There's something there for even those not trained in working with individuals to balance the body in alignment with the force of Gravity.
This brilliant message will give you a wonderful insight into the full scope of Dr. Ida P. Rolf’s definitive and peerless approach to human health and functioning ... to Human evolution.
Ida Rolf’s Hidden Mystical Teachings on The Line: Do We Really Want to Turn Our Backs on This Truly Transformational Part of Her Teachings?
Dear friends of Ida Rolf,
Out of the wellspring and headwaters that were Dr. Rolf’s genius two great tributaries have sprung. The first is well known and traveled by all of us regardless of which teaching school we attended. It represents the genius of the hands-on work, the promotion of an approach to touching bodies and, for most of us, a recipe of navigation that guides us as we bring more integrity to the random nature of bodies that show up in our office. From the perspective of this first great tributary, all of the numerous teaching schools that have sprung from her original insights, regardless of their different approaches to the work, are similarly oriented. The schools are all vocational training schools, not in their way unlike schools for anyone wanting to learn a trade that they can then take into the world and earn a living with, and they all provide a fundamental understanding in how to touch and work with your clients.
The second great tributary is literally “the river less traveled” and has been almost entirely neglected, expunged from the maps, or simply given lip service by the large majority of the vocational training schools. This is the mystery school aspect of the teachings. Dr. Rolf wanted to be a teacher of evolutionary transformation, not just a teacher of physiotherapy and—if you were listening—left us with a series of “somatic koans” that could guide us in our personal evolution just as clearly as her insights into how to touch our clients’ bodies guide us in our vocational work. And herein lies an important distinction between the two tributaries. The first gives us tools to help heal our clients’ aches and pains. The second gives us tools to transform ourselves into what Dr. Rolf viewed as the altogether natural evolutionary transformation that would occur for us as we kept exploring what she referred to as The Line.
Dr. Rolf viewed the work that bore her name as a “way of life,” and she wanted all of us who trained with her to commit to a path of profound evolutionary awakening based on her guidelines for exploring The Line. Tragically, this part of her teaching—which is what drew me to her in the first place—is in grave danger of being completely and forever lost, and it is the very real prospect of that loss that ha motivated me to write this love letter to you all.
Dr. Rolf’s vision of an embodied exploration of The Line begins with her acknowledgement of the importance of organizing the upright structure of the body (whether standing or sitting) around the vertical axis. The vertical axis is like an imaginary friend for the mystic of The Line. While it has no conventional reality in the world of physical form, it has enormous impact through its relationship with anyone wishing to explore how The Line starts affecting and changing them.
Dr. Rolf viewed an embodiment of The Line as allowing you to let go of fascial tension that’s otherwise necessary to brace yourself against the downward pull of gravity. Instead of bracing yourself against gravity’s tug, you begin to float in its sea instead. Through such relaxation the inbred armoring that most bodies experience as necessary to be upright can melt away, and the felt presence of the body—in the form of vibratory sensation and deep felt energies—is revealed. Dr. Rolf would say that through such an embodiment evolutionary energies would be awakened and spread through the entire body resulting in an evolutionary transformation of consciousness. She did not mean that you would just start functioning better in the world. She would speak instead of a radical alteration to consciousness, of who and what you experienced yourself to be.
The Line, even though based on the image of the vertical axis, is not a fence post. It’s more like what happens when you ride a bicycle and ushers you into a kind of spontaneous dance of surrendered balancing (as we are about to see, The Line is VERY motile). The more you relate to the vertical axis as a dance partner, the more you’re able to relax unnecessary tension, and the more you start feeling an actual, palpable shimmer of vibratory sensation awakening throughout the entire body. So the first level of exploration of The Line begins by waking up the sleeping felt presence of the body.
Verticality is only the beginning. Dr. Rolf would then espouse to anyone who had the ears to hear that the patterns of fascial inhibition to the free flow of breath begin to let go as bracing against gravity starts to let go. Suddenly breath becomes a force that can be transmitted through every joint of a relaxed body (and she said that this would be felt everywhere including the sutures of the skull and the joints between the small bones of the feet!) and will make its passage through the body not unlike how a wave moves through a body of water. And so the primary koan that guides us in our sitting and standing exploration of The Line and directly comes from her is:
Exploring this koan, breath by surrendered breath, in the context of sitting or standing meditation affects and changes almost everything you’ve ever been taught about meditation practice. The entire body stays in constant motion, becoming amoeba-like, expanding and contracting on every inhalation and exhalation of breath. Restrictions to this expansive and contractive motion are exposed, and you begin to breathe and let go deeply through the entire body.
Over time the ability to so relax and let go in this way through an exploration of The Line begins to profoundly affect and shift the physiology of the body (one of Dr. Rolf’s favorite rants was: “It ain’t psychology; it’s only physiology!”), and it’s this physiological alteration to bodily experience that starts dissolving the consciousness that passes as normal (largely out of touch with felt bodily reality, often lost in thought and completely identified with the speaker of all those random thoughts as “I,” dependent on the fascial holdings throughout the entire body and very much present in the cranium to create an image of self). Awakening body and liberating breath in this way reveal the evolutionary dimension, the altogether different sense of self available to every human being if we could just learn to stay motile, surrendered to the mighty impulse to breathe.
Some of the vocational schools have recognized that some form of movement reeducation is not just helpful, but mandatory, in order for our clients to begin to fully appreciate and enter into the possibilities for change that the initial hands-on work has allowed. The practices of The Line are also practices of movement reeducation, but they’re not undertaken in the context of improving function within the consciousness that passes as normal, but as an evolutionary transformation that exposes a whole other, both far deeper and higher, dimension of being that’s available to all human beings. In my experience this dimension is primarily addressed in the spiritual literature.
I offer you a choice. Delete this email, and participate in the continued squelching of this part of Ida Rolf’s legacy, or . . . I’d ask that you share it with every graduate of your school.
With love,
Will Johnson
Will Johnson has been a Certified Rolfer® since 1976. He audited with Ida Rolf and Jan Sultan and was trained by Emmett Hutchins. The author of 15 books about the role of the body in spiritual practice (two of which have won awards as “Best Spiritual Book of the Year,” all of which point to an exploration of Lined states as the doorway to real transformational awakening), he teaches a form of deeply body-oriented practices in the Buddhist world based on the koans of Ida Rolf. His insistence on allowing natural motions of the body while sitting in meditation is revelatory to Western Buddhism and serves as a powerful antidote to the pain and struggle of the meditation posture of frozen stillness coming over from Asia that virtually guarantees that awakening will not occur. With dear friend David Davis, lead instructor at The American Guild for Structural Integration and personal bodyworker to H.H. Sai Maa and H.H. Satuwa Baba Maharaj, he teaches Mystics of The Line workshops and trainings open to anyone who’s graduated from one of the many schools who trace their lineage to the hands-on work of Ida Rolf. Anyone sincerely interested in learning more about these workshops may contact Will at will@embodiment.net.
Ida Rolf’s Hidden Mystical Teachings on The Line: Do We Really Want to Turn Our Backs on This Truly Transformational Part of Her Teachings?
Dear friends of Ida Rolf,
Out of the wellspring and headwaters that were Dr. Rolf’s genius two great tributaries have sprung. The first is well known and traveled by all of us regardless of which teaching school we attended. It represents the genius of the hands-on work, the promotion of an approach to touching bodies and, for most of us, a recipe of navigation that guides us as we bring more integrity to the random nature of bodies that show up in our office. From the perspective of this first great tributary, all of the numerous teaching schools that have sprung from her original insights, regardless of their different approaches to the work, are similarly oriented. The schools are all vocational training schools, not in their way unlike schools for anyone wanting to learn a trade that they can then take into the world and earn a living with, and they all provide a fundamental understanding in how to touch and work with your clients.
The second great tributary is literally “the river less traveled” and has been almost entirely neglected, expunged from the maps, or simply given lip service by the large majority of the vocational training schools. This is the mystery school aspect of the teachings. Dr. Rolf wanted to be a teacher of evolutionary transformation, not just a teacher of physiotherapy and—if you were listening—left us with a series of “somatic koans” that could guide us in our personal evolution just as clearly as her insights into how to touch our clients’ bodies guide us in our vocational work. And herein lies an important distinction between the two tributaries. The first gives us tools to help heal our clients’ aches and pains. The second gives us tools to transform ourselves into what Dr. Rolf viewed as the altogether natural evolutionary transformation that would occur for us as we kept exploring what she referred to as The Line.
Dr. Rolf viewed the work that bore her name as a “way of life,” and she wanted all of us who trained with her to commit to a path of profound evolutionary awakening based on her guidelines for exploring The Line. Tragically, this part of her teaching—which is what drew me to her in the first place—is in grave danger of being completely and forever lost, and it is the very real prospect of that loss that ha motivated me to write this love letter to you all.
Dr. Rolf’s vision of an embodied exploration of The Line begins with her acknowledgement of the importance of organizing the upright structure of the body (whether standing or sitting) around the vertical axis. The vertical axis is like an imaginary friend for the mystic of The Line. While it has no conventional reality in the world of physical form, it has enormous impact through its relationship with anyone wishing to explore how The Line starts affecting and changing them.
Dr. Rolf viewed an embodiment of The Line as allowing you to let go of fascial tension that’s otherwise necessary to brace yourself against the downward pull of gravity. Instead of bracing yourself against gravity’s tug, you begin to float in its sea instead. Through such relaxation the inbred armoring that most bodies experience as necessary to be upright can melt away, and the felt presence of the body—in the form of vibratory sensation and deep felt energies—is revealed. Dr. Rolf would say that through such an embodiment evolutionary energies would be awakened and spread through the entire body resulting in an evolutionary transformation of consciousness. She did not mean that you would just start functioning better in the world. She would speak instead of a radical alteration to consciousness, of who and what you experienced yourself to be.
The Line, even though based on the image of the vertical axis, is not a fence post. It’s more like what happens when you ride a bicycle and ushers you into a kind of spontaneous dance of surrendered balancing (as we are about to see, The Line is VERY motile). The more you relate to the vertical axis as a dance partner, the more you’re able to relax unnecessary tension, and the more you start feeling an actual, palpable shimmer of vibratory sensation awakening throughout the entire body. So the first level of exploration of The Line begins by waking up the sleeping felt presence of the body.
Verticality is only the beginning. Dr. Rolf would then espouse to anyone who had the ears to hear that the patterns of fascial inhibition to the free flow of breath begin to let go as bracing against gravity starts to let go. Suddenly breath becomes a force that can be transmitted through every joint of a relaxed body (and she said that this would be felt everywhere including the sutures of the skull and the joints between the small bones of the feet!) and will make its passage through the body not unlike how a wave moves through a body of water. And so the primary koan that guides us in our sitting and standing exploration of The Line and directly comes from her is:
"... body is something wrapped around the breath
let the wraps move freely like silk scarves."
Over time the ability to so relax and let go in this way through an exploration of The Line begins to profoundly affect and shift the physiology of the body (one of Dr. Rolf’s favorite rants was: “It ain’t psychology; it’s only physiology!”), and it’s this physiological alteration to bodily experience that starts dissolving the consciousness that passes as normal (largely out of touch with felt bodily reality, often lost in thought and completely identified with the speaker of all those random thoughts as “I,” dependent on the fascial holdings throughout the entire body and very much present in the cranium to create an image of self). Awakening body and liberating breath in this way reveal the evolutionary dimension, the altogether different sense of self available to every human being if we could just learn to stay motile, surrendered to the mighty impulse to breathe.
Some of the vocational schools have recognized that some form of movement reeducation is not just helpful, but mandatory, in order for our clients to begin to fully appreciate and enter into the possibilities for change that the initial hands-on work has allowed. The practices of The Line are also practices of movement reeducation, but they’re not undertaken in the context of improving function within the consciousness that passes as normal, but as an evolutionary transformation that exposes a whole other, both far deeper and higher, dimension of being that’s available to all human beings. In my experience this dimension is primarily addressed in the spiritual literature.
I offer you a choice. Delete this email, and participate in the continued squelching of this part of Ida Rolf’s legacy, or . . . I’d ask that you share it with every graduate of your school.
With love,
Will Johnson
Will Johnson has been a Certified Rolfer® since 1976. He audited with Ida Rolf and Jan Sultan and was trained by Emmett Hutchins. The author of 15 books about the role of the body in spiritual practice (two of which have won awards as “Best Spiritual Book of the Year,” all of which point to an exploration of Lined states as the doorway to real transformational awakening), he teaches a form of deeply body-oriented practices in the Buddhist world based on the koans of Ida Rolf. His insistence on allowing natural motions of the body while sitting in meditation is revelatory to Western Buddhism and serves as a powerful antidote to the pain and struggle of the meditation posture of frozen stillness coming over from Asia that virtually guarantees that awakening will not occur. With dear friend David Davis, lead instructor at The American Guild for Structural Integration and personal bodyworker to H.H. Sai Maa and H.H. Satuwa Baba Maharaj, he teaches Mystics of The Line workshops and trainings open to anyone who’s graduated from one of the many schools who trace their lineage to the hands-on work of Ida Rolf. Anyone sincerely interested in learning more about these workshops may contact Will at will@embodiment.net.
