Rolfing 2 (http://www.rolfguild.org/aboutsi.html)

After 2 weeks, I am back to my Rolfer. I had to wait an extra week because in the meantime he has become the father of a second son. Apparently there had been some problem because the baby was born through caesarean surgery. However, Jordi, the father and Rolfer was in good shape, and we started after a short while our session.

Last time most of the concentration and efforts went to my breathing. This time the attention went towards my feet, my posture and my way of walking and it became quite an experience to realize and admit to myself that my feet I have never trusted and they have during a lifetime been the weakest part of my body. I have always been ashamed of my flat feet and as a consequence, they have become tense and ridid. My feeling until now has, with a slight exaggeration, been that my legs ended just above my knees. I have never really used my feet. My way of walking has been very similar to my way of thinking and act mentally to protect myself from feeling pain of not being wanted, accepted and it means a tense insecure feeling on the verge of a cramp. During the session and while I experienced similarities with my epilepsy, I talked to Jordi about it, and I could feel how I made connections between the brain and my feet.

The short moments I can remember from my epileptic grand mal seizures are a physical full size cramp. Most of the seizures took place when I was unconscious and out and therefore, the bodily pain was limited. To go through a birth primal is a very similar experience in my case but with the big difference that it is a longer process with much more physical and mental pain. Every sequence of the repressed physical pressure, torture, numbness, suffocation, strangulation, horror and fear of death are relived in detail, repeatedly. These same cramp feelings have in a way allways been latent present in the different parts of my body.

In my case, the horror filled birth process took place 1940. 1980 I had my first birth primals and my most liberating primals happened 15 years later. With other words my fascia (connective tissues) in my body and my organs have a least for 40-55 years lived with the pain filled birth cramps in their memories and the change and character of my body, my posture and my way to move. In this connection the genius of Ida Rolf and her structural integration has meant so much to my ability to develop and assimilate my primal experiences.

Ida Rolf says: “Physical individuality is shaped by the forces of life - how we were born, when we learned to move, our goals, experiences, accidents, mental and emotional sets. All of these leave a record in our mental and our physical memories. The two are in many ways similar - bodies as well as minds bear witness to the puzzelments, accidents, unfinished business of our lives.”

December 1979 I made my first acquintance with the truth of the Rolfing principals and now more than 30 years later I am prepared to take the next steps in my structural integration. In the meantime, I have been through a number of mental integrations with the help of the Primal Principal and Dr Janov. Already after two sessions I am amazed how fast I am able to feel and make connections within my body and CNS.


continued... 

When Jordi alternately touched my feet and asked me to, with varying strength, over the entire foot, from heel to toe, first to press against him or to receive pressure and then to withdraw the foot or relax, I had difficulties. All of my foot and my leg were tight as violin strings. It is and has been their unnatural state since before I was 9 years old. They are still  marked by the tensions that my horrific birthing created, and which was confirmed when my father physically abused me.

This unconscious tension that I have carried on in combination with a sense of shame to be weak, undeveloped and flat-footed have always followed me and has meant that I have often felt uncomfortable when someone tried to touch me. Tenderness in sexual relationships has served as long as I took the initiative and was not satisfied. Caresses when I myself did not take the initiative or wasn't aroused has been painful and uncomfortable and the discomfort has pulled me back, which of course has created situations that have made my partners disappointed.

Since I now can feel my body's lack of ability to relax naturally I can remember and connect to all those times when I, for various reasons felt outside of communion with others. They are feelings related to not be wanted or accepted, that I do not count, that I am not able and that I’m not good enough. It was as if I was moving out of the unpleasant situation by both emotionally and physically tense myself until I almost did not exist, even if my body was still there.

Many are the times from my school and growing up when a team, in different contexts, should be selected, and I was not picked but became a teammember of mercy. I experienced during these moments horrific, destructive feelings of not counting, which were connected to my mother's treatment at birth and my father's assault  when I was 9 years old.

Reminiscences of those emotions are still all over my body even though I over the years have felt and been exempted from much of my worst initial tension. After having been through Primal Therapy, Rolfing and various physical exercises I have experienced how both toes and fingers have grown one size and that my vital signs (my pulse, my blood pressure and my body temperature) have changed very positively.