Most people come to Rolfing because they’re in pain. That’s the truth, simply stated. Rolfing has stuck around as long as it has because it often helps people get out of pain. But it doesn’t work the way you would think.
First off, in the words of Ida Rolf—founder and creator of Rolfing—in regard to pain, “Go where it ain’t!” She was normally quite the articulate woman, but this short, emphatic statement was her at her best—keeping it simple and getting down to the basics.
- You can’t help pain by chasing it.
- You have to find its source.
- You can only find something new by looking somewhere new, not at the pain, but at where it ain’t.
This leads to our next point—Rolfing is not a technique. If it were, we’d already have offices on every corner and advertisements in your living room. Rolfing is an approach to thinking about and working with the body. And as such, it’s a process that finds unique ways for every person to live happily and healthfully in their body. This is significantly different from a technique you apply to solve a specific problem! You don’t apply Rolfing to a problem, you apply Rolfing to a person.
People in pain need to change. Generally any change that makes the pain go away is welcome. But this is the secret: unstructured change isn’t going to do the trick. You’ve been changing, probably even as you’re reading this you’re shifting in your seat trying to get more comfortable. Sometimes it works, we call that a healthy compensation. Sometimes it doesn’t, we call that bad. Sometimes even the healthy compensations don’t feel good after a while. This is the process the body goes about, unconsciously, with every ouch, bump, fall, sickness, thought, and feeling. We are always shifting ourselves in response to our environment, inside our body and out.
Rolfing steps in and starts to clean up those choices. We do it consciously through movement by making you aware of what choices you’ve made and why they may not be helping you. We do it unconsciously through touch, by helping parts of the body that are stuck become unstuck and by connecting those newly unstuck parts into the big vibrant whole. We do it together by teaching you how you got to where you are, with pain, struggle and difficulty, and we work together to find out how you can get to where you’d like to be: free and easy. And whole.
My specialty is looking where you’d never think to look for the origins of pain: the emotions. Most clients have had the experience that their pain doesn’t show up on x-rays, doesn’t respond to the usual drugs, therapies or treatments. Many people are at the end of their rope. That’s where I come in. By helping you to understand that your whole life contributes to how you feel in your body, often, once you understand this at the deepest levels, you start to heal. We all know how anger makes us tense and how sadness makes us collapse. Once we see these emotions operating in the body, we can get a handle on how to move them, how to change them and how to free our bodies from pain.
The truth is this, Rolfing is not for everyone. It demands growth and change. Many people, most in fact, find that they’re forced to look deeply at themselves. Often this process is difficult. But for those who stay with it, who are willing to do the work to get better, something amazing happens: they do.
If you’re curious, schedule a session, or give me a call, or an email, or a Facebook “Like”—although no texts, I’m entirely too verbose for that. But I’m always happy to talk. You can ask detailed questions about your specific issues and whether Rolfing might be right for you. My practice is devoted to helping people not only heal their pain, but outgrow it.
My best to you.
Kevin
