By Christina Fenendael, Certified Rolfer™

Introduction

Bodyworkers come across people from many walks of life, but certain shared experiences are commonplace. Desk  jobs are prevalent, as is the state of disconnect between  body  and  mind that sedentary but intellectual activities may precipitate over time. Many people spend hours a day detached from their physical sensations (unless  they  are  in a state of discomfort), and recreational sports and outdoor activities are popular pastimes. In some ways, this makes a Rolfer’s job easier in the sense that body- mapping exercises and fostering greater awareness of kinesthetic sensations will most likely help the average person with both work and leisure.

However, when working with those coming from training traditions that emphasize a great deal of conscious control over how a movement takes place, such as dance, it may be worthwhile to incorporate different tactics. As someone with extensive training in many classical forms as well as body- mind centering practices, I occasionally find myself perplexed by what seem like simple movement cues, or overwhelmed by awareness exercises that may be refreshing and enlightening to others. While my personal difficulties may be unique, and undoubtedly experienced Rolfers are already accustomed to working with a wide range of clients, I offer insight into how my experiences within the world of dance have shaped me, in the hope that it may be helpful for newer practitioners when working with others with similar histories.

The Training and Mindset of a Dancer

Like many young, passionate dancers, when I first heard about Rolfing® Structural Integration (SI), I was desperate for transformation. My fears were that I would never overcome what I considered ‘bad habits’: physical limitations in range of motion, speed, and strength; and, worse yet, that I would never escape the inside of my own head and truly dance. Despite attending an innovative, public high school for the arts with a progressive and supportive teaching staff, and going on to a well-rounded and body-positive BFA (bachelor of fine arts) program, I, like many of my peers, was relentless in my pursuit of physical perfection despite knowing intellectually that such a thing does not exist (and that our differences are what make us each rare and beautiful artists). And frankly, trying to force change upon ourselves was sometimes necessary: I once told a guest artist that I couldn’t roll up from the floor as slowly as her choreography demanded due to limitations in spinal flexion (something that I have been working on in the nearly two decades since), and her response was, “Well, you’ll just have to make it happen.”

This was my mindset for many years – that to admit to structural limitation was a failure, self-indulgent, and moreover counterproductive; that one must simply ‘make it happen’. In this scenario, the only thing truly limiting a person is his/her own mind – but if that is the case, what is one to make of things like x-rays or doctors’ diagnoses? How is a person supposed to know what s/he is truly capable of? On the flip side, is major change even possible, or are we supposed to just accept what others tell us we can and cannot do? It was a recurring dilemma.

At the same time, I was exposed to  many  different  training  techniques and philosophies – one modern dance professor would have  us  stand  with  our weight in our heels; another in the balls of our feet. A butoh choreographer prefaced each performance with hours of slow, moving meditation, while a release- technique teacher might emphasize efficiency, speed, and minimizing unnecessary muscular effort. A Broadway jazz teacher directed us to project our energy outward towards the audience, while a contact improvisation teacher might have us close our eyes and focus on sensations, breath, and spontaneity. I was taught that survival as an artist meant being adaptable. Being prepared at any moment to demonstrate any number of ways of walking, jumping, and rolling on the floor was de rigueur. My classmates and I sometimes wished for some magic way to transcend our training, to be simply able to do  what  was  asked  of us without having to wonder how. One of the beautiful things about Rolfing SI  is that it stimulates adaptability, and it seems inevitable that it would be popular amongst modern dancers as a result.

The other challenge for me while I was a student were my mental demons when it came to performing since I was graded on my technique – or, even worse, on my expressive quality, since I was in a state of abject terror of inadequacy most of the time I was in class. Yet, my stage performances were what redeemed me in the ever-watchful eyes of my advisors, because it was usually only then that I could come close to ‘letting go’ and just dancing, and it sure felt glorious.

Bringing Rolfing SI into the Picture

The Initial Inspiration

I first heard of Rolfing SI when a much- beloved professor, the late Danny Shapiro, told us about the Ten Series during composition class one day. Danny and his wife, Joanie Smith,  were both faculty members in my BFA program and the artistic directors of my favorite local modern dance company, Shapiro and Smith Dance. Their teaching was inspiring, and their work is still breathtaking – they celebrated what individual dancers, whether students or professionals in their company, brought to the ‘steps’ and favored a playful approach to choreography and composition. They both reminded me of the joy of movement, my unique strengths, and the idea that sometimes you need to give up on perfection and just do – my very greatest challenge at the time.

I first heard of Rolfing SI when a much- beloved professor, the late Danny Shapiro, told us about the Ten Series during composition class one day. Danny and his wife, Joanie Smith,  were both faculty members in my BFA program and the artistic directors of my favorite local modern dance company, Shapiro and Smith Dance. Their teaching was inspiring, and their work is still breathtaking – they celebrated what individual dancers, whether students or professionals in their company, brought to the ‘steps’ and favored a playful approach to choreography and composition. They both reminded me of the joy of movement, my unique strengths, and the idea that sometimes you need to give up on perfection and just do – my very greatest challenge at the time.

Danny’s stories of Rolfing SI sounded  like a way to strip oneself of ‘bad habits’ and flawed technique and start  fresh. He told us about the intra-oral and nasal work, which was horrifying enough, but the real selling point was what he told us happened after he received work to his legs. He was an active, athletic teenager at the time he received sessions, and had floor burn from rehearsals on the side of his knee that he would scratch absent- mindedly. When, after the session (which was very painful), he reached down by habit to scratch his scab, he found it  was no longer where he expected it to be, but rather behind his knee. How could something so dramatic take place in such a short period of time? We were enthralled. The discomfort he described was hardly a deterrent, since most of us assumed that anything transformative was probably going to be traumatic in some way anyhow. “True metamorphosis,” I thought; “Sign me up!”

Body Learning

Although craving the breakthroughs I  felt Rolfing SI promised, in reality, I did not experience Rolfing SI personally  until over a decade later. I was, by that time, a full-time athletic trainer at a small sports physical-therapy clinic and moonlighting several nights a week as a professional samba dancer and campy cabaret performer. My employers took advantage of my training as a yoga instructor and dancer and facilitated  my training in Pilates Reformer work so that I could best help the subset of their patient population most mysterious to them: dancers. Rehab and post-rehab work with dancers, gymnasts, martial artists, yogis, and circus performers became my niche, though I worked with any and all patients who came through our doors. They were all ‘movers’, whether rugby players or lawn-bowlers, and there was (and is) still so much for me to learn about human movement that it never got boring.

But dancers were always shuttled in my direction, and I was able to put them at ease simply by our shared values. Knowing that a health-care provider has a solid grasp on what you do and how important it is to your life is a relief to anyone, and I could relate from having had doctors who were dismissive of my needs. In retrospect, however, I have also learned much since then. Once I was assigned to work with an injured professional-track student in the prestigious San Francisco Ballet training program. As an exercise, I had her externally rotate only her hips in order to help her identify what I had been taught to consider ‘true turnout’, versus compensating by  also  rotating at the knees and ankles in order to achieve the flat, 180° turnout aesthetic so prized in strict ballet tradition. She looked at the angle her feet made and simply responded, “That’s just not acceptable,” and I had flashbacks to being told to ‘make it happen’ even when it was not biomechanically ideal. Luckily for me, my teachers in college told us to say no when choreographers asked us to do something  dangerous, but I fully understood the pressure that professional dance hopefuls are under. When I told her that working from her accustomed turn-out could lead to serious injuries and a potentially shorter career, I was preaching to the choir (and explaining pliés to the corps de ballet while I was at it) and adding unnecessary stress to an already challenging situation. Ballet training is different from many other disciplines and a little tact can go a long way. While contemporary modern dancers are often asked to adapt to whatever movement tasks are presented to them, ballet is a much older form with specific aesthetics and physical expectations that are less likely to be attainable by any  body,  and a ‘long’ career is not, in any case, generally expected.

Loving to ‘Fly’

I had, ironically, more-or-less given up modern dance because of a series of injuries that made the unpredictable nature of the choreography difficult. Ballet was more manageable, with its strictly codified ways of landing jumps. It was especially beneficial when studied from someone who was also a master instructor of the Feldenkrais Method® (Augusta Moore, still a favorite). I still loved modern dance, but I no longer felt inadequate about not making my living as a member of a professional company. And Augusta’s humane and humorous approach to pain-free ballet paradoxically always indulges my cerebral nature without sacrificing the importance of heartfelt expression. My weekly forays into the professional cabaret circuit were defined by the shameless silliness and self-acceptance that goes hand-in-hand with doing things like dancing mambo in Santa hats or leading conga lines with Elvis impersonators (not to mention developing professional relationships with sideshow performers and a man in a gorilla suit).

I was finally confident enough in my stage presence to practice what my professors had always preached:  study  technique in order to be able to forget about it later and just fly. I was still eager to experience new ways of attaining that state of near- thoughtless grace (if you consider dancing for 1960s-style surf bands or terrible contemporary DJs ‘graceful’, which I do) that I once found so ephemeral, and now found so addictive. I figured Rolfing SI probably couldn’t hurt in that sense, at least, so I gave it a try.

My first practitioner, Carole LaRochelle, turned out to be an avid salsa dancer and a kindred spirit in many ways. I later did my Rolf Movement® sessions with Rob McWilliams, who once toured with Shapiro and Smith Dance (as I found out accidentally). While  it is not necessary to share backgrounds with every client, these commonalities made me feel normal – I had so often felt like the ‘odd one out’ in traditional sports medicine situations – and allowed for greater change.

Later, while receiving sessions from a fellow student, Elizabeth Klinger, in Phase II of the Rolfing training, I was able to train successfully nearly every day on a brand-new, aerial apparatus at a circus school. I progressed rapidly, despite my notions of my own abilities regarding spinal flexibility, upper body strength, and bravery. The luxury of doing a Ten Series in such a consistent manner was new to me, and I found myself gaining strength and integrating skills quickly. Yet again, Rolfing SI had shown itself to be transformative in my life – Danny was right!

A ‘Problem’ with Cueing Performers . . .

I did find one thing odd as a new student at the Rolf Institute of Structural Integration (RISI; now the Dr. Ida Rolf Institute®), and I want to point to it, for consideration by my colleagues as you work with movers, particularly performers. As we worked through the Ten Series, we regularly cued each other to increase awareness and sensation, and for many people (especially our clients from the local community); this seemed liberating. Yet for me, it sometimes felt that I was somehow being inauthentic. Even just standing could be perplexing, because I was never quite sure if they wanted me to stand as usual, with conscious effort to lengthen my spine, equalize my weight, and balance my posture, or to fully relax, which I almost never did. At one point, I explained that my background had trained me to be actively aware of what felt like almost every step that I took, trying consciously to alter my movement  patterns  to  somehow  be more ‘right’ or beneficial in regards to what I assumed were biomechanical errors. I loved the physical therapists I worked with, but they had also sometimes

Many of us get lost inside our own heads at times and suffer from ‘analysis paralysis’, but it seems that certain types of movers are more susceptible to this than others.

encouraged focusing on minutiae of movement patterns and specific muscle activations [I recall time spent trying to alter the timing of my vastus medialis oblique (VMO) to correct patella-femoral dysfunction. While it helped with recovery, it also compounded what I already tended to do, which was to overanalyze].

Many of us get lost inside our  own heads at times and suffer from ‘analysis paralysis’, but it seems that certain types of movers are more susceptible to this than others. I would hazard to say that people with lots of body-mind discipline training may fall into this category, so it could be beneficial to keep that in mind when working with these individuals. Alternately, when some performers find themselves being watched, they naturally fall into ‘stage mode’, simply as a result of their hours of drilling.

Here’s a story about that. As a senior in college in 2003, I had the opportunity to perform in re-stagings of some of the most famous postmodern choreography when White Oak Dance Project came to town. They recruited local untrained community members, youth dance students, and professional-level dancers to participate. For one of the pieces, Overture to “The Matter” by David Gordon, there were around forty of us, varying in age from child to elder. In the spirit of the post- modernists, we were all equals in this choreography even though some had never set foot onstage. All we were asked to do was walk, while Mikhail Baryshnikov himself puttered around in coveralls, moving random-looking set pieces around the stage. Quite literally, we each walked across the stage in a single-file line at a set speed and distance from one another. I adored it, even though it was challenging to walk ‘naturally’ with an audience (which I think is common for any human). One teenaged ballet dancer simply could not do it. No matter what the director said, she could not shake her ingrained ‘ballerina walk’ when in front of an audience –whether it was other dancers in rehearsal, or the audience filling the huge auditorium to see Baryshnikov on opening night. It was fascinating: she clearly did not walk like that all the time, but her training effectively overpowered her ability to change her movement patterns in that particular context – it was almost as if to not walk like a ballerina when onstage, in the presence of such a ballet legend, would have caused her distress or, at the very least, uncomfortable cognitive dissonance.

. . . And Some ‘Cures’

Knowing that overthinking hinders athletes of many types, from the golfer who chokes at the tee to the acrobat who freezes before a new trick, how can we, as practitioners, simultaneously encourage enhanced physical awareness and spontaneous, coordinated movement? As a Rolfer-in- training, to receive initial permission to not always put words to physical sensations, and to sometimes relax and be as ‘sloppy’ as my body wanted to be, even when being observed by myself or others, was invaluable. Being reassured that ingrained movement patterns are not ‘bad habits’, as I’d once thought of them, but had served their purpose in context, and may continue to serve their purpose when appropriate, was validating. This helped me reframe my own potential and the value of my experiences.

I find that participating in postmodern dance forms like contact improvisation, as well as my ongoing professional experiences with unchoreographed performances, are useful when it comes to fostering physical freedom on my own.

For the therapeutic setting, like a Rolfing practice, simple exercises can help – anything that encourages movement without judgement. I have found reminders that spontaneous, enjoyable movement can be beneficial to health helpful to me as a student, teacher, trainer, and now bodyworker.

Finally, simply be aware that context can be of vast importance when asking our clients to move. We can make this easier for them by using clarifying language – such as saying, “Walk as if you are on  your way to an appointment,” or “Breathe as if you are relaxing after a long day,” or “Stand as if you are supported by sky and earth, without effort,” for instance. Such languaging reinforces that anything we suggest is merely one possibility of many, and they do not need to adhere to anything that is not useful for them.

Surely this will be an often-revisited puzzle as I develop my Rolfing practice as a freshly-licensed practitioner in a brand- new city. My current clientele mainly consists of performers, and aerialist peers are encouraging me to rent space to give bodywork sessions in the circus centers and dance studios at which I  train.  I look forward to learning from veteran Rolfers and new clients, and I expect that the balance of mind and body and the inherent dance between the two (if they are separate at all) will reveal itself to be a beautiful, endless choreography to live and witness.

Christina Fenendael, Certified Rolfer, LMT, received her BFA in dance from the University of Minnesota in 2003 and has been teaching dance, choreographing, or performing ever since. She has been a cabaret performer in the Bay Area for the past decade, and an aerialist for seven years. She has danced professionally for schools, hospitals, libraries, parades, weddings, casinos, surprise parties, birthdays, anniversaries, and retirement parties; at bars and wineries, circus events, fundraisers, variety shows, and countless corporate events; and in music videos and with live bands and DJs of all types. She graduated from RISI in 2018, moved to Seattle, and received her license to practice in Washington state in the summer of 2019. She frequently works with clients who are members of the stage community, including dancers, singers, stagehands, acrobats, jugglers, contortionists, aerialists, and magicians.