Rolfing 10. (Febr. 17th, 2011). Conclusion.

I have over three months (Nov 19th 2010 - Febr. 17th 2011) been through my 10 Rolfing sessions. I have during these months been aware of many things. In general I have for more than 30 years could feel that my psyche and body are interacting. I have for a life time carried effects of my lengthy and painful birth process, which developed a first line imprint which later has evolved into second and third lines manifestations or to be more specific developed into epilepsy and physical blockages and neurotic activities as my body  grew and the intellectual part of my brain over the years expanded.

In my endless search over decades for solutions I have been specifically attached to two techniques to live my pain, Primal Therapy and Rolfing. The impacts and effects of the two have interacted over the years. Rolfing, in the way it took place 30 years ago, blew all my defenses away and took me to a position to live birth primals, where my knowledge of Primal Therapy (understanding that the way out of repressed pain is to feel / live it) and the use of Tegretol saved me. After I, during many years, have lived and felt tremendous amounts of the pain and terror during my birth, I have very little need of neurotic / compulsive filters and actions and after having been through several traumatic primals how my life has been propelled by abnormal, humiliating behavior to kill pain of the similar magnitude. Today I am driven by more realistic day to day needs.

However, to avoid feeling my imprinted pain, over the years, during my efforts to survive and function, my fascia has directed and constricted my muscles in an instinctive, protective way that has blocked my body (and psyche) in positions which over time have been fixed to my bones and in different ways crippled me. Furthermore, I have over the last few years as a consequence of my need for less neurotic protection, been aware of the uselessness of building muscles and strength and instead started to look for an extension of the mental relaxation which has come as an impact of that much of the pain from my birth has been lived and dissolved.

To release reflexes established in the fascia and muscles since many decades it requires a technique of a special format. Rolfing, with its gravity principle and its rearrangement of the fascia, has meant a new step towards a further liberation from my prison of pain.

Four areas of behavior won’t be the same after my 10 Rolfing sessions; My breathing, my walking, my posture and my physical exercises.

I will, in stead of an abdominal (associated with the parasympathetic nervous system) breathing, through my posture and by a new way of walking,  carefully try to direct my breathing towards a dominance of thoracic breathing.

My walking will feel and look totally different. In stead of tip toeing, I will use the whole leg and the whole foot, stretching the heel and extending the leg and “breathe” through the foot sole and end the step by using the big toe actively.

My body will be better able to search the position of optimal gravity. I will walk straighter. (Not only from a physical perspective). My shoulders and arms will make less efforts to tense my posture, which means better breathing, more economical movements and my thinking will eventually lose its tendency to become rigid and protective of historic reasons. 

My physical exercises will take time to develop. I will find drills in which extending, opening up joints and muscles all will improve, confirm a better equilibrium.

During these three months, I have learned that when my body is in balance, I feel strong and relaxed. When my muscles are pumped up, I may look strong, I don’t feel strong and I’m certainly not relaxed.

Jan Johnsson

Valentine's day post: The Difference Between Romantic Love and Sex. Arthur Janov

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Romantic love exists. Emotional attachment exists. Yet they involve different brain structures and different biochemistry than what drives pure, lustful sex. Once there is attachment or love, a separation can cause pain. Oxytocin helps to quiet this pain and can function very much like other neurotransmitters and inhibit suffering. To listen to my patients is to understand the terrible pain of a child separated from his parent; the cry of separation is an attempt to bring that parent back close again; it is true in nearly all animal forms.

There is a structure within the brain known as the cingulate cortex, which is responsible for that cry. This cortex is like an arc overlaying the limbic/feeling area and also deals with aspects of emotion. This area plays a role in maternal care and loving. The cingulated cortex is responsible for making the chemicals of comfort, and is also involved in inducing a sense of empathy, the ability to feel what others are feeling.

The cingulate cortex is endowed with endorphins, internally produced painkillers. When animals cry (as a result of separation from their mothers), these painkillers surge forth to ease the pain. When such a separation is abrupt and goes on for a long time, the baby’s pain becomes imprinted in the brain and remains. It is more pain than what a young body can tolerate.

Mother Nature knows that a baby needs two parents to care for him. Pair bonding is the result of two adults becoming attached, having sex, having a child, and loving that child. With the love these parents themselves received early in their own childhoods, they have the oxytocin and vasopressin that enables them to love their own child. Love is the foundation, therefore, for survival because when it is lacking, the child does not get the love he needs and he suffers, and the system becomes skewed and dislocated. Later, there may be disease and premature death as a deviated system is forever out of whack. A baby needs to be caressed and feel the sense of touch, which is the baseline of love. Without it, the brain changes and is less adaptive.

Alterations inside a pregnant woman, who does not want her baby, can affect the brain development in the womb so that the frontal cortex of the fetus becomes impaired. This has implications for later learning and adaptation. The mother's attitude, if not loving, adversely affects her fetus. It is one reason that we cannot be taught to love later on, though we can be taught to behave in a sociable manner. Love is not something to be taught. It is something we learn through our experience.

When the stimulating hormone, dopamine, and the repressive hormone, serotonin, are both at proper levels, there can be feeling and love. When serotonin is too high, there is too much repression and the ability to love is less. When dopamine is too high there is too much agitation and not enough cuddliness to allow love. A proper balance is needed among all the hormone systems. This is particularly true with oxytocin in females and vasopressin in males. After sexual orgasm, both of these levels rise by hundreds of percent in both parties, as if to say that attachment and closeness are part of sex or perhaps "should be," according to nature. It's nature's way of saying that sex should be taken seriously and is part of the syndrome of romance.

Constant random sex has nothing to do with love and is more or less a release of tension. It actually contradicts nature. However, there are two different brain/biochemical systems involved – one for pure sex and the other for attachment. We can be attached to someone and still have sex with someone else without love. There is evidence that in the latter case – sport-sex – the oxytocin and vasopressin levels are lower.

What are we to make of all this? That love exists and it is has physical effects. It can sculpt our brains early on. It is an intimate part of sex, and it ensures healthy development, both physically and mentally. Love is not an ethereal entity, but something we can measure. It may be a more accurate gauge of our state of being than all the protestations of love we might make. Love really does make the world go round. 
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Killing Softly. (Article 25 of the history of my epilepsy.)

Killing Softly

Part of the price of having lived with neuroses, epilepsy and a hidden agenda in virtually an entire life has been that my turnover of spouses, cohabitants, jobs and home addresses have been significantly higher than the corresponding average of my colleagues. During almost 40 years, I have saved my thoughts, concerns and frustrations about what has happened to me, so I have in retro perspective, a good background,  to analyze with sharp memory to which extent my epilepsy and the neuroses that come with it, has caused my apparent capriciousness.

The crucial dynamics that arise in me are: The feeling of being stuck and not being able to get out even though I'm struggling for a long while without giving up, leading eventually to a crippling sensation that makes me desperate. During this paralysis and despair, something extreme often occurs that makes me turn 180 degrees and like the birth process, I’m pulled out of the inhibitory situation which is about to destroy me. From job history, these radical changes have been due to mergers, closures, offer from a headhunter, promotion to a new job, being dismissed, or that I applied for another job. These have been the best moments in my life, and I have been able to start afresh with the sense of unlimited motivation and the feeling of being stuck has temporarily receded. With new experiences and knowledge and often at a new place, with a new job and sometimes with a new language to learn, life felt easy.

Identical feelings and patterns that existed in my career were repeated in my private life. It is hence the similar basic underlying currents which have propelled my changes in both my career and in my social life.  Employers with tempting assignments or women with a seductive look could temporarily overturn my plans, but not for long periods of time. I could not escape the forces of the engraved patterns, which represented my nature, which had existed in the brain since birth. It has by a law-bound force created the same reactions, whether I worked with Dutch tiles, hats, corsets, toys of all categories, fashion clothes, sports equipment, plastic products, analytical instruments, high pressure laminates or furniture components. Similar results, whether I have been married / living together with a 16 year younger Spaniard, an eight year older Danish, a 4 or 12 year younger Swedish or a German of the same age.

Although my psyche has undergone many crises and traumas caused by my compulsively repeated life patterns, I have only fond memories afterward of all I have been through and there are few experiences I would like to have undone. The same is true for all the great people who have crossed my path because of my compulsive behavior. Many of these people I continue to have contact with. From a professional point of view, my neurotic wanderings definitely meant that I was capable of dealing with difficult change situations, which of course have been a major reason that my life has been possible to implement.

From a private social life point of view, I have obviously also improved over the years, but here I feel, however, a greater sorrow over the injuries, I may have caused family members because of my obstinacy due to my hidden agenda, to which they of course, were innocent. The best I can say to my defense regarding my three surviving children is that they all were wanted and loved. It is harder to bear that regarding two of the children, I was often not on hand as a father when they needed it, which certainly is the big blob of a painful but fascinating epileptic adventure.

The relationship with my second spouse followed the pattern described and have been especially difficult to overcome. It was not just a romance, a marriage, a crisis and then a divorce. Through the fascinating and dramatic events we experienced simultaneously, the various transformations that we went through jointly and individually (I by Primal Therapy and she by an exciting design education) and because that we really enjoyed being together for many years, it has taken a very long time to get over the loss of this relationship.

Killing Softly

Over two years I changed jobs two times, which meant that the earliest move took place in 1972 from Malmo to Hillerød, Denmark and then the second move to Gothenburg in spring 1974 and that fall back to Denmark. Then my first spouse said stop. She was tired of me, on the moves and wanted to stay in Gothenburg and develop other solutions there. This was a traumatic shock for me, and it took me a few months to work out myself of the crisis. However, a new, exciting, reasonably well paid job as head of a toy company with in-house production and wholesale activities took my time and being taken care of by Danish friends, the feeling of being abandoned turned while thrilling opportunities developed. December 13, 1974, I met, at the headquarters in Osby, my future spouse. Admittedly, my first spouse had begun to doubt her Gothenburg Project, and since I met her and the children regularly she had failed glimpse that they would be willing to move to Denmark again. This thought tempted me for a while, but then I met G. and after during a period have felt through the situation the decision was made steadfast by my first wife when she realized that she after all had had enough of me.

From spring 1975, and until 02/16/1982  I lived with G., who was more than 12 years younger than I. We lived in Denmark, Jyllinge to 1977, in Sweden (with housing in Malmö, Gothenburg and Olofström) for the remainder of 1977 and subsequently in 1978 and 1979 in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles. From 1980 to 1982 when we parted, we stayed in Brokamåla, Olofström in Blekinge. 1976 G. was very close to death when she received prenatal poisoning during her last week of pregnancy. She was rescued by the life because the same week in which she suffered from fetal poisoning, there was an international gynecologist Congress in Copenhagen where she was transported from Roskilde. She was treated by an American specialist who saved her life. During the two years that I had arranged in the U.S., first for myself to go to Primal Therapy, G. avoided therapy and studied textile art at Passadena Art School in L.A., and she took weaving classes in St. Barbera.

After our experience with fetal poisoning, my new insights through Primal Therapy and the dramatic development of my primal experiences when returning home in 1980, I was not interested in having more children, which developed into a conflict issue between us. Furthermore, G. studied from 1981 onwards at the Art School in Gothenburg, while I worked as a consultant to the Bonnier Group's leisure division, and visited the retreats which DR Janov during those years arranged in Europe.

Already in the years in California I had the first feelings that our relationship might not hold.  This was due to the fact that I was not interested in getting more children and partly because I thought that G. needed therapy (which view, I based inter alia on her unreasonable jealousy of my first wife, who G. was reminded of every time  we discussed my children and it was often), which she didn’t want and that this eventually would make our relationship difficult. However, I felt that G. was at that time dependent on me and I postponed the decision to end our relationship.

During a Primal retreat in Frutigen, CH, at the end of January 1982 I sat listening to a discussion, between Vivian Janov and a male patient, about a relationship in which one of the two parties did not love the other but didn’t dare to conclude the relationship. "Killing Softly" suddenly flew out of my mouth without being able to stop myself. Shortly afterwards Vivian came up and spoke with me and during our conversation, it became suddenly clear to me that I was in a relationship that I did not dare to leave. Two weeks later I had made up my mind, and I left G., house and home on 02/16/1982 at her 29th birthday.

From 16.02.1982 onwards, I had many dramatic feelings and dreams around G. and it took several years to get over the divorce. Dreams are the brain's own way of resisting and trying to solve problems and they have often been followed by primal feelings that activated the neuroses that have been behind my unreal needs and practices.

The mice

The night between 27 and 28 July 1984 I woke up after a nightmare and primal birth feeling. The nightmare was about two mice whom I had hunted and killed. The hunt took place at the end of my bed, and my tools were my legs and feet. One of the mice had a thick and blond curly hair that was identical to G’s. The non curly mouse was attracted like a magnet to the curly mouse. The painful and exhausting dream ended up with that I squeezed the two mice to death between my feet and the floor. First I squeezed the curly mouse to death because I sensed that the non-curly mouse's death would follow automatically. The non-curly mouse, which had an unlimited willpower, tore off its head while the body was jammed between my feet and the floor. I had a constant fear that the curly mouse would become entrenched in my penis. A piece of the non-curly mouse's head and spark of life disappeared out to the right, and I felt in the dream that it was no longer dangerous, and that it should disappear.

The night before the July 27, G. visited me in Karlshamn, since we had met in Brokamåla together with some friends from Denmark. We had been separated for more than two years, and I had slowly started to get over our divorce and hung out some with a Hungarian woman, Hh from Stockholm, who I met at a retreat in Bergen, Norway. Hh was a non-curly psychologist and was a sensual experience of a new kind for me. I felt strong and independent after an inspirational dance evening at Ronneby Brunn with Hh., G. suddenly showed a new seductive interest to me which I to her disappointment, however, managed to ward off, which seemed like a liberating response to the fact that I just a few months ago failed to reestablish a relationship with her. It turned out that I mentioned the meeting with G. to Hh., when I later during the evening spoke to her on the phone, and she got the idea that I was dragging myself out of our newly established relationship. 

The G. incident on 27 July and the following dream during the night made me both sad and happy. Sorry for getting rid of the beauty which G. represents and the imaginary symbols of success she brought with her, and because she is a sweet and lovable person. Happy that G., in front of herself and in front of me had been able to make up her feelings with me. It is easy to understand the emptiness I felt by the exciting development and transformation, we both had been part of. However, it was a relationship which, had started on distorted conditions: I didn't dare to say no and challenge my loneliness when the exceptionally beautiful, blonde and curly G. suddenly decided to, certainly after subtle invitations from me, to move in with me in my house in Jyllinge during the spring of 1975. As a result, I took the responsibility to be loyal and did my best to rid G. from sad childhood memories and try to make her as strong as I had hoped that my mother would have been against my father.

The greatest sorrow is to recognize that we ourselves are the cause of our misfortunes. Sophocles

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTFKPdWw1Gc&feature=related

Rolfing 9. (Febr. 10th., 2011)

Both Rolfing and Feldenkrais call attention to the fact that emotional expressions are linked to the shortenings of the flexor muscles. Consequently, someone who is overwhelmed by negative emotions tends to get shortened muscles. The energy in a chronically flexed body is fully occupied with keeping the body up. The body's owners must constantly produce surplus energy to keep the body going. Such a chronic constriction provides a profound sense of fatigue and depression.

During my Rolfing sessions, I become gradually reminded of the imprinted, reflexive muscle constriction, which instinctively shows. It appears when I try to establish a normal contact / relation between, for example, my feet and my back, or when I try to establish a natural, energy conserving and efficient way to walk. The reaction occours in the form of an unconscious spasm of the muscles that I have, for some reason, earlier wrongly chosen to use. For example, using and tensing my shoulders when I move my legs.

The muscle’s contractions that occur during a birth primal or a seizure, became imprinted in my lengthy and painful birth process, and they exist more or less in my whole body and it’s fascia. The more I have experienced / lived, during the years, of repressed pain, the less tensions do I need. It is very similar to my drastically reduced need for a painkilling, neurotic filter. After that I have lived almost a full life with countless fascia coordinated / protective muscle contractions, so I have now belatedly realized the options of Rolfing to restructure my spherically distributed fascia and learn to eliminate negative muscle contractions. Instead, I try to combine stretch and flex muscles in accordance with the natural need. Just as I have reacted to the imprinted muscle reflexes, in the same way, my mental behavior worked with filters of protective functions, which brought with it an often overly controlled and inhibited behavior without the reasonable spontaneity that makes life less stressful.

It is to me inconceivable that Primal Therapy is not engaged in or even discussing the subject of physiological restructuring, which is necessary for elderly patients who have lived for decades with improperly balanced bodies caused by both psychological and physical causes from womb life and beyond. Instead there is an esoteric debate going on, over future psychotherapeutic issues on the fringe, in and of itself, interesting topics, which belong among "the products of the future in a successful company". That have not yet been established... Meanwhile, many are suffering without being able to get help.

Over the last few months Rolfing sessions, I gradually released many of my anti-self and started to feel like doing things. Today, for example, when Jordi and I trained a natural, effective and energy-saving way to walk - which is by no means as simple as it sounds - I  lost my self-command for a moment and got to a nice relaxing walk. Positive feelings were born and I remembered suddenly the reason why I live in Spain! Originally, I wanted to go to Buenos Aires in Argentine to work but with the ulterior motive to learn tango and speak Spanish. However, prudence and reality took me to Valencia, and I can now speak Spanish.

Perhaps Rolfing can now make me sufficiently coordinated to learn tango and travel to Buenos Aires. Is there anyone who wants to tango with me?

Jan Johnsson
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBHhSVJ_S6A&playnext=1&list=PL491EB384C2184612 

Communication Between The Two Brain Hemispheres. (Article 24 of the history of my epilepsy.)

Communication between the brain hemispheres. (Three examples.) 

When my old birth trauma is being dissolved piece by piece, insights and flashbacks can follow provoked by painful events in life. They appear as an effect of the normalization of the brain and is due to improved exchange of information between the hemispheres of the brain, as the painkilling activities of the neuroses no longer are needed. One can speak of a delayed maturation step by step.

One morning I had three very different experiences. The first was a fairly recent history with roots in the past. The second experience occurred 14-15 years since in Malmö, together with my son, Anders, then 25 years old. The third and most dramatic event occurred almost exactly 60 years ago. Last in first out.

Experience 1. 

Puskas is our dog and he is a big adult boxer, four years old, born 2006. We bought him when he was 18 months old. He had then, during a year, traveled in southern Europe participating in dog competitions, when the owner decided to sell him. Puskas was mainly trained for the exhibitions, which meant that he was instinctively set to flash aggressive postures to demonstrate his racial superiority, a sleek muscular structure. To adopt him to a normal life as a house dog we had to start from scratch with his training. The saying: ‘it's hard to teach an old dog to sit’ could not have been given a better example. 

My daughter and I, who both wished that we got a dog, had taken on a difficult task, and we went during four months to a course with Puskas and we read some books on dog training and boxers. Puskas has a healthy mind and is very affectionate with people but is, however, extremely dominant in other dogs' presence. Especially his demand for respect from other dogs created severe adjustment problems early in the course, especially as long as I was convinced that the problem lay with him... 

Puskas and I make daily long walks in the mountains and hills around Genovés and during these trips, I tried practically to implement the theoretical principles from the dog course. I liked Puskas but had no real feel for how I should motivate and discipline him. This affected me mentally and I was occasionally confused and had hallucinations and / petit malls, which were triggered by the feeling of being wrong and incompetent, and I felt generally failed when I had mine, at first, unsuccessful fights with him. Since he is a great boxer and strong both from a physical and mental point of view, he liked to fight with me. Though he is a charmer around people he ignored totally my stubborn attempts to correct him. 

This lasted until I had a hallucinatory / epileptic emotional experience of the painful feeling of ineptitude which my father created by never positively communicate when I did the right thing and without giving me justified criticism and advice when I was doing wrong. A laissez-faire policy which left me without help to learn and understand what was right or wrong or good or bad. Suddenly, I realized or rather I felt I was entitled to punish and correct Puskas immediately (so that he could understand the connection) when he was wrong and, of course, exactly as important, to tell him (with words, patting or other rewards) when he was right. 

This straight communication at the right moment on important and critical elements in the behavior of Puskas changed the relationship between us almost at once. I got a new depth of understanding regarding the importance of proper communication. This, of course, I had read about countless times and knew the theoretical answers, but not until the insights from my feelings / hallucinations, when I knew my childhood lack of educational importance, I knew what behavioral training really meant. I had had to go through a full career without these insights even though I have arranged several training seminars on the theme ... 

Experience 2. 

I drove a car in Malmö City with my son, rather late one dark night 1996.  We rolled through the neighborhoods of The Old West, where I had worked at a very young age after having dropped out of high school and from where I had had exciting experiences. Probably, I could remember, and I expressed catchphrases like "The Lady Shame of the Shady Lane" because the environment in this now fashionable neighborhood those days was not fully housebroken. This district then was the whore quarters . We drove on a very narrow and one-way street. 

Suddenly, a car came towards us. "We are damn running the course in the wrong direction!" I screamed. The car in front of us was a police car! We were trapped, there was no way out! The alley bathed seconds afterward in blue police lights and two large and young police officers came up to the car, one on each side. I opened the window on my side, and the police bent down with a smile, which I need not describe. My next reaction was immediate and equally surprising for both the police on my side of the car, as it was for myself and my son. I began to shake and a heartbreaking sound of a baby’s crying came out of my throat. 

The young police on my side lost his head and yelled at me: 'Go to hell with you’! Then the police and his colleague, with quick steps went back to the police car, beating the blue lights, backed out of the alley (in the forbidden direction) and left the room for us. I can still feel the dual liberation of that birth primal. The therapy has really helped me from more than one viewpoint. This experience, however, will be difficult to repeat! 

Experience 3. 

It was about how my father had beaten and abused me 1950. He made it certainly more of a neurotic ambition, to set an example and uphold the disciplinary rules of the agricultural university of Alnarp. I do not think he did it out of hatred for his son. He did it after being contacted by a supervisor who had reported that I was cheeky and had run away from him after climbing a high fence. 

My father hit me like a lunatic for several minutes until the carpet beater broke, which is difficult even for a strong man as he was. During the merciless beatings so I screamed and begged for forgiveness, “sweet dad, forgive me” time and again. My memories of the violence are not the physical pain itself but the pain that I caused myself by asking for forgiveness. ‘Please, dad, forgive me’ caused the mental pain that exceeded the physical pain. (Anyway, in the brain pain = pain wherever is physical or mental.) I did not mean what I said but humiliated myself by saying these words. I can still feel the pain of the violation, and it happened 60 years ago... 

The physical pain I felt during my father's act of violence was very similar to the pain I feel when I feel the umbilical cord around the neck, stunned, terrorized and trapped stuck in the pelvis of my mother, which in turn is close to the feeling of a seizure. To make an allegory: My father banged me back to my traumatic fetal stage. My father carried the burden of his actions for 40 years until he, two months before his death, crying dared to ask me for forgiveness for what he did with me when I was 9 years old. I said that I no longer hated him. That was not true. Not then. It would take many years yet before the hatred was dissolved. 

“Corporal punishment is as humiliating for him who gives it as for him who receives it; it is ineffective besides. Neither shame nor physical pain has any other effect than a hardening one.” Ellen Key.

Rolfing 8. (Febr. 3rd, 2011)

The first time I went to Rolfing 30 years ago I knew nothing about it. Two things triggered me. Rolfing was kind of taboo at the old Primal Institute in Santa Monica, and I had got the tip from a cult person in a competing therapy in Boulder. I was impressed by the label “Structural Integration” and by the fact that this was something about a deep holistic system of soft tissue manipulation that organized the body in relation to gravity. I had no idea of the dramatic changes which would be the consequences of the ruthless, compressed manipulation of my fascia and my muscles which I had asked for and as a consequence was subjected to in Boulder, Col., Dec., 1979.

It certainly broke up all my gates and defenses to my imprints, all the way back to when my birth process became too much pain and horror to resist during a fight between life and death. These imprints which were laid down during these hours, later stress and provocations turned into epileptic seizures of different magnitudes in my late teens.

So why do I go back to do Rolfing? Because the more I have been aware of and understood my mental blockages the better I have been able to feel the mental pain which have caused my neurotic lifestyle. I am becoming increasingly conscious of that there exist an equivalent tension in my body, fascia, joints and my physical well being is lacking a naturalness when I move and manage my body. A body which for decades has been carrying around imprinted tensions in all vital parts due to the 48 hour mistreatment during my birth process.

Ida Rolf wrote: “The more you watch people change in front of your eyes, the more sure you are about how people can get stuck in childish incidents, or birth incidents, or for all I know prebirth incidents. You see it right in front of your eyes. And then changes happen through Rolfing, and it begins to be possible for a body to take on what we consider appropriate adult form. Then the person continues on psychologically, and develops.”

So with the same logic as I put efforts into maintaining my knowledge of Spanish, English and Danish, I want to put an equivalent amount of energy into my body to achieve length and separation of the joints. I have actually too much contraction of the joint surfaces. Something else is needed to loosen my imprinted tensions. The only way you can straighten a body in Rolfing is by lengthening it.

This time I have all the experience from the dramatic treatment in Boluder, I know very much of my epilepsy, my birth and my neurotic lifestyle, which has been decoded through Primal Therapy is no longer a survival need. Furthermore, I have studied how Ida Rolf interpreted Rolfing and understand the basic principles for her philosophy, and it fits into my holistic lifestyle and like when I do something I try to follow the device: Love what you are doing.

During today’s three hour session, we worked a lot with my arms and shoulders. My shoulders shall hang like a loose horse saddle on my thorax, with my arms hanging straight and lose along the flanks. No more strained shoulders that are holding together the chest, preventing breathing with the aid of tense hand- and arm muscles will be possible. 

Over time, I will change my posture and my movements from being will commanded habits to being an automatic process by my fascia. It will take time to build this new confidence, especially for a person like me who is driven by much willpower. A fascinating task.

Another task over the coming months will be to change my flex filled training program to be more stretch oriented.

Jan Johnsson

Dream A Little Dream Of Me.

After having written my story of my Epileptic Journey and come alive, I have a dream. It is a dream about that many more than I should have access to a combination of physical and psychotherapeutic support to achieve a healthy mind in a healthy body. To give an example in a nutshell: To lower the heart rate from >70/75 to 55/60 per minute, to lower the blood pressure from >140/80 to 110/60, and to lower the body temperature by 1 - 1,5 degrees. I am convinced that there are  treatments available to peel off mental blockages and neurosis down to imprints created in the womb life, as well as it exists techniques to release the physical consequences of the psychological deadlocks and imprints. I have had the fortune to have had access to therapies from both sides.

Regarding the treatments, I have undergone in Primal Therapy and Rolfing, I understand with increasing clarity that I have been a lucky case, almost a kind of exception. I have been fascinated by two exceptional personalities during 30-40 years, Dr Art Janov and Dr Ida Rolf. Their ideas/theories of a natural way of healing mind and body, fit into my needs and experiences in my search for a cure of my epilepsy and its negative psychologic aftermaths. I was early convinced of the geniuses of both and with more luck than skill, I could get their help.

These two paragraphs were the beginning of an article I called, “I have a dream”, which I wrote a couple of months ago. Last night I really had a dream. It was a very realistic and positive dream, filled with music and good feelings in which cramps were understood, and I came alive.

A dream figure, a physiological and psychological creature, who represented someone completely adapted to gravity and with a feeling mind. I wanted to be that creature and in between, I was. In the dream, I was singing and listening to “Dream a little dream of me”. Simultaneously, I had feelings, in which I resolved cramp after a cramp. During a moment, I had a feeling of being close to a seizure, being numb and feeling dead, something, which happened when I was 18 (before I developed epilepsy) though without knowing then what was going on.

During moments, I felt identical with the Primal/Rolfing creature in the dream, even if it was not me. The dream which felt very realistic lasted for hours. In spite of sensations of cramps and crude feelings, it was a very pleasant dream. I cannot understand how I, who have always been perceived as tone deaf, during the dream, from my memories, could retrieve words and music to “Dream a little Dream of me” and sing it during the whole dream with the timber of Nat “King” Cole. I have not heard that song for many years. Both immediately after waking up and now hours later I feel calm and balanced. Physical health and mental health are the same thing!

Jan Johnsson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fCGkl-ToTw