Extra session with Kate

I’m a little late in posting this I think we did the session back in April.  Kate & I have had summers that have made scheduling a session tricky.  In part due to rehearsals for the sell out show Rise, that we were both in.  We should pick the sessions up again shortly.  The first three sessions are pretty standalone, they work to free up the surface layers of the body, in sessions 4-7 we work with deeper postural muscles.  So doing the first 3 sessions & taking a break is no bad thing.

However, Kate arrived for session 3 in some discomfort & I decided it wasn’t appropriate to do the official session 3 with Kate.  From what Kate described & how she moved, I was curious about her low back, my hands confirmed my curiosity.  I worked with a tight focus on the area above Kate’s left hip (she describes it below) then I worked with a broader focus above & below the area in difficulty with the intention of reducing tension in the general area.  I then did the same on the right hand side to balance left & right.

I sometimes think of these sessions as firefighting sessions, something has happened that needs immediate attention.  I’m looking forward to continuing the ten series shortly.  The next session will be called session 3 & continue the progress through the 10 Rolfing sessions.

Here’s what Kate had to say

Extra Session

In my last write-up of Rolfing Session #2, I said it was my favorite session. I take it back! This one has blown Session 2 out of the water!

Perhaps it is due to a more familiar relationship between practitioner and client, i.e. James has a deeper understanding about how my body works and what might be helpful, but this session was incredible. I am so glad this is a series of treatments rather than just one; I would have missed out on this experience and the deeper understanding it gave me about how I am supporting my body (or rather, how I am not).

To preface this post a bit: I developed a painful and tense muscle ache on the left side of my lower back, just above the iliac crest of the pelvis (I did my research). It had been getting worse over the course of a few days and was impacting the way I moved. I am an aerialist (hobby, not profession) so I expect a certain amount of tiredness and ache in my muscles, but this was unusual and I had a hunch, as did James, that it was crucial to the way my body moved.

I am a fairly flexible person and have toned muscles from aerial and cycling and general activity, but feel limited in how my pelvis moves. Freedom of movement, as well as control of the pelvis is somewhat essential for aerial, as there is a great deal of inversion inherent in aerial silks and trapeze. I find it difficult to bring my hips up due to the tightness in the muscles around my pelvis, which is what we worked on a lot in this session.

James did some pretty deep work on my quadratus lumborum (more research) and along the sides of my body. I can only describe this session as being on the “sensory precipice”; it felt amazing, and exactly what my body needed, but it was incredibly intense and almost difficult to take! I was aware that my body was steeling itself against yielding to the direction James was trying to get it to go in, but the longer he worked on me, the more I could release. I read something really interesting in “Balancing Your Body” that resonated with me after this session: we fight gravity for emotional reasons as well as for purely physical ones…[we] protect our feelings by tightening our bodies.

After some time, James had me stand up and walk around. We repeated this 3 times, but the second time I stood up it was as if this point in my hips that had been giving me so much pain had let go, and I had the sensation of almost falling flat on my face when I was walking around. It was as if my pelvis and hips had been acting as a hinge that had seized; they weren’t actually supporting my upper body, but holding it prisoner. James commented that I support myself with my surface layers rather than the deep After this session, the way I ordinarily have the weight further back in my feet with my hips jutting forward (possibly a result of carrying a baby and now small child for 4 years..!) changed. Obviously I have to balance this out, but it made me optimistic that there are other possibilities for the way my body moves rather than the way I have been moving.

I look forward to the next session!