Editor’s note: Over the years, a number of Rolfers have experimented with developing energetic ways to accomplish the goals of Rolfing® Structural Integration (SI), some working off the body, others with minimal touch. Deborah Stucker developed her method in the 1990s, and had a conceptual underpinning that allowed her to teach it to others, which she did through workshops for some years.

The method of Rolfing® SI I use leads with the energetic taxonomy.

Rolfing SI always impacts the client’s energy (and space). Unfortunately, we have very little to go on in formulating that impact and how to achieve it directly. To reach the energetic information, we need to look at our clients from a different perspective. Make a shift from primarily seeing to primarily feeling. Not much is different yet nothing is the same.

We have said for decades that “structures are functions that move very slowly, functions more quickly,” but it is the other way around. Structures happen near the speed of light, functions obviously much more slowly. We cannot match the speed of structure, but we can determine much about its nature by tapping into its energetic life. The conjectures we make are then used as feedback into the system, which changes it.

Origins

Peter Melchior told his class, “We don’t change the body so much as change the mind about the body.” Over time, I discovered a touch protocol that deals directly with how and when the mind makes the body.

Another ‘kickstarter’idea came from Ida Rolf where she quotes Norbert Weiner as saying, “We are not stuff that abides but patterns that perpetuate themselves.” Whoa! What?! That is an exciting idea. How we perpetuate ourselves must be a vital question for us as Rolfers. Since we know from quantum physics that we are dynamically coming- into-being, the question is not “How do we change?” but “How do we not change?”!

Jason W. Brown, with his theory of the microprocessing of consciousness, and Duane Elgin, with his model of coming- into-being, both suggest that materialization and consciousness are reciprocal. Each organizational stage is ‘fixed’ into being by self-observation inherent in that  stage.

The point of contact for me is at the observation phase of pre-materialization. Once that stage is complete or self-aware, materialization proceeds.

I have to say that I owe a debt to the nun who taught me the importance of zero. If you start at one, one is a given. If you start at zero, nothing is predetermined. For someone in the change business, zero is the most powerful starting place.

Somewhere along the way, I found this part of a poem, “Light and Dark,” by William Bronk (of the Bronk family, for which the borough of The Bonx is named). It encourages me daily.

World, world, I am scared

and waver in awe before the

wilderness

of raw consciousness, because it is

all

dark and formlessness, and it is

real

this passion that we feel for forms.

But the forms

are never real. Are not really there. Are not.

Basis of Working with the Energetic Taxonomy

We know that there is a reciprocal relationship between energy and space. A human being is a stable system that enacts itself energetically. This stable system uses space in characteristic ways. If our clients could change within the space they currently occupy, they would have done so by now.

Change can be introduced by quantifying the space that would be necessary for a different use to occur. The quantification itself is the bulk of the Rolfer-client communication using this approach. We participate in the formative consciousness to mandate change. I say “mandate” because there is a certain inevitability about proposed change based on successful conduction. Melchior called this idea of proposing change that results in inevitable reintegration “working lawfully.”

Playing with the space that the system uses adds or subtracts energy, impacting the form. This integration of space and energy operates at every level of formation, from the subatomic to the galactic. Rolfing SI can be understood as a practice that manipulates this relationship in the human being therapeutically.

Touch as a Protocol

Touch is an agreement. What is touched and its meaning are a negotiation between the touching parties. Grappling with this understanding made up a considerable part of my acting studies and came with me into my development as a Rolfer.

Many touch protocols are learned conventions within a given society. These conventions mask the process of selection of sensations and assignment of meaning to those selections. Intention is a way of selecting a protocol for establishing distinct contacts. The intention that informs the touch of surgery allows all the parties involved to proceed in an atmosphere of beneficence as opposed to butchery. Just the thought of removing a still-beating heart and supplanting it with another is enough to kill a person outright in some cultures. The standard Rolfing approach is to ask for fascial anatomy, and so we get fascial anatomy. With a ‘direct electromagnetic (EM) approach, we ask to speak to the way the system is a perpetuating pattern and voila! – it starts talking back.

Working with Space to Change Form

By sticking resolutely with the relationship between space and energy – perceived as shape and pressure – we  bypass the organizational consciousness of fascial anatomy where the structural approach works.

To discover the touch protocol at the level of the pattern, one must focus on experiences that engage the pattern. Sounds fancy but it isn’t. A shift in attention, nothing more. After all, the experiences have been there all along, so it really isn’t all that new once one gets the hang of it. That said, there is no getting around it: if you want to touch into pattern, you have to be willing to feel and analyze whatever you feel unconditionally as your basis of information.

The direct EM approach observes the use of space by the client. This includes noticing relationships between any given landmarks, such as between navel and spine. If the client unconsciously keeps these two places in an  unvarying juxtaposition –  part of  a system-wide pattern of blockage and compensation – then when that spatial relationship changes, the whole pattern will change. Creating a reference point of the navel to an alternate vertebra could be a step in this direction. The actual work   is carried out by tapping into the feeling/ impression of pressure and working with it spatially to resolve the pressure.

Working with ‘impression’ takes me into contact with the system’s energetic being. Once I can feel a way to communicate a plan for resolution of problematic pressure, there is a simultaneous understanding on the part of the client’s spatial consciousness. At that point, I get out and let the client come-into- being in the corrective space without me.

The shape and pressure of the proposed solution is based entirely on whatever impression I receive. I cannot say much about details as these impressions are fleeting and nonverbal. Perhaps the closest example would be when you want to convey love visually to someone across a room. Imagine yourself squeezing your own body in a hug meant for the other person. Your recipient understands what you mean by reading the pressure and duration of your squeeze and the focus and content of your look. It’s communicating in analogue, so to speak.

One reason why I like working this way is that, since I don’t make the change, I am not needed for it to persist. In the client’s consciousness, I was never there. From the momentofinformationuptake, all thechange is made by the client alone. Practically, this means that every time the client resorts   to his or her habitual locations, the more energy-efficient, and thus preferable, pattern within the gravitation field reasserts itself. The client metaphorically goes ‘out’ the ‘in’ door unconsciously to re-arrive at the new integration.

How Does One Develop EM Perception?

To develop EM perception, first soften your vision. Make yourself receptive to movements that catch your eye. I work in dim light to reduce color to grey scale. This enables me to catch near subliminal shifts in the reflection of light with the client in ordinary movement and in repose.

Ask the client to stand without moving around or talking while you look nowhere in particular (you can use your notes as a prop). You will see all kinds of unconscious movements and shifts indicating that the client’s energetic pressure requires more space than is available in the body as it appears. It is important to realize that the shape and thrust of the shifts in space in those unconscious movements is the body as it appears. The information is not visible but nevertheless there to see. Start looking at the space instead of the form. They  are related.

Even the most relaxed client may exhibit some kind of improbable and totally unconscious jerk or displacement. It sometimes mimics a strobe effect. Did you even see it? Often, the client cannot maintain a passive stance without doing something. To me, this almost certainly means that this person’s system requires unstinting upper cortex involvement just to maintain itself. Hyper-arousal is another indication of the fixed body of fight-or-flight. Observe all uses of space, from flustering and release of energy as the client settles into a new environment to compulsive action with rationales. Look at how much pressure the client seems to be under.

If nothing makes itself apparent, try blinking softly to  settle yourself down.   It is okay to feel panic while waiting, as long as you keep waiting. The panic will vanish when you catch a clue. You will soon discover that the more still you can make yourself, the more information you can receive. The more indeterminate you let yourself be, the more alert you will be to the determinations of the client.

Look at the outline. Say the client is standing on both feet and the head is centered over that base. If a hip is yanked up or there    is compensation, such as rotation and compression, then the apparent symmetry is an illusion of ‘normalcy’. If the client were a crumpled or twisted bed sheet, prevented from shaking out and reaching the far corner of the bed, you would be able to visualize exactly how you would have to throw it to get it to straighten out. Looking at the yanked-up hip can give you clues  as to how you would need to position the upper body to allow the hip to drop back down, and where the head would need to go to keep from compressing the hip back in its usual position. The corrective position is almost sure to be off the body. That is the space it requires to change.

Place your hands lightly on the client and let yourself feel the pattern of pressure. There will be a bias towards movement in a certain direction inherent in the tissue. Your impressions of the bias will be enough to go on.

Try paying attention to the way in which you may already be moving/responding as you contact your client’s system. You may have felt something and are moving in response. You might find yourself habitually stepping back from that engagement in search of an objective ‘reality’. Go with your impressions. They may come to you as feelings, senses of shapes, a sense of pushback or resistance. Try to not second- guess. You will not get the ‘real’ impression, just ‘another one’, if you don’t go with what you are being given at first. Just thank God you are being given something so you can quit panicking and start practicing!

Here is a little experiment. Sit down in a relaxed, upright position on a hard surface with your hands turned palm upward, resting by your sides. Close your eyes and feel the front plane of your forehead. Imagine where you might place that plane so that your shoulders would drop, your back and your front would balance out as they cascade down, and the psoas and rhomboids would engage and balance. No big intellectual deal, just like finding where you would need to toss the crumpled-up bed sheet of your posture to lengthen it out. Feel your way to it; wait for the sweet spot to reveal itself with a ‘click’ or some such other noticeable experience. Open your eyes and blink softly. Feel yourself liquify, even vanish, with stronger support at the core.

Botttom line: the result of all Rolfing SI is a post-psychological organization, one based on the balance, strength, and centeredness derived from improved grounding and electrical conduction, rather than on the struggles and ambiguities of human life. It will only stick – is only integrated – when the client’s self-perception aligns itself unconsciously with the reorganization. In other words, if you must keep reminding the client to feel lifted from inside (or whatever), you have failed to integrate the person in the gravitational field so that such conscious efforts are unnecessary.

We don’t improve or destroy the body  of fight-or-flight or the scaffolding of personality. It is what it is and is necessary to the client. We eliminate the compulsive need for it.

Everything That Happens in the Room Is of Clinical Importance

One must cultivate observation without censorship. Thoughts and feelings are never outside the scope of the work at hand and can be mined for clinical observations. It  is very hard to not self-censor moments of seeming detachment from the process, such as a sudden thought about dinner. ‘Off- mission’ thoughts like this spring to mind as an integral part of the action – usually when the client is going through prolonged respatialization. It takes guts to even pay attention, never mind pay attention without censure.

Emotions count. Observe in what ways your client attracts and repels you. Be as wary of the love you feel as the repulsion. Examine your feelings as expressions of distortions of space between you. Read attraction and repulsion as space shaped by energy – push and pull. You will be able to detect and analyze changes in your coexistence emotionally and spatially before and after a given session or series. How does it feel? Take your immediate answer and go from there.

Everything that the client says and does from greeting to exit is meaningful. Every behavior is an expression of the whole system and factors into the clinical assessment of the client’s habitual use of space. Gather ye your impressions while ye may.

So, you want maximum engagement with maximum detachment. It’s kind of fun. It’s certainly a challenge.

There Is No Set Technique

It is unfortunate that I can’t convey the many ways I have responded to each client’s information. I have taught a few classes, given a few demos, but the methods used were how I did the work at that time. I  am afraid I have sown more than a little misunderstanding about the approach, inadvertently giving the idea that this or that technique is the method itself. I regularly work with what I call Water Drop, Hold and Release, Align the Shine, and Imagine!, and make discoveries every time I tap in.

I can say that a lot of waiting is involved. Allowing gravity and the system to renegotiate takes as long as it takes. There will be a feeling of release when things have settled. Meanwhile, you can softly look at the client to find out how the corrective information has been taken. Or you may find yourself thinking about dinner.

I do test the system for potential as a way of making sure that the system can resolve its problems within the human space that it occupies. Like water, which can assume a shape only to have that shape dissolve, the human body ought to have the potential to assume any shape possible with an immediate dissolve. So, in the science fiction realm in which this approach resides, I can energetically ‘roll’ the client up to a headstand. If there are glitches, then more space would be necessary to accomplish the task. Resolve the glitches. Check again. It can be used as the direct EM equivalent to the end-of-session back work and pelvic lift.

The Wet and the Dry

During a session, the client adopts new starting points of coming-into-being. The process creates novel flows of energy (the dry) throughout the system, followed by a cascade of hydration (the wet). (Or the other way around: a novel hydration resulting in proliferating flows of energy.) This activity in turn touches off more novel energy pathways and so on. There is a global change in hydration throughout the system. The connective tissue is the primary conductor of energy in the system, coupled by water molecules. Change the flow of energy; change the hydration.

Our proprioception of direction – which way is ‘down’– is based on the asymmetrical tug of gravity on water. It is always available in present time in human consciousness. Water cannot be fixed, though patterns  of hydration may be. It is always where    it is when it is. That’s a good place to start for those of us in the Here/Now business. Fooling around with the ‘fall’ (orientation of the water molecule array) of water resets patterns and proprioception.

Messing with the conduction and hydration of structure and being is as close to the body as it appears as this approach gets. We are out before neurological organizations kick in. Still, I think of working in ‘the wet and the dry’ as an indirect use of a direct EM approach – one that works quite well.

Peculiarities of My Practice

Theconcentrationrequiredpreventsmefrom talking while working. More importantly, as change accumulates, the client will be profoundly engaged at the pattern level, which produces no words or pictures. S/ he will feel ‘out’, as though asleep, but s/he is not. Talking only rouses the higher brain functions. Let sleeping clients lie.

I may also experience mild blackouts at the latter phase of sessions as the client’s global change of space demands change in my own being. I call it ‘frequency synch-up’, to call it something.

Except when taking pictures, I work in dim light. Darkness forces the eyes to see the shine beneath the surface, the brain to compute shape at its most elemental. Plus, subduing the visual input reinforces the primacy of feeling.

I always use an overheated room, to blur the lines of demarcation between the self and room for the client lying on the table. Blankets are okay but I’d rather the room be hot enough to make them unnecessary.

I use as little propping as possible. Propping, to my view, reinforces the subliminal notion that the body has a fixed shape no matter what position. The ‘fixed-shape’ human is the psychomotor ideal. We aim to locate support onto a strong energetic polarity, not the body of ‘fight or flight’ that is the human ‘fallback’ position requiring a fixed shape.

People may think of what I’ve been calling a direct EM approach to Rolfing SI as being off the beaten path, if not off the reservation entirely. Maybe so, but I stick to a very strict Ten-Series protocol. I see the ten sessions as a progressive reorganization of the ‘bodymind’, plane by plane. It is not even necessarily a ‘hands-off’ practice, though it mostly is for me.

Rather than getting to romp around in the attractive ether of mysticism, my approach to Rolfing SI – and Rolfing SI in general – works in the basement of human existence. We are in the Here/Now business of being.

Unique Advantages

Because we cite gravity as the arbiter of change, we are not matching opinions with the client on how to be. As far as EM conduction is concerned, if a person is conducting energy, that person is perfect. It’s a merciless ‘on/off’ switch that will continue to spark life into even the most hideous of human contortion and loss until it doesn’t. It sees us from conception to cremation. This same relentless self- acceptance can be turned to the client’s advantage. Energy’s indifference to human form includes putting up no resistance to change, provided it can continue to conduct somehow. It is a relief to get out from under resistance. The job is big enough.

By projecting a ‘lawful’, alternative location for embodiment, we neither affirm nor negate the existing pattern. We use it instead as the jumping off point to the new. The client’s habitual location is always still potentially available but, like a lap, it doesn’t have to exist all the time.

There is something mildly sadistic about rendering up our clients to the gravitational field – like getting Dad in to settle the argument. No one likes to fail. It’s unthinkable! Why fight when you can kill? These feelings are not peripheral to the method I created. I wanted to offset my natural ferocity and need to help with a touch just this side of Schrödinger’s indeterminate state. Safety first!

The touch protocol I wanted to find rejects the Rolfer-as-heroic-actor model that we have inherited from modern medicine. So seductive a place to inhabit and so treacherous both to ourselves and our clients! If our clients derive their support from us, then where is the escape for them into the infinitely more reliable primal support of gravity? I believe that one can use a firm-handed approach that serves the same principle. It’s not a matter of technique but of letting gravity arbitrate.

Time

In the energetic taxonomy, we get to play with time as it relates to structural formation. I call this the ‘Don’t Be Here Now’ option. Remember the power of zero?

One of the main problems with the body of psychomotor organization is  that it  is simply around too much, going too fast. When the wavelength of the system elongates, it reoccurs more slowly, with lots of time for indetermination in the self- observation process of materialization.

The impression of the speed of entry of structure allows us to use time as an agent of change. ‘Reentry’ can be evened out to correct imbalance. Time is simply another aspect of the relationships within the system. Indicating a change in the timing of conduction can reset the entire system. Timing can be felt in a build-up in pressure, like holding a fire hose before and after the spigot is turned on.

Themoreindeterminationyoucanintroduce into the system, the better. Perhaps you’ve had the experience of having all the time in the world to respond in human situations as compared to your pre-Rolfing self. There is nothing wrong with human being that being around less doesn’t improve. Behavior that is  forged  in  the  struggles of childhood, often painful and tiresome, if done less becomes integrated as style and inclination.

In the direct EM approach, we can feel  into pathological patterns in a way that is hard to do in standard Rolfing SI with its prioritization of visual perception. Pain is invariably accompanied by an energetic pattern that defies the anatomical view. There is always an element of science fiction in the pattern that is creating pain that we can directly address. Words cannot touch this disconnection, in the same way that words fail at a certain point in ‘talk therapy’ if trauma precedes speech. Connective tissue is mute; anatomical organization is words from start to finish.

Electromagnetic being is not constrained by the physics of everyday human reality. Any space is accessible to us. In a classic Second Hour, for instance, you might want to anchor your client’s grounding several feet below the floor – like planting a fence post deep below the surface. We can gain access directly to such placement, and its potential for profound stability, when we ignore apparent realty for an alternative one.

I love that all of the client is available when working through the energetic taxonomy. Bones are as fluid and flexible as the jelly of organs and as easy to reach. In the beginning of this practice, I started fooling around with just the point where the fascial network interlaced with the periosteum. These fibers are where much of the rigidity of behavior resides, seldom moving freely and subtly pushing the client spatially to compensate for his inability to move. These micro- fixations are areas of hypo-activity, with hyper-activity elsewhere. Moreover, they are integral to the fixed body of fight-or-flight. Just introducing a counter-wave through those fibers smashes through rigidity in the entire system. It is still a viable technique.

We are looking, as all Rolfers are, for a more stable yet more open system. I have found that working at the planning stage of materialization gets straight to the part of consciousness that is in charge of these matters. “Take me to your leader!,” marching into gravity. I see Ida Rolf smiling, with a flower in her hair.

Random Remarks

People have asked me if the way I work is as good as the way I used to work. Let me just ask, “What kind of question is that?!” Why would anyone sacrifice results? I can’t imagine. I slabbed ‘em and grabbed ‘em with gusto and not without results for years. All Rolfers evolve the work individually, and rightly so. And for each and every one of us, the clients’ needs come first. Right?

What about the charge that this way of working is simply imagination? Working through the energetic taxonomy makes some unconscious aspects of Rolfing SI conscious. I think all Rolfing SI is imaginary. The touch of standard Rolfing SI is based on conventional protocols of physical being, which confers a sense of reality to the process. Convention in no way contradicts the imaginary nature of the interaction. My clients do not have to believe in me, or my method, for me to make contact at the level I do. I am in no way negating human reality any more than standard Rolfing SI does. Imaginary and real are not in opposition. “We do not change the body so much as change the mind about the body.” Melchior was a hands-on guy: Why did he say that? What did he mean? How did he do it? As I hope I have suggested here, human embodiment is largely imaginary. That’s why the client’s proprioceptive imagination can be appealed to for change.

Which Came First, the Theory or the Practice?

I literally felt my way to where I am now.  I picked up on threads from my Rolfing training and went back to my home lab. Explanations or  theories came later, as   I studied up. I’ve mentioned my  debt  to Melchior, but Jim Oschman has been    a constant source of food for thought too, among countless others. Many have gone down this road before me in our community. Most have never been seen or heard from again. I guess they met with some resistance. I can’t imagine why.  It   is our own energetic taxonomy, after all. Here’s my stab at trying to articulate it.

Author’s note: A shout out to Karen Sallovitz and Steve Mettner, Rolfers of very long standing who gave me questions to answer and points  to ponder.

Deborah Stucker began training in the first CSP (now Unit I) class in 1987 in Carmel, California, certified as a Rolfer in 1988 in Boulder, and completed advanced certification in 1995 in Brazil. She stopped actively practicing in the early ‘oughts’ to travel, go to cosmetology school, care for relatives, flip houses, work as an interior designer, and hang out with a small individual disguised as a dog. She still practices, though, every so often – can’t help it!Integrating the Invisible[:]