The essence of Rolfing and yoga is integration. To give Archimedes a lever long enough in our body, and put it in the right place, is the essence of integration. The femur, the longest bone in the body – when connected from the feet and legs, up through the pelvic floor, and connected to the psoas – becomes our body’s greatest tool for movement. When the body is integrated, the lines of transmission travel through layers of fascia and ligaments, through the suspension system that weaves through layers of tissue. Rolfing releases restrictions and connects the body along its core, integrating inner and outer structures; yoga puts the body in the right position and moves it. In my Rolfing practice, I have blended yoga philosophy and principles, both spiritual and physical, with my knowledge of Rolfing.

Visualize a John Friend Anusara Yoga workshop with one hundred yoga practitioners lined up in rows of twenty per row, filling the gymnasium floor, all of us in one big synchronized downward dog. This is a pose where hands and feet are on the mat, the head hangs, and the bottom rejoices in the air. John is a magical, instructive teacher who talks us through each pose. He speaks of the Sanskrit words chit anande , which means, “to recognize”, and how in the recognition of consciousness, there is joy. John’s words weave in with the breath, instructing the student to draw in to the core of the pose. With the exhale, expressing through the heart, a matrix of yogic principles align the body toward an integrated state of awareness. Then he says, “let your coccyx draw down toward your heels and the top of your sacrum in and up toward your heart.” With toes spread, I squeeze my lower legs toward each other, and with fingers intentionally spaced I squeeze the radius bones of my lower arms isometrically toward each other. I reach my sitting bones and tailbone toward my heels, and the base of my sacrum in and up toward my heart. Then magic happens. My torso extends out of my pelvis, I automatically inhale more deeply, and my mid-thoracic spine extends with a few subtle pops. We jump forward in Uttinasana, or forward bend. I once again draw my tailbone to my heels, and my sacrum in and up as I extend with an inhale. As I exhale, I fold into the pose, my chest presses into my knees. Wow, a new experience.
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This brought my mind into a full state of questioning and exploring. For the next ninety minutes, I played with the concept of differentiating the movement of my tailbone from the movement of the base of the sacrum. My breath was fuller, all of my poses were deeper, and I felt connected in my body in a way that produced euphoria. The dura wraps around the spinal cord and attaches at the second sacral segment. Do the sacrotuberous and iliolumbar ligaments allow the sacrum to float within the pelvis, or is the sacrum actually differentiated at S2? I continued my exploration.

On the yoga mat, on another day, the intention for my yoga practice was to give myself a ten-session series through yoga, in a two-hour period. I have been Rolfing for a long time now, long enough that the Rolling series lives in my bones. So there I was with myself on the yoga mat, Rolfer and Rolfee, contacting tissue, core, sleeve, intention, and unwinding into a deeper form of integration, freeing the psoas, freeing the sacrum. Sometimes it felt as if I were wrestling myself on the sticky mat, and sometimes it felt like I really could experience the essence of letting go into integration. I could experience the relationships within myself, and a kind of freedom within the arches of my feet, into the core of my legs, into the pelvic floor, the front of the sacrum through the kidneys, the base of the heart, the front of the cervicals, and into the core of the cranium. I practiced the sensations of extending through the crown of my head as I simultaneously reached into the heels and through my feet. The most incredible releases seemed to happen for me when I anchored my coccyx and lower part of my sacrum – sacred bone – toward the floor, and moved the upper part of my sacrum in and up toward my heart. My body opened to a new state of integration and strength.

Now the interesting application – from a Rolfing perspective – is when I apply yoga principles to my Rolfing clients. I am not talking about doing yoga poses, or asanas, with my clients, but positioning and moving parts of the body as we do in a yoga practice. For instance, in the first session of the Rolfing® Ten Series, the intention is to open the breath, horizontalize the pelvis, and initiate work at the base of the cranium. Enhancing the breath in a Rolfing session, combined with certain yoga principles, may involve moving the head of the humerus deeper in the socket to free up the ligaments of the shoulder girdle and to assist in releasing the lower cervicals. With the client supine, I put one hand under the torso near the transverse processes of the thoracic spine, and with my other hand I move the head of the humerus slightly up towards the head, and then down towards the table. As the head of the humerus moves to the back side of the body, the thoracic spine begins to let go, and the tension and restrictions in the mid-thoracics begin to change. The clavicular ligaments and the first rib may need to be released to allow the head of the humerus to go deeper into the body. This facilitates differentiating the shoulder girdle from the ribcage, releases the thoracics, and enhances the breath.

Anusara Yoga defines Universal Principles of Alignment, and a secondary series of loops and spirals, to work the body around in various poses (see Figure 1). It can be compared to the blocks in the Rolfing graphic of the “Little Boy Logo”®. Instead of blocks, the picture looks more like gears going through the body at specific locations. The locations of the loops are at the ankle, calf, thigh, pelvis, kidney, shoulder or heart, and the skull. The loops have axes running through the horizontal plane, and the intersection of the loops mark important focal points of the body, such as the pelvic floor, the thoraco-lumbar junction, and the intersection of the hard and soft palates of the mouth.

Synthesizing information from both yoga and Rolfing has produced profound results in my Rolfing practice. Once restrictions are released, the combination of yoga and Rolfing – within the framework of a Rolfing session – allows integration to be sustained, which facilitates the healing process. As an example, in Rolfing we commonly differentiate the pelvis by freeing the sacrum from the ilia, a practice also demonstrated in yoga. In yoga, the sacrum can be influenced in two directions. When the sacrum is differentiated, yoga practice becomes dynamic. The tailbone and the apex of the sacrum, influenced by the sacrotuberous ligaments, assist to stabilize the legs and anchor the body. The base of the sacrum moves anteriorly and up toward the heart. In essence, this promotes the stability of the pelvic bowl, along with the action of the sacrum going anterior and upward, lifting the contents of the lower belly out of the pelvic bowl. In my Rolfing practice, at the end of a session when the client is on the Rolfing bench, I encourage him to anchor his pelvis by reaching his sitting bones into the bench. As I work down either side of the spine, I encourage the client to lift in and up – from the base of the sacrum – lifting out of my hands, up through the base of the heart, and through the center of the cranium. This is perhaps the most effective method I have found for defining and enhancing an integrated state in the client at the end of a Rolfing session.
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The inward and outward “spiraling” of the femurs in a yoga pose can be compared to the internal and external models defined by advanced Rolfing instructor Jan Sultan. In the external model, the pelvis is posteriorly tilted, and in the internal model, the pelvis is anteriorly tilted. In yoga, the anchoring of the tailbone creates the action of a posterior pelvis, and when the sacrum moves in and up, this creates the action of an anteriorly tilted pelvis. This combination expresses integration in the body, and allows the structure to move toward greater potential of movement and enhanced depth of breath. This combination allows the spine – from the lumbars, through the thoracics and into the cervical spine – to be more fully extended.

One way we assess integration in Rolfing is to follow the connected fascial relationships running through the core of the body (Sultan). These lines of transmission follow through fascial and ligamentous lines that run up the front of the sacrum, through the crura of the diaphragm, and up the front and back surface of the heart. They run through the suspensory ligaments, such as the sternopericardial and thoracopericardial ligaments that support the heart, through the front of the cervicals, behind the hard palate and up to the center of the head. The profound connection between Rolfing and yoga is that Rolfing°, through intention and precision, allows a person to access balance along these lines of transmission, creating freedom though the body and an enhanced state of awareness. yoga provides precise intention that moves through these opened lines of transmission. In both the Rolfed body and yoga practice, integration is truly felt as an enhanced, energetic system producing a heightened sense of well-being.

In Rolfing, part of the integration process involves the intention of releasing restrictions and enhancing underlying support. With the ancient wisdom of yoga philosophy and its application of poses, the Rolfed body can investigate new openings of awareness. Blending these two practices in the Rolfing room has enhanced my client’s Rolfing experience. With the blending of yoga and Rolfing, including the complexities of movement of the sacrum and the pelvis, a deeper sense of awareness and an electrifying integrated state can be realized and available for all of us.

END NOTE

Vasisthansana is a pose representing the sage, Vasistha, the teacher of the dharma. According to my yoga teachers, Vasistha represents integrity and wisdom, a pose I dedicate to my teachers of Rolfing and yoga.