Ida Rolf in Her Own Words: Lecture & Demo at Esalen (1967 Recording)

Welcome to Voices of Escaline, I'm Sam Stern. Today it's my genuine delight to open up our archives and share a rare and remarkable recording from Escaline's storied past, a talk and live demo by the one and only Ida Rolf, founder of Structural Integration, or as most folks have come to call it "Rolfing". So first, what is "Rolfing"? It's a form of bodywork that's some report as kind of painful but very effective. Rolfing proposes that through precise and thoughtful realignment of our connective tissues profound shifts in our physical and emotional well-being become possible. In this episode, you'll hear Ida Rolf lecture, which is exciting in and of itself. I don't think there's a lot of "Rolf" material out there in the world, and then you'll hear her do a demo on a volunteer, and even without visuals, the vividness of her demonstration will bring you right there into the room with her, allowing you to fully appreciate this woman's dynamic presence and to sense the precision of her approach. This really is a masterclass. According to the book The Upstart Spring by Walter Trude Anderson, Ida Rolf first came to Escaline on the invitation of that legendary Gestalt therapist Fritz Pearls. She gave Pearls a session a day for a week, and on the seventh day he passed out, as she was in the process of "reorganizing" his neck. At first causing her some concern, but when he emerged from unconsciousness, he said the experience had brought him back to a specific trauma where an anesthesiologist had twisted his neck during a procedure, which had in turn bothered him for decades. He became an ardent supporter of Rolfing, and Ida Rolf returned to Escaline regularly after that, and Escaline became the West Coast Center of Rolfing, much as Fritz Pearls had made Escaline the West Coast Center of Gestalt therapy. So prepare yourself for an hour rich with insight, humor, and genuine wisdom delivered by the one and only Ida Rolf. For a short description of the evening's program, I'd like to read directly from the October issue of psychology today. There is an article that has pictures of Dr. Rolf doing some Rolfing and a very nice description of what the technique is. The theory and technique of structural integration, Rolfing, as it is called, is largely the creation of Ida Rolf. Dr. Rolf earned her PhD in biochemistry and physiology at Columbia in 1920, was for 12 years an associate in biochemistry at the Rockefeller Institute and has, for the last 40 years, worked in applied physiology, perfecting the manipulative techniques that constitute the practice of structural integration. If I sound a little nervous, it's because I'm going to be the model tonight. Dr. Rolf. Thank you for your welcome, ladies and gentlemen. I'm just being a little amused at our model. He doesn't realize that this model fever disappears in only an hour. So if you just be patient for the best part of an hour, I think you'll find in beginning to smile and do a little less, have his knees shaking a little bit less. Now I don't know how many of you here have heard me speak before. Would you hold up your hands? Well, I hate to tell you that you're in a vast minority. So will. Wasn't this thing come out? Sure it does. Interrupt me when I get so interested in what I'm saying that I forget to say it to you. But we'll begin at the beginning. You people here are members of the growth center, or at least guests of a growth center. And as you know, all growth centers around this country, as far as I know, are dedicated to one proposition. Secondly, the enhancement of human potential. They assume that you can grow. Now I don't know how many of you have stopped to think about this situation. I remember, and it's not that long ago, when the idea that an adult human being could grow was an absolutely ridiculous notion. According to a standard practice, according to the classics, according to Mr. Aristotle, and all the people who descended from him, a man grew in terms of years. And during those years he grew to a peak. He grew to an intellectual and to a physical peak in his early 20s and 30s. And from there his progression was downward. From there aging, so called, satin. And this was his growth. This was normal growth when I was a young woman. To see you are here tonight examining a premise which is the exact opposite of this. And this premise deals not merely with the physical body and its potentialities, but it deals also with the psychological body and its potentialities. Those of you who are here who are in the psychological profession, psychotherapeutic profession recognize that it's very few years since the same assumption of government, the field, mainly that a child came into the world with a certain IQ. And nothing after that changed it. To remember the assumption that people had and many of them still had, but I hope they're not in this room, that I quote unquote, was a set and relatively unchanging thing. I did it this way. I felt that way when I was angry, I. And this was I and nobody expected to change it. And you hear in this growth center and in every other growth center around the country are challenging this assumption. And I am here to tell you why it is possible for you people to successfully challenge it. In both the physical and the psychological realms, because actually the psychological realm is an expression of the physical being, the physical body. And it is possible, it is simple, relatively, to deal with that physical body. That physical body is a something which is out in the physical world. You can see it, you can touch it, you can affect it. And in seeing it and feeling it and touching it and affecting it, you are changing its psychological responses to its environment. Now this is a big order. The reason why it was not understood 50 years and 30 years ago that this was possible is because two premises concerning human beings had not been examined. And it is necessary if we consider that we are going to change human beings, human personalities that we first look at what constitutes a personality. And what can we change in a personality? And what is there in this human being that stands in front of us here, that we can expect to change and expect to change so quickly and so startlingly that the neighbors can see it and a man can feel it. Can we change his anatomy? How hardly? Because an anatomy is a slow moving situation. Bones are bones and they change, but they change slowly. But the physiology, the function of the man is another situation. Physiology changes and it changes with all moods that you have. It changes with all illnesses that you have. It changes with all joys that you have. It changes period. So in other words, if we go out and look for physiology and how to affect physiology, we may have the key to the situation in our hands. And this is what we are proposing to do here. [BLANK_AUDIO] to look at how to change physiology in human beings because the physiology, the function of the man, is what is the man. So that this is what we are going to look at, and then we are going to try to call your attention and nothing more to the fact that the psychology of the man reflects his physiology. And the psychology of the man, as you all know, can be profoundly affected. There is no question about this through psychotherapeutic methods. But it takes longer. It's not as openly demonstrable, shall I say, as what you will see us experimenting with here tonight. So that this is what I am talking about. Now in terms of physiology, it is not a new idea. It is an old idea. But if you are going to look at a man, you must look up a man in terms of his environment. That a man never exists except in an environment. That the man modifies the environment, but more than that, much more than that, the environment modifies the man. Now if you look at an environment in those terms, you begin to wonder what are you talking about. And all of a sudden you know what you are talking about. Because the most universal force in the environment that surrounds every one of us is the force of gravity. And gravity works on us for one reason and one reason alone. It is our environment for one reason and one reason alone. And that reason is that we as human bodies are masses, material masses. And as material masses, we are operating within three dimensional space. And as material masses operating within three dimensional space, we must means obey the laws of any material mass operating in three dimensional space. And that is the set of generalizations that we name mechanics. Mechanics is actually a study, a registration of the laws which masses behave in a gravitational space. Now there was a time. And again, it is not that long ago when we consider a mass as being a physical material, something. And that is what it was. But the days are changing and the idea which came in within this century that actually any material mass is a special aggregate of energy. This idea is beginning to come into our consciousness and to be used by us to examine this sort of thing. So all of a sudden we begin to realize that when we are talking about a man in an environment, we are talking about a material aggregate that is operating in an energy field, the field of gravity. And now we begin to have something new, something that we can begin to look at and say, we have here a new set of premises. Where will it take us? You remember some of you I'm sure that Mr. Kozybski used to say, if you're going to work by grandpa's premises, you get to grandpa's conclusions because grandpa was pretty smart too. And if you're going to go further than grandpa went, you have to get some new ideas, some new premises. And here you have them. Now there are a couple of other new ideas which you don't get just by looking at it, but you do get in terms of what comes out from what we do. And that basic premise on which all our work of healing as such depends, all our work of organizing bodies, all our work of increasing the vitality of bodies depends. That idea is the recognition of the fact that bodies are unbelievably plastic materials. And if you go to the dictionary, you find Mr. Webster says that a plastic is something which can be deformed without breaking. It can be deformed to a great extent, extensively, without breaking. And I say to you, yes, this is one definition of a plastic. The other definition of a plastic is that it can be reformed without breaking. And people come to grief, come to their griefs by virtue of the fact that these bodies of theirs have been being deformed under the pool of gravity since they were born. And nobody has gotten around to reforming them because nobody has really taken a good look at the fact that it is a plastic body and therefore can be reformed. Now, let's look a little deeper and realize that this body of ours can be reformed by virtue of the fact that it is a consolidation of segments. It is not a solid something. It is not a tree trunk. It is not a cylinder of steel. It is a group of segments, one stacked on top of the other. And the whole thing bound in an elastic sack. I sometimes call it a shopping bag. I sometimes say that the good Lord didn't trust these dumb guys. He was afraid they might lose some of their segments and he put them all into a shopping bag. And this almost literally is true. You can see those segments are really bony segments. And those bony segments are surrounded and are held in place by soft, so called soft tissue, flesh, muscles, eventually skin. And the second thing is a skin shopping bag that keeps us where we belong. Now, it is on the basis of this idea that you can begin to change the structure of human beings. And it is because that soft elastic tissue can be changed by the addition of energy to it. The position of that soft elastic tissue can be changed. And if it is the position of the bones shifts. Now, slightly, I'm not saying that you're going to take your arm and put it in between your leg and your torso. We don't do things like that. But we very often get arms from where they don't belong to where they do belong. And this can be done, as I say, by virtue of the elasticity that the plasticity of this soft tissue. [BLANK_AUDIO] Now the function of the bones, this is another idea that you have to look at and realize that you're shifting around considerably from what you were taught in high school or in college. In college you were taught, or in really more elementary than that, in elementary school, in grade school and in high school, you were taught that bones held the body up. This is not so except in a very special sense. Bones hold soft tissue apart. Those of you who can't in the days when a tent was instructive that looked like that, remember what it was like to put that tent pole in under the plastic canvas. You had to get your tent pole precisely formed. In order that you could take your canvas and you could tie it down with diorokes so that the left side counterbalanced the right side. And either they balanced and balanced well or when the winds really struck that night, the tent was down on top of you. The right side balanced the left side. The left side pulled down in order to pull the right side up and the same thing was true of the front and the back. A body is rather like that. There are other things to realize about a body. It's not a squat single thing like a tent pole, like a tent plus tent pole. It's more like a series of blocks and those blocks need to be stacked and you people all realize that you were all of two years old when Uncle Joe gave you some blocks and it didn't take you very long to know that if you were going to get a stable stacking of blocks, you could only stack it in one fashion. And we'll see a little bit more of that in the pictures that I'm going to show presently. The centers of gravity of each block had to be in a vertical line with the center of gravity of the block above and the block below before it was possible for those blocks to form a stable form. And this is part of the story of bodies. All bodies can be looked at as being aggregate of blocks, big blocks. I mean blocks like the head, the thorax, the pelvis, the legs. And for a stable arrangement, the centers of gravity of those individual blocks has to be above the center of gravity of the one below it and below the center of gravity of the one above it. Otherwise you have an unstable arrangement. And in as much as your blocks are contained in this shopping bag I was talking about, that shopping bag which has now miraculously sprouted nerves and feelings is beginning to be aware that at certain places it is feeling strange and pain and all your back hurts you so much that as you sit on the floor you're not that comfortable. Now this is the problem of blocks. There is another way that you can look at it. You say well how do they get that way? There are lots of ways they get that way. They get that way the time the baby falls out of the high chair. They get that way the time the toddler falls down the cellar steps. They get that way the time the seven or eight year old falls off the roof, the porch roof, and the teenager is thrown from the automobile onto the freeway. Now many times bones do not break. And everybody says, Mama says, oh you know Jimmy was so lucky he fell out of the apple tree the other day and would you believe that nothing happened to him. What Mama really is saying is that there were no bones sticking out of his skin so she didn't take him to a doctor. And if she had taken him to a doctor except the bones was sticking out of his skin, the doctor would have said well aren't you lucky nothing happened to Johnny. Because the doctor who is a specialist in chemical methods is not a specialist in general in physical methods that sees that a shoulder is displaced or a rib is slightly displaced or something of this sort, not broken but displaced. And this displacement now is an area of pain and of trouble because as muscles, as energy travels through muscles it can't get through that place that is now displaced it has to go around it. And that place hurts and it hurts for three or four days and then it stops. And Johnny says, gee I'm feeling better and Mama says, oh God was good to us. And Mama doesn't know and Johnny doesn't know that the reason why it stops hurting is because this point which has taken the brunt of the strain has now distributed some of its burden to another place. This A puts off some of its misery onto spot B and spot B takes it on for a couple of days and then spot B gets sick and tired of the job. And it pushes some out to C and after a while C distributed to D and B distributed all over the place. And so presently you have the kind of body that we call a random body. And by a random body we mean that as we look at those bodies they don't seem to match. The head is way out in front. The hips in a girl they may be size 18 and she takes a size 10 waist in a size 18 skirt. In a boy, lots of things go wrong with these boys. They get their chest fallen down and their dairy is coming up behind and a great big hump in the middle of their back. And this is what happened to them when they fell out of that apple tree and God was good to them, nothing happened. I had an actual happening of this sort one time in New York. A young man came in as a model. He also was shaking in his boots and had model fever for an hour. His story was. He was at this point I would say about 35 to 40. His story was that since he had been a teenager he had had a great deal of trouble with his legs particularly with his knees and they hurt all the time. And he had gone to doctor after after after doctor. And he had finally come to the man who was the partner of the woman who was President Kennedy's doctor Trevelle. On this man had said yes he'd seen two cases like this in his life and it was called so and so. And since it was now called so and so my model settled back and decided he was going settle suffer with this for the rest of his life. Until somebody said why don't you go up and see those people on the 73rd street see what they have to say. And so he came in as a model and we started to work with him my son Dick does most of the work around my house and all of a sudden I said Dick come on let's go down see what kind of a coccyx that guy has. And a two of us got into this boy's coccyx and it nearly killed him for one thirty second of one of a minute. It was awful and then all of a sudden it was over and he was gleaming and pink and white and finally he looked up and as smile was from here to here and he said oh that's wonderful. I said yes now tell me about the time that you fell down when you were skating. Skating? Oh I wasn't skating I was roller skating and I was roller skating down this flight of concrete stairs. And I said yeah how old were you? Oh seven or eight. And this is the story this is the true story of that particular man there are lots more stories like that around. Anyway this is the sort of thing that happens. This is a sort of thing that makes bodies random. They no longer match. They no longer work economically with economic energy. And in order for that man, for example, to walk, he had to literally drag himself. He had to tell himself that he had to walk. Now, plenty of people don't have that problem. I have some other problem. But you see, this man had to take three times as much energy to walk, as was necessary for a man who was balanced to walk. And that energy that he took to walk, he couldn't use in his business. He couldn't use to play tennis. He couldn't use to do any of the things which we spend our energy on and think we're not happy without spending our energy in this way. And this is the story of the random body and of the random population. Now, the way you get them out of this randomness is to know how they should look. In the mind of the practitioner, there must be an understanding of what that model should look like. You people can begin to get this kind of an understanding tonight by taking the model who stands in front of you and visualizing him as a set of blocks and how do those blocks go. And how would you wish to see those blocks? And how do you see those blocks? And what must be changed to get those blocks stacked vertically, one on the other? And this is the story of what we do. It is not the story of how we do it. It is the story of what we do. And you will see a certain amount of how we do it. But one of the booby traps in this system is that it looks so simple that you go home and you try it on your mother-in-law. Now, you may think I'm joking, but this has happened to me. I, one time, spoke to, I don't know, at least three or 400 people in Metara-Practic College in Canada. And this introductory talk was an introduction to a course I was going to give six weeks later, something that saw. I was down-- no, they were sitting in the lower auditorium. And I was up on the platform above them. And you can figure out how big this auditorium was and how much they could see. So I got back six weeks later, and a kid walked up to me. And he said, you know, that system of yours isn't any good. I said, no, good. How did you find out? He says, well, I saw you work. And I went home. I tried it on my mother-in-law. My mother-in-law has a bad heart, and she has bright disease. It didn't help any. So don't try it on your mother-in-law. You won't find-- you won't-- you won't-- you won't be knowing that much tonight, unless you really want to kill her. Anyway, as I say, this is a movie trap. It looks so simple. But it is a fairly complicated situation. It is a situation where you have to do a great deal of studying, a great deal of understanding about how these segments of the body are held together, and even more important, how these segments of the body are held apart, before you are ready to try to change a body. But to me, I never worked with a body without getting a thrill. And my thrill comes from the recognition that you can change a body. And you can do it in relatively very short time. Our standard practice is to work with people for about 10 hours. At the end of that time, we know that if we've done our work properly, these bodies are balanced in terms of their muscular components. They are balanced right side against left side, and front side against back side. But most important of all, they are balanced outside against inside. The long muscles that make up the surface of the body are neither too flexed nor too tense to be able to balance against the short muscles that hold the spine where it has to be held to keep these muscular patterns in their own position. So that what I am saying to you tonight is that the key for health, for well-being, for vigor, for women vitality is relationship. It is balanced. Now realize that you cannot get balance except you relate that physical material body into a gravitational field. This is what we offer you that none of the more classical systems of manipulation have ever offered. Some of these older systems have ever taken into consideration that you cannot get so called posture except as you have structure. Structure is relationship. Its relationship wherever you use the word structure, you are really talking about a relationship. You talk about this beautiful structure. You are talking about the way the top relates to the middle relates to the floor. The shape of the ground. All of this is implied. When I say I was in a beautiful structure tonight. Structure wherever you use it is relationship and it is particularly relationship of parts in a body. Now posture is something else again. And the boys that devised the word posture knew what that something else was because the word posture means it has been placed. It is the past participle of a Latin word "poneray" to place. It means it has been placed. And when you use the word posture you are saying it has been placed. Somebody has placed something somewhere. Somebody is maintaining the placement of something somewhere. Somebody is working to keep something placed somewhere. And I guarantee that there is no one in this room who doesn't know that in this day and age of the, what is it, 19th, 20th century, last part of it, last quarter of it, that to keep any of these bodies in posture takes effort. Constant continuous effort. And when you have to make effort concerning anything in your body, it is a very bad sign. You don't usually interpret it in the view of the next words, but as I see a man struggling to maintain posture, I know that he is losing his fight with gravity. That's one item, and I know that his structure is not in balance because if his structure is in balance, his posture automatically is good. Poster is what you do with structure. There is the way you relate parts of the body to each other. And if you are really going to understand what I'm talking about tonight, a little meditation on those two words wouldn't do any harm. Because you see in meditating on posture and meditating on structure, you can ask the same questions. You can ask the question of, now see here, if I alter this structure, what can I hope to get from it? Similarly you can say, if I alter this posture, what can I hope to get from it? This is a big question. And you ask any of your MD friends, and they'll say, "Oh, Rod, nothing." So you change those relations, you change that structure, and you get the kind of ease and the kind of vitality that you have seen some of your friends get who have gone through this system of structural integration. Now these are some of the ideas behind what we do. - Okay, now, we're about 10 minute break, not more. While even they're out, we can move around, and then come back, and we will have a demonstration on this wide model, and again, you know, of his model fees. - That's a wonderful idea. - We all can welcome thanks. (audience applauding) He's also timing out to look, stand up here, and let you switch your blocks in while they belong with reference to him. Now if you do this, what do you see? I hope all of you are noticing the great weakness that there is at his knees. And those knees prevent his also, really getting support from below. They disorganize the way the leg fits into the wall, and because of this, because of the lack of support, you get a feature of a failure of the rib cage. The ribs are too far down. If you are making a statue of man, you wouldn't want those ribs to come down in this fashion. You would want a better, common-to-it rib cage, and you would know that that common-to-it rib cage would do a better job in getting the body austenated. Now, hot and like you shouldn't notice is the way any person lies down. What part of the lies having a really relaxed on the floor? How does arms lie? As a matter of fact, they're not there. So I am delighted to come in this nice positive little statement. And his legs, you see, it's not apparent to you as this gentleman lies flat, that he has as much of a problem. In other words, his problem is the problem of support. His problem is the problem of losing man's gravitational fight. Now, we teach that the pelvis is the important item of the body. It is the central item of the body. Most of you have heard that in various teachings of common, otherwise, for good many years. But we also teach that because this is what we see. When we go to work as we're going now, what we are going to do is to try to loosen the upper part of the body so that it is not squishing down on that pelvis. And we're going to loosen the legs so that the pelvis can settle itself back on those legs to get better support. And we're not going to do as much work on the knees as we should do for this gentleman's weak knees. But on the other hand, there's only a little to the mouth that you can do with a body at any one given time. Other than that, you just overwork that body and get given to trouble. So we're going to work. You can start and I'll be with you in a minute. Now, the main point you should be looking at at this point is the demonstration of how the model is breathing. Now, I'll take another breath. Here's how I'm already beginning to raise his breath from the abdomen, up into the chest, which is good, which is where it should be, which is talking about the fact that it will not be that difficult to organize that with cage. And one of us doing is going in to the places where these various muscles stick together, and we lose those muscles together. Now, you can begin to see that his breathing is getting very much freer. And probably in a minute, you'll be able to see that there is a wager extension of that rib cage on the right side and there is on the left. Now, I'm going to breath. You begin to see the difference in the way those two sides are responding. It feels very light. I've tried to move in on a thick, flawless minor now. It's dramatic. I'm trying to get a little soft, so it's no trouble. Well, I think most of you can see that this side is changing very much. Anybody crawling with that statement? And you have a trouble seeing. This is not good. [silence] It feels much different going in the strap. Very light, different. Would you like to talk to them just tell them how you feel? My right side feels very much alive and my arm felt different right at that point. And so, let's get to the center of the right. I feel much more expanded. It feels more like there's more of me. You feel there's more air in the right side? Well, more air. If I was looking at myself, I would expect this portion to be larger. Would you like to talk to them about the question of pain at this point? Emma had his hand underneath me. It felt like he had a full of skin or something, but I don't believe you did. Did you have a full of skin? You were moving it. Well, it really hurt. The most pain was the very last thing when you dug very deep in there. Otherwise, it hasn't been as painful as I had thought it was going to be at this point. I told you it'll be a model that is coming quickly. Was I loud enough? I want to see something more than right on the head. I don't like that. Now, this is what I want to get. How do you like that? It feels okay. You know, the female of the species is more deadly than the male? Not yet. I must have lost my strength. You're getting there. Oh, yeah. There's one point where you're digging in there. Yeah, right there. Yeah, I don't try it, but. I feel more symmetrical. Now, feeling a little lighter, seems to be a little stuck in here still. I knew I could finally get around to it. You know, you wouldn't be getting your money's worth if you didn't get some pain. I expect to hurt for two weeks. That's better, that's better. Now this is the normal response. Oh, good. Oh boy. Now, your elbow comes straight out. Elbow straight out. Move it. That's it. And it's straight in. Straight in. I mean, but in now. Straight in. Oh, move it in now. Okay. Straight out. Straight out. Easy, easy. Straight in. Oh. Now. Do you feel how differently that's moving now? Not a big difference from the other time except that I can feel the pain. I can't see though, I can't see. Okay. Doctor, what did you do? I worked on this at all. I told you before that the whole basis of this is to organize the places and the ways in which muscles lie. So why did it was to organize the places and the ways the muscles lay in them? I'm saying in this back, in this front, and then, etc. You can't just say, "Oh, you take so and so, you do so." Sure. Sure, you can see it with your eyes. My right arm feels very light. Feels like it's about ready to go. Now, let this arm go around like this. Good. And now, let this arm go around. Can all of you see the difference in weight and fashion in which this doesn't have a symmetric balance pattern? I felt like a hinge thing, not quite doing the right thing. Somebody needs to get in there with an oil can. We'll be there. Now, how'd you get out of this job? I don't know. I can't figure out. A woman doesn't know when she's my lord. That's feeling better, I think. Could you describe what you do? No. I'm sorry, I can't. I have all I can do to do it. It has to be on his back. I told you we were loosening the thorax. You don't want it to get a change of respiration. And then I wanted to get it up or all his life. He's been trampping it down, shaking down the contents like you shake down the socket and sugar. Now you've got to get it up and get it all. And that's what the mount's doing. The way you're working now feels very much the same as the way I'm going to start. Yes, my reaction to it feels different. Good. Keep going. I feel very light in the head. Wow, there's a picture. Now, as everybody will see, there are different parts of that ribcage and that thorax that are moving now. And we're moving before. And he seems to have a ribcage which is much more adequate for a man of his size. Now let's see what we can get from him. I'm going to put the people in your chin back. How's that? I feel something in here anymore. Good. Now, you wouldn't be giving you any sort of work if you weren't getting something. You wouldn't be able to tell all the people next week how gallantly you would spend your time. Well, I'm taking a breath. Just further up. You lose a further down. Oh, come on. You rest a minute while I do this. Now let your elbow come straight out and straighten. Now, what's going on in there? Oh, a lot of energy going through there. Everybody here, what he said. He said there was a lot of energy going through there. What else? Sure. Where the muscles of the arms come from? Oh, yes they do. Otherwise the arms would drop off. I hate to tell you but these are the facts of life. Tell them what you're feeling about that. I feel very expanded in a lot of air and energy rushing through. You just turned on my nervous system. You feel as though you're suffering. Some of these people are looking down here and saying, "I'm giving you a terrible time." Do you feel that? No, the pain, and I wouldn't call it suffering, is only at the very end. And I think you stop when you detect the pain. But it does hurt just because you come into it. Could you verify or say it is not so? When I say that the pain is only while we're actually giving you pressure. The pain goes away. It's quite immediately. And not only does it quite immediately but you feel high. Exactly. See, about 15 million people, more or less, have told me the same thing. So I know. Now, I wonder how many of you, as you look at our models, see that you've got a chest, the thorax that looks good to you. And as you come down here, you get an upper leg and groin pelvis that looks inadequate for that chest. And as you saw, I hate to see you guys go out because you'll be afraid of the pain. chest before all those. You like that? From my right shaking with you. Yeah, surely shaking. The shaking because I haven't made the proper change to balance it, what you're protecting is imbalance. Now, would you draw your knees up, "Oh, your chest, please?" And put one hand on each knee and drop it gently to you, slowly, slightly. Do one and then the other and feel it. Do you feel that movement starts at the bottom of your spine and moves up or if you do not feel it, where do you feel it blocked? I don't know about a blockage, but I'm reacting to what you said that my, that from here down, feels inadequate. And if that's the same thing that I agree with what you said, it feels like my legs are thin and inadequate. You know, yes, inadequate. Now, can take your knees and pitch them from side to side, not roll them, but pitch. No, you're rolling. If I turn to the pitch and roll from one hand to the other, you do this and you do back. With my hand. Yeah. Don't hang on to a pitch from and let go of them so that a person can. Should they be together? I don't care how they are. Look, don't you do it. This is pasted movement so that it tests what's going on. You see, you're getting older yourself from the bottom of your spine. I'm not sure what you said. I don't know. Turn around your side. Now, you are about to have a very remarkable experience, about to be initiated into a very fancy club sorority fraternity. This is the fraternity of the Ralph Albo. You'll find. Now all of them is all over the country, all over the world. How does that feel? Terrible. No, I wouldn't say terrible. Good close. No. No, it is not terrible, but it does approach it. Now just to the moment that Jarvan very vulnerable, the position man. I don't feel it. And this is part of where this inadequacy is going to be told. Oh, that's. Yeah, I know. Now turn on your back. Now, draw your knees up and test first one and then the other. Feel the difference? I like what you feel. I couldn't label it, but there's a difference. Does it feel sturdier? Does it feel smoother? Does it feel. Well, I'm trying to. He has also looks bigger. Well, I know you're feeding me words and I say sturdier is very cool. You like sturdier best. Now, keep your. When you're knee down, get your hand on your knee. Right, and hang on to it. For all your work. For all your work. And if you think you're going to break it the same, you're not. No. It just feels that way. Keep pulling. Keep pulling. Good. Now. Now try this again. Now try the other one and see whether you can compare them. Well, it feels like it's already gone. Yes, it feels like it's oiled. But I think that you can detect something else in there. It isn't only that there's. It's oil, but that there seems to be more orbit. And then people are sitting back here would say, "Yes, that's what it's supposed." There seems to be just more orbit. I'm not trying to solve this. This leg seems to be in less shape than the other. Have you any idea why? Have you ever had an accident living? No. Do you remember as a child being aware of any difference between the two legs or having a feeling that my legs are as good as the other kids? Oh, well, I just do my legs. Then you never tried to be aware of it. Yeah, I was on the track. I haven't worked. Well, I was good on the track, too. People often all look quite inadequate legs. There. Are you beginning to feel that under my hand it feels as though there's more leg there? All of these questions sound so silly, but can you explain that? No, you're exactly right. No other way to put it. Now, try not on your back. I'm going to try pumping the first one leg and then the other one. Now, everybody back here see how this leg seems to go straight. This leg pulls around. Do this one. You see it pulls all kinds of things with. Now, keep pulling. No. Pull it straight up here nose unless you're going too much to your shoulder. Keep pulling. Keep pulling. Now, you. Yeah, it was coming around. That's right. It was without pattern and now it's going straight back and forth. Now, I'm going both of those things up. Don't think you're going to like this too much either. Keep pulling. It's going to go large size difference in the way that pelvis sits. Keep pushing. Keep going. Keep going. Go. Go. Go. Go. Now, I'm walking to you to see how she came back that way. A very big release. I mean release. No, I mean release and a charge of energy. Did you see a little as your leg went down here? You adjusted within your pattern as you could not have done before. Let them come down again. That's it. Now, let them come down here and see what's happy to you. You see how you make a pattern there that is no longer random. You're getting to be balanced. Now, stretch your legs out please. Then you lose together. That's it. I'm not growing this up. I'm not laughing again. I'm not getting a whole body again. And see if you like what you feel. So it feels like you were young again, eh? Eight years old or something? 18. No, that's a young, that's a young play, but 18. Eight. I don't remember when I was a. All right. I'm going to wash my hands a bit right here, and then work a little on your neck. And you people in the meantime can look and see that his head and his neck seem to fit for the pattern very much more poorly. You see that the pattern has been established through the rest of the body. But when you come to his head and his neck, it looks as though somebody had thrown his head at him and it had stuck. You all notice that I'm very, very, very complimentary to models. Why anybody will ever take on the job I'll never know. I want to. I want to agree that my shoulders feel very high in my. They feel high right now. They move high. Yeah, well, like. I think they might even say they are. [Piano music] Now I know. [Piano music] Oh. [Piano music] [Piano music] Now what does that do for your shoulders, honey? They don't feel as high. Right. So turn your hands to the left. Keep turning. Turn to the left. Turn to the shoulders. Keep. [Piano music] [Piano music] [Piano music] How's it feel now? Cockat. You want to know how it is now? Cockat. [Piano music] Now turn your head more. Now that's it. Keep going. Go on. Keep going. Keep going. [Piano music] Keep going. No mind. I do. If you just had to come up, I believe that there's lich. I always carry something in my bag. Now I don't see how it feels. It feels more symmetrical but a little cocky, too. Like how that. Does cockat have any lost? Less, but I feel it. All right. Are you gonna do more? Except the wrong thing. [Piano music] Tell mine. Come apart if the seams is all right. We put together again. Chin. Good. Now at this point, are you beginning to feel how your shoulders are starting down? Now very gently draw your chin in and see how you're connected down through your spine now. Can you see that spine going all the way down? That's quite different from what it was, isn't it? Well, I didn't try it before but it feels very. No, but I would think that you might know that. You might know it's from painously. Now just turn your tail on that. That's it. And lift. Now let your waist line come down. Easy, slowly, slowly. Let your waist line go down to the floor in the middle. Now, how's that? I feel like I'm very, very flat on the mat. Yes, now turn your tail under one sole. Right. Oh, yeah. Oh, that's why I was telling you to do what my ass is in English. [laughter] That's very, very good. Easy, guys. You've still got a problem around the toxic here which I'm not going to be able to drop. That you waistline. [laughter] You waistline. And then just turn and lie down. Right, right. And just bring your chin in and feel how you connect through. That's pretty nice. Well, very good. No, I definitely do. Now sit up and put your far up here in English. Keep going. [sighs] Good. Now, how's that feeling? I'm not getting a big reaction as an answer to this. All right. Not bringing your head up straight up. Feel where up is. Not back. That's up. No, it's back. That's up. Can you feel now that that's up? You'd be surprised how few people are on the world with nowhere up is. Yeah. I was picking up at whatever else I was doing. Yeah. Would you like to stand up please? On the mat? No. [applause] Now try putting your feet straight forward. Your feet straight forward. Look down at them. Your toes in. Now, I'm just doing tiny little sitting right in here. Easy doesn't. Keep going. Easy, easy. Now come straight up. Up. Good. Now sit again. Up. Sit again. Huh? I'll see how that feels. That's better. It feels very different. Yeah. Do you have anything more you'd like to say to your friends and neighbors? Well, the biggest thing that I'm feeling right now is that I know that my feet felt like back. My legs, the knee felt like back when I started. And I don't think I can do that right now. Can you feel how much your waistline has come back? I feel very straight, I don't know. Yeah. And your chest has come up. I can turn it so we can see you. Oh, yes, I'm sorry. Oh no. I feel so charged with energy. I don't know what I look like. Okay. Thank you for listening to Voices of Escaline. Today's show is produced in conjunction with Cheryl Levine. Our theme music is by Nico Holliman. Until next time, be well. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)