What We Do: Structural Bodywork Series
Gravity. Why fight it?
Think of the most relaxing, comfy position you can get into. Chances are, it involves lying down, or at the very least reclining, probably on some sort of padded surface with soft upholstery and in a warm, cozy room. Take all effort out of it and just allow everything to find its natural way to the place of least resistance. Sounds nice, doesn’t it?
We live under a constant waterfall of energy that pushes us inexorably towards the centre of the Earth, called gravity. Every living being must negotiate this force and its effects, preferably in the most efficient way possible in order to get anything done. Plants don’t move, but even they must overcome gravity in order to find the most optimal position to get a good sunbath, and the competition is fierce amongst them. We animals have it comparatively easy, in that we don’t all necessarily have to crowd about the same spot for food, water, and light (not always, anyway), but our negotiation with the inexorable force of gravity is made a bit more complex by that fact. Every time we move, we have to ensure that we don’t fall down. Most animals do this by staying relatively close to the ground. The more active and jittery amongst us lift their torsos off it, but retain a good, firm four points of contact below them. A truly insane few, i.e., birds, have decided that they’re too good for the ground and shed as much weight as possible in order to defy gravity and sustain themselves off the ground for periods of time. However, even them must eventually find a place to perch and contact the ground once in a while.
And then there’s humans. Of all the solutions to the problem of gravity, humans have wound up with the most fraught. Unlike plants, we move about (well, most of us). Unlike birds, we are pretty heavy and cannot really leap off the ground for more than a few instants. But not content with lifting our torsos off the ground safely and on four limbs like the rest of our mammal cousins, we decided to lift our heads even higher (presumably to get a better look around) and turned our torsos ninety degrees up on our hips to stand on two legs instead of four.
Let’s stop for a moment and consider this. No other animal on this planet does this except for brief instants. The reason for this is structural: the further away from the ground something is, the more it requires propping up to avoid succumbing to gravity. It takes effort, too, to hold the weight of all that meat, wobbling in space above the ground. This is why bears and gorillas and chimpanzees only stand up briefly before returning to the comfort and stability of standing on four legs. We are the only wackos who want to do this all the time.
So we humans are all involved in a perpetual, ongoing balancing act. Our bodies have adapted quite effectively, all things considered, but the individual solutions that most of us have for this problem are quite rudimentary, and prone to dysfunction. After all, bodies are effectively part of the landscape they’re embedded in, efficient and functional events that respond to conditions around them to ensure survival. You know the phrase “use it or lose it”? That’s the mandate of your body’s tissues, and it’s applied relentlessly. It’s like, because we decided we wanted to move, we need movement in order to stay healthy.
This is where our couch potato lifestyle catches up with us (the word “sedentary” doesn’t really strike home as effectively). Modern humans just don’t move as well, as often, or as effectively as we should. One can set up their lives to pretty much minimise the amount of movement required to get through. So our bodies start stiffening up, and we start holding ourselves up (or down) in ways that seem comfortable, but are really just where things more-or-less randomly ended up.
When was the last time you climbed a tree? Or dug through the ground for tubers (or truffles) with your fingernails? How about chewing raw meat, complete with cartilage and bits of bone? Your body is designed to do all of this, and it hasn’t really changed much in the last 100,000 years. When you think about it this way, it is a little funny to imagine all those people pumping iron in gyms, riding bicycles and trotting gallantly along sidewalks trying to provide movement upkeep to their bodies in ways that couldn’t be more opposite to the phrase “fit for purpose”.
But I digress. The key takeaway here is that if we don’t use our bodies, or use them in the same way for too long, our bodies will start to change to reflect that. The positions and movements we use the most will become imprinted in our connective tissue, because, ever helpful, the cells in those tissues want to make sure we can do that better. It’s what seems to be needed, after all. It’s like scars. You get a deep cut, your body heals it, but the scar remains. Your body knows it got injured, so it reinforces the site of injury to ensure that this particular place will not be injured again. Translate that to the countless ways in which you use (or abuse) your body and you have a collection of structures and places that are reinforced against further misuse or injury, all pulling and hardening what should be a pliant structure of semi-solid material, capable of movement and adaptation whilst simultaneously conforming to that ever-present force, gravity.
It goes beyond injury. Like I said earlier, any movement that you do constantly or consistently, is sending a message to your tissues that that needs to be reinforced. This is how carpal tunnel syndrome, tennis elbow, and monkey shoulder happen. But step back from named ailments and think about how you’re sitting in front of your computer right now, as you read this. Hunching forward? Craning your neck down and squinting? How’s your lower back in all this? Now ponder how many hours a day, how many days a week you do this. Your body isn’t taking a break. The cells whose job it is to lay down and clear up connective tissue are working constantly, responding to the demands imposed by your habits of posture and movement to reinforce what you’re using, breaking down and recycling what you’re not.
Last, but certainly not least, is the way these tissues are affected by what goes on inside you. Oh yeah, it gets us coming and going. Emotions are massive discharges of chemical energy that incite somatic responses. Our bodies are literally filled with emotion, and their position in space changes as a result. Think about how you move, or stand, or sit when you are angry, or sad, or scared, or even happy. Now imagine the way your prevailing mood and stress level is doing to your body, day in and day out.
So, we have posture, movement, and emotion all playing into the way our bodies exist in space. Through the medium of the body, all of these processes are playing out, and like most things in nature, patterns tend to repeat and reinforce themselves until something introduces a change.
This is where our work comes in.
The upside of the ability of our bodies to adapt in these ways is precisely that: we can adapt to pretty much anything that doesn’t happen too suddenly or intensely to overwhelm our resources. It follows that, if we change the inputs going into the system, we might be able to break the cycles of some of these patterns and introduce some positive change. Those cells in our connective tissues can get the message pretty quickly, if we send it right. Applying tension, pressure, shear, or torque, as one does with one’s hands, when done in a skilful fashion, eminently does the trick.
The Structural Integration series work is designed to do precisely this. It’s not intended to treat any specific illness, but therein lies its power and its beauty. We go about systematically, working through the body by sections, attending to the specific ways that each person has set themselves up in space to deal with whatever is going on in their lives. It’s manual therapy, but it isn’t “massage”. We aren’t trying to get things to relax by pushing on them. The goal of structural work is to intelligently work through the structures, releasing what’s stuck in single-mode, making the body pay attention to itself, removing the cobwebs from the parts it’s forgotten, and putting it back under the cascade of energy called gravity with more adaptability and resources available to it.
In the lower body, we work to open the joints and improve the relationships amongst the layers of tissues that support our weight in standing, running, dancing, and walking. The joints of our hips, knees, and ankles are designed to distribute weight across and through them, without damage. The goal is to improve the ability of these tissues to hold us up without placing undue, imbalanced stress on any structure, thus preventing “wear and tear” injuries.
In the upper body, we focus on what is perhaps the most important, most overlooked function of the tissues surrounding the important, visceral bits: breathing. Breathing doesn’t only happen in the lungs: each and every one of our cells does it, and the movement of the muscles, tendons, joints and bones of the chest and abdomen help the cells of all tissues to move and do their jobs more effectively. By opening the spaces between the ribs, releasing tensions in the abdominal wall, and touching in with your diaphragm, we can help you breathe better, which always makes people feel lighter, happier, and more free. The work here extends to the arms, because they have an inverse and often-overlooked relationship to the functioning of the organs of the chest and abdomen, as well as a close relationship with the way we “carry” ourselves, in all senses. We work here to release tensions related to common activities that can have a negative effect on the health of the joints (think carpal tunnel, tennis elbow, and so on).
We focus particular attention on the spine. Its unique architecture requires it. It is the pillar upon which everything else rests in the body, both because it’s in the middle, and because of its intimate relationship to the nervous system. The spine hides and perpetuates patterns of torsion, bend, and tilt that make it more of an effort to be in gravity, and releasing them can have a profound effect on the health of the internal organs, and the long-term wellbeing of the tissues themselves. Openness and flexibility of the spine is crucial to prevent disc injuries, as free and balanced movement help to lubricate these structures and keep them in top form.
Finally, there’s the head. Ida Rolf, the creator of structural integration, said that we do the rest of the series so we can work with the head. In many ways, the head is what this is all about. We are centralised in our heads, both in terms of how we construct our image of ourselves, and in the way that we are literally wired, with the brain working as a central processing hub for all the information we receive from the world around us. Placing the head in the best possible relationship it can have with the rest of the body and gravity is perhaps the most profound way that we can help you feel that you are “in a better place” in your life and in the world.
The series has many incarnations. Three treatments is a sort of compressed, summarised version of this work, but nonetheless effective. There are also longer versions (Dr. Rolf’s “original recipe” is 10 sessions long, and is still considered “classic” Rolfing). As students of Tom Myers’ Anatomy Trains, we also practice his modified 12-series, for people who really want to take the plunge at the deep end, exploring numerous aspects of the relationship of their bodies with themselves over several months.
Whether you have pains and aches and scars (who doesn’t?), if you are an athlete looking for a boost to your performance that won’t break you and help keep you injury-free, or even if you’re a regular joe or jane wanting to get off the couch and into a better, more nuanced relationship with your own body and with gravity, I invite you to give Structural Integration a try.
Gravity. Why fight it when you can make friends with it?
