Fitness in the New Year: The Transformers

Posted on January 4, 2012 by Linda Grace

This clip from the Messiah is one of the most inspirational pieces of music that I know.  (I’m not talking about the possibility of being resurrected!  I leave that to your own personal beliefs.) I am talking about the inspiration for change.

Some people just have a mysterious transforming ability, both for themselves and for others.  Like the lyrics of the Handel tune, cribbed from First Corinthians, it is a mystery.  Like art, we know it when we see it.  We can internalize it, some of us, and we can externalize it, seek out people who can get us going, especially stimulating our own transformative ability.

“Behold, I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed. In a moment, in a twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.”

In this New Year, I’m suggesting that most of us know something about our own unique transforming potential, and know where to go to seek out inspiration.

At this time I am re-reading Harold Bloom’s Where Shall Wisdom Be Found and another very wise book in a different way, Laurence E. Morehouse and Leonard Gross’s Maximum Performance.

… and Emma Lazarus, quoted in the New York Times this morning: Take off your shoes as by the burning bush…

This our mission, should we choose to accept it: May the trumpet sound for all of us to feel more alive and in the presence of the burning bush of transformation.

 

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Fitness in the New Year: what is best?

Posted on December 29, 2011 by Linda Grace

When John B. (Jack) Kelly, Jr. died early at age 57 in Philadelphia in March 1985, his body lay in the Philadelphia morgue unidentified for 2 days. Here’s how that happened.

A member of a classy bricklaying family that included his sister Grace Kelly (yes, Princess Grace) and a father, John B. Kelly, who won 3 gold medals in Olympic rowing, Jack Kelly, Jr. was a star athlete himself who had been on 4 Olympic rowing teams and medaled all over the world.

On the day that Jack Jr. died, as reported in the Philadelphia Inquirer, he had been running many sprint rowing races with his son Jack III, and losing every time. He remarked at “being tired” and wanting to get more fit. At 57, Jack Jr. was still in great shape.  His pedigree as a rower was much stronger than his son’s, and perhaps this drove Jack Jr. to challenge his son over and over as he was losing over and over.

Finally Jack III just said, “No more”. So, seeking more fitness, wearing shorts, a t-shirt, and no identification, Jack Jr. ran a couple of miles back toward the Palace Hotel where he was living at the time.  He dropped dead with a massive heart attack on a corner a few blocks from the hotel, unidentified and unrecognized in the street.

Most of us aren’t that driven, or that accomplished.  Thinking that we need more exercise is something that all of us are prone to, however, and maybe that thought just isn’t true. Maybe we are exercising just the right amount.

Fitness isn’t even the first thing on the table for health.  Over and over studies have shown that #1 is quitting smoking, #2 is flossing your teeth, and #3 is salt/potassium balance with much less salt than is currently in most of our diets.  All of these preventions have proven out in longevity with health.

#4 Fitness:  Are you injured? Elsewhere in these blogs I have written about starting back to exercising after injury or layoff, and I stand by the idea of walking out 10 minutes and walking back 10 minutes, and continuing at a graduated rate.  Have a checkup and clear doing moderate exercise with your doctor. Even if you pass without having to do some remedial work, consider whether you want to be in rehabilitation or hospital environment to do the exercise. Especially if you have lung or heart problems, these environments can be a lifesaver.

So, you are not broken down, what to do?  Probably the least effective thing you can do is to go out and join a health club.  My friends in the industry tell me that only about 3% of folks who sign up for monthly payments with their credit card automatic withdrawal actually go after the first trip or two, though the automatic withdrawals go on and on.

Find something that you like doing that doesn’t hurt you and keep doing it regularly. Why not get a personal trainer? Or sign up for a specific class.  Many of the younger fitter clients are going for Crossfit.  Crossfit is cool if you are at that level, and if you are not, it is torture and injury.  If that sort of thing is your goal, then get with a personal trainer who can get you up to speed for the classes.  Even one class of some of those activities can injure you so that your next fitness class will be getting Rolfing® Structural Integration and restoration of movement.

Personally, I am paying attention to #1 (last time I quit was 1983, and I intend to stay that way), and #2, #3, and #4, plus having an advanced Rolfing series this year.

In closing, this article by Jane Brody in the NYTimes is a real wake-up call for those of you who love salt, which she says is the cheapest way to enhance flavor and texture and preserve food.    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/27/health/high-sodium-to-potassium-ratio-in-diet-is-a-major-heart-risk.html?_r=1&ref=health

 

 

 

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Reading Scientific American, This Gamer Rejoices

Posted on December 10, 2011 by Linda Grace

Research in games has gone far afield from the “corruption of young minds” and “dangerously addictive” talking points for the recent past.  Cognitive load, executive functions, and several types of memory must be engaged.  Motor skills! Attentional systems! These are being studied.

As a dedicated gamer, I am studying these things myself. (Well, not in a scientific way, haha) Only last night, 8 p.m. came around and after talking on Skype with my relative visiting in Brazil, I was off to check out the new content on World of Warcraft.  This was a little earlier than usual; I was very excited to go with my “toon” Killertomato to see, dispatch the new Dragon and maybe win some new gear in a random raid of 35 folks which contained not only folks from my Guild but from all over the RL world as well.  (RL=real life).

The ones from my Guild were hooked together on “Vent”, which enabled us to voice talk about the game and help each other out, critical for those of us there for the first time. We were also communicating in “chat”, a continuous typed scrolling dialogue at the left corner of the screen for the whole group.

Also, a running account of the damage and healing that each of us was doing was running at the lower right, which had to be attended to, at least by me.  I tend to not pull my weight in a group sometime, just being in the beautiful environment, and that reminds me that i am on task.

One’s health and life force and position (am I close enough to the healers, within shooting and dotting range, and out of reach of the ice shards?) must be monitored at all times or risk being taken out of the game by death, costing maybe a 100 gold to repair.

I totally agree with this quote from Scientific American: “In short, the game is a relentless exercise in multitasking and constant decision making”.   The big question for further study: can there be transfer of these skills to RL?

This could be important.  Besides me, according to the Entertainment Software Association, 72 percent of American households play computer or video games.  Many adults including a number of women play these games, but youngsters,teenagers from South Korea, ruled the roost at a recent competition in Providence, Rhode Island.

This winning by teenagers has a number of factors probably, but a chief winning strategy may be the lack of the dreaded RL distraction called “spouse aggro”.  (Aggo=Aggravation) In spouse aggro, the RL spouse trumps all play and actually takes the player out of the game with incessant demands for coming to dinner, paying attention to said spouse, demanding busy work to keep player from the game, and the like.

Here the link to the long and meaty article:

 http://links.email.scientificamerican.com/ctt?kn=81&ms=Mzc3MjExNDYS1&r=NTM5ODIzNjAxNQS2&b=2&j=MTIyMTkzODI3S0&mt=1&rt=0

You will notice almost perfect form and function in the Korean winner short video. His elbows are hanging down, he is using appropriate tonus, and if we could get him to sit up a bit he would be all golden. Probably that folding chair is not the best.

 

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40th Anniversary: one story of the founding of Rolf Institute of Structural Integration

Posted on November 30, 2011 by Linda Grace

After a full year of investigation, I finally heard something about the legalities of the founding of the Rolf Institute of Structural Integration (RISI) in a bar in Boulder CO.

Over this past year I have asked everyone I know who could have been there what actually happened. Why did Ida Rolf decide to make a legal foundation as a repository for her work? How did that founding happen, actually? Why did the founding take the non-profit form?

Questions were out there: Ida Rolf started working way before 1972. Did she decide to do the founding because she knew she had cancer? Because she wanted to leave something of an inheritance to her children? She wanted to solidify the organization?

So, back to the Boulderado Hotel bar, October. I’m sitting in the bar with Joy Belluzzi, a Chevy Chase Rolfer™ who is married to one of Ida Rolf’s sons, Alan Demmerle, who is also at the table.  After a bit, their son Justin shows up, a recent graduate of the University of Chicago in philosophy, who knows really good brainy jokes.

Also around this small table: Dean Rollings, an old time Rolfer, whom I knew only slightly from afar, partly through a visit to his restaurant in Key West. He once helped lead a secession of the Florida Keys from the United States, in the ’90′s.

What I didn’t know was that Dean was busy in the early ’70′s as the Vice President of the proto-RISI. Ida Rolf was trying to get some continuity going for her demise, which looked seriously near, and had appointed Dean as V.P. of the proto-RISI and Joseph Heller as the President of the proto-RISI.

Alan, as I had ascertained before, knew nothing of the founding. He had been busy at his job in middle management at the National Institutes for Health. Joy knew nothing, even though she was Ida Rolf’s secretary at the end of Dr. Rolf’s life.

Dean was filling us in, from his viewpoint. We had all just been to a presentation where several other old-timers were on the dais and told mostly Ida stories, nothing about the legalities of the organization of RISI. This might have been a little aggravating to Dean, that nothing was said about this part of the anniversary. Maybe this sparked the stories, or maybe it was the Scotch.

Dean is probably about my age, 73, a huge difference between being that while I was spending time in the Mid-West playing oboe etc., he was at Esalen and knew all that personal growth stuff, got trained as a Rolfer™ and was one of Ida’s major go-to guys for Rolfing celebrities. He is smart, too, and noticed right away when Joseph Heller got a big fish supporter to offer Ida Rolf a million dollars for the rights to the work.

Right away, he knew that offer would take structural integration work down a whole other garden path, one of big money and big advertising and loss of control of the Ida-anointed teachers of the work, because any one would be able to teach in that scenario.  (Joseph Heller and Dean Rollings were not chosen by Ida Rolf to teach, whatever her reasons were.)

The million dollars was a lot of money in 1971.

Dean set to work and got the disparate players, Ida Rolf, the faculty members, Richard Stenstadvold, then the executive director of the school, and other players to agree to have the legal founding of RISI as a non-profit in the jurisdiction of San Francisco.

I think Dean was motivated by the loss of structural integration as a discipline, the possibility of the diaspora spreading out too quickly. He certainly doesn’t seem to be currently (or in the past) motivated by money or even wanting to teach, that necessary but oh-so-political choosing and being chosen which infests thoughts at RISI.

It is easy to see why the faculty supported the project of the non-profit founding; their self-interest was all there.

Dean and others were also interested in checks and balances, and made sure that a democratic governance was set up, with a Board of Directors elected from the membership. (Nowadays, there can be two outside Board Directors).

Dean was also interested in countering the offer from Joseph Heller. He managed to get folks together on having RISI make a payment of $20,000 a year for 20 years to Ida Rolf’s 2 grown children. This 20 years is long since up, paid and done. I remember during the ’80′s when Alan deferred receiving the payment through some bad times at RISI but we of RISI have long since honored the full of the agreement.

So, the trademarks including Rolfer™ and Rolfing®Structural Integration were established, to become a bone of contention to every other school who believes they should be able to use them.  The legal defense fund at RISI is alive and well, and spent into the 6 figures last year on the bad dogs.

Because of the haste of the last minute items of the founding, the “little boy logo”, which I have written about in these blogs, was not cleaned up by the artist, John Lodge, whom I personally heard bemoan not cleaning up the overnight drawing showing the rotations in a small boy’s structure before our use of it as a trademark.  The digital world has made that drawing even more needing clean-up, but it will need some lawyers and some filings.

Perhaps, that will happen in this year, young Rolfers™ are howling for it.

 

 

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Thanks Week: a testimonial

Posted on November 25, 2011 by Linda Grace

No name will be here on this testimonial.

This testimonial arrived about 6 months after the person’s standard basic 10 series was completed. I hadn’t seen hide nor hair of this person since the basic 10, until this card arrived from out of the blue, snail mail, no less.

“Dear Linda,
Do your ears burn around 2 pm every day? When I jump in the pool and fiercely kick those legs which for years
did the dead man’s float, I say, “Thank God for Linda Grace.”
My body feels much more like a unit—one I don’t half mind carting around.
Hope you are thriving.
Wishing you a warm holiday with many blessings,
_______”

I happen to have talent for doing this work and am very grateful to be living in a time in which this work exists.

Just think, to be born as Mickey Mantle in 1832 where the social construct didn’t exist for baseball.
What if Bill Gates had been born 10 years earlier and the 13 year old Bill didn’t have that school computer to program?
(Alrighty, enough already with comparing myself to celebrities.)

Of course, the reverse can happen as in today’s world, where the social construct has moved past many old movies that just don’t have the people that have the listening any more for them. Is the same thing happening to symphonic music?

There is a listening in the world now for Rolfing SI. Outliers are tuning into their bodies and learning
how to be structurally integrated. 1800 Rolfers are out there to meet them, many of them past the 10,000 hour goal for mastery of their subject. It is an optimum time for receiving the work and tuning into the body.

You just about have to be an outlier to show up for this work. You have to be able to get past the old
pain stories and the idea that you are just getting older and nothing can be done.

Fortunately, I like outliers. That person that sent me a snail mail card is a definite outlier, and one I truly appreciate.

Happy Thanksgiving to all my subscribers. I truly appreciate you, too.

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New Dance book tells all: Peterson’s “Dance Medicine”

Posted on November 13, 2011 by Linda Grace

It is a little of a mystery why dancers even do this art. There is physical struggle for hours upon hours through years to master the art. There are injuries and health and psychological problems common to the field. There is constant criticism, favoritism, and politics.

Then, after all this, a very short career with not much pay.

So why? It seems the pain and pay PALE to the glorious sight and feel of the dance for both audience and dancer.

Reading this book at first I had some trouble to tell to whom it was addressed.  I considered giving it to a certain 13 year old that I know, and asking if she could read it; then I realized that she could, because of the way it is written.

The information that is given is very sophisticated and yet plain in a  medical vocabulary way, and told in a way which can be understood by anyone willing to stick with it and follow the presentation. Terms are defined, and one goes from the general to the particular.

Peterson pulls no punches, can’t tell all in this brief meaty book, but gets the information out there in an available form that this is a whole body consideration. When she asks the rhetorical question which rings so well that we know that she heard that a few times, she tells the story with details, succinctly and from start to finish including pictures.

I have never seen a better explanation of the way the rib cage works with the spine.  As a Rolfer™ I would like to see that fleshed out with more about how the whole body goes with it, but one of us will have to write that book, the one that includes the structural and movement integration building on this book.

In short, this is the book that defines anatomy and kinesiology and physiology and psychology of the dance all together in about 150 pages.  There is so much to learn in here for a parent or teacher in such a short time that the book can be savored over and over again. http://www.amazon.com/mn/search/?ref_=nb_sb_noss&url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=dance%20medicine%20head%20to%20toe%20a%20dancer%27s%20guide%20to%20health%20paperback&x=0&y=0&rd=1

This could be a good primer for those who are not that interested in dance since the details and pictures are so well done, and the advice on performance issues goes right into daily life.  (How many are having knee problems and not even dancing!  This will explain.)

However, it is a dance book.  Judith Peterson M.D. has devoted much of her professional life to the care of dancers, and every page drips with her erudition, compassion, and love of the art.

Here, the trailer from the movie written by Lisa Niemi and performed by her and her husband Patrick Swayze, One Last Dance.  See if you can tell which knee Patrick Swayze trashed out when he was with the Joffrey Ballet.  (He hides it pretty well!)  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0157191/

Posted in function/movement, Linda L Grace, Mind body medicine, physical therapy, psychology, Rehabilitation Doctor | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Rolfing® Structural Integration definition in 32 words

Posted on October 29, 2011 by Linda Grace

Rolfing Structural Integration: a method of body knolling to the core. Plus function.  No knolled desk, even one of Tom Sach’s, has ever been into walking with a cross-crawl motion —– that I know of, heh heh.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-CTkbHnpNQ&feature=BFa&list=SPC39A0360F5799668&index=9/

 

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Oops, it is tomorrow: Linda presents at RISI in Boulder

Posted on October 27, 2011 by Linda Grace

The conference has started. Last night hearing and seeing the 7 Rolfers on the dais talking about their experiences with their training during the Esalen years, preceding the 40 years ago founding of the Rolf Institute, I began to think of those movement teachers of mine who were so influential to me, and who were or were not there.

Jim Asher was there.  He was the first Rolfer that I trained with who had actually cross-trained, both as a Rolfer and as a movement teacher.  He still is a model for what a Rolfer should be to me: someone who can have a foot in both worlds of the person/body and have those Moments where transformation occurs.  I have known Rolfers who fly in to work with him. As well, he is a cranial therapist who can also make cranial work with the rest of it: the structure and the function.

I missed Judith Roberts, and Louis Schultz, both Rolfers who cross-trained who were important to me, Louis as a mentor in my early days of the mid-years of the ’80′s and Judith as someone who saved my bacon as a professional when I worked in such a way as to damage my thoracic outlet in 1985.  She came to Philadelphia in that year, and I saw her once a month on her visits until I managed to embody a way of working that could allow me to continue.

I missed Janie French and Annie Dugan.  They were way ahead of their time at RISI.

I missed Rebecca Carli.  She has been so inspirational in the movement world in so many ways, and is the person I refer to as a practitioner as well, (what would Rebecca think of this!) since she is a performer herself and comes at Rolf Movement and Rolfing SI in a dual path, it is as one path.

I missed Hubert Godard, another refugee from the dance/performance world who has been so influential to me.  His French intellectual tradition combined with Rolfing SI and movement principles has driven me since first classes with him in Philadelphia. I love the way he teaches, and will never forget the first time we learned to jump (you can read my post on dunking in these blogs) and he didn’t teach us to land until the next year when he came back.  There were a lot of heavy landings.

There are a lot of good movement practitioners in the Rolfing world, many of whom have studied diligently, and are available at www.rolf.org.

These above are some of the ones I am thinking of as primary to my well-being and work as a Rolfer in the world, and I hope that none of them, the quick and the dead, would be embarrassed tomorrow.

Back in the present, this morning I got a call from my son Paul just before his rehearsal in Verizon Hall with the Philadelphia Orchestra, and I related to him that I had a performance anxiety dream last night.

The dream went like this: about 5 or 6 people showed up for my breakout session at 10:15 on Friday at the conference at the Boulderado Hotel.  After I said about three sentences, 3 or 4 of them walked out and the others were talking about where they would have lunch.

Paul said, “HA!  BAD DRESS REHEARSAL, GOOD PERFORMANCE!”

I wish I had replied, “From your mouth to the ears of the Tonic Postural Complex”, but it was too early for repartee here then.

 

 

Posted in Find a Rolfer, function/movement, Linda L Grace, Rolfer™ | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Old People Smell: Why?

Posted on October 18, 2011 by Linda Grace

Sitting downstairs in Pumpkin Market for lunch a couple days ago, I overheard 2 interns from the hospital down the street giving a really hard time to one of their supervisors.  The guy didn’t sound as bad as one I had heard of who actually had an artery flopping around and spraying the surgical room with blood, but the 2 proto-M.D.’s were after him, mouthing off about him.

The culmination of their tirade was: He smells like an old person.

Since I am 73 years old, I am a li’l sensitive to these concerns.   I’m hoping that someone will tell me when and if this happens(or has already happened!), though I am not sure anything can be done about it.

It is common.  We can all remember walking into our elderly one’s homes, and smelling the “old person”, and maybe even have had the experience of smelling this elsewhere.

Last year I went to a concert at the Philadelphia Convention Center and smelled the “old person” smell. The Philadelphia Chamber Music Society puts on all kinds of great chamber music, including that event, the Johannes Quartet.

I arrived a little too late to select a good seat, though still 5 minutes before the concert.  As I walked down the aisle to the front to see if a seat was left down there, I smelled old people.  At the time I thought, these people wear the same clothes to every concert without having them cleaned.

But no. Since then I have been around old people who are meticulous about hygiene and still have that smell.

So, what is also going on?

I’ve been asking around.  One of the early answers was “dehydration, not enough water in the tissues”, from a fellow Rolfer™.

Today, back at the Pumpkin Market, Jude struck up a conversation with my dog Tito, and then with me. (I am used to playing second fiddle around my cute little Havanese.)

He says, “It is entropy, dead material is accumulating.”

Both of these answers have possibilities for prevention, I think.

Are we drinking enough water so that our tissues can stay hydrated? (One way to check this: what color is your pee (ok, urine)?  If it is lighter, it is better.  Then drink just enough water to maintain that color, even if your older bladder is talking.

Now about the dead matter accumulating. Are we still exercising? Still having some sort of bodywork that keeps the fluid tissue transfer system operating optimally for where we are?

There is a little old lady in her ’80′s who walks around this neighborhood with her walker every day.

SHE IS MY NEW HERO.  She doesn’t smell.

 

Posted in bodywork, function/movement, Rolfing Structural Integration, Rolfing the elderly | Tagged , | 4 Comments

You Will Never Be Lonely Again

Posted on October 8, 2011 by Linda Grace

Since I read that the above title is the most popular blog title of all time, I have been wanting to try it out.  What would this do for my blog “spiders and feeds”?

The back of my mind has been running this program for a couple of weeks: how can the best most popular blog title in the world of pixels be related to Rolfing SI?

Though not totally ready on this question, I must tell my research so far. It began with a friend’s idea for her show-and-tell at a health fair out West.

She will have postcards, which folks who visit her table can mail to relatives or others from whom they have been estranged. Perhaps some hurtful words and acts have turned them away from each other, and a kind communication could start with a postcard.

Immediately I thought: One could mail a card to one’s disowned self!

Imagine, someone comes in my office and says some dissociative remark, maybe, “I hate my posture!” and BANG I’ve got them addressing a postcard to themselves!

Isn’t this more constructive than, “You poor thing, you’ve got the world on your shoulders!”

Perhaps the postcard could say, “Even though I completely and totally hate you slumpy shoulders and sticking out hurty neck, I completely and totally accept you.”

The body listens to good and to bad talk about itself; so why not be a little constructive about the talk?

The big question is, Are you listening, spiders and feeds?

Postscript on Oct. 18: Spiders and feeds have already tripled this month.

 

 

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