Angle of Identity
The Ten Series is a remarkable therapeutic, physical and psychological work that will bring your body into better postural alignment and your psyche-self into better spiritual, emotional and mature authenticity. My interest in doing this work for others derives out of my own struggles in my life, years of therapy and healing school, enormous costs both emotionally and financially, and a very deep hearted dose of being a mother, teacher and naturally caring individual. My commitment to each person who walks through my door is to help you resolve current issues which are limiting you in some way--physical, emotional, psychological, spiritual--so that within Ten Sessions you will leave here with a much greater sense of your self, much better health and fluidity joy in your body and correct postural alignment, a life that truly reflects your own core values and core God-Inspiration, and a very true alignment to your self. Perhaps I could say that ultimately this work is about INTEGRITY.
This work is called "Structural Integration" by the late Dr. Ida Rolf. According to her name, it is also often known "Rolfing". Before her development of this ancient method of touch and health, others called it Postural Integration or Postural Alignment. We use these words as if we think we know what it means, and we shake our heads "yes" as if we understand, when really, if we look beneath the veneer of our sociability and mind's thinking, we really have no idea what is meant. The mind itself doesn't really know, but the body does. Over the course of a Ten Series, your body is going to come into much greater knowing of itself, which isn't something verbal. The mind will begin to understand new things about its own person-self-body and there will be vast new connections made through the nervous system to the brain, cerrebelum, hypothalamus and limbic system, pons and entire wiring. As we talk about these changes, you will become more mindful and conscious of what is going on in your body, your life, your emotions, your own spirituality and value system, and what was before a rather stressful static of vying compensations built up from life, you will feel greater INTEGRITY with your own self.
What then does Integrity mean? Or Alignment for that matter? And why did I name this article "ANGLE OF IDENTITY'? Like Maria in Sound of Music, let's begin with the easiest, at the very beginning.
When I begin my work, I am looking to see how your body is aligned. That is a complex action actually. In general, I am looking to see how the feet and ankle falls beneath the hips and how the ball-socket joint of the femur relates to the foot-ankle through the leg bones. I am noting the strains around the knee and the torque going on in the hip joint. I am also seeing and sensing the amount of mobility in the Sacro-illiac joint (SI joint) of the sacrum. Obviously I am studying the spine itself: is there any scoliosis, even slight; do any vertebrae seem out of alignment with the others; are the cervical vertebrae of the neck in a nice curve and seem without strain; is the head nicely on top of the cervicals or is it jutting forward? I cast an eye to the thorax and core region of the diapraghm and where the psoas morphs into the diaphragm. What strains are moving through the core, either ipsilaterally (same side) or moving through a diagonal (e.g. a pull from one knee or hip to its opposite shoulder creating a rotation or a rotation of the hips creating a pull?). I study the shoulder girdle to see how you might be rotating one shoulder forward, or how tension in the arms is limiting movement and flow. The face and the head also catch my attention. Everyone has a way of using his or her chin to balance, the eyes often have a frozen look when there has been any sort of trauma, physically or emotionally, which can reflect even issues of birth. Whatever is going on in the body itself will show up in the face. I am also registering the organs and how they are responding and vital. My training in Visceral Manipulation through Dr. Barral's Institute honed a sense which I naturally had to feel the natural rhythmic life pulse of the organs and also sense how they are constricted fascially. Any constriction in the organs will pull on the structure and create mis-alignment as well. Being an energy healer, trained in Reiki, much Shamanic work and then the 4-year program Barbara Brennan School of Healing, I am also registering and "seeing" your chakra system, Hara System and Core Expression. Back to the physical, I am always looking at your feet because they are the part of your body-soul which relates you to the floor and ground and earth. Everything head down shows up in your feet, and vice versa, everything from your foot up, shows up in your face and eyes and the membranes inside of your skull!
I begin sensing these things the first time you call me and we talk. One of my highest developed sensitivities is hearing. It's not exactly the same as when I hear the birds chortling because there is a spring snow outside and good things, like flowers and juicy worms, are about to happen. It's a different sort of hearing into the body itself related to my strongest perceptivity of kinesthetics, followed by highly developed "sight". Through your voice, I "hear" a certain alignment of the tissue and how you relate to your body. All the competing frictions of the body show up in your voice. Hence in my work I like to work with the throat itself, a very vulnerable place, because we hold many tensions in the throat region which relates (and hence helps to integrate) the head to the body. When I first watch you walk, I am also sensing all of this and "putting it together". I have a strong sense of analysis, used to teach math, and hence bring that sort of equation-like perception into my work. I am sensing how you have become an overlay of competing tensions which responded over time and developed into physical-psychological complexes of survival. After awhile, your body has used up all of its slack, physically and psychologically, and there is no more room for change, either good or bad. That's when you begin to get injuries or health issues or psychological issues which you no longer seem to be able to resolve. When I first watch you walk, I am "listening to" and "feeling" and to some degree "analyzing" these things. If you ask me to tell you what I see, I'll give you some words but it will be far from what I am actually "putting together" and "understanding" about you. Most of what I sense is NOT VERBAL. The will come later, after the session, especially if you write to me. By then my body will have processed it into some conscious form of verbage so I can communicate it.
The last few paragraphs were mostly about how I sense the postural alignment, but almost immediate I begin writing about other things. Let me back up for one moment then.
In the postural alignment work of Structural Integration, I am going to help your body align itself or return to its own INTEGRITY by releasing strain mostly through the joints so that everything lines up correctly from head to foot through your shoulder joints, hip joint, ankles and feet. At the end of a Ten Series, you will stand up tall and straight, without having to use your muscles to make yourself do it. It will come naturally because the tensions which have been straining you are released through the work and your skeleton has a natural design to be upright. Once one releases the strains in the fascia and nervous system which are pulling you out of alignment are released, your body goes back to its natural alignment with ease. It's how you are built! God has a good design! You are beautiful inside in every way!
Now let me write more about Integrity and the ANGLE OF IDENTITY. Integrity comes from the word Integrate. Structural Integration works by Integrating the many parts of the body so that you move as one whole being, on your axis or your true vertical alignment from foot through head. Integration in this way means that I am helping the parts of your body RELATE to one another in correct anatomical way and move together with a new sense of freedom, harmony and conscious maturity of body. We will work on movement through our sessions and your body gains this sense of itself, of its natural lightness and yet groundedness on the ground and floor and in reality. People will often have realizations after the first or second session about "having feet". Seems funny, I mean, we all know we have feet, and yet you realize that you haven't really realized that you have feet and that your feet are working to balance and hold you with each step. In the work I am relating feet to psoas, feet to arms, feet to knees, feet to sacrum etc. As these relationships become more clear through your body and you are more organized in the tissue and nervous system, you become more physically integrated . . hence the INTEGRITY of the body is increased.
Another word I like is COHERENCY. As the body becomes Structurally Integrated through the Ten Series (and beyond!), the parts move with less friction or static and there is increased COHERENCY between the parts. You will feel more at ease in your own body. Your body begins to move with greater fluidity, poise, balance, harmony, flexibility, and stability.
How does this relate to your psyche? Your ego? Your IDENTITY? Totally! Who you think you are is a reflection of what is going on in your body. Your body is a reflection of an embodiment of something spiritually far beyond our comprehension (except perhaps in very heightened times of awareness). Your body is a reflection of the earth, of the Light, of the great transformation going on through us with every pulsation of Light Energy and Love. We each have a soul, a spiritual energetic configuration, something like a beautiful glowing snowflake, which scintillates at a very high level of consciousness and which is expanding its Light and Love everywhere touching all the other souls of Light and Love.
Yet the body is a phenomenon of conflict. The soul chose a body to enter into through conception . . or really, it's more like a body formed around the soul's configuration like sugar crystals on a string in the jar of sugar water. The body is an exact mirror, with its emotional story of parenting and family and education and culture and religion, of the soul itself. Earth and all of our relationships allow us to work to clear patterns and misconceptions and darkness that the soul seemed to "take on" as it became incarnated. As we ease these conflicts in the body itself (hear structural integration and postural alignment), the psyche and knowing of oneself and expression of oneself becomes more clear as well. YOU ARE YOUR BODY so as your body becomes more upright and integrated, you as a person become more UPRIGHT AND WALK-LIVE WITH MORE INTEGRITY as well.
Hence . . . ANGLE OF IDENTITY. When I begin to work with you, I "see" or sense the ANGLE of misalignment you are from your own NATURAL AUTHENTIC GOD ESSENCE. The more conflict there is in your body, the more conflict there is in your soul. The body is a vehicle of the soul and you see life and experience life through this vehicle. The more clear your body becomes, even with injury or crippling affects of diseases, the more clearly your soul's Light will shine through your body.
As we go through the Ten Series, I will talk about things like ROMANCING YOUR SELF. Most people have never really felt into their own selves, their own life, and gotten a true sense of the inner metal of the self or soul. There are many forms of spiritual work to help you do this. Meditation, prayer, sweat lodges, shamanic journeys, dance, devotional chanting, yoga, and more. The Ten Series is another way that meets some other basic needs and it works, fast. In other articles I talk more about the maturational process from child psychology to adulthood through the Ten Series so I will leave that aside right now. Albeit to write that a great deal is happening through your body to help you grow up fast. Along the way, you will begin to ROMANCE YOUR SELF, learn about loving your self, and choosing better ways of life which MIRROR WHO YOU REALLY ARE AND WANT TO BE.
Part of that phenomenon is one about owning your own sexuality as your own creative vital current of life. Take those words in: CREATIVE VITAL CURRENT OF LIFE. This is what sexuality is. When the CREATIVE VITAL CURRENT OF LIFE FORCE gets compromised through any physical problem, which relates to a psychological and spiritual concern, your life vitality is also compromised. As I help the body to release the strain patterns that are limiting the flow of life, you begin to heal. These tenets are basic osteopathic principles of healing, wholeness and health. As adults there are often issues around sexuality itself and how we relate to our partners intimately that are part of the healing process and about which we might speak.
In this process, there will be a period of truly owning your self, Romancing your self, and discovering something significant about WHO YOU REALLY ARE INSIDE. You will touch something that you must touch in your own self, OWN YOUR OWN INTENTION OF LIFE, OWN YOUR OWN GOD-INSPIRATION, and come FACE TO FACE with something deeply Core and Vital to your own being. You usually will get a sense of this during the core session 4 - 7. You will meet your self and begin to love your own self in a new way. You will begin to choose better and better life affirming actions and responses to life, and health issues that you are facing from injury to endocrine system problems to disease to depression . . . will begin to resolve. It's not that a miracle will happen and as long as there is breath in your body, you will be dealing with "stuff".
It's just that . . . The stuff gets lighter and you can live with a more clear Angle of Identity. When I first meet you, I am sensing how far out of alignment are you in your body and in your soul, so to speak. That's incorrect. Your soul is in perfect harmony with everything. However there are ways in which your ego-verbal and body consciousness is not matching that inner spark of life vitality. So I am helping to facilitate bringing you into greater INTEGRITY with who you naturally are as a Whole Being.
Along the way, each one of us meets a certain inner struggle. More on that later. Sometime. The Shadow self in Jungian Terms. The inner struggle will resolve itself a great deal though this work as I help your body come into correct postural alignment. Many of your body systems will begin to restore themselves during this time. Injuries begin to heal and function restores to the body. People lose weight. People get off of antidepressant drugs or other medications if they can. You begin to exercise or dance or enjoy life. I help you open yourself up to a better life where you can live more IN JOY than you were. When you are being who you naturally are, you will live more IN JOY and IN INTEGRITY WITH WHO YOU ARE.
Health, Wholeness, Integrity are all words which relate to the Sacred Journey of Life itself, with its many stages, failures to triumphs, pain to joy, questions to answers, anger to love, everything between cradle to grave. It's not easy, we all know that, yet when we reach out to touch each other with care, concern, love and a willingness to help . . . a willingness to help each other, we all touch something essentially beautiful and sacred that we are all here to realize.