After three years of business serving the Rolfing® needs of the Anchorage community, The Way of the Elbow has relocated its headquarters to Sausalito, California, to accommodate its quixotic owner’s chimerical quests for higher knowledge (in this instance, to undertake a master’s program in Philosophy, Cosmology, & Consciousness at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco).

Phenomenology (that branch of philosophy which studies the nature of experience itself rather than abstractions & concepts about it) delineates two modes of mental processing: reflective & pre-reflective. In relation to the first installment on this topic, we might conceive of a correspondence between reflective processing & the neomammilian complex in the triune brain schema.

The question is not an unfamiliar one because we dawdle. Monkeys call Man “the wobbling biped" because his balance is questionable and because she constantly second-guesses herself. If you're a monkey, you don't worry about these things; you enjoy your tropical fruit. If you're a cobra, the question doesn't even make sense. That's why cobras don't listen to The Clash & why their strike is liquid lighting.

“I am dealing with problems in the body where there is never just one cause. I’d like you to have more reality on the circular processes that do not act in the body, but that are the body. The body process is not linear, it is circular; always, it is circular. One thing goes awry, and its effects go on and on and on and on. A body is a web, connecting everything with everything else.”

“Over and over again, people come to me, and they tell me, ‘You just don’t know how strong I am.’ They say ‘strength’ and I want to hear ‘balance.’ The strength idea has effort in it; this is not what I’m looking for. Strength that has effort in it is not what you need; you need the strength that is the result of ease.”

— Ida p. Rolph, Ph.D.

It defines the human condition that one's gaze orients outwards. The eye sacrifices self-awareness to entertain images of the world. This explains how one can lose one's sunglasses on one's own forehead & why the proverbial emperor needed a youth to point out that he was naked.

Over a third of the year has passed since New Year's Day. Now that Tax Day is finally behind us with ides of April, what better time than to revisit one's resolutions for well-being of body & soul?

The Vernal Equinox (in the Northern Hemisphere) heralds the advent of Spring & indicates that we have prevailed over another winter. This most invigorating of holidays vivifies our souls, imbuing us with the sprightly energy of the season.

Posture can start to feel like serious business. "I used to know how to stand," is the sore lament of many a fellow, "...before I started getting Rolfed.

There is comfort & beauty in symmetry, the balance of an ordered form. From the yoga of three lines suddenly emerges the triangle, a portal into an Euclidian infinity. Geometry is a projection of this psychological Platonism.

When we confront a given challenge, it is not uncommon that we experience some level of anxiety. If we investigate this experience, we generally find its source to be a fear failure. I would like to provide a different perspective for such cases: 

"No news is good news."

This statement articulates the relationship that most of us have with our bodies. So long as nothing hurts, then it's good enough. Whether or not we realize it, most of us experience life like talking heads, "immortal souls" ensconced in little orbs, roving around atop teetering bipedal locomotives. This is sinful. Just kidding. But it certainly represents a terribly limited way to experience the world.

Outer space is perfectly dark—just look at the space between the stars on a clear night in winter. But this is only half of the truth: in fact, the former is utterly brimming with light; billows of light, photons by the bucketful, dancing omnipresently, even in the celestial interstices! These waves need both a subject & an object to display their brilliance; otherwise, they remain invisible.

Here is the familiar dilemma:I have recognised a habit that I wish to change—this is a conscious process. But the habit is habitual, which is to say, sub-conscious. Therefore, it's like trying to eat spaghetti with a spoon. We naturally identify ourselves with our voluntary actions & thought processes: "I lost my checkbook," we say, but never "I beat my heart," or "I grow my fingernails."

In this post's antecedent, a monkey at a typewriter unveiled a rough-hewn road map for the benefit of those of us wishing to carry out an evolution of our own behavior. The value of such formulations is only conditional and instrumental. Their measure is by the degree that they are of utility for the reader in her own process. Words & formulations indicate something beyond themselves.

The sea provideth bounty for all who know how to reap it. But the said "know-how" does not arrive instantaneously. It ripens, rather, through several graduated stages. To step out of the maritime conceit of this series and speak literally, integration, ease, & grace in the body arise as the eventual result of sustained application.

One of my responsibilities as a Rolfer™ is to empower my clients to take responsibility for their own health & well-being. Proverbially, to lavish a fellow with fishes does him disservice; my interest is not in fostering dependence. I strive to teach self-sufficiency. As a fishmonger might instruct another in the art of net-weaving & chasing sardines on the open sea, I strive to provide my clients with specific & ambiguous means to their own embodiment & flourishing. I can't take credit for this idea, obviously...