When clients ask me whether their problems are just part of getting older I reply that my guess is that the problems we associate with getting older are perhaps 40% due to physiological changes and that 60% are due to the accumulation of years of compensations, binding and habitual use patterns. In my opinion, this is a very optimistic view because even though there is only so much we can do about the former, there is a lot we can do about the latter and Rolfing is particularly effective for this.
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Several years ago as I was working a phrase went through my mind, “if bones could breathe…” I liked the sound of it and over the next few weeks, I kept coming back to it and eventually decided I had to do something with it and over a period of months and various iterations I finally came to this:

if bones could breathe

if hands could touch us in those places
where we have lost touch
make us mindful where we have lost our minds

if touch could be the spark that would light up the network
the puff of wind that would revive the smoldering embers
into tiny dancing flames to light the way

if words could connect what fingers have touched
what hands have melted and nerves have sparked
then bones could breathe
and hands could think
hearts could dance

and bodies could sing

When I began thinking of how I wanted to open this journal, I came across some notes from an experience I had with my daughter’s 5th grade class. Her teacher had decided to build a walking labyrinth in the garden of our Waldorf charter school. We went on a field trip to Grace Cathedral in San Francisco to walk its labyrinth, which was a replica of the famous labyrinth at Chartres Cathedral in France. I had an image of it as a kind of metaphor of our ongoing journey to our own center and back again out into the world. The instructions I had read did not usually include walking the labyrinth with 23 fifth graders though…
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Once when working on a particularly tough and braced spot in a client’s ribs, it occurred to me that often I am working with muscles and fascia that are compensating in a way that was once a dynamic and intelligent response to a difficult and perhaps irresolvable situation. It may not from the outside seem like a mature and well-adapted response, but in their situation (or their view of it), it may have been the “least worst” of the choices available. The problem is that if repeated often enough, it becomes habitual and chronic, and may become their only way of responding. So, even though other options are available, they cannot even see them. Rational arguments for change may be of little use. Read the rest of this entry »

Kaaren is a voice teacher I met several years ago who came in for a complementary Rolfing session and immediately proclaimed, “James, I have to do this, but… I have no money for it (she was in the final stages of studying for the priesthood). I wonder if anyone in your family would be interested in voice lessons…?” It was a match made in Heaven since my daughter had been badgering me for months about doing voice lessons. Our sessions were a combination of Rolfing and wide ranging discussions on many aspects of embodiment and spirituality and the need to be grounded on earth as we reach to the heavens. For her ordination ceremony she asked my daughter Juliana to sing and asked me to speak about embodiment. I of course agreed and then forgot until the last moment when I realized with panic that I had only a few hours. Usually I am a slow writer, but it seemed like some angel came and sat on my shoulder and in one hour this is what I came up with: Read the rest of this entry »