Balance IV: An Hymn to Themis, Titaness of Balance
Balance is not a commodity to quantify
Nor a quality to mete & measure.
No object to be claimed or gotten.
Balance enters when we wed
Our actions with the space, the place—
When wholly we partake in the holy here & now:
Balance II: A Practical Approach
Balance, that elusive condition! We struggle to achieve it. And when, for a fleeting instant, we manage it, just so, it vanishes even as its promise is in the making & we must begin our search anew. Mechanically, it is no surprise that balance often eludes us. As bipedists, our forfeiture of extra feet inevitably renders our locomotion precarious. If gravity had its way, we would topple over indeed.
Balance Part I: Pre-ramble & "equilibrio ergo sum"
Conventional Western healthcare is fragmentary; it is not whole. Rather, it suffers from innumerable holes wrought with the selfsame reductionism & mechanistic philosophy that permeates all avenues of our policy & thought—only such a tradition could claim with a straight face that Love is merely a sequence of chemical reactions in the brain involving dopamine & oxytocin & evolved for the sole purpose of furthering the species.
Ye Postural Manifesto, Part I: Preamble
These are the words of my teacher, Monica Caspari. They represent her concise expression of a specter that's haunting the Modern West. So poignant is her statement that I would gladly decorate it with some superfluous qualifiers & then expound on it till I've pounded out a veritable manifesto.
Integration: Epilogue
Now that you, fair reader, have navigated Integration's four realms, your understanding of the term will have blossomed along the journey. Like the four blind men who feel an elephant, one reports it’s solid, another that it's serpentine, etc...
Integration IV: The Intersubjective Culmination
In the three posts hence, we have considered several different understandings of the term "integration." In the final installment of this series, I intend to offer forth a fourth conception of the term, a culmination that, in some sense, integrates the prior three!
Integration III: Intra-Subjective Equilibrium
Through the process of Rolfing® Structural Integration, we invariably arrive at a more refined awareness of our bodies. We furthermore begin then to take notice of factors & conditions that influence their state. Our bodies do not operate in a vacuum but rather function in an unimaginable interplay of information continually exchanged between myriad interdependent systems.
Integration II: Relationship to the Environment
In the first post of this series, I introduced an aspect of integration that I described as "internal congruence." We might also designate this condition as intra-structural integration. In this second post, we will hear the next blind man's testimony about the elephant of integration: I will offer another interpretation of the fruitful & enigmatic term, describing an integration that is inter-structural. This is to say that it is not within but rather between subjects.
Integration I: Internal Congruence
"Structural Integration promises structural integration in ten sessions!"
"Wait—what does that even mean?"
Through the course of the following four posts, I mean to broadly delineate several distinct yet interrelated understandings of the concept of integration. First, I think it is fitting to note that when circumstances required that she coin a name for her method, Ida Rolf settled on the title of "Structural Integration."
Posture and Morality: Part II
In Part I of this bit, I tried to show how posture and morality come apart. That dismemberment, I feel, must be the first step. The second step is to yoke them back together.
Posture & Morality: Part I
"The seventh circle of Hell is reserved for those who...slouch?"
It is so natural to moralize about posture that we often do it without even noticing. We often apply such terms as "bad," "good," or "lousy" to our alignment & physiognomy without even pausing to consider the moral judgment implicit in such labels. I believe it is useful to recognize this tendency and to appreciate that posture in itself is neither good nor evil, rather "
Metakinetical Relativity
We find ourselves in a continual exchange of information, and this communication transpires through many channels. "Body language" represents one channel indicating another; the verbal indicates a communication that is actually physical. From anecdotes to attitudes, information is ferried about by infinite different vessels in a commerce that is inexhaustible. Words, gestures, art, poetry, music, numbers—the inventory of surpasses apprehension.
Rolfing® SI: A Brief Catechism IV
"What are the benefits?"
Through Rolfing, we come to inhabit our bodies with greater skill. Life becomes easier as a consequence.
Rolfing® SI: A Brief Catechism III
"What's the point?"*
Rolfing® SI allows us to live more skillfully in our bodies. To live is, most basically, to sustain a relationship with the world for approximately four years & ten. The finer this relationship, the easier our lives become. Rolfing® SI provides a path to this end—towards more natural integration of the body with its environment.
Rolfing® SI: A Brief Catechism II
"Why in the world would you choose such an ominous name as "The Way of the Elbow" to call your business?"
No answer. But I can say I was going to call it the "Tao of the Elbow," but I made a compromise with normalcy...
The Birth of Effort & the Arising of Ease
I entertained this slogan in The Way of the Elbow business salad days. "Movement should be easy" because the body is designed to move. Activity ought not to feel like a burden because it is what is natural. Very few things are more steadfast than the hills, but how much effort do they exert in their stern majesty? And yet many of us expend much greater effort to much lesser effect.
Standing With Pain: III, a terça parte
...Or withstanding it?
I would like to suggest that standing with it was a more useful response. This is because the minute we try to avoid the physical discomfort, we have already generated "another nail," so to speak. Now we have three points of impalement: