Dr. Ida Rolf Institute

Structural Integration: The Journal of the Rolf Institute – Winter/December 2004 – Vol 32 – Nº 04

Volume: 32

When we Rolfers think about our work and how we structure our sessions, we most likely ignore the primacy of pattern, being more interested in the linear and organic development of our clients within the context of the basic series. Yet, when we take a moment to reflect on how we work and seriously consider the essential nature of Rolfing, patterns emerge at all levels of our thinking. Even when they fail to emerge, they lie perniciously, expectantly, just beneath the surface of our consciousness, seductively calling to us like a chorus of semi-submerged Sirens whose plaints led so many hapless souls to Davey Jones’ Aqueous Mega-Plex. Patterns are not only our stock and trade, but so totally pervade our thinking as structural integrators that most simply miss them or find any exploratory process of them irksome. I challenge that position and choose to consider here some implications of the double-edged sword of pattern and its frustratingly pernicious traps.

This of course begs the question: We use pattern in our work; so what? When we look at the problems of our pattern-seeking propensities in a larger context, we glimpse the implications of this not-so-clear path and how blithely following said route like some Myofascially Naive Candide may distort our thinking, testing our credulity as we eagerly fall prey to the seductive paradigms of those charismatic Svengalis among our body-working elite. To further trope on our metaphor, danger lurks in the intricacies of pattern, in its dank corridors and labyrinths, and it is with some of these deceptively insidious Fafners (the somnolent dragon of Wagner’s Ring) that we will wrestle like the infant Hercules did with those vile serpents that attacked him in his crib.

Patterns in Rolfing? Every model we use requires pattern recognition. Failure to see such patterns in our trainings can prove embarrassing and lead to defensive denials of our limitations. The ability to see The Line, for instance, is so fundamental to our work that even those with an incomplete understanding of it confidently extol its merits long before they actually see what others universally claim to have seen all along.

The fascial layers, all those of the sleeve, middle, and core, are essential to how we sense and see. Yet consider the challenges of connecting to and correctly identifying a specific layer of the net. This in fact seems so stunningly difficult and so subjective that even the most perspicacious minds would reasonably boggle at its subtleties. Add to this, the notion that we must follow this layer throughout not only an entire session, but rather a subset of sessions. A reasonable person would react with incredulity to the idea that such a thing is possible. Yet we do this every day, confident in our skill and guided by our secure and naive trust in matrices of patterns, constructs layered atop one another like some precarious Tower of Babel.

Our every word when discussing structural integration is shaped by fundamental notions of pattern recognition and description. Shape, relationship, relative normalizing of proximal and distal structures and land marks, even the landmarks themselves, all are pattern. Every typology is pattern, many very detailed and complex, ever competing, all with their loyal and often noisy champions. Rolfing as pure SI, as taxa and decision-trees, as internal and external, as blocks or fascial balloons, as horizontalized pelvises and improved verticality, core and sleeve, tilt and shift, lift and support, embryological layers, biodynamic and biomechanical technologies, meridians, fascia trains, and emotional mappings for each hour. Pattern, pattern, pattern. Everywhere pattern. We have seen the enemy and he is pattern (apologies to Pogo and his fans).

The previous silly pun would seem to be where our litany of pattern enumerations inevitably leads us. However, the implications of this conclusion are totally untenable. If we abandon pattern in our work, where are we? How can we evaluate a structure and its relative degree of coherence prior to and after a basic series if we are not at every stage guided by changes in structural patterns?

We can no more abandon pattern in our work than we can in our everyday life. Without patterns we have no references, no order, no sense of self in the world. As interesting as chaos theory might be, no rational being chooses chaos over order, chooses to reject all patterns as traps and illusions and replace them with nothing (although many argue that patterns eventually emerge even in chaos).’ Such a choice is not only impossible and meaningless, it is insane.

Abandoning all we know and hold dear about structural patterns, setting ourselves above the need for seeing pattern is ultimately an exercise in futility. Trying to change ourselves into some idealized creature that transcends pattern and creates some meta-Rolfing technology is absurd in the extreme. This is because to do so requires that we repudiate one of the most fundamental things that makes us human. So, before we go off on some pointless jaunt to change our DNA, let us take a look at how some recent thinkers approach this Gordian knot, a knot that even the Lady of the Lake’s Excalibur will fail to sever. We will then return to the implications of these general ideas for our work and look at some possible benefits of this clearer understanding of ourselves as “creatures of pattern.”

My first introduction to these problems was a brilliant little tome about randomness and problems of predicting patterns in the stock market. This book, Fooled by Randomness:The Hidden Role of Chance in the Markets and in Life, by market analyst Nassim Nicholas Taleb, decimates all efforts to reliably predict economic patterns over extended periods of time. Taleb argues that we have a natural hard-wired resistance to randomness and that we will always choose pattern over chaos. While his approach is largely statistical, his ideas touch on fundamental notions of our genetic wiring.

He argues that we are not made to view things as independent from each other; that, when two events occur, it is extremely hard for us not to assume causal connections between them. “Our bias is immediately to establish a causal link. For, it is harder to act as if we were ignorant than as if we were smart. … It is very hard for us to just shut up. We are not cut out for it.”2 A bit later Taleb states that we become path-dependent and are naturally wed to our ideas. Usually, these ideas become so deeply entrenched that we cannot see our way out. “Many people get married to their ideas all the way to the grave. Beliefs are said to be ‘path dependent’ if the sequence of ideas is such that, for evolutionary purposes, we may be programmed to build a loyalty to ideas in which we invested time.”3

Taleb presents himself as a prisoner of pattern and advances a curiously ironic position, one in which he resigns himself to face the fact that he is as subject to randomness as those of his colleagues whom he ridicules and whose financial disasters he gleefully describes. Having the awareness to see the traps makes him in no way superior to his cohorts and in some ways makes him even more an object of derision, as his “superior understanding” hardly liberates him from the trap of being fooled by randomness. “My problem is that I am not rational and I am extremely prone to drown in randomness and to incur emotional torture. … My sole advantage in life is that I know some of my weaknesses, mostly that I am incapable of taming my emotions facing news and incapable of seeing a performance with a clear head. Silence is far better.”4

His conclusions, though, are oddly consoling and do offer us some limited solace. After leading us through a disconcerting retinue of statistical, logical and literary examples of how easily we are biased and swayed to see order where there is none, Taleb concludes with a graceful Stoic stance, a surrender to the forces of random nature that will always win out. What he advocates finally is a personal “dignity defined as the execution of a protocol of behavior that does not make us dependent on the immediate circumstances. It may not be the optimal one, but it certainly is the one that makes us feel better.”5′

Taking a very different approach, the wellknown skeptic Michael Shermer explores the problems of magical thinking in an effort to understand why we are hard-wired to create meaning and to believe in the fantastic. Shermer states, “in our complex and contingent world, random events often happen in seemingly peculiar sequences that cry out for meaning. We usually use the occasion, finding patterns in nature even when they do not exist or have no real significance.”‘ To explain this phenomenon, he suggests that what shapes our brains is what he calls EEA, Environmental Evolutionary Adaptation, which creates a “Belief Engine” to cope with the confusion we face daily in an alien and frighteningly random world.

The evolutionary advantages of this ability to construct meaning are clear. “Humans evolved to be skilled pattern seeking creatures. Those who were best at finding patterns left behind the most offspring. They are our ancestors.”7 But, we pay a price for our pattern recognition skills. “The problem in seeking patterns is knowing which are meaningful and which are not. Unfortunately our brains are not always good at detecting the difference. The reason is that discovering a meaningless painting (painting animals on a cave wall before a hunt) usually does no harm and may even do some good in reducing anxiety in uncertain environments. So we are left with a legacy of two types of thinking errors: Type 1 Error: Believing a falsehood; and Type 2 Error: Rejecting a truth.”” Taleb also discusses these two types of error; however, his concern with mathematical and statistical models differs considerably from the evolutionary and scientific interests of Shermer, who is ultimately interested in constructing a model for “the science of good and evil,” the title of his most recent book9.’

Shermer develops his argument by offering numerous examples of magical thinking, reasons for religious beliefs, and convincingly demonstrates the impossibility of separating causal and magical thinking. “We think magically because we think causally. We make Type 1 and 2 errors because we have to think causally. We make Type 1 and 2 errors because we need to make Type 1 and 2 hits. We have magical thinking and superstitions because we need critical thinking and pattern-seeking. The two cannot be separated.”” This observation underlies both the writings of Taleb and Shermer and offers us a useful insight into the root causes of the pattern conundrum.

A somewhat more fanciful approach to this issue is presented in Steven Pinker’s The Blank Slate. While Pinker’s brilliantly argued book is mostly a repudiation of recent theories of consciousness (its title refers to the most familiar, yet erroneous theory), he does offer some interesting insights into the genetic advantages of being able to see geometric patterns in our environment as well as genetic selection for pattern recognition in fields such as art. “Organisms get pleasure from things that promote the fitness of their ancestors, such as taste for food, the experience of sex, the presence of children, and the attainment of know-how. Some forms of visual pleasure in material environments may promote fitness, too. As people explore an environment, they seek patterns that help them negotiate it and take advantage of its contents. The patterns include well-delineated regions, improbable informative features like parallel and perpendicular lines, axes of symmetry and elongation. All are used by the brain to carve the visual fields into surfaces, group the surfaces into objects, and organize the objects so people can recognize them the next time they see them.”11

This theory may account not only for why we love studying patterns in our work but also suggests why our discipline appeals to so many of us at such a basic level. If we accept Pinker’s argument, seeing geometric shape, the way that many of us see structure, reinforces and helps develop our ability to organize and make sense of our morphing environment and is actually a genetically selected trait which we refine over time. This may also account for why Rolfers so love pattern and are so passionate about their perceptions of contours and geometric patterns seen in their clients (spirals, torsions, horizontals and verticals, etc. ) and why those “Rolfed” bodies that manifest the most balance are most aesthetically pleasing, and also why they are the ones we delight in photographing and choose to illustrate the symmetrical improvements we co-create with our clients.

An amusing example of the rewards for constructing complex decorative patterns (beyond those obvious ones derived from the robustness necessary to create vibrant and elaborate tail patterns among male peacocks), occurs in the bowerbirds of Australia and New Guinea. “The males of this species compete for mates by constructing elaborate nests that they decorate with colorful objects such as orchids, snail shells, berries and bark. Some of them literally paint their bowers with regurgitated fruit using leaves or bark as a brush. The females appraise the bowers and mate with those who create the most symmetrical and well ornamented ones.”12

This colorful image, as I read it, triggered an absurd vision worthy of a scene from some 21tit century naturalist’s remaking of Bunuel’s Un Chien Andalou.13 If we extrapolate this wacky pattern dance from the aviary realm and transpose it to the Rolfing kingdom, we can imagine frantically busy Rolfers, those selected for creating exquisite multi-textured representations of our work, competing for attention, showing off their skills by creating the most elaborately beautiful patterns in their models, as an enraptured class of neophytes praise their endless regurgitations. We imagine them spewing rainbows of metaphor and complex patterns, assuring not only their own primacy in the tribe but, more importantly, the survival of their ideas. We might call their elaborate patterns Rolfing memes, to borrow a term from the evolutionary biologist Steven Jay Gould, who coined the term “meme” to describe ideas or concepts that are selected to survive in “genetic memory.” While many of these memes qua bowers come from beautiful minds and are fundamental for a proper continuation of our vital work, my rather vulgar metaphor may serve as a cautionary confection for those who too hungrily crave the seductive sweets of self-serving bowerbirds and peacocks.

Let us abandon these vulgar and colorful digressions and return to the problems of “the pattern conundrum” in our work. We might, for instance, consider a simple example of how exposure to a new model in our training shifts our seeing; say, during our first “post-ten three series” class (in which we learn the familiar girdle-girdleline paradigm). In this familiar model, you concentrate on specific anatomy and strategies for dealing with girdle asymmetries, problems of how the appendicular and axial skeleton relate, and how to improve verticality once the girdles have been normalized. During such a class you will observe demonstrations during which the instructor presents his particular approach to seeing and working with these patterns. You will naturally reproduce your distillation of these demos during your trades and will invariably modify your previous techniques and languaging to match those of your instructor. This process will both entrain and superimpose the instructor’s pattern recognition paradigm onto yours. We might even aver that your implicit (and explicit) duty in these classes is to assimilate and paraphrase the language and gestures of this more sophisticated model. Those who fail to do so rarely come away satisfied, the reasons for this displeasure being diverse and not always obvious. But the heart of the problem you face in such a class can be reduced to a conflict of pattern schemes and the dissonance that a new model can create. This harkens back to Taleb’s observation that we are hard-wired to invest in a particular pattern of beliefs.

Assuming you have, however, succeeded in distilling the essence of this new model, you return home with a new way of seeing and working with pattern. Now, in your practice you find that you not only see your clients differently, but that you also see all your clients’ issues in terms of the specific paradigms on which you concentrated in your training class. Now and possibly henceforth, you will “see” that the “best way” to resolve these recently revealed patterns is in terms of your teacher’s strategies. It is as if the same client you saw the week before the class now looks entirely different to you. While it might be comforting to interpret this as some sort of evolution in your seeing, you are simply swayed by a new pattern, which may or may not be a better way of working with this individual at this moment in time.

That this pattern is real, few would debate; but, all things being equal, you are fooled by your wiring for pattern into thinking that this new pattern is a better one. Your way of seeing is skewed and every client now has similar girdle and line issues that your new model (for a time) perfectly addresses. It is rather like the famous pattern problem usually drawn from the automobile realm. Say we buy a new red Honda Accord and for the next few months we notice that there seem to be more red Honda Accords on the road than ever. The number of Hondas has not changed but our perceptual bias has.

We see selectively and are influenced by patterns and recent experiences in so many ways that we sometimes even attach mystical significance to such imagined patterns. Nothing has changed but our perception and there is no larger significance to our perceptual bias. The number of Hondas is the same and our clients have not magically developed shoulder girdle issues that lay dormant or hidden prior to the class, the pattern emerges because of our selective prejudice to see in that manner. There are so many examples of this that we could devote pages to enumerating them (which is precisely what Shermer and Taleb do so nicely for us).

We are swayed in our pattern recognition. This predisposition is born out in our rapidly changing paradigms of seeing and sensing pattern during our basic trainings, and later as we progress through technique classes and particularly in our advanced trainings. After our first visceral class, we see girdle and extremity issues in terms of visceral asymmetries and pulls. If we are influenced by the part of this model that attributes all leg rotational patterns and asymmetries to visceral asymmetries, we may see leg patterns solely through this lens. Similarly, after we dance in the fluid tides we may for months or even years thereafter constantly be seduced to see subtle strains in the system in a very different way and attempt to resolve them through connections with outside vectors and work in a more passive evocative manner than the more familiar active (some might say intrusive) means we were originally taught to employ to create change.

I offer these examples neither to detract from their efficacy nor to demean the transformational potential of more subtle ways of seeing and resolving strain patterns in our client’s system. Rather, I suggest that recognizing the tendency to see successive patterns, each of which may prove equally valid and useful in our work and then trying to in some way prioritize or rank these ways of experiencing and working with actual patterns is one of the greatest challenges we face once we move into this seemingly infinite wealth of competing models and strategies for resolving structural imbalances.

Another common variation of this pattern game we might call the “what is the most important deficiency in this person’s system” game. Those familiar with Rolfing history will certainly recall perhaps mildly distorted tales of Dr. Rolf standing students in the center of the room and asking their nervous compatriots to tell her the worst thing about this student’s structure. Each suggestion was summarily dismissed and what seemed completely obvious to Dr. Rolf (and not so obvious to her students), when finally revealed, was most assuredly met with disconsolate sighs and rapid nods of acknowledgment whether the students actually saw the “true pattern” or not.

There are two ways to respond to this frustrating game, the values of which are obvious even though its methodology is certainly flawed. While this game’s outcome is both predictable and dubiously successful as a teaching tool, we see variations of it played out in our training classes, most teachers so often inclined to share the embarrassment wrought on them with others.

From a positive perspective, such exercises in pattern recognition will most often help sharpen the students’ abilities to see significant patterns that they will encounter repeatedly in their practices. An obvious example, following a familiar aphorism about all strain ending up in the lower extremities, would be pattern recognition of weaknesses in legs and feet that compromise support of even the most beautifully integrated torso and upper pole. Secondly, the ability to see emerging patterns in the series, what needs to happen for this body to more fully express the goals of a given hour, and how to prepare the body for the next hour, are critical for all Rolfers who wish to work effectively within the classic Rolfing paradigm. Finally, for those numerous gifted instructors who truly do see pattern in a highly sophisticated and pure way, sharing repeated exercises in pattern evaluation with their students and exposing them to fundamental ways of seeing structure in accordance with the goals of Rolfing will inevitably help raise the students’ level of seeing and sensing and will give them an excellent set of guides for recognizing specific patterns they will see every day in their offices. It is hoped that if such instructors continually ask their students: What do you see?; that they will evolve a clearer paradigm of how to work that will serve them well until they are ready to grow beyond the model. All of this is not only important but also critical for developing new generations of skilled and articulate practitioners who aspire to perform our work in a repeatable and consistent manner. It should also be stated here that we cannot see beyond pattern’s limitation if we do not fully understand the pattern with which we are working. So, despite the problems of teaching pattern, we must start with simple principles, impart them cogently, live with them for a considerable time and only then are we in a position of sufficient understanding to start look deeper.

The negative consequences of the often frustrating pattern game are more serious but perhaps sometimes more subtle than its positive instructive value. Consider this insidious game as a variation of what happens in academic literature and music classes when instructors ask a meaningless question such as: Why is Beethoven’s 9t” symphony the greatest piece of music ever written? This question is pointless because there are obviously a respectable number of wonderful compositions from the standard practices era (c.1730-c.1910) that would certainly qualify (Bach’s B Minor Mass, Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde, Brahms’ German Requiem, and Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps, to name a few) any of which qualify for this absurd moniker. One obvious negative here is that once such a question is posed, the students will start scanning their memories to recall what the professor’s ideas are on the subject and try to repeat his patterns of thought as closely as possible without blatant toadyism. This is a truly offensive ritual, one we should assiduously avoid.

So, where does this all leave us? Let me first recapitulate the implications of Taleb’s ideas for our work. If I operate from the same position as Taleb, I find myself in his oddly contradictory position, one of mocking self-effacement. I know that I am constantly seeking pattern in my Rolfing practice and that the patterns I infer are most likely chimera and fraught with contradiction. The fact that I know and accept this, and the fact that most of my colleagues do not, puts me in a dubiously superior position. Yet, I am even more an object of derision than those I criticize in that my knowledge in no way prevents me from being less prone to both Type 1 and Type 2 errors. Ultimately, the inconsistencies between my theories and how I actually practice make me seem pedantic and ridiculous. I might take solace that even brilliant men like 2011′ century philosopher Karl Popper were, like all of us, fraught with troubling inconsistencies, but this, like Taleb’s resignation, will offer me small comfort.” So, unfortunately, when we try to apply this position to how we actually work, we find ourselves engaged in endlessly circular meanderings and may end up consuming ourselves like some cannibalistic Ouroboros.1S This is because we operate from a hopelessly inconsistent position, on the one hand enmeshed in pattern while we simultaneously attempt to rigorously root out errors of logic and misattribution in all the fascial patterns we employ.

If we work with pattern every day, and this is obviously fundamental to how all Rolfers work and see, how do we repudiate pattern or question pattern while continuing to employ it? By seeing the deficiencies of our reasoning and the ease with which we are deceived into creating patterns, do we actually operate in a superior manner when using our “decision tree” than a comparably skilled practitioner who operates in ignorance of this pattern problem? Furthermore, if this knowing does not translate into a different and more rigorous approach to the work and if that approach does not result in a more precise and measurably different model for the work, why work so hard to root out errors of pattern or logic at all? Are we destined to be married to our ideas from their conception to our graves, as Taleb suggests, or is there an alternative?

One way to address these queries is to offer an alternative application of these ideas. For this, we need to recruit elements of the scientific method and the ideas of Karl Popper to aid our cause.” If the goal of true science is to explain our reality in ever more precise and verifiable theories and to constantly try to falsify these theories in methodologically solid and repeatable experiments, then an application of those principles to our scientifically-based connective tissue transformational model should raise the bar for those who wish to better explain our work and quantify its immediate effects as well as those changes of a more enduring nature.

One reliable way to verify our theories is through testing the patterns we use in our seeing and working. If we truly believe that while all patterns may seem equal, some patterns are more equal than others (to convolute a famous line from Orwell), we must be willing to verify that this is actually true. Most would agree that some patterns when addressed will have a more profound effect on structure than others. As suggestive evidence for this, we might revisit accounts of Ida’s consistent ability to create immediate and profound changes through incredibly focused and precise interventions and even cite similar experiences in our own work.

While some might grasp this critical pattern game quicker than others, for most of us this process is one of trial and error, usually more deductive (or perhaps more rarely inductive) than random. Testing the patterns we see by addressing them and evaluating our intervention’s global effects are the most effective ways that most of us progress in our evaluative and manipulative skills. Type 1 and Type 2 errors will inevitably occur as we test our abilities to recognize and correct patterns. Our goal must always be to make less of both types of error and, honestly examine our models, as we gradually become more skilled at addressing strain patterns and building order.

What we need to avoid are the pitfalls of over-reliance on specific pattern strategies such as the relativistic and oft-used primary and secondary pattern paradigm. We must also remain vigilant as we proceed through any pattern treatment protocol, knowing that at all times our previous training and ways of seeing may be seductive traps that limit our thinking and entrain us. Our awareness of the trap and our willingness to challenge our models at all times increases the likelihood of an evolutionary although hardly linear progress in our skill set and effectiveness. We must constantly strive for a balance between history and growth, between the pure basic series and alternative ways of working and seeing, between the inescapable seductiveness of pattern and the simultaneous possibilities of ever-improving testable and repeatable models and theories. This slowly rigorous manner will surely provide fertile ground for scrutinizing what we do. It should stimulate intellectual curiosity and eventually elevate the level of our work. This is a perhaps a naively simplistic application of scientific methodology to structural integration, but it is a sight better than the static alternative.17″

We live in a world of pattern. This we cannot avoid. We work with pattern. This we need not change. What needs to change is the blind obeisance to any particular model of seeing. While clearly a model is only as effective as those using it, even the most inclusive model can serve as either a limiting filter or a gateway to more sophisticated ways of seeing. Knowledge of the limitations of pattern is essential for those concerned about fuzzy thinking. Informed use of pattern recognition and an ever-more sophisticated ability to test those patterns in our clients’ tissue is one important way for us to evolve as practitioners and to separate ourselves from those who understand manipulation but fall short in their seeing and ability to create integrative change along broader, more wholistic lines. So, pattern is both the worst of curses and the best of tools. It is obviously the only means through which we can create change. An odd conundrum, yet an evitable consequence of our wiring.

I would like to end with a pair of provocative quotes that interface nicely with my argument and point to even larger implications than those ventured here. The first extends our consideration of paradigm, which is model, which is of course pattern, and so it goes. “Paradigm is what you think about something before you think about it.”” What appeals to me most about this extraordinary observation is that it challenges us to rethink our most fundamental patterns and seek answers that require a more profound level of understanding. The second serves as the underlying motivation for anyone who would choose to more deeply plumb the fount of our most cherished ideas, and here we end.

“Deep understanding yields its own rewards.”19

NOTES

1. Derbyshire, John, Prime Obsession: Bernard Riemann and the Greatest Unsolved Problem in Mathematics (Washington, D.C.: Henry, 2003), p. 315. This view of chaos theory, as applied to the indeterminacy of planetary orbits, is explained as follows: “The beauty of chaos theory is that there are patterns embedded in chaotic systems. While in general a chaotic system never retraces its steps, it does exhibit these recurring patterns; and underlying these patterns are certain regular, but unstable, periodic orbits into which, in theory, if infinite precision were available to the nudger, a chaotic system could be nudged [italics mine].”

2. Taleb, Nassim Nicholas, Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in the Markets and in Life (New York: Texere, 2001), p. 179.

3. Taleb, Nassim Nicholas, Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in the Markets and in Life, p. 187.

4. Taleb, Nassim Nicholas, Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in the Markets and in Life, p. 59.

5. Taleb, Nassim Nicholas, Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in the -Markets and in Life, p. 192.

6. Shermer, Michael, How We Believe: Science, Skepticism and the Search for God, 2°II ed. (New York: Owl Books, 2003), p. 34.

7. Shermer, Michael, How We Believe: Science, Skepticism and the Search for God, 2nd ed., p. 38. For a much more detailed consideration of importance of pattern recognition for the development of a wide variety of survival activities among our early ancestors, see Kingdon, John, Self-Made Man: Human Evolution from Eden to Extinction? (New York: Wiley, 1993): p. 142, pp. 163-64, pp. 179-84, pp. 199-201, and pp. 213-14ff.

8. Shermer, Michael, How We Believe: Science, Skepticism and the Search for God, 2″ ed., p38.

9. Shermer, Michael, The Science of Good and Evil: Why People Cheat, Gossip, Care, Share, and Follow the Golden Rule (New York: Times Books, 2004). This is actually part of a trio of books which began with: Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudo-Science, Superstition, and Bogus Notions of Our Time (NewYork: MJF, 1997). I highly recommend this trio of fascinating books along with a challengingly subtle intervening work: The Borderlands of Science: Where Sense Meets Nonsense (New York: Oxford, 2001).

10. Shermer, How We Believe, p. 39.

11. Pinker, Steven, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature (New York: Viking, 2002), p. 405.

12. Pinker, Steven, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, p. 407.

13. Salvador Dali and Luis Brunel’s famous early surrealist film, Un Chien Andalou (“An Andalusian Dog”), premiered in 1928.

14. Taleb, Nassim Nicholas, Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in the Markets and in Life, pp. 108-109. See also, Edmonds, David, and Eidinow, John, Wittgenstein’s Poker: The Story of a Ten-Minute Argument Between Two Great Philosophers (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), pp. 183186 ff., for their insightful discussion of the flawed nature of the brilliant philosopher, Karl Popper.

15. This simile is borrowed from the writings of Tom Myers whom I gratefully acknowledge.

16. I wish to acknowledge my friend Harry Blazer who first suggested this approach to pattern, among others, during a long discussion as we drove through Glacier National Park one day in early August 2004. For a clearer understanding of Popper’s ideas, see Popper, Karl R., Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge, Reprint ed. (New York: Routledge, 1992). The second and third essays in this collection lay out Popper’s argument quite well: “Science: Conjectures and Refutations”, pp. 33-65; and “The Nature of Philosophical Problems and their Roots in Science”, pp. 66-96.

17. For some interesting and more detailed explanations on designing more rigorous scientific studies for our practice, see Duffy Allen’s “Overview of Research Designs for Rolfing”‘ Structural Integration”, accepted for publication in Structural Integration and sent to the author, who had the privilege of reading and editing a draft of this article in mid-October, 2004.

18. Quote attributed to a Muslim Imam and emergency room physician, identified only as Dr. Faizkhan and as a friend of the speaker’s, in a speech delivered by Michael C. Ruppert at the Commonwealth Club, San Francisco, Tuesday, August 31, 2004. Thanks again to Harry who e-mailed me this disturbing speech a few days after it was delivered.

19. Greene, Brian, The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time and the Texture of Reality (New York: Knopf, 2004), p.20.The Pattern Conundrum:

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