The Pain Game

"Why is Rolfing so painfull?" When I see a new client I often hear about Rolfing's painfull repuatation. This may be due to the nature of the therapy, people's expectations around Rolfing, and the communication that happens during a session. Fundamentally the pain happens when nerves are stimulated.

THE NATURE OF ROLFING

The nature of myofascial release work - and Rolfing therapy - is one that creates a deep and lasting change for the client. This said, the depth of the work, and the speed at which the tissue changes are two key components of the pain level experienced within the therapy. If I jump into your quadricep with my elbow, and start pushing hard and fast - that will create a lot of pain (unless you're particularly thick skinned). However, if I address outer layers of myofascia first, and unravel the tissue on different layers (outer to inner) with a slower approach the you will NOT experience much pain/neuro sensory overload.
This said, Rolfing isn't for the faint hearted (unless you found a particularly patient and unique practitioner). Tissue change is challenging, and I liken it to deep psychological work. Sometimes it feels great, and sometimes it just sucks. We go to therapy because we have problems, and want to elevate our overall quality of being/existence. A good therapist (whether myofascial release, deep tissue massage, Rolfing practitioner, chiropractor, etc.) will know your limits, know how to manage your pain level and not let it get out of control to the point where you just don't want to come back. A key question in deciding whether Rolfing is for you is deciding if want to confront the ingrained reality of inflexibility in your body. If this is true, a happy medium can be found. However, like talk therapy, sometimes the confrontation of self can be too much. Rolfing can end up feeling like a trap that you just want to get out of, and for that we need to allow agentle, kind, patient, loving presence in our work. I strive to provide this on balance to my clients and utilitze to outer to inner approach to unraveling as much as is possible in order to create a wholly satisfying, yet transformational client experience.

COMMUNICATION IN ROLFING

A key component in Rolfing is direct communication between client and therapist about the pain level, moderation of the level, and a mutual sense of satisfaction around this. Rolfers are not masochists or sadists. We care about helping people, creating new alignment, better posture, improved breathing, freedom from chronic pain and myofascial restriction, transformation in life, and many other things. For this reason, I am typically very direct with clients about the pain level in the session. A number scale is a quick and dirty way to find out where the client is with the therapy - "1 is nothing, 10 is excruciating, I never want to go above a 7 or 8 for you during the session, so please let me know if I'm getting there" is a typical statement I make to my clients when I first meet them, and during our first session I make a point of using this system a couple times so they get a good feel for it.

With the 1-10 scale in place, direct communication can still be still elusive. For this I typically watch breathing patterns (restricting breath can mean pain), and facial grimacing. Nonetheless, clients can withold their expression of pain, hide it from the practitioner, and go away feeling it was too much. Creating a promise to the client to moderate pressure and approach according to pain/sensation threshold is only as good as the client's expression of his/her threshold. Trust on the Rolfing table is not an easy thing to come by, especially if you have difficulty expressing your limits in day to day activity, or with your body in general. So Rolfing is not something I would recommend to people who struggle greatly in this area. Or if they do -to consider Rolfing but only with the open discussion of this boundary issue with your therapist. There are truly great moments in Rolfing when the client - choosing to face his/her inflexibility in an area can find great satisfaction, trust, and relief in literally handing his/her body over. This is built on trust with the practitioner, and trust of self. It intimate but not sexual. It is simply a state of being safe, met, and realized. For me, these are some of the finest moments in my practice.

Charity Promotion - Giving Back

Season's Greetings!

Transforming other's lives and bodies and bringing them deep relaxation and awareness is a great job, but I am looking to give some of what I do away this season. For this holiday season I'm giving back by donating new client session fees to charity. Best of all, you can choose your charity.

If you give $125 to a charity (listed below) through the link below for the holiday season I'll give you a Rolfing session. This is a great way to help get on track for 2009 as well as promote a worthy cause.

The charities you can give to for a free Rolfing session are:

AIDS Action Foundation
San Francisco AIDS Foundation
American Cancer Society
Humane Society of the U.S.
Marine Mammal Center
Kiva Microfunds
American National Red Cross
National Health Care for the Homeless
World Wildlife Fund. Inc.

Descriptions of these charities and payment must be made at my (Greg Brynelson) Registry through the link at justgive.org below:

http://www.justgive.org/basket?acton=viewList&donorId=208257&listTypeId=1

All scheduling can be done through my website online scheduling request forms (see cityrolfer.com). Please indicate your participation in the program either during donation checkout or on your session schedule request form.

Much love and good tidings!

Ida Rolf - A Quote

This is a great quote, revealing how Ida linked all aspects of life. Her unique gift for seeing the body in the context of the human condition.

"Old religions used to teach you to sit or kneel and always rock, gently but definitely rock. When you rock, you swing from prevertebral to postvertebral muscle. You'd see the same thing with sailors in the more active days of the war. You'd go down the street and you'd see a man in uniform, but you'd know without checking the uniform wheter that man was a seaman or a landman. The landman went down rolling- from the prevertebral to the postvertebral, the prevertebral to the posvertebral. He may not have had what we would call a really balanced gait, but he did use that alternation which kept the whole body at its peak. And they do this in many religious rituals. So much of ritual, if you look at it in the light of what you know of physiology, can be seen as a form of preventive medicine."

from, "Ida Rolf Talks About Rolfing and Physical Reality"
edited with an Introduction by Rosemary Fetis, 1987

CITYROLFER NEWSLETTER #2

Ineresting Articles:

Living to 100: What’s the Secret?
Harvard Health Publications
Harvard Health Letter
www.health.harvard.edu

Centenarians may well have a genetic head start on most of us, but in his 1999 book Living to 100, Perls argues that we can make choices that may help us catch up. Of course, we don’t have complete free will over these choices; behavior of almost all kinds has a genetic component. Still, there are some lessons to be learned from the do’s and don’ts of centenarians:

• They don’t smoke or drink heavily.
• Those who had smoked didn’t do so for long.
• They gained little or no weight during adulthood.
Being overweight makes people more vulnerable to many life-threatening
illnesses, including heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and stroke.
• They don’t overeat.
Okinawan centenarians consume 10%–20% fewer calories per day than typical Americans. And in animal studies, calorie restricted diets have consistently increased the life span. The old Okinawans consume less fat, too. About 26% of their energy intake comes from fat, compared with 30% or more for Americans. And more of that fat is beneficial—omega-3 fatty acids and the unsaturated fats found in vegetable oils.
• They eat many fruits and vegetables.
The Okinawans have an average of seven servings a day.
• They get regular physical activity for as long as they are able. Strength-building activities, such as climbing stairs or lifting small weights, are especially beneficial because they help slow the age-related loss of muscle mass.
• They challenge their minds. Stimulating mental activity may help prevent age-related thinking and memory problems by stimulating communication between brain cells. Particularly among elderly men, decreased cognitive performance is strongly associated with mortality.
• They have a positive outlook. Perls says centenarians seem to have personalities that shed stress easily. An inability to control emotional stress has been linked to memory loss and heart disease.
• They are friendly and maintain close ties with family and friends. Not surprisingly, positive relationships are associated with lower rates of depression. And lower rates of depression may result in lower rates of heart
disease. Many researchers think that people could add up to a decade to their lives if they emulated the centenarians. And, from what we know so far, they aren’t doing anything

(for full text please visit the website)

What's in a Stretch?
By Julie Gudmestad
http://www.yogajournal.com/for_teachers/2376?page=1
(for full text please visit the website)

Important as it is, stretching is easy to misunderstand or overdo. Help your students—and yourself—learn the basics behind this crucial element of yoga.

Ligaments, which join bone to bone, and tendons, which join muscle to bone, are comprised primarily of nonelastic fibers.
On the other hand, fascia (another type of CT) can be quite flexible, as it contains more elastic fibers. It's found throughout the body and can vary in size from microscopic, as in the tiny fibers that help hold the skin onto underlying bones and muscles, to large sheets, such as the iliotibial band that runs from the side pelvis to the outer lower leg and helps stabilize the torso over the leg while standing. Basically, fascia holds all of the layers of the body together, including binding the muscle cells into bundles and bundles into distinct muscles that we know by name. It's been said that if all other types of cells were somehow dissolved, leaving only fascia, a clearly recognizable body would remain.

Physical therapy research has shown that in order to change the structure of fascia, you would need to hold a pull on it for 90–120 seconds. This information also supports the idea of holding a longer, gentler stretch, since who wants to sit through two minutes of pain?

CITYROLFER.COM NEWSLETTER #1

CITYROLFER.COM NEWSLETTER #1
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 9, 2008

Dear Clients and Friends,

In this newsletter I am excited to offer you my latest practice updates and interesting health findings from around the web. Below you will find exceprts to links on interesting health-related articles as well as any new developments in my own Rolfing ® practice. I will send out a newsletter every 4-6 weeks.

Enjoy!

Greg Brynelson Certified Rolfer ®, Registered Nurse

P.S. To unsubscribe simply send me an email with “unsubscribe” in the subject.

___________________________
Greg’s News:

I will be participating in the 7th Annual New Living Expo, April 25-27, at the Concourse Exhibition Center near 8th and Brannan

Visit: http://www.newlivingexpo.com/2008/html_files/index3.php


Did you enjoy Rolfing® with me? Would you recommend others? Please visit yelp.com and place an online review of my practice!

______________________________
Happenings:

Brazilian Rolfer Pedro Prado opens a website with numerous articles written by and for Rolfers. All free to the public. Visit:

http://pedroprado.com.br/cgi-bin/cont_ipr.cgi
______________________________
Funnies:

One Friend to Another:
“I’ve found that there are times in a person’s spiritual journey when prescription drugs are entirely appropriate.”
by Barbara Smaller

________
Interesting Articles:

What Science Can Teach us About Flexibility
By Fernando Ruiz

Even if you're active, your body will dehydrate and stiffen with age. By the time you become an adult, your tissues have lost about 15 percent of their moisture content, becoming less supple and more prone to injury. Your muscle fibers have begun to adhere to each other, developing cellular cross-links that prevent parallel fibers from moving independently. Slowly our elastic fibers get bound up with collagenous connective tissue and become more and more unyielding. This normal aging of tissues is distressingly similar to the process that turns animal hides into leather. Unless we stretch, we dry up and tan! Stretching slows this process of dehydration by stimulating the production of tissue lubricants. It pulls the interwoven cellular cross-links apart and helps muscles rebuild with healthy parallel cellular structure.

For the entire article visit:
http://www.yogajournal.com/practice/209?page=1


Flip Your Memory Switch
Social connection keeps your brain sharp and your memory strong
By Julian Kesner

Chatting with a friend doesn't just catch you up on gossip--it may also strengthen your mind, found a new University of Michigan study. Before taking cognitive tests, 76 participants prepped for 10 minutes in one of three ways: They chatted socially in pairs, completed reading exercises, or watched a clip from Seinfeld. Surprisingly, the schmoozers did just as well on tests as those who worked out their brains (the TV viewers were a distant third). At the very least, make a phone call or two before you turn on the tube at night.


http://www.prevention.com/cda/article/flip-your-memory-switch/9e3426b225d18110VgnVCM10000013281eac____/health/brain.fitness?cm_mmc=Ounce%20of%20Prevention-_-4032008-_-Health-_-Flip%20Your%20Memory%20Switch

New Year; New You

Ringing in a new year we traditionally focus our intentions on dreams, personal goals, and resolutions. But what about this year brings anything different that the last? How will you move from fat to thin, poor to wealthy, messy to clean, etc.? Of all the ways we resolve to change it is common to fall short. Many times we resolve the same goal over and over again to no avail.

I find my clients often enter the 10-series with a sense of hope and anticipation toward greater health; an intent to use Rolfing as a stepping stone for greater health and personal change. I love to see this in new clients and am always amazed and blessed to share in this process with you.

With a new year at hand, there is change in the air. Making time for yourself to allow the changes, setting a distinct vision for your change, taking small steps that lead toward a culmination in the large change you want are all keys. I would be honored to have another client for whom personal change is at the forefront from January to December, this is one of the continual sources of inspiration for me in Rolfing work.

Contact and connection

What is it about the touch of another that can bring satisfaction?
What is the difference between a skilled touch, and that of a friend or loved one?
Why does modern medicine ignore our need for touch?

We are a social species, and touch is an integral part of our basic needs. Babies know when they are being held, and when they are deprived of touch - actually grow up with brain damage. Touch is a universal language. We shake hands to greet, hug good friends, request back rubs (well some of us do ;-)), and pet animals to befriend them. Though the language of caring is conveyed through touch, I believe there is more to it. We become more connected to ourselves (and the other person) when physical contact happens. Touch brings a sense of relief and happiness, and also a sense of being known that cannot be captured by simple conversation. What would you rather have when you come home from a hard days work? An empathetic conversation or a shoulder and hand massage?

Though pills can do wondrous things for our physiology, I know of no pill that can bring the relief and connectedness found in a simple backrub. Why does modern medicine ignore this, and why is the insurance industry lax to cover any skilled touch? I'm not sure, but it has to do with our culture's desire to lead with our heads rather than our whole organic understanding.

Through my work as a nurse in several hospitals, I have seen that medicine is delivered primarily through pharmaceutical and surgical solutions. Cutting it off, open, or direct control of the bodies fluids and chemicals is the mainstay of Western medicine. You'll be lucky to get any other touch in the hospital besides a needle stick, IV line, bandage change, or repositioning in bed. Obviously our culture needs some help accepting the value, and fundamental NEED for this other part of health called skilled touch.

And why must touch be skilled? Well would you like to have a trained surgeon or layperson digging around for your inflamed appendix? Skill brings satisfying results. And if the primary goal is connection, integration, and relaxation you better call the best in the industry. Of course, once you are sold on an alternative route deciphering which alternative to take can be another ball of wax. I'll save that for another entry. Thanks for reading, now go touch somebody!

Kinesthesia:

... a sense mediated by receptors located in muscles, tendons, and joints and stimulated by bodily movements and tensions; also : sensory experience derived from this sense. (Webster's Dictionary)

This is your 6th sense. How can you close your eyes and still touch your nose? Your body feels it. Just like any other body sense or system, it can work well or be dis-eased. Unfortunately we cannot yet do laser corrective surgery to repair disrupted kinesthesia.

This is where somatic therapies come in... Rolfing, Alexander Technique, Feldenkrais Method, Chiropractic, certain Physical Therapy techniques, Yoga Asanas, Dance, Breathwork... and a host of other body-therapies can help to re-program your body's sense of itself.

Often the problems start with your mental state; your response to stress, your ingrained habits, and your physical responses/guardings to emotions.
So mental and stress reduction therapies also can play a role here. Meditation, biofeedback, psychotherapy, guided imagery, and simply being attentive to your body state/reaction/alignment can all be helpful in regaining and maintaining your proprioceptive balance.

Just as when you don a pair of glasses and a new field of vision opens up, using these physical and mental therapies toward correcting the kinesthetic sense enlivens us, and allows us to be more at ease. Unlike the sense of vision, we can become active participants in growing and correcting this sense. Unfortunately this also means we can ignore the signs of incorrect proprioception to our detriment. I encourage you to address and prevent the inevitable imbalances to live well in your own body!

Blog Opening Day

Dear Readers, Rolfers, RN's, Reiki Masters, Reichian Therapits, and Republicans,

Let's get this blog started by enjoying a

Cup of Tea, with Nan-in

Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor's cup full, and then kept on pouring.

The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself. "It is overfull. No more will go in!"

"Like this cup," Nan-in said, "you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?"

Lest we forget, we cannot retrieve health. It is innate, homeostatic, and visits us when we are still, kind, and buoyant. From the prodding of Western medical minds to the hands of holistic care-ers the layout of a mind and soul are mapped in divergent realms for Northernamericans.

How do we solve the clamoring desires for youth, beauty, balance, painlessness and health if we cannot first learn to be still and accept life?