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Balancing Your Body: A Self-Help Approach to Rolfing Movement PDF

228 Pages·1996·8.561 MB·English
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SELF-HELP. APPROACH Tol Mary Bond .= Ca: Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2022 with funding from Kahle/Austin Foundation https://archive.org/details/balancingyourbod0000bond BALANCING YOUR BODY BALANCING YOUR BODY A Self-help Approach to Rolfing Movement MARY BOND Healing Arts Press One Park Street Rochester, Vermont 05767 Web Site: http://www.gotoit.com Copyright © 1993 Mary Bond All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permis- sion in writing from the publisher. Note to the reader: This book is intended as an informational guide. The remedies, approaches, and techniques described herein are meant to supplement, and not to be a substitute for, professional medical care or treatment. They should not be used to treat a serious ailment without prior consultation with a qualified healthcare professional. The word Rolfing is a service mark of The ROLF INSTITUTE of Structural Integration. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Bond, Mary, 1942- Balancing your body : a self-help approach to Rolfing Movement / Mary Bond. » em. Includes index. ISBN 0-89281-642-2 1. Rolfing. I Title. RC489.R64B66 1996 615.822—dc20 96-24187 CIP Printed and bound in the United States. 109876543241 Text design by Virginia L. Scott Illustrations by Barbara Mindell This book was typeset in Berkeley Oldstyle with Carolus as the display typeface. Healing Arts Press is a division of Inner Traditions International. Distributed to the book trade in Canada by Publishers Group West (PGW), Toronto, Ontario Distributed to the health food trade in Canada by Alive Books, Toronto and Vancouver Distributed to the book trade in the United Kingdom by Deep Books, London Distributed to the book trade in Australia by Millennium Books, Newtown, NS.W. Distributed to the book trade in New Zealand by Tandem Press, Auckland Distributed to the book trade in South Africa by Alternative Books, Randburg CONTENTS INTRODUCTION: RULES OF THE GRAVITY GAME CHAPTER 1: BLUEPRINT FOR STRUCTURE Script l: Evaluating Your Standing and Walking Patterns CHAPTER 2: EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE Script 2: Exploring Your Respiratory Pause Script 3: Fascial Breathing Exploration Script 4: Structural Breathing Awareness CHAPTER 3: HOW TO THROW YOUR WEIGHT AROUND Script 5: Exploring Your Back Half Script 6: Exploring the Core Script 7: Rolling up to Standing Script 8: Standing and Walking Script 9: Exploring the Sitting Zone CHAPTER 4: THE PELVIS CONNECTION Script 10: Thigh Release and Lift Script ll: Knee Circles Script 12: Forward Thigh Drops Script 13: Pelvic Rolls Script 14: Pelvic Floor Exploration Script 15: Seated Pelvis Exploration Script 16: Integrative Knee Bends CHAPTER 5: GOING WITH THE FLOW 89 Script 17: Toe-hinge Exploration 92 Script 18: Toe and Ankle Integration 93 Script 19: The Drawbridge 95 Script 20: Drawbridge, Drag, and Drop 96 Script 21: Pelvic Roll, Roll to Standing, Knee Bends 98 Script 22: Activating Your Suspender Muscles 100 Script 23: Moving from Sitting to Standing 106 CHAPTER 6: WINGS TO FLY 110 Script 24: Exploring Shoulder Support 113 Script 25: Guiding Movement from Your Elbow 115 Script 26: Arm Raise and Drop 118 Script 27: Integration of Shoulders and Pelvis 119 CHAPTER 7: HEADS AND TAILS 126 Script 28: Exploring Facial Tension 130 Script 29: Cranial Support for Your Face 132 Script 30: Pivoting and Nodding around the Head Hinge 133 Script 31: Moving from the Back of Your Head 136 Script 32: Movement Mantra 138 CHAPTER 8: SIDES OF THE COIN 144 Script 33: Blending Qualities of Your Pattern 154 Script 34: Appreciating Your Pattern 156 Script 35: Exaggerating a Tension 157 Script 36: Eliciting Messages 158 Script 37: Integrating Bilateral Balance 159 CHAPTER 9: MY STRUCTURE, MY SELF 166 CHAPTER IO: WINNING THE GAME 187 APPENDIX 205 BIBLIOGRAPHY 210 INDEX 212 INTRODUCTION RULES OF THE GRAVITY GAME It's seventh grade and the day for posture evaluations. You line up outside the nurse’s office, grateful for your reprieve from that history quiz. Inside, the nurse draws dots down your back with a marker, and pointing to a chart of spinal curvatures, explains the dire consequences of scoliosis (lateral curvature of the spine). The scoliosis threat is exciting for a day or two—there’s talk that Terri Dawson has it and might have to wear a brace. For the most part, though, posture is a boring topic that is soon blithely forgotten. Your sophistication mimics the images you see in magazines, and “stand- ing up straight” doesn’t look cool. Traveling forward in time now, let’s visit your fiftieth high school reunion. Do you look and feel as vital, supple, and dignified as you'd like to? If not, why not? Many things affect your body in between seventh grade and your seventieth birthday—diet, exercise, work, play, love, and luck, to name a few. Another important factor is your attitude toward your body. Is it just something to be deco- rated or camouflaged, a mere vehicle to transport you from one experience to the next? Most of us take our bodies for granted. At the beginning of our game of life we're dealt a number of “selves,” like cards or Monopoly properties. There’s the mental/intellectual self—the one who goes to college and becomes a CEO; there’s the emotional self who falls in and out of love and cries at movies, and there’s the spiritual self who seeks meaning in religion or peace in meditation. The physical self, the body, is relegated to carrying the other selves to job and church and dance floor. It’s taken for granted until one day, in the middle of the game, the body self prevents one of the other selves from making a move. Your body’s “shape” is not just its appearance but its ability to move you energetically and gracefully through your days. And your shape begins to be determined long before that nurse’s hasty ap- praisal of your posture. Very early we begin to shape ourselves by modeling the people around us, usually our parents and siblings. We unconsciously imitate their rhythms, postures, gestures, and tensions. These people comprise our known world—we need to feel close to them, so we do as they do. Come adolescence, we generally overlay our familial, acquired, movement patterns with the gestures of our friends, with the pos- tures of our heroes, with the stance of our rebellion. Later, as we enter adulthood, we model images of accomplishment and success. In today’s media-rich world, we're increasingly tempted to assume shapes we see outside ourselves. Though women’s roles in our society have begun to change in recent decades, the media continue to portray women’s bodies ac- cording to outmoded physical ideals. Fashion offers women two alternatives. One is the low-slung model’s stance—pelvis under, chest withdrawn, and head forward—a combination of passiveness and seduction. The other more assertive and extroverted stance has breasts and head high, back arched and “buns” up. Both stances suggest woman is man’s sexual adjunct. A woman is rarely portrayed standing on her own two feet, except in a kind of mannish defiance. As women’s changing roles and collective self-concept become more defined and secure, the media’s portrayal of women’s bodies will change. As for men: you poor fellows are trained from infancy to “keep it all together,” to project an image of rock-hard stability and sto- icism. For men to be expressive with their bodies has been a sign of weakness in our culture, mobility of spine or pelvis a signal of effeminacy. Elvis Presley introduced a measure of freedom within the confines of the entertainment industry—so as long as you're making music, guys, it's okay to move your hips. As men’s roles change, the media begin to portray men in more relaxed postures. 2 BALANCING Your Boby

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