PERSISTENT METAPHORS

Despite the conceptual advances in the second half of the twentieth century that have encouraged us to re-examine old metaphors of the body as a machine, the “machine” metaphor is still deep-rooted in our daily lives and our literature. We talk of being geared tip – our joints being well lubricated, our bones well aligned, and the engine of the heart beating strongly.

This tendency to study the body through its parts, without taking into account the whole, is still strong. It continues surreptitiously so that we almost do not notice. In Western scientific thought, indelibly marked by the Enlightenment, it continues to be dominant. Through the lens of the “machine” metaphor, to study human posture we study the anatomy of its parts and their relationship, without taking into account the person’s psychic, affective and socio-cultural particularities. The body is no more than a structure of juxtaposed organs, whose operation we understand through mechanical metaphors and whose parts – should they fail to function – can eventually be replaced. This metaphor has the potent effect of separating body and mind, as problems are treated by focusing only on specific problematic parts, while neglecting relationships of communication, interdependency, knowledge and perception – both within the body, and of the body with the environment.

However, it is possible to begin the study of the human body from a different level of description and understanding: the communicative relationship between the two principal systems that configure the human body – the corporal system itself and the gravitational environment of the Earth. When silences, freezings, thickenings, and other impediments are established in the relationship between the body and its environment, there starts a process of damage or degradation of the body. Movement and plasticity are always the gauge of good communication, of health and of life. There is, therefore, a co-evolutionary process of communication between the body and the environment.

To be centered and balanced in gravity is more than a question of body biomechanics. Other factors are involved in the dynamics of the body’s equilibrium in space-time. The emotions reverberate within the body, and together with other somato -sensitive signs, help to create the complex combination of states that constitute the corporal image. The posture of the human body is loaded with emotional elements, fruits of its personal history and of its interaction with the physical-social environment in which it lives.

ON EMOTION

In Looking For Spinoza, Antonio Damasio discusses the advances of neuroscience in understanding feelings and emotions, and of the role these play in human life. In this revisiting of Spinoza, Damasio observes that the philosopher intuited what neuroscientists are only now establishing: that mind and body are manifestations of the same substance, and that feelings are foundations of the mind. Damasio [2004:85] asserts, “A feeling is the idea of the body being in a certain way.”

If feelings are perceptions, they are comparable to other perceptions in that they operate through sensory signals mapped in the brain. Feeling an emotion has, in this way of thinking, a physiological basis comparable to that of the other sense impressions, such as seeing a sight or hearing a sound. The difference is that in the case of feelings, the stimulus for the sensation is inside the body and not outside of it; i.e., it is part of the living organism that senses. Until recently, many scientists have been reluctant to accept that the somato-sensory system could be the critical substrate for feeling. Damasio’s experiments and thinking demolish the last remnants of resistance to its neurobiological basis.

If the emotions are products of the perceptions of bodily states, they create an interplay of mirrored senso-perceptions. According to Damasio, the images created by the mind are structures made up of sensory signals and somato-sensory signals. Sensory signals originate from stimulus in the outside world: vision, smell, hearing, taste and touch. Somato-sensory signals include various modes of perceiving the inner world: temperature, the emotions, the muscular system, visceral sensations, the vestibular system, and proprioception.

The brain constructs maps through chemical signals (transmitted via the blood stream) and electrochemical signals (transmitted via nerve bundles); thereafter, the neural maps are transformed into mental images. Thinking might be an acceptable word to describe the continuous flow of these mental images, which can arise in a manner that is orderly or not, rapidly or slowly. They can converge, diverge, or arise one on top of the other. These images are formed when we mobilize objects outside the brain toward the interior, and when we reconstruct objects as part of memory or reflection. The image-producing function is ceaseless; even as we sleep, we produce images in our dreams.

There is no mystery as to the source of the images: they come from the brain, originating from neural patterns that are wrought into neural circuits. The question that science has yet to answer is how a neural pattern is translated into an image. For this reason, Damasio maintains two levels of description – one for the mind, and the other for the brain. Without suggesting that there are two separate substances (one mental, and one biological), Damasio recognizes the mind as something existing on a higher level than that of biological processes. For Damasio, this higher level deserves to be specifically identified. At the same time, he describes neural events in connection with the endeavor to comprehend how those events contribute to the creation of the mind.

Emotions are largely modifications of the interior world; therefore, according to Damasio, the sensitive signals that make up the principal basis of a feeling of emotion are, above all, interoceptive. The principal origins of these signals are the viscera and the internal milieu generally, but signals also arise from the musculoskeletal and vestibular systems. Damasio states that the same region of the brain responsible for feeling emotions is also connected with the reception of signals representing the contents of feelings, such as body temperature, states of pain, the blushing or blanching of skin, shivering, itching, visceral and genital sensations, changes to smooth muscles, local pH balance, and others.

This is the interoceptive sense, the sense of the inside of the body that constitutes the principal basis of a feeling of emotion. Damasio quotes William James (Damasio [1998:129]), who proposed that feeling an emotion depends on the perception of bodily states:

“What kind of an emotion of fear would be left if the feeling neither of quickened heartbeats nor of shallow breathing, neither of trembling lips nor of weakened limbs, neither of gooseflesh nor of visceral stirrings, were present, it is quite impossible for me to think. Can one fancy the state of rage and picture no ebullition in the chest, no flushing of the face, no dilation of the nostrils, no clenching off the teeth, no impulse to vigorous action, but in their stead limp muscles, calm breathing, and a placid face?”

Similarly, Damasio [2004:96] describes how pride manifests in the human posture:

“Can one imagine a more distinct body posture than that of a person beaming with pride? 117mt exactly beams? The eyes to be sure, wide open, focused and intent on taking on the world; the chin held high; the neck and torso as vertical as they can get; the chest unfearingly filled with air; the steps firm and well planted. These are just some body changes we can see. Compare them with those of the shamed and humiliated man.”

In Rolfing Structural Integration we do indeed work in the territory of this interoceptive material, and we inevitably encounter feelings of emotion. The tissue carrying old content comes out of its frozen state and releases a charge of feeling. When feelings of emotion arise through the manipulation of body tissue, the client often greets them with genuine surprise, as the client ostensibly is not being treated for the causal, or even catalytic, object of the original emotion. In the client’s perception, the emotion stays detached from its agent.

As we know, the psychological consequences of physical illness (the so-called ‘real’ illnesses) are normally ignored or addressed only much later; but the reverse – i.e., the effects that psychological turmoil has on the body – are even more neglected. Damasio observes that the body struggles to find balance when its organization is chaotic, and that this struggle manifests as a feeling of absence of pleasure and various pains. At the end of the Rolfing process, however, when we have attained the greatest currently available fluidity of movement and ease of communication, and when the regulation of life has become more efficient, the client may experience a feeling of pleasure and an absence of pain.

According to Damasio, the maps associated with joy signify states of balance in the body. Physiologically, they correlate with well-being and are characterized by increased capacity for action. The maps related to sorrow (Damasio borrows from Spinoza a definition of sorrow that includes anguish, fear, guilt, despair) are associated with states of functional imbalance, where the facility of action is reduced, and the presence of pain, signs of illness or physiological discord indicate diminished vital functions. If the sorrow is not resolved, illness and death may follow.
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We should distinguish at least two aspects of pain and pleasure. In the first, the brain organizes the representation of a change in the local condition of the body – this is, in a real sense, a somato-sensory perception. The second is the result of a more general change in the body state – one that originates from an emotion. That which we call pain or pleasure is the name given to the concept of a specific body image that our brains perceive at that moment. This perception is modulated within the brain by neurotransmitters and neuron-modulators. These, in turn, affect the transmission of information and the function of brain areas involved in the representation of the body.

According to Damasio, therefore, the feelings bear witness to the condition of life. They are sentinels that allow the self to become aware of current life states. Feelings are mental manifestations of balance and harmony – or, perhaps, of disharmony and discord – within the body. They do not necessarily refer to objects or events outside of the body, though evidently they can also do so. Feelings have prevailed as important phenomena of complex living beings precisely because they are capable of giving witness to life as it happens in the mind. Rolfing can be extremely transformative when it allows the client to investigate how body image representation and perception are processed; i.e., when a change in body posture is carried through to a change in felt sense of the corporal landscape.

THE POWER OF NEW METAPHORS

In order to evaluate how the transformation propitiated by Rolfing is processed, we did a case study – and the question arose: what is the analytical basis to verify the change in relationship between the body and the environment? How can we supply the scientific imperatives of observing, measuring, and verifying improved communication – a restored communication – between the body and the environment? Needless to say, local biomechanical measurements would be inappropriate for this line of research, and would fail to comprehend the complexity of the phenomena. We must find an approach that lets us look beyond physical structural change. Ultimately, our interest is the person in relationship with the environment – not the person in relationship with body parts. Where, then, do we search for the theoretical apparatus to make such an assessment?

Researchers Lakoff and Johnson, like philosophers and scientists Damasio and Ramachandran, believe that body and mind should not be seen as separate entities: corporality and mind are unequivocally one, and only through this unity can we make sense of the world. In their pioneering work of 1980, Metaphors We Live By, Lakoff and Johnson attribute to metaphor a key cognitive role in scientific activity, arguing that metaphor unites reason and imagination in an imaginative reality essential as much to science as to the arts. We comprehend the world through metaphors grounded in our bodily experience:

“Just as we seek out metaphors to highlight and make coherent what we have in common with someone else, so we seek out personal metaphors to highlight and make coherent our own pasts, our present activities, and our dreams, hopes, and goals as well. In therapy, for example, much of self-understanding involves consciously recognizing previously unconscious metaphors and how we live by them.” [2003: 233]

This theory was inspiring because it formulated the idea that the emergence of new metaphors might indicate a new relationship between the body and the environment. If these new metaphors translated into liberation, learning and growth, they would be indicators of a more efficient communication between body and environment.
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ROLFING AND METAPHORS

A fundamental moment in a Rolfing session is when, after liberation of restrictions in the tissue, the body begins to perceive itself differently. The sensory-motor system changes the way it functions and movement flows with newfound ease. The “simple” act of walking takes on a disconcerting strangeness, and new sensations and perceptions arise. It is not uncommon for people to say they are “re-learning” how to walk. This process can be deepened when, as new sensations are perceived, new metaphors arise, as well. The new metaphors, in the words of Lakoff and Johnson, will make possible.

“The constant construction of new coherences in your life, coherences that give new meaning to old experiences. The process of self-understanding is the continual development of new life stories for yourself.” (2003:233)

This emphasizes the need to constantly listen to and understand the many metaphors that arise during sessions. The first associations are images, the most simple of which might be feeling that one side of the body is bigger than the other; or heavier, or brighter; that this part of the body is blue, while another is black; that this part clean, that one dirty; this one is “full of sap”, while the other is like “a stick of dry wood”; this part younger, the other wrinkled. Even in the initial consultation, we can collect countless images. Many are surprising, like the dancer who always had an image of men wearing hats when touched near the interosseus membrane between the tibia and the fibula; the actress who experienced the feeling of an eagle imprisoned below her ribs; or the photographer who wanted to be free of the dragon that lived inside her chest. For sure, all of us have dozens of fantastic examples.

A possible explanation for the phenomenon of metaphor that so surprises our clients is that re-organization of the network of memory and tissue produces such mental images, reveries and reminiscences. Gerald Edelman says that memory is more like the melting and refreezing of a glacier than it is like an inscription on a rock. One woman, a retired secretary, on being touched on the shoulders, suddenly remembered that her mother used to tie her shoulders to a chair to prevent her from stooping, and to maintain “good posture”. This embedded memory arose as a weft in the tissue. It is exactly this network of memory and tissue that can be transformed and reorganized in the body; and in the action of self-re-organization, the body comes to understand its reasons and new metaphors arise. Perhaps for the secretary, some conflicting emotion finally felt and understood after so many years, allied to a new organization in the shoulders, nurtured a new sense of well-being. Tissue and memory were enmeshed within the new organization.
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According to another client, a young actress:

‘In Rolfing, we started by trying to join the upper and lower halves of the body, which were acting separately. The sternum started to melt a little, I think I started to use the ground, I noticed that there was something between the bones, a musculature, that I could call “a want”, “an affection”, or “of the heart” -joining things very internally. On another occasion I was asking how to protect the sternum, and we imagined an ointment, then the “tail of a dinosaur”, “mop of hair”…’

The relationship created with each client is unique; and in each case a whole, individual, set of images starts to arise. In the case of this client, the connective tissue began to be understood as “an affection”, “a want”, but she also developed images such as the “tail of a dinosaur” and the “mop of hair”. These images communicate the new metaphor for what she perceived in the body; they are the elaboration of the perceptive awareness. This is a search for a new language to reveal and communicate the experience, as well as to take possession of the new reality. The metaphor is the kind of language best suited to communicate the nature of the body’s felt-sense.

Because this client’s structure is organized around support from the tips of her toes, she has difficulty getting good support from her feet; no wonder she felt as if she was “floating” and “scattered”. She described the new sensation of groundedness in terms of the “tail of a dinosaur” so she could better perceive a new structural organization that would allow her good support from the heels. The metaphor evokes the posture; it translates the web of memory/ tissue. When she evokes it later, the image allows her a memory of stability, bringing strength to her sacrum and helping to liberate her chest without effort.

And she continued:

“Still, from time to time, I have a tendency to live in the clouds, with my feet off the ground and to be in my head. When that happens, I can spend some days vacant, drifting, but gradually as I start to come back, I start to make connections again – “Of course! I am like this because I took my feet off the ground. ” From here, I start to rebuild my relationship with the ground, lift my sternum, let my adductor muscles speak, and everything improves. I think that I will have still more possibilities of discovery through this work, because each time we re-establish the process, it touches us so profoundly.”

The images of “taking the feet off the ground”, “to be drifting, vacantly” express a felt-sense in the body. The body image, as defined by Shaun Galagher (1998), is a complex set of intentional states – perceptions, mental representations, beliefs and attitudes – the intentional object of which is one’s own body. There are three modes of this reflexive intentionality: the perceptual experience of the body; the conceptual understanding of the body; and the emotional attitude in relation to the body.] Through the exercise of conscious perception, the client can alter the body’s felt-sense: for this particular client, rebuilding her “relationship with the ground” launches a raft of images that help her to construct a new and more stable structure. Perhaps this resource, that is, to make the use of stimulating images, is one of the strategies to which Ramachandran (2004) refers when he discusses the interior construction and modification of the body image.

Perception itself, which is part of the body image, can also change. New stimuli resulting from the perception of a “new” body – an “unknown” body – can help to alter the pre- established image. These new perceptual stimuli reorganize body maps that previously might have related only to pain to shape a new relationship with joy, as in the case of the retired woman cited above. Remember that for Damasio maps connected to joy signify states of functional equilibrium, while those associated with pain, illness or physiological discord signify imbalance.

A NEW WINDOW

Rolfing® seeks to help a person adapt to the particular conditions of the body in a certain environment, and whenever possible to enable the recognition of this change through proprioceptive awareness.

Ida Rolf had a vision that connective tissue was plastic and receptive to transformation. She understood that the key to this transformation at the highest level of functionality was the gravitational axis. She also discovered that this transformation worked not only at the levels of structure and function, but reached all levels of the person: psychological, emotional, and, if you like, spiritual. She said she did not know why this occurred, but that she intuited the existence of different levels of body description.

Thirty years later, enhanced understanding of body-mind function from the ideas of neuroscientists like Antonio Damasio and V. Ramachandran have clarified some questions raised by Rolf. In Rolfing®, as in other practical methodologies, it is often difficult to describe and analyze the processes. At the same time, throughout the history of science, many significant theoretical advances have arisen from practical pursuits. Bringing our own practical methods together with the new body theories, especially the proposed inter-theoretical connections with the cognitive sciences, presents new possibilities for action. Perhaps a window has opened a little to illuminate our structural work with the new theories of how emotions are perceptions of what happens in body states and of how memory is enmeshed in the organization of the web of the physical tissue. All of this corroborates Dr. Rolf’s idea that the functional and structural organization of the body is fundamental to a new organization of the person at all levels of being.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bernard, Michel (2001) De la Création Choreographique. Paris: Centre National de la Danse.

Damasio, Antonio (1994) Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain (1994) New York: Putnam.

Damasio, Antonio (1999) The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness. New York: Harcourt.

Damasio, Antonio (2003) Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain. New York: Harcourt.

Gallagher, ShaunCole, J. (1998) “Body Image and Body Schema in a Deafferented Subject” in: Body & Flesh: A Philosophical Reader, ed. Donn Welton Malden. Blackwell Publishers Ltd.

Godard, Hubert (1994) “Reading the Body in Dance – A Model” in: Rolf Lines, October 1994: 36-41. Rolf Institute® of Structural Integration.

Godard, Hubert (1995) “Gesture and Perception” in: Lições de Dança 3. Silvia Soter and Roberto Pereira (ed.), Rio de Janeiro: Universidade.

Gracovetsky, Serge (1988) The Spinal Engine. New York: Springer-Verlag.

Greiner, Christine (2005) 0 Corpo – Pistas para Estudos Indisciplinares. São Paulo: Annablume.

Lakoff, George and Johnson, Mark (2003) Metaphors We Live By. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.

Lakoff, George and Johnson, Mark (1999) Philosophy in the Flesh, The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought. New York: Basic Books.

Maitland, Jeffrey (1995) Spacious Body: Explorations in Somatic Ontology. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books.

Ramachandran, V. S. and Blakeslee, Sandra (1998) Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind. New York: William Morrow.