Integrative Bodywork, Breaking it Down

Integration—embodying new knowledge. Mind-to-body, mind-to-ligament, mind-to-space, and back agin. You pick up what is useful for Your Healing, and you use it!

Integrative Bodywork—the piece-by-piece process of exposing an emergent, more “natural” order in your body and movement. Fascial tensegrities and skeletal supports provide keyholes to this deep organisational intelligence. We can unlock these areas with strategic fascial-based touch combined with your breath-led intention.

Thomas Myers describes fascia as the “biological fabric that holds us together, the connective tissue network. You are about 70 trillion cells — neurons, muscle cells, epithelia — all humming in relative harmony; fascia is the 3D spider web of fibrous, gluey, and Fasciawet proteins that binds them together in their proper placement. Our biomechanics regulatory system is highly complex and under-studied — though new research is filling in the gap. Understanding fascia is essential to the dance between stability and movement — crucial in high performance, central in recovery from injury and disability, and ever-present in our daily life from our embryological beginnings to the last breath we take.”

The concept of the Whole Body—its fascial-digestive-energetic-skeletal-emotional-mental (add in whatever divisions you’d like) web—is irrefutable. And as a bodyworker with hands predominantly in the connective tissue, I am here to ultimately serve the system as a whole, prioritising efficiency, not symptoms. It is my wish to ally with all methods and practitioners that take us down this path—chiropractic, cranial sacral, visceral therapy, acupuncture, osteopathy, trigger-point therapy, nutrition, pilates, yoga, meditation, martial arts—and offer a resonance of my own.

Ida Rolf continues many decades on to sew her legacy through this work. I first opened her book “Rolfing” in 2015, and I am still struck by the potential for creativity and somatic discovery within the framework of her Recipe. I am struck, as well, by her humility—embodied also by my contemporary teachers—born from a deep respect for where the fascia ends and the ineffable begins.

Our session/s begin with a body reading and few simple somatic tests from which we base the goals for our work together. We begin every session with a bodyreading, usually done in the client’s underwear. We seek lift where there is compression, expansiveness where space is constricted, vitality in areas that are “off”, and ease where there is tension. My goal is to support your integration of “parts” into a whole. From your rib cage to your jaw to your wrists, “embodiment” requires congruence with the forces of Gravity from above and Earth from below.

This leads to a hallmark of Ida Rolf’s legacy: the Recipe for strategically integrating the whole body. Her original 10 session Recipe has evolved much through the years. Series work is deeply transformative. Watch my video where I explain the full 10 series in more detail. Not everyone is able to commit to a full 10 and not everyone needs it! For many clients I recommend a 3-series, or a 5-series—some framework for us to strategically unravel and reeducate your fascial body. Single sessions, or spot-work sessions are also beneficial. If it wasn’t for seeing my Rolfer once a month when I was sixteen and surfing and swimming 4 hours a day I probably wouldn’t be here (or, at least, wouldn’t be as happy. Thank you Steve).

BODYREADING AND SERIES WORK

Whether we’re doing a single session or ten, certain goals remain constant…

Goals of Integrative Bodywork

• Improved Kinesthetic Intelligence—your ability to access sensory information from within the body, in subtle and macro movements. Simply put—your bodily perception. Ideally, we cease to “perceive” our bodies as we get closer to being our bodies. This we call “Embodiment”.

• Improved economy in the tensile relationships between myofascial tissues. Decreasing tension through the body, often unconsciously held. Finding increased ease in stance and movement. 

• Skeletal alignment and support. Sky above. Earth below.

• Reduced pain.

• Generosity of Movement. Better understanding our bodies’ creative capacity to move while feeling supported and engaged.

• Lift and Length. Gravity as an ally instead of being a compressive force in our lives.

• Greater connection to “Core”. Perceiving the core grounded through the feet and rising in front of the spine through the crown above. Myofascial tissues are balanced from the outside—in, so you may act from inside—out.

• Improved resilience to the bodily impacts of stress as it meanders and careens through our lives.

Integrative Bodywork Can Help With

• Headaches, migraines

• Repetitive Stress Injuries

• Low Back Pain

• Muscle strains

• Scoliosis

• Jaw issues

• Sports injuries

• Healing from soft-tissue surgery and trauma

• Courageously bearing the load of being Human in the 21st Century.

The majority of my clients return not because their back pain is back, but because of how good it feels to more fully embody themselves—with Gravity from Above and Earth from Below.