Rolfer, Dancer, Teacher

Posts tagged ‘Rolfing’

Advanced Training in Brazil: Round 1 – Welcoming the Other Side

Rolfing Camp At The Beach to be exact

Rolfing Camp At The Beach to be exact



The Basics of the Advanced

  • Class was taught by Lael Keen  with Karen Lackritz assisting.

    Our classroom for the training

    Our classroom for the training





Structure and Function and Function and Structure





Lots of Review, Tidbits of New



Third Week Openings



Outro Lado – Welcoming The Other Side






Finishing the Training with Turkey

Finishing the Training with Turkey

Working with the Space Between Spaces: Explorations in Wholeness Class Review





For Clients




For Practitioners




And Space to Grow…




Stepping Away from The Lindy Lab



What This Post Is and Isn’t




Creating a Space to Support the Dance


Teaching From a Radically Different Head Space


Lack of Return Students


Did Not Play Well With Other Instructors



Timing Suuuuucked


Deciding to Quit


Space to Grow


The Hopeful Aftermath




Scar Tissue Workshop with Sharon Wheeler review


About the Workshop


About the Work


Why I Think it Works




What I’ve Done With the Work






Making Better Use of Your Lats


lat-extensionWhat are Lats?


Extending to Activate




Why Extension Helps



Beyond Just Lats


When “Relax” Doesn’t Work (and 3 simple things that do)

tight stone fist




I cringed a little watching this exchange between a massage therapist and a client. The massage therapist was trying to get her client to release tension in her arm. The woman on the table was having trouble relaxing and the massage therapist was becoming frustrated by the client’s lack of response. The client, not too surprisingly, seemed less and less relaxed as the therapist became louder and more insistent.

I have seen similar situations play out in dance classes where well-meaning instructors have created traumatic situations for students by pushing them to relax. I have talked to students who were reduced to tears after a private lesson where they were just told over and over to relax. And I recently had a student who really needed to relax thank me for finding more active release-oriented ways to cue her because a previous ballroom teacher had essentially beaten her over the head with the word “relax” to the point where she hated/feared hearing it.

“Relax” can be an extremely difficult instruction to execute. It seems a great many instructors, students, and people in general don’t have alternative strategies to try when “relax” isn’t effective. So when “relax” doesn’t work, they don’t have a backup wording and just keep saying the same thing that didn’t work the first time. Then they go on repeating “relax” like a mantra until they give up or manage or contort themselves into something that looks close enough that they can move on.

What makes “relax” so hard?

For starters, context. People typically get told to relax in situations where they are already tense, meaning they are under some sort of stress or sense of danger. Telling someone to relax in such a situation is essentially asking them to turn off a defense mechanism when they feel threatened. Frequently, people who are tense because of some fear of judgement end up tensing even more when told to relax because they fear being unable to comply and being judged further.

Relax is also a fairly complex concept, when you think about it. Not only does it involve a change in physical state, but also a mental/emotional shift. And for relaxing to make sense to your nervous system, you need to view your current surroundings as non-threatening. If any of these tensions are habitual, it can even be difficult to tell that you are tense in the first place. With all these factors involved, relax becomes more a state of being than a simple action.

Many people seem to conceptualize relax as the absence of doing something. In the US, the tendency to fill our lives with doing things can make the idea of relaxing seem to equal doing nothing or even being viewed as a negative. Rather than viewing relaxation as a lack of doing, it can be far more productive to approach it as an active releasing of tension. The following few ways can help you to physically and mentally achieve relaxation more effectively than just thinking “relax.”


breathelungsOne of my first cues anytime I find myself tense is to extend my breathing. Taking a longer breath, and particularly a longer exhale, activates the relaxation response. Under the sort of duress that causes tension, most of us will shorten or even hold our breath, reinforcing the tension. Deep, slow breathing helps to settle the nervous system and bring it back to a state of ease, leading the muscles to relax without direct, conscious effort.

You can also direct breath towards particular areas that need help relaxing. Shoulder tense? Try focusing on the area in your chest near that shoulder and imagine directing your breath to it. The expansion of the lungs is a great way to passively expand muscle groups and give them more space to settle into more comfortable and relaxed positions.

Think Down

The body responds much better to simple directional ideas than it does to complex concepts like “relax.” The end goal of relaxing can often be achieved by thinking about letting the arms (or whatever body part) sink down.

melting_womanIn many dance contexts I’ve seen teachers repeatedly asking students to relax their arms, often with minimal to moderate success. Often, this arm tension is based on the idea that someone needs to hold their own arms up. So a great deal of tension is a result of fighting gravity to keep the arms at some specific height. By thinking about allowing the arms to sink down, the body can surrender to the effects of gravity and work with it, rather than constantly fighting it. I often use the idea of melting like candle wax to enhance this effect in relaxing. Because a relaxed arm will more effectively transfer motion, this sort of release is integral to creating natural connection in dancing.

ghostbusters-floating-danaI see the same effect on my Rolfing® table where many people’s bodies tense away from the table almost as if they could levitate themselves by sheer force of will. When I prompt them to recognize that the table can support their weight and to let themselves sink into that support, their bodies relax and their mental state follows suit shortly after. In standing, a similar effect is achievable by becoming aware of the bones in your body and allowing weight to carry through bones rather than be held up by muscle.

Tense & Release

One of the more counter-intuitive moves for relaxation is to tense up first. Most of us, when told to relax, will aim to go directly towards some sort of relaxing attempt. stress ballHowever, it can end up more effective to tense muscles first, hold that tension for a few seconds, and then allow them to relax. In essence, taking yourself into greater tension allows for a better release.

Because many of us carry constant tensions, it can be easy for the brain to begin filtering out these sensations. I often hear people remark that they had no idea they were tense in so many places. By creating a conscious tension in the muscle first, the difference between tense and relaxed can become more apparent, which helps you feel yourself relax. This technique is also used by some physical therapists, terming it Progressive Muscle Relaxation, to treat general anxiety issues.

The 3 ideas above are just starter ideas, feel free to modify them or come up with your own. The more tools you have, the more you can help someone else relax or have options to try when someone tells you to relax.

In any case, keep in mind that attempting to produce a relaxed state involves physical, mental, and emotional aspects. Shifting any one aspect can help to shift the whole.  So when you are having trouble relaxing, focus on a simpler version of it, releasing a part of the body, slowing your breathing, calming your thoughts, instead of trying to do everything at once. And just like working out a muscle, the more you work with these ideas, the stronger they become and the more readily they will help you to achieve relaxation.

Rolfing® as an Alternative to Corticosteroid Injections



Rolfing provides additional health benefits


Rolfing does not come with a list of side effects


Rolfing involves the personal touch of a local provider




Neural Mobilization Unit 2







Neural Mobilization Unit 1

This post is imported from my original blog at

This past Thursday to Sunday I had my hands full… of nerves.  Inside Out Body Therapies of Durham hosted a workshop by Jon Martine on Neural Mobilization strategies.

The nerve fibers running through your body are not only surrounded by fascia, but also internally wrapped together by fascia as well.  Each nerve fiber is wrapped and then bundles of fibers are wrapped together eventually forming the full nerve.  Ideally, these layers of wrapping work together to allow the nerves to glide and stretch through the body the same way your muscles must stretch as you move.  This motion is beautifully illustrated in the video Strolling Under The Skin (Note that this video contains images of living tissue).

If the wrapping around the nerves becomes impinged or stuck, the nerves will signal muscles to contract in order to prevent the nerves from stretching too far or being damaged.  So sometimes what we may read as a tight muscle is actually a tight nerve using the muscle to protect itself.  By releasing the nerve and allowing it to glide, the muscles may be allowed to release their tone and move more freely.

Going into the workshop, I was not sure what to expect from this style of work but came out really thrilled with some of the results.  The workshop focused on arms and legs (Jon plans to be back in December for an axial nerves class) and I felt some incredible unwindings both in mine and other particpants bodies.

For me one of the strongest effects was felt in my forearms.  Having been in computer programming for 8 years, my forearms have taken on the inward roll of a keyboardist.  So when my arms would hand at my side, my thumbs would end up pointing at my legs rather than foreward.  This has contributed to other issues like rolled shoulders, a hunched posture, etc.  But with very little pressure, one of my classmates was able to unwind that twist by almost 90 degrees just by opening up the nerves in my arm.

I have since tried this with a few clients who had had limited response with fascial work and have been very pleased with the results.  For several clients who’s bodies were inflamed or wound up, neural mobilization seems to have been very helpful in allowing their bodies to relax, recharge, and hurt less.  It is really incredible to watch how someone’s body and entire system can settle with this work.

I’m very excited about adding this dimension to my work and grateful to Jon and IOBT for putting together this workshop.

The “Does Rolfing Hurt” Question

Nine times out of ten if I mention Rolfing to someone and they happen to have heard of it but not tried it, the first thing out of their mouth is “I hear that hurts a lot.”  My short answer to this is “It can, but it doesn’t have to,” a response which, while good for passing conversation, is incomplete.  This post is intended to provide a more balanced view of Rolfing and pain.

The image that Rolfing is just a brutal style of work that pins people to the table and makes them yell uncle is one that mostly persists from the early days of Rolfing.  When Dr. Rolf’s work was first being taught at the Esalen institute, part of the therapeutic context of the time was to delve deep and push for abreaction.  Rolfing at the time carried a similar sensibility and while it could produce some amazing results, it also traumatized some patients.  But just as psychiatric and psychoanalytic care has evolved beyond Nurse Ratchet in One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, Rolfing has evolved beyond the “If they’re not screaming, it’s not Rolfing” image of the past.

Yes, Rolfing can hurt.  Any therapy with the power to heal also has power to do harm and most Rolfers I know take steps to maintain awareness of this double-edged sword.  That said, Rolfing is so much more than just “it might hurt”, so here are a few things to consider.

You are in control

Rolfing is not a therapy that is just being done to you.  It is requires active participation on the part of the client and part of that is working with the Rolfer to find your edge and the most effective pressures to work at.  It is always at your discretion to go deeper or direct your Rolfer to ease off.  Through the course of a series, many clients will find themselves going deeper and more capably than they may have thought possible at the outset.  And that deepening of ability to work into discomfort/pain areas can enhance your ability to grow in other ways as well.

Growth requires discomfort

Almost any growth or healing requires some variety of discomfort.  Exercise makes muscles sore, stretching is it’s own form of discomfort, even simple acts like meeting someone new provoke a certain level of anxiety.  In much the same way, Rolfing benefits most from a willingness to step into uncomfortable places.  By playing our edge, we can learn to differentiate between pain that leads to injuries and pain/discomfort that leads to healing.  This awareness can extend into other areas of life as well, knowing what discomforts will do us good and which may harm us.

A wide range

Rolfing today teaches a very broad spectrum of touch.  A good Rolfer can work very deep when needed, but they can also affect change via feather-light pressured touch.  Just as you wouldn’t only use a hammer to build a house, Rolfers don’t only use full on pressure and elbow drops off the top rope (a la Pro Wrestling). Additionally, constant high intensity work is not any better for the Rolfer’s body than it is for the client.  Rolfers who want a long career are going to use the minimum amount of pressure they need to get the job done.

Rolfing can at times be described as pleasurable, relaxing, intense, and yes, even painful.  And just as with exercise, stretching or personal growth pushing into those temporary sensations can yield many great growth benefits.

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