Program Roots

Historically, Ida Rolf and Moshe Feldenkrais were close friends and contemporaries who knew and collaborated with each other regularly in the mid-20th century. She called her work “Structural Integration,” and he called his “Functional Integration.”

Their long-term collaboration is why each of these ten audio lessons has 2, 3, or 4 parts ( 31 separate segments) — to engage the same muscles, bones, and joints as the corresponding Rolfing session in different functional relationships with each other. And because our bodies are also the medium through which we experience emotions, each lesson encourages mindful awareness of thoughts, feelings, and meaning as well as muscles and movement, i.e. “Who You Are.“

Lesson Descriptions

1. Aliveness: Lengthening sides, opening breathing. (2 parts)
We all learned to shut down or otherwise “manage” our sense of aliveness as children to conform with social expectations by limiting our expressions of aliveness and spontaneity appropriately in various settings. generally involves habitual tensions that limit our freedoms of movement and of choice. This lesson explores bending and rotation of the spine, freeing the ribs for deeper breathing, improving energy flow, and softening the trunk.

2. Grounding: Standing on your own two feet. (3 parts)
Our language is replete with references to the cultural importance of “standing”–taking a stand, having standing, standing on your own two feet, and so forth. Though we are designed to walk upright, each of our individual histories builds unconscious patterns of muscular tensions which pull us out of alignment with gravity into a constant state of stress. Improving standing balance improves confidence, strength, balance, and well-being. This lesson works extensively with feet, ankles, legs, and hip joints, alignment of feet and legs, and exploring your sense of groundedness.

3. Clarity: Connecting hands and feet. (3 parts)
Because of the construction of our bodies and nervous systems, our functional images of ourselves tend to be oriented to our extremities, with less clear picture of how our hands and feet are functionally connected to our center and to each other. Like all living organisms, we are constantly moving through a repetitive cycle of feeling needs, organizing behavior to satisfy them, enjoying a sense of emotional nourishment when it becomes available, and taking time to savor a restful sense of ahhhh when a need is satisfied, a job completed, and physical and energetic tension relieved. This lesson works with connecting hands and feet to trunk, spine, and center, and explores themes of reaching out, making contact, and emotional self-observation.

4. Animation: Stabilizing your center of gravity. (3 parts)
Our bodies and nervous systems are the products of millions of years of evolutionary testing. We have evolved to observe, learn, and act to get what we need. Success is more difficult if we feel inhibited, unprepared, or off center, and feeling grounded and centered improves the effectiveness of our actions. This lesson works with flexing, extending, and twisting the spine, with the pelvis as our center of gravity.

5. Autonomy: Relating the spine to the pelvis. ( 4 parts) 
As complex social animals who live for an extended period in a state of dependence on others, independence and autonomy can be elusive. From childhood disappointments or hurts we learned to distrust, take for granted or exploit without gratitude many of the good things that came our way. Autonomy is the ability to move easily among independence, dependence, and interdependence, getting by without something when it’s not available, yet fully enjoying it when it is. This lesson explores a sense of “uprightness,” flexibility of the trunk, and functional connections between shoulders and hips.

6. Letting Go: Moving from your center. ( 3 parts)
Coming to rest in conscious inactivity is the natural completion and counterpoint to activity. It’s not about sleeping; it’s about limiting input on a regular basis, and developing a renewable sense of completion. This lesson explores these issues through grounding in the pelvis, differentiating rotators and sphincters, and bending and twisting the whole body around the pelvis as the center of gravity.

7. Under the Mask: Connecting the head to the feet. ( 3 parts)
My mother used to talk about “putting her face on.” We all put our faces on, but not with makeup. We do it with our senses, our beliefs, our expectations, our affect. We are caricatures of our ideas of ourselves. These faces, these expressions, echo throughout our bodies, literally posturing ourselves as something less than we really are or can be. This lesson is about connecting head and pelvis, relaxing facial expression, eyes, mouth, neck, and jaw, and reconciling public identity with a felt sense of self.

8. Self-assurance: Aligning the lower body. ( 4 parts )
Lessons eight through ten are about integration of parts. By integrating elements of the lower body, we clarity our connection to earth and gravity, the ground of being on which our centers rest and move. These explorations connect feet to hips and hips to waist, explore extending and rotating through the waist and back, rolling to the side, and freeing hip joints and hamstrings for more assured standing.

9. Creativity: Aligning the upper body. ( 3 parts)
This is about refinement, making contact with the world, and interacting with it with sensitivity and purpose. Here we explore delicate movements of the fingers and hands, connecting hands to shoulders, back, pelvis, and feet, contact with the world, and sensitivity to our inner and outer worlds.

10. Integration: Rolling home. ( 3 parts)
These are really three separate lessons, putting what you’ve learned
into a more dynamic and interactive context by using a roller to enhance
awareness. These lessons are very powerful and interesting, and explore
a sense of balance in rotation, flexion, and extension; stimulating and
softening the back; and opening the pelvis, chest, and shoulders to new
experience.