JA: My relationship with Dr. Rolf was very complex on the heart level; I loved her very much, not only as a mentor, but as a family member. I really cared for her a lot. She had me assist quite a few of her classes, in ’70, ’71, ’72. Between or during class breaks I would sometimes stay with her in Big Sur. She would work on me, we would go to dinner, I would fix her things and run errands for her, and so on.

Her hands were crippling from arthritis. So one day her hand was just in the right place and I started to work on it (I’m sure we weren’t in class because she was very private); anyway, the work made a significant difference. So then she asked me to work on her hands every chance we had that we were sitting around, kind of putting her hands in my lap. It was great, I can’t tell you what a thrill it was to be able to give back and to assist someone whom you care about so much, someone who has changed your life. That was probably in 70.

Then, in ’71, maybe ’72, I was in Florida with her, and she asked me to give her sessions-full body sessions. Now this was particularly special, because if you check into the past, she only let one person work on her, and that was her son. I was honored.

How long did I work on her? – probably through ’73-it must have been even longer-’74,’75-because I would try these new ideas out on her. She loved the work. All of the later difficulty was not because Dr. Rolf didn’t like what I was doing in terms of bodywork. It was thrilling to be able to work with her. One time she paid me, and I took the check because I just had to take it, it seemed an acknowledgement of being “professional”. I think I was going to frame it, but I have a feeling that, being broke, I cashed it.

I had been teaching since 1963 and had been looking for someone to explain to me why the ideas I had were working. So when I was asked to join Moshe Feldenkrais’ first U.S. training in 1972 – I thought, “Oh, maybe he can explain why my theories seem to work.” I wasn’t wanting to train with anyone, I just wanted someone to explain my discoveries to me.

Dr. Rolf was also teaching a course at the same time right down the hall there at South coast in Big Sur (in 1972). I had the opportunity to visit her class as well. One day Moshe said, “Listen, if that is ‘Structural Integration’, this is called ‘Functional Integration”‘. That was the birth of the term “Functional Integration”. I was sorry to leave the class; I was touched by the wonderful connection with him.

Moshe was someone who, for whatever reason, for whatever he saw, was very supportive of me and my discoveries. Not too long ago a therapist took one of my classes in Boston. I asked, “What brought you to this class?” She said, “You are the only person Moshe Feldenkrais referred us to who is still living!” I laughed and said, “I should be able to use that as a marketing tool somewhere!”

I was teaching at the college, and could only attend the first part of Moshe’s training. I love Moshe’s work, it’s very powerful, it’s very successful, it’s very lovely to do. It just wasn’t what I would do, so I listened to him talk, and I would say, “Ah, good, now I can ask him, right?” Finally he granted me a time after class to demonstrate my work. Moshe was so funny because he used to smoke during his classes. During my session he started way on the other side of the room, and as the session progressed he kept moving a little closer, a little closer, and by the end of the session, he was leaning over the client – his ashes dropping on my client!

Afterward he said, “Did you figure this out yourself?” I said, “Well, yes, but is that a bad thing to say? He said, “Clever. You are so clever to have figured this out!”

From that time on, he started lecturing me, “Judith, you need to work with 300 people at a time… well, wait a minute, you must work with 1,000 people at a time!” We had established a close friendship, close in the sense of a connection, although I only saw him a couple more times after that before he died.

After that I just kept going on my own. Since I couldn’t seem to find anyone to explain to me why these things were working, I would just figure it out on my own. I do know how to persevere.

I became more certain that as people used the old paradigm of posture, they looked and were on hold. I wondered if the premise could be traced to certain beliefs about how people are supposed to be upright, supposed to stand and be proper. I believe these ideas were then set into the body by the environment – meaning shoes and furniture and clothes – in the aftermath of the industrial revolution.

People were standing with their feet straight ahead and close together, chest out and head up. This was so prevalent, yet I didn’t really know anyone who did it, unless asked to do so. This was the piece that caught my attention. I said, “I just don’t understand how these things work, that good posture needs to be so effortful.” Shouldn’t good posture look natural?

Then with the Rolf model, I saw people work to use their psoas, moving their waistline back, to swing the leg forward, to move the top of the head up, the elbows out, etc. These strong directives came not only from Dr. Rolf, but also from Alexander, and from traditional postural and body mechanics from a medical model, and from dance.

I looked at all of these models and I thought, “The common denominator is holding in some way; holding in any way loses the essence, the person in their natural state.” It was never more striking than when I would enter a room with 20 students and suddenly they all put on their best posture. I suddenly felt that there was only one body in the room – or one agreed-upon idea – my teaching promoted the loss of 20 unique individuals for one correct idea. Oops.

So in the early ’70s I started to play with a slight lean, where, instead of the weight being aligned over the malleolus, I suggested that people bring the weight forward to the center of the foot – which put the plumbline to the front of the ankles. This was heresy in the environment that I was in. But, when people did it they said,”Hmm, I feel a lot better.”

The first piece was the slight lean forward, the second piece was the slight open stance. Then I started to work with teaching people how to use these ideas and work. Peoplewould say, “The pain is less in receiving work, and the effort is less in doing the work; do I need to charge less?” – the Rolfers were very funny – “do I need to charge less, because I am not working as hard and my hands don’t hurt as much?”

SI: Would you mind defining “a slight open stance”?

JA: A slight open stance is where the legs are slightly externally rotated. I call it a neutral position because I believe this position better matches the structural design of the bonesand the soft tissue in the way that they spiral through the body. I felt that if the feet were too parallel, the torsion created by that might create a sense of stability; but it really also created holding, which reduced the mobility and the moment-to-moment negotiation of weight-bearing. I call this dynamic position “neutral”.

The results of this new body usage seemed to be an increase in effectiveness and a decrease in pain for the client, and effort for the Rolfer.

I then offered many workshops across the country teaching people to use these ideas. By the mid-’70s I saw the importance of teaching the difference between a “structural holding pattern” and a “functional holding pattern”. “Functional holding patterns” can come from habits or beliefs or habitual movement patterns; they are easier to release than “structural” patterns and can be released through movement, meditation, a vacation, etc. “Structural holding patterns” seem embedded, ingrained in the tissue, and don’t seem to change from thought; I think people need hands-on work to change “structural holding patterns”.

I started to play with this, and as people explored, they could see that the movement work addressed the functional patterns so quickly. However, there I was going against one of Dr. Rolf’s wishes, as she only wanted people to do the movement work after they had finished the Ten-Session Series. It was a little awkward, because I found that if practitioners taught movement first, the functional holding patterns would change and more accurately reveal the structural holding patterns.

Always a student of observation, I continued to ponder those questions about why people “hold on” to have good posture. Why was having one shoulder slightly higher than the other shoulder such a bad thing? In fact, if the body is supposed to be symmetrical, why had I never seen a body that was symmetrical, except in a posed position?

There seemed to be a lot of shame around having an asymmetrical body.

So I said to myself, “I wonder if asymmetrical is the way the body is supposed to be? I wonder if asymmetry in the structure might be the source of true perfect function of the body to create movement; and movement is what keeps us dynamic, healthy, rehydrated, and flexible in our thinking and in our emotional expression.”

I started to ask people to explore and honor / “match” their asymmetry, meaning to go into the pattern of what was truly asymmetrical. Guess what happened? As they were able to really be guided to “match” what was truly asymmetrical, what was functional about that asymmetry changed. And it would lengthen or widen or deepen in some way. And I said, “Well, that’s kind of amazing!” I realized that people were often holding a pattern of correction which added a second layer of holding that kept them from neutralizing the true problem.

One of my clients in 1973 or ‘4 had a short right leg. I asked her to walk, and could she please take a moment and really go over her right leg, and feel the shortness. She said, “Well, it’s not supposed to, I’m trying to lengthen.” I said, “I know, but this time I want you to just match what is. And as she was walking, I had her move her center of gravity further to the right, to be directly over her right leg, and then to move her center of gravity over her left leg. She had to move further- wider -, and lower, to center over her right leg and higher and narrower to center over her left. I said, “Susan, is this my imagination or is your right leg lengthening?” She said,”It’s lengthening.” I said, “That’s what it looks like!”

Her functional compensational patterns were holding her even further away fromimproving, because she was trying to force length on the right, which was stretching the tissues too long vertically, and therefore squeezing the function of her leg. A torsion was also created by staying centered over her left leg.

I kept noticing all these tendencies in people. One time I mentioned to Dr. Rolf about the asymmetry and she said, “Well, which leg is longer?” I said, “Well, generally, the left leg, and the body’s center of gravity is closer to the left.” She said, “That’s what I think, too.”

I taught these ideas because I believed in them and saw them to work, but I wanted to know why. I thought, “I just know there’s a reason for this, and I’m going to find it.” I saw the body improve. I realized that if you linked the asymmetrical movement of all the joints together, from one side to the other, the movement inscribed an asymmetrical spiralling pattern that was very fluid. You can have quite a difference in your leg lengths, spiral through them differently, and still be very fluid and graceful.

This was pretty exciting. Then, in 1976, I helped to organize a raft trip with a lot of our friends, Rolfers. I couldn’t sleep on that little Insulite pad, so I took all of my clothes out of my dufflebag and I stuffed them into all the cubbyholes of my body. I slept really well. Then I wondered if bodies needed better support while being worked on.

I started playing with filling in all the spaces to support the body so that when a person was on the table, they could let go of the positional tension and reveal their truebody tension, rather than the positional tension. I didn’t know if I was reading the fact that their knee was hyperextended because of the position on the table or whether their knee was truly hyperextended. So rather than work people into a pattern that I created by having them in a certain position, I started to teach body supports.

I was asked to present this to the faculty, and I knew it was a loaded situation, but I did; and that’s when Dr. Rolf said, “You’ve got to stop pampering the client, you need the tension to see where youneed to work.” I pushed it and created conflict. Shortly after that was the release of the article in Human Behavior magazine. I never knew how the author got his information.

SI: The article about “Soft Rolfing “?

JA: Yes. After that the faculty and the board, both of which I was a member, were having meetings without me, so I knew what was coming down the road. This was in Spring of 1977, and I was called into the board meeting: “Well, you show us what you do now, and we’ll tell you if it works”. And I said, “I’m so sorry, I apologize up front because I know you’re not going to like this answer, but I would have to train you for you to be able to evaluate it. Because if you measure by the old paradigm, it won’t make sense. So, it’s best I go.” I realized I needed to pursue these ideas that I had been working with before Rolfing, as well as my new questions about asymmetry, etc.

As I thought about it years later from my more mature place, I realized that Dr. Rolf had not asked me to change her work.

SI: Do you reject the Ida Rolf idea of the vertical line?

JA: Actually, it wasn’t just Doctor Rolf’s model – it was and still is the accepted vertical postural model that I disagree with. The feet straight ahead, the 90 degree angle at the ankle, the plumbline over the malleolus, etc. That model places the direct weight-bearing over the posterior third of the foot. If we are to be directly over the heel, then why do we have a forefoot – or why not a forefoot and an aftfoot? Then I realized why there is a belief that the human has not evolved to be a biped. For the body to be on all fours, the extremities need to be in internal rotation when you stand – you leave the lower extremity in internal rotation from the hips down. No wonder the upper body needs to work so hard! My discovery of this new biomechanical model does allow us to be evolved to truly on two feet with ease. Just think, the incredible design of the increased depth of the anterior foot (forefoot) supports the anterior depth of the chest and face!

I continued to explore ways of releasing tension through movement and bodywork, but was perplexed by seeing the holding at deep layers. I thought or imagined that I could see holding/ restriction along bones, between bones, and in soft tissue that was acting like bone. I designed positions and spiraling movements to specifically influence places my hands could not reach. And guess what? The deep layers would release and the new mobility could match the other changes in the body. These explorations were in 1975-1976.

Clients appreciated their new “springiness”. I entitled the work “Arthrokinetics”, and I offered the first training to others in 1977.

I was still pondering the question of asymmetry, and then one day, walking by my desk where an anatomy book lay open, I went, “Oh my goodness! Of course! There it is – the answer to my question: the asymmetrical design of the internal body.” It seemed obvious then that the asymmetrical design of the external body was because of the size, weight, and placement of the internal organs and the developmental phases from one system to the next. The asymmetry of the lungs, the two lobes, the three lobes, the position of the heart, would probably explain why the left side would have the center of gravity closer to it, and be slightly longer and narrower, with the right side being a little wider and closer to the ground, and with more torsion, etc. “Now it all finally makes sense! Aha! Now others can see the magic and necessity of the asymmetrical truth of the movement patterns!”

Note: some people have anomalies where all the organs are on the opposite side.

If the body has asymmetry onthe inside and you hold symmetrically on the outside, you create what I call “microwhiplashes”, shear patterns which over time create scar tissue.

I just couldn’t stop these ideas from coming, and although I acted like “the mad scientist,” exploring and theorizing, it was just thrilling. By the late ’70s, early ’80s, I saw the need to ergonomically match the person with their task of sitting. The clients would look so good at the end of their session, and then lose it as soon as they sat in their car seat or office cubicle. I started by giving people towels to place here and there; later I took my duct tape and foam to design their best support. When one of my clients said, “You’re not using that duct tape on my leather seats!”, I decided it was time to pursue the hard products.

I started designing products like crazy. By the time I went to the patent attorney, I had 175 designs, and he said, “Well, I have good news and bad news.” I said, “Okay, let’s have the good news.” He said, “The good news is that you may have discovered a law of nature. The bad news is that you can’t patent a law of nature. But you can patent each of your 175 ideas here.” The patent process is very expensive! Most of those products are on the back burner because I just haven’t had the time or the funds to develop them.

SI: You have produced a number of products, though. How many are there? Can you say what sorts of things they do, and what they’re made of?

JA: Currently my product designs include around 25 cushions to select from to find comfort in sitting, a toning platform, an exercise mat, book and video. What they do is support the body in this new math, or in a new guideline for human factors. The equation equals comfort, which is determined differently by each person for each test. It lets go of the old paradigm that chairs are supposed to sit you at 90 degrees or that you’re supposed to slouch back in the thorax in a chair, airplane seat, or car seat. The environment is a big part of what gets us into trouble, because the suggestion of the shoe, the chair, the seats, and the sports equipment actually shapes our bodies. And that shape borrows from the body’s integrity and optimal function. People are so intelligent; their body intelligence recognizes integrity. And once you ask, “Try this… How about this?” They say, “Well, why didn’t you say so in the first place?”

By the early’80s I had been coaching people in exercise and sports for 20 years. But something started to become disturbingly obvious: for all the hard work people did to be fit, their workout regime and exercise equipment was causing serious problems. When my female clients were getting wider hips and thighs from doing the popular exercise routine, I knew I’d better look at the problem more closely. Sure enough, they were doing their leg lift by jamming the head of the femur into the hip socket, and that compression was then overly stabilized by their 100-lift set! So again my inner voice said, “There must be a better way.”

That led me to create five new forms of fitness: the toning, loosening, stretching, cardiovascular, and senior fitness programs. I can say to you that they are very different when you try them out, you will see how different. For example, much weight training is done isolating muscle groups; this usually creates a problem “where stillness meets motion”, and compromises other body segments. There are easy, fun ways to tone the whole body without compromise. Everyone needs tone, enough to stabilize the skeletal structure, enough to provide strength to perform activities, and enough to provide appropriate boundaries for expression.

In the ’90s I focused on training PT’s and OT’s in new rehabilitative methods; and I got to practice my own techniques when a serious skiing accident left me using a wheelchair and crutches for four months.

SI: Why do you call your work “Aston Patterning”? Why do you use the expression, “Aston Paradigm”?

JA: Back in the early ’80’s I had a wonderful 93-year old client who said to me, “Now, dear, why do I pay you all this money for common sense? Why didn’t I learn this before?” And I said, “Actually, the common sense is that you can recognize it. It hasn’t been out there before because we’ve been receiving this message of what’s proper for many, many years.” The whole idea is somewhat new, but easily recognizable. So that’s why it’s called “Paradigm”. The “Pattern” part is that you have a pattern that’s up for today that can be unraveled – if it’s the appropriate time – you may have a similar pattern tomorrow, but it feels different. The “Patterning” has to do with you, the “Aston” with my discoveries of the math or the relationships and the expression.

I remember Dr. Rolf saying to me emphatically, “I am in charge of the Static Body, and you, Judith, can be in charge of the Dynamic Body!” I said, “Yes!” I have always appreciated how much our work helps others do whatever they do better. It is the how they do what they do, to exercise better, touch, move, lift, problem-solve, and listen better.

Contact Information: Aston Paradigm Corp.
PO Box 3568 – Incline Village, NV 89450
775-831-8228 www.astonenterprises.com