At this year’s annual Rolfing conference in July, Marianne Bentzen spoke to us about BODYnamics, a unique system of body psychotherapy developed in Europe that combines Reichian approaches to the body with theories of psychomotor development. My wife Cheryl Why at, also a Rolfer, and I have both taken the one-year BODYnamic training, are presently taking the one-year training a second time, and are considering taking the four-year training which begins in early 1992. In this article, I will relate how I came in contact with BODYnamics and how it enhances and opens up new possibilities for working with clients in the context of Rolfing.

One question I have had since I was first trained as a Rolfer is, how do we as Rolfers deal with the structure of the ego personality as we work the structure of the body? I confronted this issue more and more as I continue to Rolf certain clients on an ongoing basis for several years, although I also noticed it on a more subtle level in the ten-series. I noticed certain body twists, curves, contours or pains which improved to a point and then plateaued with no improvement during the next few months or years. This was true whether we worked intensively for a number of sessions or if we took long breaks between sessions or if we worked gradually, one session every month or so. Over time, I began to sense I was confronting an ego structure manifesting itself in the body.

This, I realized, was not a new or startling discovery. Reich’s character analysis, Loweri s bioenergetics, Ron Kurtz’s Hakomi therapy, and many others had made these connections long ago. However, I think I unconsciously assumed or desired that Rolfing would deal with this “stuff”. After all, I had heard clients on Rolfing videos say they had tried all sorts of psychotherapy and nothing changed in their lives. Then they found Rolfing, and “Rolfing just gets down there in the body” and their lives changed. Some of my clients referred to above were also in psychotherapy. I was frustrated. I wanted to do more with these clients, and I wanted to do it in a way that I could integrate with Rolfing.

One day I began working with a five-year old Asian boy whose mother was concerned, because he was a slow learner and he walked on his toes and he couldn’t talk as well as the other children his age. He had been a premature baby, born after 61 /2 months gestation, weighing 1.8 pounds. He had open heart surgery at 2 weeks of age; had had pneumonia five times and had a hearing problem. I was out of my league. This client was not covered in my Rolfing training, no in my manual of clients-most-likely-to-walk into-one’s-Rolfing-practice. But I was game to try. Oh, one more thing: the boy’s father was frustrated with his son and frequently yelled at him for not walking or talking correctly and for not listening.

I started with the ten-session series, focusing on opening his rib can get and pelvis in the first session with special attention to the long heart-scar extending from under his left scapula around to his left side. We focused on his legs and gait in the second session. During the following week, he struggled more in breathing; his lips turned blue during sleep; and he wet the bed three times (more than usual for him). But he walked a little better. Was this progress?

At a party, I spoke with Peter Bernhardt, a therapist friend who told me about Lisbeth Marcher from Denmark who worked with children with developmental problems and who was in town at the time. She was looking for children with whom she could video-tape sessions for training purposes. The session would last about three hours, and I could work with her although I wasn’t sure what she did.

The therapy was something called BODYnamics. Peter told me that Lisbeth and others, including Marianne Bentzen, had developed ways to work with hypo- and hyper responsive musculature in relation to specific problems arising in childhood development, including birth and pre birth trauma. They were able to teach practitioners how, through touch, to diagnose hypo- and hyper-responsive muscles in clients. These diagnoses of muscle responsiveness do not always correspond to levels of muscle tension but rather to levels of elasticity in the tissue. Hypo-responsiveness also tends to correspond to resignation, while hyper-responsiveness tends to correspond to resistance as underlying attitudes which clients adopt during the developmental stages. Of course, if a client passes though a developmental stage in a healthy manner, the muscles that correspond to that stage of development will tend toward a healthy resilience which indicates a person has more choice for action in life. BODYnamic practitioner first (though not always first) stressful life situation. This was also part of the reason for him walking with his toes striking the ground first. Lisbeth uses playful situations as a way to rework children’s birth experiences; with adults, she uses more direct methods for reworking birth traumas. It was important, she said, to provide Chris with activity that moved him close to his fear, but offer him resource and support, such as gentle, physical contact, so the fear would not overwhelm him. By the end of the evening, Chris was worming his way thorough a dark canal provided by two sides of a futon. To be honest, much of the session didn’t become clear to me until after my one-year training with Lisbeth. It was even less clear to Chris’ parents. At the next Rolfing session with him, Chris’ mother told me his father thought we were only playing with Chris and not doing anything to help him. In the course of the Rolfing, I also had Chris do some pushing against my hands with his heels and playfully held him so he could escape and free himself. His walking continued to show improvement. However, we were only able to continue the Rolfing for two more sessions before the family moved unexpectedly. As a result of this experience with Chris and Lisbeth, my wife Cheryl and I decided to enter the BODYnamic one-year training program which I found to be frustrating at first, particularly since one of my reasons for taking it was to integrate new ideas and methods into my Rolfing practice. What I found was that BODYnamics is an extensive body of information which one cannot expect to grasp or integrate with one or two weekend workshops (how very un-California!). In time, this became one of the things I appreciated about the approach. The training focused on the character structure modelners use this information to create a Body map of the client which informs them of not only shock and trauma but also unresolved developmental issues still in the body and psyche. I was fascinated.

Chris seemed like a perfect client for Lisbeth to work with. He definitely had trauma issues around birth: pre maturity followed by open heart surgery. Before the session with Chris, I spoke to Lisbeth by phone and told her what I knew about him.

Lisbeth began the session informally, sitting on the floor with Chris and me, talking with his parents about his birth, his illnesses, and how he was doing at school. One teacher told Chris’ mother he was retarded and would remain so all his life. As Lisbeth talked with the parents, she was also touching Chris’ back and sensing his musculature and talking to him and playing with keys with him. She learned he had better than average fine hand and finger coordination … and he could read the word “Toyota” on one of her keys something his parents didn’t know he could do. In many other ways, she observed and told the parents he was either slightly ahead or behind children his age; that his premature birth and heart surgery would naturally delay his development in some areas; and that repeated ear infections during bouts of pneumonia had probably delayed his speech development.

As she began to develop her own relationship with him-he is a very open and friendly child, and in only two Rolfing sessions we had quickly developed a playful, loving relationship-she had him begin pushing against my hands with his heels. Then she held him with her arms while he playfully struggled to free himself. She kept telling him to use his power. Every now and then, one could see a faint hint of fear cross his face. She explained that a premature baby or a C-section baby never had the opportunity to feel the pressure of the contracting uterus and birth canal, nor to use his/her own power by pushing with the heels to come through his/ her first (though not always first) stressful life situation. This was also part of the reason for him walking with his toes striking the ground first. Lisbeth uses playful situations as a way to rework children’s birth experiences; with adults, she uses more direct methods for reworking birth traumas. It was important, she said, to provide Chris with activity that moved him close to his fear, but offer him resource and support, such as gentle, physical contact, so the fear would not overwhelm him. By the end of the evening, Chris was worming his way thorough a dark canal provided by two sides of a futon.

To be honest, much of the session didn’t become clear to me until after my one-year training with Lisbeth. It was even less clear to Chris’ parents. At the next Rolfing session with him, Chris’ mother told me his father thought we were only playing with Chris and not doing anything to help him. In the course of the Rolfing, I also had Chris do some pushing against my hands with his heels and playfully held him so he could escape and free himself. His walking continued to show improvement. However, we were only able to continue the Rolfing for two more sessions before the family moved unexpectedly.

As a result of this experience with Chris and Lisbeth, my wife Cheryl and I decided to enter the BODYnamic one-year training program which I found to be frustrating at first, particularly since one of my reasons for taking it was to integrate new ideas and methods into my Rolfing practice. What I found was that BODYnamics is an extensive body of information which one cannot expect to grasp or integrate with one or two weekend workshops (how very un-California!). In time, this became one of the things I appreciated about the approach. The training focused on the character structure model Lisbeth, Marianne, and others had developed, but it also included theory and experience of body awareness, boundary development and formation (how boundaries develop in the child, how to sense one’s boundaries, how to sense boundary problems in clients, and how boundary awareness serves as a key to understanding transference and counter-transference issues at body level), and a small introduction to working with shock and birth issues.

The bulk of the training consisted of working with the character structure model which draws from those of Reich and Lowen, but which is based on the unfolding of muscular development from in utero through adolescence. I especially appreciated its terminology. For example, instead of an anal structure (Freud) or the masochistic structure (Lowen), they use will structure, which is also grounded in the developmental stage of childhood (2-4 years old) in which will structure issues (“I have the right to choose, use my will, act with my power, and still belong”) are first encountered by the child. Each of their seven character structures has an early and a late phase: for example, self sacrificing is the early phase of the will structure while judging is the late phase. Each structure also has a healthy possibility, which I also find appealing. For the will structure, this is self-assertion. Thus, their terminology focuses more on central developmental issues rather than on pathology.

They then take it another step. Each structure and each phase in each structure has its own set of muscles which are activated by a new impulse in the development of the child, as in the new impulse required when the infant first begins to hold up its head or when it moves from horizontal to vertical in first standing or when it first begins to walk. In adults, these sets of muscles will include hypo-and hyper-responsive ones. If most of the muscles in a set are hypo-responsive, this usually signals that a person is stuck in the early phase (resignation) of that particular developmental stage; if most are hyper-responsive, this would signal the person is stuck in the later phases of a developmental stage (resistance). If, for example, the parents direct enough interference at the child during the early phase of a developmental stage when the child is first experiencing the new, emerging impulse, the impulse will be crushed, the child adopts resignation as the underlying attitude for that phase, and the muscles give up (hypo-responsiveness).

In the training, we spent time taking on the muscle pattern of each character structure with our bodies and were amazed how much of the psychological aspect of the character structure we experienced simply by embodying its muscle pattern. Again, using the will structure (late phase) for my example: when I tensed my pectoralis minor, teres major, rhomboids, inferior trapezius, the superficial muscles of the galea aponeurotica, and the massater-I am omitting a number of others-I experienced a significant shift toward a judgmental attitude that in some mysterious way took over and permeated my outlook on life.

And there are further refinements. For example, there are seventeen muscles included in the set for the will structure, but some include only some of the muscle fibers, such as the top part of the iliotibial band or the inferior fibers of the trapezius.

My frustration in the beginning was that I was unable to integrate the new knowledge in to my Rolfing practice. However, by the end of the last of the year-long series of four workshops, the last one being a five-day residential workshop, I was then able to utilize some of the information on character structure, sensory awareness, and boundary formation in my sessions. With one client, it helped me guide him into having more of a relationship with his body by having him track my touch and sense when my touch was painful and when it was pleasurable. He had almost no relationship to pleasure in his body. He developed a greater sense of body boundary which he never developed previously, because he was continuously having those boundaries violated as a child. Since childhood, he had always left his body when a parent (usually his mother) did something which hurt, because he thought he had no right to say, “Stop!” By controlling the depth of my pressure when I touched him, he gained a new sense of his own power which he began to experiment with in his job and his intimate relationship. With another client, I had her kick her heels against my hands to sense the power in her legs which then allowed her to let go some in her lower back and trust that her legs could support her without locking her knees. It also changed her stance from a defiant two-year old to one approaching puberty. I am also able to perceive boundary problems in this client and some early character structure issues.

Although from the beginning of my Rolfing, I assumed that in laying my hands on a person I was also probably contacting psychological “Stuff”, I am now more aware of specific developmental issues when I look at clients or place my hands in certain areas of their bodies. For example, when I see a butt tucked under like the person has his tail between his legs and I put my hands on the tight and dense quadratus femoris, I know lam dealing with a will structure as well (issues of a person making choices and using his/her personal power). I do not feel qualified to do therapy with the person, but I can structure the Rolfing sessions so this client can more consciously experience his personal power in our relationship by giving him choices in the session and by suggesting new choices for relationship with his own body. These are techniques all of us probably use already in our sessions, but the difference I have noticed is that now I do these things with more consciousness and intention. Just as clarity of intention is one of our most valuable tools in Rolfing, so it is in BODYnamics.

I am seriously considering doing the four-year BODYnamic training, because it seems like a body psychotherapy approach that I could eventually integrate with Rolfing and because it offers the possibility of working more extensively with the emotional aspect of body structure. In the course of her work with clients, Lisbeth will often recommend Rolfing. She observes that psychological and emotional issues work their way into the fascial structure of the body. After clients work their way through certain emotional issues, the fascial patterns remain, and she then refers clients to Rolfers to restructure the fascia.

As Rolfers, I feel we have developed a highly refined attunement to touch which we can also utilize in the BODYnamics approach to the body, especially in assessment of hypo- and hyper-responsiveness in tissue. I also think it offers us another approach to waking up the aliveness of hypo-responsive tissue in those clients who walk into our offices with soft bodies and a resigned attitude toward life. In the BODYnamic approach, practitioners gently contact hypo-responsive tissue and attempt to coax it, draw it out, help it to fill out, moving at a pace that keeps contact with it without overwhelming it. Their goal is to wake it up by activating its impulse. How many times have I tried to wake up such tissue by pressing deeply into it? I also see possibilities of working more deeply with clients who have experienced shock such as physical and sexual abuse. It remains to be seen how this integration of Rolfing and BODYnamics will occur within my work, but I am optimistic and excited about the possibilities.Rolfing and BODYnamics