05/04/2024
Ida Rolf:
"Realigning body structure thus implies realigning a flowing river of fluid-borne nutrients. Currents within the river flow at different rates. These chemical substances are not merely three-dimensional material particles floating in an aqueous medium. This is an oversimplified notion, another surface disguise. The underlying reality pattern is once again one of energy currents, energy interplays—energy transfers from less dense to more dense media and back again. As one substance or nutrient attaches to another in metabolic transfer, or as they detach in a catabolic phase, we call the exchange “chemical.” With equal justification, we can see it as an energy phenomenon. Application of pressure (energy) through muscular expansions and contractions fosters these transfers. To get more economical flow, we must start at the macrolevels of muscular and fascial systems in order to influence the microlevels of cellular metabolism.
In our experience, the finest and most minute tissues of the body can be reached by way of the coarser layers; thus body structure can be integrated and ordered throughout. The start must be from the outside, the periphery. Loosening and stretching of superficial fascia permit liberation of underlying layers. Interaction between these freed intermediary muscles and tendons and deeper fascial layers allows the deepest-lying elements (the bones) to find their place and exercise the function appropriate to their structural design. The relocation of more peripheral soft tissue and appropriate organization of its mass directly affects chemical changes. The body that emerges through this balancing of structures is one of great resilience and lightness, the benchmark of effective metabolism.
In this kind of body, the vital myofascial tissue is the primary support—the more static bones are secondary. As in our tent, where the tension created by the fabric and ropes of one side pulled up the other side, so in this body, agonist countering antagonist creates the span of balance. The function of the bone in this design is not primarily support; rather, it is the precise separation of myofascial tissue required to achieve span and balance. A spine barely more than semi-erect, merely a support for pendant muscles, acts as a dragging, weight-burdened, earth-bound unit. The lightness, the movement, the lift of the integrated body has nothing in common with it. The differences begin with the unit of the whole spine, not merely its individual bones." (Rolfing, p. 180)
