Dorothy Nesbit
Setting up my own business in 2002 heralded a period of steep and accelerated learning. Becoming a business owner brought me face to face with my deepest fears and I often had to dig deep to find the resources I needed to move forward.
I was ready to dig deep. I embarked on my professional training as an Executive Coach and began a period of turning over every stone in my own life – of exploring my deepest desires and forming a vision for my perfect life, of revising beliefs formed in childhood and of taking actions (sometimes bold, often timorous) to make my dreams come true.
One evening in 2006 I was surprised to feel unexpectedly tearful in my regular pilates class and I started to explore the possibility that, following such an intense period of learning, my body needed to release “old stuff” to catch up. I viewed this as a kind of mourning. When my father died later in the year the time seemed right to embark on the Rolfing Ten Series.
It’s hard to isolate the effect of these sessions from other sources of learning. At the same time I notice that, following three almighty colds during the period of our work together, I am suddenly bursting with energy and excitement. I am enjoying great clarity of direction in my business and personal life and stepping forward more boldly than ever before. I am enjoying my body more than ever and walking taller in every sense. The sudden acceleration of my business has blown me away so that I’m wondering what else I can look forward to during the months ahead (Alan, I’ll keep you posted). It’s no surprise to me that close friends and colleagues have started to ask for your details.
When I think of all this (and your terrible jokes, too) I feel deeply grateful. As I seek to live life in the fullness of physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health, this deeply nourishing experience has been a giant leap forward.
Karen Johnson
All I can say is I wish I had started 8 years ago, the first time I had a very severe attack of RSI as a result of 6 weeks in a cutting room perched on the edge of the desk with a hefty laptop, rewriting scripts for 10 hours a day, then rushing home to lug round a large baby who didn’t seem to sleep and was permanently clutched in my right arm. I added a broken ankle two years ago and a bit more stress and by the time I had dug out the aging magazine article about Rolfing, I felt about 105 rather than 45. The stiffness and lack of mobility in my right hip, ankle and shoulder combined made me feel like the two halves of my body were completely mismatched; they came from separate bodies, one fairly normal and one over developed and rapidly locking into frozen lumps of rigid muscle and bone. I felt old.
Why Rolfing, I’m not sure, I just liked the sound of it, but it was a fortunate choice for me. From shortly after the first session I felt the lightness and space that grew and developed with, and oddly around me, over the following twenty weeks.
My attention was immediately drawn to my breathing and that in itself made a huge difference. Ever since childhood when I grew too tall, too quickly, I have been trying to follow my mother’s imperatives; to breathe deeply, pull my shoulders back, walk tall and not walk like a baby elephant. But since I never really understood what any of those instructions actually meant, I merely succeeded in doing the exact opposite. I held my breath in a tense chest, tried to force my shoulders back, and force my chest upright which merely made everything even more tense and untenable.
As the sessions progressed I felt a clear and steady sense of a body gradually becoming effortlessly upright. After three or four sessions my walk had changed dramatically and I had stopped striding about with tense, rigid knees and acquired a new, easy walk, which seemed to start further up in my body, and in which my knees bent without being consciously directed. I can’t think of a better way of describing it than to say it felt a bit African; relaxed and easy. I was a bit worried in a way. I didn’t get where I am today without striding about in a tremendous hurry, but still… this new walk definitely put me in a nicer mood, made me more laid back. So I stuck with it, and I became aware that my legs were really under my body, really supporting me, with easy strength.
My feet felt better than they had for about 25 years, and my body, while not quite 25 years younger, had stopped feeling old, caved in and stuck. I felt lighter, there was more space between my ribs and my internal organs, and things just seemed to be in the right place. Bearing in mind I’m overweight, this is even more of a surprise. My head and neck, which have long been sunk down and over arched, have become more supported and less clenched. I can look over my right shoulder without effort and discomfort. I’ve often sat in exercise classes where instructors talk about feeling you have a string through your head, pulling it up. It’s never done anything for me except feel like hard work, but now I do feel as though my head sits lightly and freely on my neck, possibly even floats…
At the end of the ten sessions, I feel as though I’m much closer to knowing what a normal, confident and supportive body feels like. I recognise much more quickly when I’m over stressing it. I enjoy stretching it, and exercise doesn’t feel like an imposition, a dreadful grind I have to drag my poor battered body through, but more like a positive choice, and a treat. I’m enjoying being conscious of how I use it, and I’m encouraged to look after it better. Thank you.
Peter Granger-Taylor
Dear Alan,
many thanks for the amazing Rolfing and the invigorating banter – I miss them both!
Here are some thoughts on what I got out of it:
1) cured my lower back pain
2) made me much much more aware of how I use my body, so I have noticed how I am preventing further strains – I am feeling pains much less often
3) a much greater sense of energy – and I get tired less often
4) the ganglion on my wrist got smaller
5) I can turn my head round sideways much further before I feel resistance - I can do a full 90 degrees effortlessly – there is no pain or strain involved
6) the whole of my shoulder/neck area is so much more relaxed and stress free (my wife has commented on this)
7) I no longer have to wear arch supports in my shoes
8) generally I feel much greater sense of ease and power and I feel much younger
9) I laughed a lot (and still do!)
10) I’ve improved my breathing – I take deeper stronger breaths
So thank-you very very much!
Deanna Miller
When the sensation of raindrops hitting her skin made Deanna Miller cry one summer’s day in 1999, she knew she could no longer deal with the pain in her arms. Miller, a civil servant was suffering from RSI (repetitive strain injury). "It was excruciating," she says." At its worst, I had stabbing pains down my arms, all the way across my shoulders and into my neck, often 24 hours a day."
Miller had first started to feel pain after a three-week stretch of inputting computer data at work seven hours a day, five days a week. At the end of the third week her arms were aching and by Saturday she had "unbearable pains all the way up my forearms and then by Monday in my shoulders too."
Over the next five years Miller went from being a fit, happy extrovert woman to someone obsessed with her health. "I’d never really thought about it, but RSI, which is caused by repetitive use of the same muscles, took over my life because the pain was always there. I couldn’t sleep because of the shooting spasms up my arms and I became depressed. It also affected my social life."
From being a productive member of staff, Miller was on constant sick leave, sometimes for six months at a time. Mostly, she’d lie in bed and try to rest because any exertion was agony. Or she would read health books on "anything that might help me, from acupuncture to healthy eating."
Her GP had prescribed anti-inflammatories, which reduced the swelling in her arms for a week. Six months later she tried physiotherapy, which inflamed her muscles further, resulting in more weeks off work. A year later she tried acupuncture, which had little effect. A visit to a chiropractor helped only a little, "mainly by advising me to put ice packs on my shoulders to reduce the swelling."
At work, her employers provided her with an assistant three hours a day, as well as a voice-activated programme so she could speak into her computer and her telephone — the consequence of her taking them to court for not giving her regular desk and computer assessments in accordance with the 1992 Display Screen Equipment Act passed by the European Union.
However Miller's breakthrough came when she read a book by an American helicopter pilot, Richard Rossiter, whose shoulders had been so painful he could no longer fly — until he tried Rolfing: a series of deep massage manipulations, which works on the myofascial system, the soft connective tissue between muscles. Intrigued, she contacted the Rolf Institute of Structural Integration in January 2003 and was put in touch with Alan Richardson, a Certified Rolfer.
"I was so desperate that when Alan asked me how I was I just broke down and cried", she admits. "I couldn’t keep up the bravery any longer."
After looking at Miller’s posture and muscle position, and finding out about painful movements, Richardson set to work. Over 10 sessions, once every fortnight, he slowly massaged the muscles and fascia on her body, starting at the feet and legs on the first session and working up to the head and arms by the seventh. The point, he stresses, is to align a different block of the body each week, "until, like building blocks, they are in one long line without any obvious unnecessary tension,"
Over-stressed points in the muscles’ fascia, he says, are like "flies in a Spider’s web pulling in opposite directions, straining the structure." His task is to soften the fascia by friction and manipulation, then to stretch it so that the muscles can realign themselves in their natural positions. "When muscles are out of balance, they can feel pain in all sorts of places," he says.
"The tense muscles in Deanna’s arms meant that her shoulders were out of alignment and had frozen. Rolfing was able to reduce the compression in her whole body, so that her shoulders went back and the pain was reduced there."
In addition, he tried to teach Miller new ways of moving—for example, using her entire arm rather than just her wrist for some task—which he says freed " a significant amount of energy previously held in overworked muscles."
Since finishing her ten treatments, Miller has felt no pain in any part of her body. "Unlike all the other doctors, Alan treated it like a mechanical problem, rather than a chemical one, and it worked a treat," she says happily. " I haven’t had a day off for six months and I feel great."
Her confidence , however is still very low after years of pain, so she is wary of activity that might affect her muscles again. She goes back to Richardson occasionally for "top-up" sessions when she feels her muscles becoming tense.
"I had begun to think I would never get better again", she says. "But having gone from being a 95% cripple on Prozac, anti-inflammatories and sleeping tablets to being a 50% cripple on no medication at all, he has given me hope."
Eloise Napier
A man I don’t know terribly well has just stuck his finger in my mouth (See Note below). Although not an enormously pleasurable experience, I’m quite glad he did it because it now means I don’t grind my teeth at night — which is going to save a fortune in dentist's bills. He has performed a number of other apparently bizarre acts on me over the last ten weeks which have meant that for the first time in about eight years I am free of chronic back pain, my energy levels have shot up and my body looks noticeably different to how it did before.
This is all a result of undergoing a course of Rolfing, a form of deep tissue massage which was extremely popular in the 70’s but which subsequently fell from grace as people turned to more sybaritic — and less painful — forms of treatment. However, as a veteran of virtually every massage and osteopathic therapy under the sun, I can happily say that nothing seems to touch Rolfing in terms of sheer effectiveness on both a physical and — more surprisingly — a spiritual level.
At first sight, Rolfing appears to be just another form of intensive massage and after the first treatment, if I had not been forewarned by a friend of what to expect, I think it is unlikely that I would have made the effort (and gone to the expense) of completing the ten session course. But as Alan Richardson, one of only 12 Rolfers in the country, gently explained to me as he used his knuckles to release years’ worth of tension trapped in my ribs, Rolfing works so effectively because it bypasses the muscles and focuses instead on the fascia—the connective tissue which links and contains every muscle, bone, ligament and organ in the body. It’s quite remarkable stuff fascia. By constantly adapting and compensating, it facilitates movement and keeps the body’s entire structure in place. For example, if you bunch your shoulders so you can hunch over a computer, your fascia obligingly develops into knots to allow you to hold your position. Likewise, if you have a sports injury, the fascia will lengthen or shorten to accommodate you. Needless to say, there is a negative aspect to such versatility which Alan points out. "The body has great ability to adjust—if you damage yourself it will adapt in ways to allow you to get on with life. However, the system is very bad at adapting back to what it was before the injury occurred and, as a result, imbalances develop." Hence we spend out lives carrying around the muscle memory of years’ worth of injuries.
It was only in the 1940’s that a remarkable American bio-chemist called Ida Rolf discovered that this process can be reversed: by manipulating and lengthening the fascia you can return the body to its original state of balance. Her technique — known as Rolfing — changes the neurological pathways and enables gravity to bring the body back into alignment. But to do this, the therapist has to go in quite deep and thus Rolfing developed a reputation for being extremely painful. Over the years, however, the technique has been refined and nowadays, whilst there are still moments of pain, the discomfort is fleeting. Another reason why Rolfing results in long term success is that you are treated from head-to-toe through ten specific sessions. Any underlying problems are rooted out at source and dealt with. Everyone reacts differently to the treatments and it was only after session nine (neck and shoulders) that I began to notice the major changes — a lack of pain, improved mobility and vision. For years my balance has been shot to pieces and suddenly I realized that it was back to normal. When I first saw Alan, he told me that I was lopsided and that my head tilted to the right, my spine was compressed (as a result of birth trauma and numerous riding and sports accidents) and my mobility was impaired. Standing in my bra and knickers as he scrutinized me, I felt extraordinarily self-conscious, but by the end of the tenth session, the self-consciousness had vaporized. I felt at home in my body — everything was straight, my shoulders had dropped about six inches and my head was absolutely vertical. Emotionally (and I’m pretty skeptical about these things), I have been feeling what can only be described as an extraordinary sense of well-being; it didn’t happen immediately but gradually developed.
In quiet self-deprecating tones, Alan mentions some of his other successes — prolapsed disks which have ceased to cause pain, scoliosis which has straightened out, flat feet which have developed arches. Having had my road to Damascus moment and been thoroughly converted to Rolfing, none of it surprises me at all. It’s not cheap, it requires dedication and at moments it’s definitely peculiar, but Rolfing should be mandatory for all of us.
Note: Sometimes inter-oral manipulation is used to treat chronic jaw tension. A finger is inserted into the mouth to release the Pterygoid muscle, a key contributor to Tempero-Mandibular dysfunction. The process is carried out respectfully, as non-invasively as possible and, of course, only with client permission. Finger cots are used to maintain hygiene.
Nick Nielsen
I started Rolfing with Alan Richardson early in 2006. I knew very little about the practice and was recommended it by a good friend who had received treatment in Cape Town, South Africa. I was interested in the benefits from both a physical and emotional perspective, having heard that the structural re-integration could free up blockages of varying types in the body. Before the 10 sessions, I was in good physical shape but was aware that my posture and the way I held my body probably wasn’t as good as it could have been. I had no idea however, about the dramatic extent of improvement I was going to experience.
The treatment itself was in the main a relaxing and enjoyable affair. 10 minutes of the hour session could probably be described as uncomfortable as Alan worked on particular areas of tension in my body. The areas of particular discomfort in my body were my inner thighs and chest, because of the amount of change they would need to go through to re-support the new structure of my whole body. One of the most amazing experiences I had during my Rolfing was the almost instantaneous change I could feel in my whole body after Alan had worked on a particular area. I would get up of the table and experience a more stable feeling in my legs which totally changed the way I stand.
With my 10 sessions now complete, I realise I benefited much more and in different ways than I had initially expected. My posture is now better and my overall structure is far straighter and feels more healthy. I would not have predicted however the benefits I experience in terms of ‘feeling’ in my body. I am able to hold physical space in a more powerful way and as a result I feel more confident and lighter in my attitude.
I would definitely recommend Rolfing with Alan and have already done so a number of times. Having seen the changes in me, both my partner and father are interested. For someone who spends a lot of time in his head, like myself, it’s easy to forget the vital function the body plays in anchoring us to life and how we experience it. Rolfing has enabled me to gain this whole new understanding for which I am very grateful.
