CENTER FOR THE HEALING ARTS LECTURE
Dr. Ida P. Rolf
Presented July 19, 1975
In the past few years, one word has taken on an inordinate
emphasis in our culture - the word "energy." We have heard it so much
that its meaning has been confused and perhaps it is worth some consideration
to segregate and differentiate the implications of the word. Is the energy that
we are talking about related to the energy which a few years ago we realized
was lacking in our gas tanks? What does the energy crisis include? Where does
it stop? Most of you who are rolfers, practitioners of Structural Integration,
are used to hearing your clients say "Oh, I have so much more energy since
I've been rolfed." What are they referring to? Is this the same energy? If
so, where does it come from and how is it released by integration of the structure.
In using the name, Structural Integration, we have found that the word
"integration" refers to the psyche as well as the body, the soma.
Obviously we are in the midst of a vast confusion and some clarification and
overview is long overdue.
William Blake in the late eighteenth century said
"Energy is Eternal Delight." Well, that's one way of saying it. It
underscores the hum assumption that there is something transcendent about
energy. At the same period in time, in Newtonian Mechanics energy was seen as a
property of moving masses. By the late nineteenth century, men had extended
this very limited consideration of the physical reality of energy and organized
their thinking into new sciences: thermodynamics, electromagnetism and
quantitative chemistry. All these developed more sophisticated concepts of
energy and began to see the world around them as manifestations and
concentrations of a Universal Basic divorced from matter itself. Energy was no
longer defined as the property of moving masses, nor as a property of anything.
In men's minds, it began to take on independent reality and in the
sophistication of the twentieth century, properties of its own, made manifest
in "laws" concerning it. In this process the concept
"energy" expanded to cosmic size as we considered Einstein's
formulations E=mc2. No longer was energy regarded as a "property" of
"moving masses" - here it became measurable by an examination of the
mass from which it was generated together with the speed of light. This
revolutionary concept that energy was also dependent stretched the minds and
imaginations of man incredibly. But so did a consideration of Planck's
equation, E = Hv (from which the area later known as Quantum Mechanics was
developed) postulated that energy carried by an oscillation could be seen as a
function of the frequencies of that oscillation. This was the time when energy
grew up; it departed from the realm of Newton's apple and landed into a
sub-atomic universe.
Physicists spent much time and thought during the Thermo-Dynamics
Period exploring a concept called Entropy. As a result of this exploration they
postulated that each quantity of energy has an associated quality called
entropy. This quality is a measure of the disorder in the system and varies in
different kinds of energy. According to this concept, the associated entropy
determines the direction of flow of energies; energy always flows they said in
such a direction that entropy (disorder) increases.
To us, as human beings living on the earth, the important consideration
to date is that by general scientific agreement the predominant energy in this
universe is gravitation, associated with the three-dimensional masses of our
universe, our suns, our stars, our cosmic bodies that form our universe. The
energy we call gravity is associated with each and all of these masses, and you
remember from your high school physics that the energy of gravity can be
converted into other forms of energy. As a huge mass contracts under its own
gravity other energies - light, heat, and motion, wave forms of energy --
appear and may be dispersed or themselves transformed. But it is essentially
the energy called gravity which is characterized by no entropy, no disorder,
random-ness.
What nineteenth century physicists conceived as the "flow
of energy" was in fact the progression from order to disorder. Technically
it was stated that the entropy of a system always increased: the disorder, the
randomness of the system always increased; the energy system could always be
degraded; the higher energy form transformed to a lower form. But never did the
reverse happen, or so it was postulated. In the late nineteenth century it was
thought that the universe was running down to a dense dark desert dust. Perhaps
this is so in the vast reaches of the inanimate universe. However there is
increasing evidence of other forces of potential emergent order at work...in
isolated segments at least. We see this in segments of the universe where there
is life, where there is consciousness -- intelligence, as for instance on the
earth. It may well be that in these parts of the universe, life --
consciousness -- is molding energy to its own purpose.
This material universe lacking consciousness, this Newtonian
world, how does it survive at all? Why has it not run-down to a desert level
long since? Modern physicists think a long succession of obstacles to the
degradation of energy intervened. These worlds, these masses, are so large --
in any degradation energy is freed and therefore the unit itself becomes smaller.
But as the mass contracts under gravity, the very massiveness of these worlds
becomes their salvation. So much time is involved in dissipating this mass that
it is no longer realistically significant to men.
There are other energies in the Newtonian world. The spin
energy, for example, slows this gravitational condensation and is a factor for
security. This specifically affects the earth as well as other more cosmic
structures. Compression, the effect of gravitational energy, apparently a basic
constituent in our universe may be slowed through a thermodynamic factor.
Hydrogen burns to form helium and in so doing releases energy which resists
further compression. This, of course, is a cosmic rather than a terrestrial
factor. We see this phenomenon in the night sky and call it stars. The hydrogen
in these cosmic masses that we call suns and stars must be burned up before
further compression can occur. It is estimated, for example, that it will take
another five billion years to burn up the hydrogen in our sun before
compression can again begin. This process has been in action for some four
billion years already. Not a very eminent worry!
These are the primary sources of energy in our universe.
From them and their interaction seemingly the various other sources of what we
call "energy" in the terrestrial sense derive: our coal, our oil, our
uranium, our deuterium and above all our sunlight.
Late twentieth century physicists and astrophysicists assure
us that the underlying and predominant energy of the universe is gravitational.
Other forms of energy exist e.g., rotation energy, energy of orbital motion,
nuclear reactions, internal heat of stars, sunlight, chemical reactions,
terrestrial waste heat, cosmic microwave radiation. But understandably by far
the predominant source of energy is gravitation. The gravitational energy which
is characteristic of large masses can be released as gravitation or converted
into wave forms of energy. Light and heat as this mass falls together, shrinks.
Apparently all large masses are shrinking all the time. Moreover, as we have
said, gravity is one of the few sources of energy uncontaminated by entropy.
This is, there is minimal tendency for the energy of gravity to be diminished
through entropy. In other words it is order uncontaminated by randomness. This
is the Newtonian world seen through twentieth century eyes.
What I have outlined above is the point of view of the early
twentieth century. But as time has progressed we are recognizing that the
system in which we live is not the Newtonian world alone. We are not animals
living on a material mass, the earth, but living in a universe of at least two
members: the Newtonian world of matter interacting with a world loosely called
life or perhaps consciousness.
At this point we must consider the factor, Life. As human
beings we feel that energy is somehow related to and equated with
"life." We sense that the something we call "life" is
somehow a key to existence, a key to creating more animated beings in a less animated
universe. That somehow the crisis and destiny of the energy of the total
universe cannot be understood except in relation to the phenomena of life, of
consciousness. This seems to be our intuitive perception. This seems to have
inspired Blake when he said "Energy is Eternal Delight." Surely he
was not talking about an energy diminished by entropy (by disorder).
Later twentieth century thinking has told us that all
systems exist through at least two factors and all systems to have significance
to the world of men must include the observer. Thus, for the "energy"
to have significance for us here, we must have two members of our system. One,
the Newtonian or gravitational energy; the other, Man-Consciousness for this is
the system you are studying. This is the system whose energy value you hope to
enhance, to expand, to increase. Look at it: energy/man -- gravitation/man.
This is the system you need to explore if you are hoping to increase the energy
of the individual person on the earth or to increase negative entropy and to decrease
deterioration, disorder.
How can you increase the value of this system --
Gravitation/Man? Well, we've just looked at energy of the inanimate mass fairly
comprehensively. As far as humans are concerned gravity is a constant: always
present, always immense. We can visualize the energized earth as a huge
chestnut burr with "vertical" prickles in all directions -- all
direct towards the center of the burr, the center of the earth. This is one
member of our dyad. The second member, however, offers us better cheer. For
seemingly it is through the second member of the dyad, Gravity/Consciousness,
that we may look to alter this ratio, be able to modify the ratio by the
increase of consciousness.
In looking at this problem -- really a statement of the definition
of vital rather than inanimate energy -- the statement is not complete unless
we look carefully for all sources of energy, examine all sources of the
entropic disorganization that diminishes it. Such a search quickly uncovers a
very different kind of phenomenon which we again label "energy." It
is the phenomenon of thought transference, extra sensory perception and allied
manifestations. All "energy" deriving from gravitational energy
conforms to a generalization that the amount of energy available varies
inversely with the square of the distance from its source. But this latest
contestant for the word "energy" -- this "psychic" energy
-- shows no effect of diminution of intensity through distance. A man can
convey a message (usually involuntarily) unwittingly from America to Australia
with less loss of energy than occurs when projects his voice a hundred feet or
so. What is this? And should it be labeled "energy"? If so, what
distinguishing marks should we afford it to distinguish it from Newtonian Energy?
The teleportation or even levitation of material things -- does this word
"energy" properly apply here as well?
There are many persons in this room who could speak to the
reality of this kind of "energy": of where, how, it occurs and to
what extent it can be tamed and harnessed. I only know that the reports which
Dr. Valerie Hunt has offered seems to say authoritatively that a kind of energy
seen by workers as light, as color and felt by some workers as something akin
to warmth. Something that "turns on" as well as "turns off"
is associated with the increased energy of the human when physical, myofascial,
fleshy order is introduced into the random disorder of the average human body.
In other words, it is when we lessen the entropy of the average body, the
disorder that exists in its mass, that seemingly we increase the energy within
the body. Here we seem to be uncovering the same sort of generalized behavior,
the same sort of evolving order in the psychic personality as we found manifest
in the inanimate universe. To repeat, we find that physical myofascial order
reflects in a more vital, organized pattern of psychological and, if you like
the word, "spiritual" being.
We spoke earlier of the fashion in which the energy of the
universe was thought to be running down. Applying this metaphor to the random
disorder of a physical myofascial body, especially as it increases with age,
its entropy can be seen to be increasing. We noted that this is not true
everywhere in the cosmos -- that in local areas where there is life there seems
to be other forces at work. We need to be thoroughly aware of, familiar with,
the concept of its manifestation in the contours of the body if we hope to
reverse the disorganization of our world, -- of our bodies, in order to
increase the energy of our world. If this increase of energy is our quarry we
are in luck, for Eureka, we have found it! Dr. Hunt has been observing and
measuring it, and the record of her sophisticated pioneering exploration in
this field is shortly to be published.
We know that the body has developed embryologically from
three systems: the digestive (or endomorphic), the nervous (or ectomorphic),
and the myofascial (mesomorphic or muscular). Of these it is the myofascial
which is the organ of structure -- the myofascial which seemingly offers the
opportunity for these structural changes -- for changes in three-dimensional world.
As rolfers we have been observing for a long time the
increased energy of the body when order (the appropriate relation vertically)
is added to it. Dr. Hunt has validated our claim by measuring the increased
energy of the body as changes in the material structure have been introduced.
She has done this in several ways: she has measured the light energy indirectly
through her instruments -- and with the help of Dr. Roslyn Bruyere, directly
through direct psychic readings of the aura. And amazingly this age old method
of measurement by Dr. Bruyere confirmed Dr. Hunt's brand new instrument. In
terms of measuring lighting Dr. Bruyere and Dr. Hunt have observed its
intensity, its vibratory rate, (i.e. its color) and Kirilian auras seemingly
created in the body. In that experimental project the aura, the Kirilian
photographs, the brain waves, as well as increased energy over the various
centers that the ancients called Chakras were all observed. Dr. Hunt has found,
for example, that random incoming people tend to have auras one-half inch in
width, but after the kind of integration of structure called rolfing, their
auras will have increased often to five inches in width.
Obviously we are dealing with a basic energy phenomenon of
life here. Whether this really relates to or equates with the energy referred
to earlier (the energy whose principal distinguishing characteristic is its
failure to observe the law of inverse squares which characterizes Newtonian
transmission) this we do not know at this point. Nor do we see any way to
determine it in the near future.
But that which we do know is exciting enough!
What do we know? What have we found out? We know that order
can be evoked in the myofascial system of the body by substantially balancing
the myofascial structures about a vertical line. We know that logically we can
expect that the vertical line of that force manifesting as the gravitational
field of the earth can either support and reinforce a body or it can
disorganize it and destroy or minimize the energy fields surrounding it -- and
presumably passing through and being part of it. We know that the energy fields
of the body must be substantially balanced around a vertical line for gravity
to act supportively, and in so doing, changing the energy apparently generated
by the body. This vertical line registers the alignment of the ankles with the
knees, with the hip joints, with the bodies of the lumbar vertebrae, with the
shoulder, with the ears. This vertical line is reminiscent of the prickles on
the chestnut burr all pointing straight toward the center of the earth, if all
the lines are substantially vertical. This is a static verticality. This is the
verticality taught by every accepted school of body mechanics operating during
this century ... the Harvard group heads the list. All schools of body
mechanics teach this is a measure of verticality, but no other school of body
mechanics teaches how to achieve it. But because the body has an unforeseen,
unexpected quality it can be done -- the body is a plastic medium!
We can now define rolfing: it is a system of organizing the
body so that the body is substantially vertical and substantially balanced
around a vertical, in order to allow the body to accept support from the
gravitational energy. Two characteristic, qualities of the body make this
unlikely situation possible. The material body of man is a plastic medium. By
dictionary definition a plastic substance is one which can be distorted by
pressure and then can by suitable means be brought back to shape. Now the
question is, what does "back to shape" in this context really mean?
And the answer is simple and expected. "Back in shape" in this
context means vertical -- vertical to the surface of the earth, like burrs of
the chestnut, vertical like the lines of force of gravity. Because only when
the gravity vertical of the body substantially coincides with the vertical
gravity line of the earth can that energy field of the earth reinforce and
augment the field of the human body. Then the energy of the earth contributes
to the energy of the body. The body becomes vitalized. The flesh becomes
resilient; body functions of all sorts improve. Gravity at this point is the
nourishing force; gravity it the nourishing medium giving to the energy
quotient Man/Gravity a higher value. This expresses itself in many changes. In
behavior patterns, is a different state of consciousness -- we usually refer to
it as a higher state.
We have describe the body as a plastic medium. Two factors
contribute to this. The first is that the body, seemingly a unit, is in fact a
consolidation of large segments: head, thorax, pelvis, legs. The relation of
these segments can be changed because the connection myofascial structure is a
structure of connective tissue, of collagen; and collagen is a unique protein.
The collagen molecule is very large, and it is a braiding of three strands of a
spiral braiding. These three strands are connected by various inorganic atoms
-- hydrogen, sodium, calcium, and undoubtedly other minerals.
Such minerals are interchangeable within limits. Thus, as
the body grows older and stiffer undoubtedly a larger percentage of calcium and
a smaller percentage of sodium are present in these bonds. But by the addition
of energy, in this case the pressure of the fingers or the elbow of the rolfer,
this ratio may be varied and the joint or the connective tissue becomes more
resilient, more flexible. Collagen is a colloid. All large-moleculed proteins
from colloids with water, not true solutions. Colloids have certain qualities
in common. An outstanding one is that by the addition of energy they become
more fluid. (Remember that half set pan of gelatin and water. Put it in the
flame and it liquefied; put it in the "fridge" and it solidifies.)
With the connective tissue of the body, add energy to it and it becomes more
fluid, a soluble. Subtract energy and it becomes more dense, more solid, a gel.
What do we mean here by energy? In the case of the jell-o, we are talking about
heat; in the case of the body we may be talking about heat -- remember how
different your flesh fells to your fingers in the very hot weather? But in
terms of rolfing we are talking about pressure -- pressure at the right points
in the right directions, at the hands of the rolfer. Some of you are saying,
"Oh, yes, you mean reflex points!" No, I'm not talking about reflex
points. Reflex points, I think, are a nervous phenomenon of the nervous system.
I'm talking about energy being added by pressure to the fascia (the organ of
the structure in the body) to change the relations of the fascial sheaths of
the body, to balance them around their vertical line which parallels the
gravity line.
Thus, we are able to balance body masses, to verticalize
them. The contour of the body changes. The objective feeling of the body to searching
hands changes. Movement behavior changes as the body is a static stacking, but
as the body incorporates more changes the balance ceases to be a static balance
and becomes a dynamic balance. These are among the physical manifestations of
the increasing balance. But there is an ongoing psychological change as well
toward balance, toward serenity, toward a more whole person ... the whole
human. The whole person evidences a more apparent, a more potent psychic
development. This means that the ration Man-Earth/Gravity-Energy has changed;
the numerator Man-Energy has increased.
The ratio has therefore increased. The force available to
reverse the entropic deterioration is greater -- that world is no longer
running down. It seems capable now of building up. Is this the work of that
other energy, that one that does not manifest obedience to the law of inverse
squares? At this point we do not know.
The gospel that I teach is that man is capable of a
personal, evolutionary development.
