From the column: Ask the Faculty
"I've been practicing Rolfing for several
years now, and was wondering if you could give me some advice regarding
self-care. Areas that have come up for me include: minor aches and pains in my
arms and hands that seem to be progressing a bit, taking on clients's engergy
during sessions, and feeling drained at the end of a long workday. Any guidance
you can offer in these or other areas of self-care are weollcome.
"
On physical
aspects:
In my first couple of years as a Rolfer I did not take
any systematic approach in supporting my own body for the demands of giving many
Rolfing sessions. Inspired by my review of the literature on connective
tissue remodelling, that attitude has changed. With the half-life cycle of
collagen being approx. 12 months, I know that it is easily possible to
build a strong and elastic fascial body, provided that one
regularly stimulates the fascial fibroblasts over a period of 6 to 36
months. The key being gradual load increases, at very small increments,
with appropriate rest in between. Good examples are martial
artists which have developed an amazing fascial strength, usually
by training and loading their fascia 2 to 3 times a week over many months and
years.
With my fingers
having been the weekest parts in my body during strenous Rolfing sessions, I
therefore started to do modified push-ups on my fingertips. First putting only a
small portion of my body weight on them, and then increasing the loading every
few months. Same with doing pull-ups on a door frame, beginning again with only
a small portion of the body weight. As tactile sensitivity is diminished for a
few minutes afterwards, I usually practice these one-minute exercises at the
very end of a Rolfing day, yet only 2 times a week.
Same philosophy in scheduling my
session slots over the years: It found that it's best for my
body to work two longer days per week, with one or two easy days
(with no sessions or only very few sessions) in between. I remember
having had painful body responses after increasing my maximum session
load erratically from one month to the next. Following the martial arts
philosophy of gradual load increases, I then planned this more
systematically and went on to adding just one more session to my
maximum daily load every couple a years. Today, after more than 30 yrs of giving
Rolfing sessions, I am treating clients at two days a week only,
yet with ten sessions of an hour length on each of those
days, and with one day of rest in between those two days, as well as a long
4-day rest over the weekend. The remaining days of the week are then free
for my research work at the fascia lab, which is very different body usage than
during my session days. I am convinced, that had I followed a more
erratic development of my session load, my hands would have acquired some
aging 'wear and tear' symptoms by now, and I would probably have bouts of
wishing for 'Rolfing retirement' once a while. Yet fascia is not like a car tire
that gets used up over time. It is an amazingly responsive biological
tissue: depending on how we load it, we can wear it down, or we can
built it up. I have profitted from that insight tremendously.
On energetic
aspects:
I must confess, that I find the concept of a certain quantity of negative energy
being taken over from one person (who is subsequently 'relieved') to another
person (who subsequently feels burdened) not at all
convincing. Particularly in the light of modern scientific insights on
the function of mirror neurons and their role in human
empathy, the 'energy transmission analogy' is no longer suitable for
me. Like many other therapists, I tend to have very active mirror
neurons when being with another person. When watching
a James Bond movie for example, my skeletal trunk muscles
tend to shiver out of excitement to such a degree, that I often feel like
supressing it or hiding it to the person next to me. A less dramatic
yet similar empathetic process happens in my sesions: My breathing, my
vitality, and emotional state change from one client to the next. And the
phyisological changes in my body may be as significant as
if watching first a horror movie, then a great clown comedy, and finally a
heart throbbing historical love drama. What happens in my body has little to do with the
'energy' of the physical cinema screen in front of me. And the feelings in
my body when seeing James Bond hanging over a cliff, are probably also
different from those of the real movie actor (who may have stood on a
wooden post in a Hollywood studio, pretending to hang miles above a
canyon).
Reading the excellent book 'The
body has a mind of its own' by Blakeslee & Blakeslee has been very
inspiring for me. It helped me to understand that it is my
neo-mammalian cortex, that actively tries to guess what the functional
and emotional quality of a perceived posture or movement are for that
person (and filling in many blank spots in order to arrive at a 'congruent
picture'). And then my brain actively anticipates how I would feel, if I were in
this person's skin, yet with my own body history and with my personal life story
as a background. I am sure, that my own visceral reactions in response
to a client's expressions may often be shaped by distorted projections and
interpretations simular to their function in a movie theatre. And yet, they
also can give me very valuable input for what the great neurologist Antonio
Damasio calls the 'somatic markers' in my own sensorial advisory
system, in order to refine my intuition.
Reading a few recent research papers
concerning empathy and mirror neurons convinced me, that the degree and
direction of somatic empathy can be drastically shaped by clever circumstances
and conditioning. Given the right setup, most people can be seduced to have 'out
of body perceptions' or to project to 'live' in somebody else's limbs
(see
e.g.: Petkova VI et al.: If I were you: perceptual illusion of body
swapping. PLoS One 3:12,
2008.). That fascinating background
inspired me to experiment more creatively with my own mirror neurons during
sessions. Over the last two years this lead to what I now call the
CAKE technique: "Constructive Anticipatory Kinesthetic
Empathy". Let me briefly explain: Rather than emotionally
merging with my clients, or on 'keeping my distance', I now focus on a
specific combination of self-sensing and kinesthetic empathy. Before
touching my client on a new place I ask myself " Where is this same place
in my own body? How can I be more present there? And: am I able to anticipate
kinesthetically in my own body the particular state of release (or warmth,
letting go, vitality, postural integration, connectedness, wellness, etc.) that I hope to induce in
my client in this area.
Being slightly dyslectic, it took me initially a
second or two to locate 'my left knee' before touching my client's left
knee, as an example. Yet now it takes me less than a second to locate
it, followed by another 1-3 seconds for 'connecting' with that
region internally and to induce a positive anticipated kinesthetic
sensation. The
side effects of this practice for my own posture and wellbeing are very
beneficial. If I have a day with many leg oriented sessions, then I end up with
very happy legs and feet in my own body at the end of the day. Similarly with my
shoulders, lower back, neck; you name it. I also believe that
this helps the mirror neurons of my clients, in taking over some of the
beneficial tissue and body changes that they subconsciously perceive in my body
and in our physical communication.
What motivated me to sit down and contribute
these impressions for this journal column, is the vivid report of a Rolfer
colleague sharing her experience with the CAKE technique yesterday. Having
learned this technique in a workshop a few months ago, she reported
that she now feels energized and 'well' at the end of her session days. Yet in
addition she also got a full practice for the first time;
which she is convinced is due to how differently her clients
perceive her and her touch in their sessions. Needless to say, that I am very
happy to hear that, as practicing the CAKE technique also continues to be
of great value in my personal Rolfing practice.
Robert Schleip PhD, Rolfing
Instructor
Munich, June 2009
Excerpt
taken from: Structural Integration 2009; Vol.37, No. 3,
p.2-3