Support the Work

There are clients who need more support if they are to sustain, let alone grow from, the change you co-created with them. It may be that their lifestyle will sabotage their Rolfing SI, so you support them in getting into a more healthful diet. Or they are in a stressful relationship so you find other support for them, be it a therapist or a support group. You use your team of resources to build on their Rolfing SI. You send your clients to others so they are best served.

Rolfing SI transforms lives. The problem comes when a client’s relationships aren’t supporting that change. We all experience clients who share with us their new struggles with their significant relationships. In some of these communications, a client will be releasing past stress the Rolfing SI stirs up. In other situations, she will be consciously or unconsciously learning new skills she never got to learn. For example, she may be learning to, say, set personal boundaries by saying “no” for the first time in her life. As with learning any new skill, the beginning stages of skill development can be rocky. She also might be deliberately attempting to up-level her relationship; rather than tolerate mediocrity, she may want to go for creating a fulfilling relationship. With the support of a bigger frame and your acceptance of parts she hasn’t accepted, she unravels what doesn’t work to weave a new life that does work.

To learn more about the specific skills of expanding our Meta Mind of Rolfing SI, I suggest checking out the references below. We can leverage our amazing work as we expand the context we use to frame it. Allow Rolfing SI to catalyze even more change by expanding your frame and the tools you use in it. I suspect as you explore your Meta Mind, you will find skills that you enjoy developing and sharing with others. Let me know what you learn.

Owen Marcus, MA, is the author of Grow Up: A Man’s Guide to Masculine Emotional Intelligence and (soon to be released) The Power of Rolfing Structural Integration. More of his work with men can be found at www. freetowin.com.

Endnotes

1. A Trojan Horse statement, where a command (suggestion) is hidden in a sentence disguised as a statement; for example, “You can feel relaxed.”
2. Ron Kurtz was an old teacher of mine and developer of the Hakomi Method of Mindfulnes s -Centered Somat i c Psychotherapy. For more information go to: www.hakomiinstitute.com/resources/ ron-kurtz.

References

Campbell, J. 2008. The Hero with a Thousand Faces (The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell),Third Edition. Novato, CA: New World Library.

Gilligan, S.G. 1986. Therapeutic Trances: The Co-Operation Principle In Ericksonian Hypnotherapy. New York: Routledge, Taylor, and Francis Group.

Kurtz, R. 1990. Body-Centered Psychotherapy: The Hakomi Method: The Integrated Use of Mindfulness, Nonviolence and the Body. Mendocino, CA: LifeRhythm.

Levine, P. 2010. In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books.

Marcus, O. 2015. GLT – Group Leadership Training Manual. A self-published book on how to start and lead a men’s group using many of these somatic and indirect processes; available at www. g umr o a d . c om. F o r mo rinformation go to www.freetowin.co/ glt-group-leaders-training.Meta Mind of Rolfing SI[:]