This afternoon I go for my first Rolfing session here.
The recommended initial experience with Rolfing is the Ten Series, a series of ten sessions providing “a systematic approach to aligning your structure; each session builds upon the last and prepares the body for the next.” ((http://rolfusa.com/tenseries.html))
As the experience of getting Rolfed is, for many, very intense on several levels, I plan to document what it is like for me.
But first, why have I decided to get Rolfed, and why now?
I first learned about Rolfing in my senior year of undergrad (1995), when I took an elective class called Holistic Nursing. One of the major things I took away from that class was a new appreciation for how the body is interconnected. It was my first exposure to theories of health from China and India, as well as to the existence of fascia and myofascial trigger points. Learning about trigger points gave me a way to explain and ease some of the seemingly strange referred pain patterns I had at that time.
Unfortunately, trigger points arise from underlying structural problems or tensions in muscles and fascia. While I’ve learned to treat the symptoms (the trigger points), the underlying issues remain. Over the years, I’ve periodically thought about whether Rolfing would help the underlying issues, but the time was never right. Either the cost was prohibitive, or I just didn’t feel strongly pulled to look into it further.
I believe the time was not right because I was not ready. The way I see this is paradoxical. On one hand, my emotional and mental anxiety, rage, and hypervigilance were directly experienced and held in my physical body. On the other hand, I had such walls built between the physical, mental, and emotional that I could not recognize my own emotions or how they manifested in my body. I was so dissociated from my emotions that I would tell you that I had no feelings, but that my body hurt. I was so dissociated from my body that I often did not realize that it was hurting until the pain was intense. Body and emotions were so separated from each other that body work never caused an emotional ripple. The tales of people experiencing emotional release from a massage baffled me.
In 2009, I recognized that a wide array of my physical, emotional, and mental issues fit into a known pattern: complex post-traumatic stress disorder. I began intensive work on these issues in therapy, via EMDR.
My walls and barriers began cracking and tumbling, in so many ways.
An important part of the work has been reconnecting the layers of myself to each other and breaking the habit of dissociation. I am more than ever feeling into being in my body, observing what my emotions feel like, and holding space for all of the pleasure and discomfort of embodiment.
I did a lot of psycho-spiritual work over the weekend of New Years (2011 to 2012), much of it centered in the 12 hour Dance Lodge I attended. I came out of that weekend feeling immensely more clear, true, and strong mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. On those levels, I felt things had to some extent disintegrated and begun to restructure. Physically, I felt like a lot of dust from this disintegration was danced off and cleared out, but a significant amount of it was freed and drifting around in my body.
I felt like I needed the gunk physically squeezed out of my body. I felt like I needed to be taken apart and put back together. To be restructured physically.
And then I remembered about Rolfing. About how it is called “structural integration.” About how it is a means of reorganizing the body’s patterns. And I knew it was time. I made my appointment the following week.
A couple of nights after returning home from New Years, I asked my boyfriend to gently run his hands over my body to reassure it that it was safe. When his hand rested over my heart on my back between my shoulder blades, I burst into tears.
It seems the wall between physical and emotional really is gone. Again, I knew it was time.
What do I expect to get out of this Rolfing experience? I’m always afraid to expect too much, and the skeptical part of my brain is still alive and well.
That said, my biggest hope is that it will help my body learn to stop chronically holding tension. This comes from a deep learned self-protection pattern of defense that served me well for a long time, but that I don’t need any more. I feel like I consciously know this, but my body is not yet convinced OR it simply doesn’t know how to release the patterns it has held for so long.
I think that my other hopes—less pain, fewer headaches, etc—will follow on from that.
I’ve read some claims that Rolfing can help correct hyperlordosis, which would also be fabulous.
As always, we’ll see.
Now, off to play in the woods for a bit before my appointment.