Notes on Coaching Movement, Part Two
/A Map
Whether your client is seeking your help for better artistic or athletic performance, or for deeper personal embodiment, your role as coach is to accompany her on a journey through her body. As “tour guide”, you need understanding, empathy, rapport, and creativity. These were the themes of Part One of these notes.
You also need a theory, a map that tells you where you are with the client and keeps you from getting lost. And you need a portmanteau of techniques—exercises, meditations, experiments, explorations—ways to help your client become at ease with unfamiliar terrain of herself. In this post I’m sharing my map.
Ida Rolf’s Logo
Ida Rolf’s Vision: Structural Integration
Because I’ve spent over forty years involved with Rolfing® Structural Integration, this work is the foundation of my thinking about teaching movement. Therefore I can’t write about teaching movement without mentioning Ida P. Rolf.
As her name for her method of manual therapy implies, Dr. Rolf was interested in the organization of body parts. “Structure is behavior,” she said, implying that our bodily structure determines our actions in the world.
Rolf considered gravity to be the primary organizing force that determines whether the relationship of body parts is aligned and graceful or crooked and awkward. Gravity is the healer because true alignment relative to gravity restores order, correcting poor function and promoting good behavior. Rolf saw her work as contributing to the betterment of humanity.
What her followers call “The Rolf Line“ is the main focus of the body therapy known as Rolfing. The line is a symbol of structure well integrated with the force of gravity. With respect to the moving body, this line must be coordinative as well as symbolic. It expresses the efficiency and grace of animals in the wild, moving in harmony.
I prefer to think of the body’s central line as deriving from other forces in addition to gravity. One of these is the generative force of life, manifest in a human embryo at just fourteen weeks after conception as “the primitive streak”. In osteopathic thinking this force is the source of health throughout life.
Another source of bodily organization is what has been called our “perceptual structure”, that is, the way in which mind and body orient us to our existential surroundings. We line ourselves up according to how we feel about or interpret what is going on around us. Under siege, our ‘line”—our posture and movement—is different than it is when life is free and easy. Response to long-lasting threats to safety distort the ease and grace of physical structure.
The Primitive Streak
Rolfing Principles
After Ida Rolf’s death in 1979, the people she tasked with carrying on her teaching tasked themselves with clarification of her method. They developed a set of principles to explain the effectiveness of the 10-step therapeutic protocol that Dr. Rolf had taught them. These principles include:
SUPPORT:: support is inherent in an integrated structure. Minimal effort is required to hold the body up or to keep it together, or to move. There is no extraneous tension.
TENSEGRITY or PALINTONICITY: Palintonos (in Greek) refers to the exact right tension of a bow or a stringed instrument. Palintonicity is the word Rolf’s deputies used to define balanced tension. I believe they were trying to express the concept of tensional integrity, and that Fuller’s concept of “tensegrity” is a better term. (IPR often spoke about tensegrity when I studied with her.) Tensions expressed through every dimension of the body (front to back, side to side, upper to lower, inside to outside and along diagonal vectors) must be balanced for a structure to be integrated and stable.
ADAPTABILITY: The body can access every range of motion permitted by the mechanics of the joints and the tensional integrity of the soft tissues. The body as a whole adjusts to movement being expressed in any part. This is visible as a flow or continuity of motion through the structure. The body’s motion is articulate. It does not stutter or hesitate.
HOLISM: Parts and whole are intimately interconnected and inseparable. The whole person, including social and emotional aspects, is involved in the structural integration of the body.
CLOSURE: Completion of each therapeutic step involves the client’s ability to sustain movement and postural changes without further help from the practitioner. Movement coaching is essential to fulfilling this principle.
Godard’s Movement Theory
In the early nineties, movement theorist Hubert Godard’s ideas brought the concept of perceptual orientation into the ongoing project of understanding Ida Rolf’s work. Perceptual orientation is part of a comprehensive model of human movement. In a very small nutshell, Godard’s theory is that optimal function is influenced in four ways: through a person’s physical structure, his self-expression, how he perceives the world and how he coordinates movement.
EXPRESSION indicates how we do what we do in life, including the emotional and mental shading of our behavior. It includes the meaning we ascribe to sensations and movements.
PERCEPTION (or impression) is how we take in and interpret our sensory experiences It involves how we orient our bodies both to the ground and to our surroundings. Surroundings include the physical environment as well as the people and events around us.
COORDINATION involves the management of large ordinary movements like walking and the learning of new movements as in mastering a new sport or dance style. It also includes the unconscious and minuscule motor adjustments we make to prepare ourselves to make the larger actions. This last is sometimes called “pre-movement”. It is the subtle expression of one’s perceptual orientation at any moment.
My multimedia book, Your Body Mandala: Posture as a Path to Presence, is my attempt to bring Godard’s theory to a mainstream audience...
Fundamentals
After that long prologue, I think I can now list my fundamentals for coaching movement.
One: Our bodies have a central line. This can manifest as a pole, a broken line, or a continuous flow of energy. I want to facilitate the expansion and freer expression of my client’s central line.
Two: The Rolf principles (stated above) are effective ways of impacting body organization and the rehabilitation of the central line. Structural integration is facilitated when the client begins to:
recognize the sensation of support as inherent physical experience.
fully occupy her interior body dimensions—becoming as big (or as small) as she really is.
be adaptable to change within and outside her body.
embrace wholeness of body, mind and spirit.
move more efficiently and gracefully in daily life.
Three: Godard’s contribution sheds new light on those principles.
Our perceptual orientation to the ground and to the space around our bodies affects our support, tensegrity, adaptability and holistic expression of self.
Occupying the perceptual space outside the body helps us embody the physical space within the body. (Tensegrity)
How we express our emotions and ideas influences our coordination—the ways in which we move. Vice versa: how we move affects our ideas and emotions. Choosing to move in a new way (study a new movement discipline, dance or sport) can change our outlook on life. Psychotherapy can change how we stand and move. (Holism)
Sensory experience drives coordinative change. If you try to teach new movement directly you are only offering new choreography—new “steps”. To transform coordination you must do so via perception. Deeply felt, a new sensation in the body automatically changes movement. (Support, Adaptability, Tensegrity, Meaning)
Where to Begin?
I use the Rolf Principles as a checklist that helps me determine the answer to that all important question. Something like this:
From where does the client receive support? Is it located appropriately in the spine and lower body, or is it manufactured through tension in the upper body?
Tensegrity: How is space distributed within the body? Is the front narrower or shorter than the back? Upper body bulkier or more delicate than the lower? How do the two sides compare? What is the quality of the central line? Is it lively or rigid? A pole or a polarity?
Adaptability: Does the body’s movement reflect a continuity of motion throughout the whole structure, or are some parts held back from participating in the whole-body flow?
Holism: Do I sense cohesion between the person’s expression and her movement expression? Do I feel that I am in the presence of the whole person?
Perceptual Orientation: Godard’s insight about perception has been so powerful for me that I view it as an additional principle. Does this person seem more comfortably related to the ground or to her spatial environment?
For me, support is number one. Without support, I can’t seem to help the other principles emerge. But the same could be said about adaptability: if the body is not adaptable, how can someone learn to accept support? The Rolf Principles are inseparable.
The value of the check list is perhaps not in finding a precise answer to the “where to begin” question, but in informing your decision-making so that whatever you choose will have a logic to it. If you’ve made the wrong choice the client’s confusion will soon set you on a better course. Both of you learn something by taking that small detour. Your client gets to see that moving in a way that feels foreign is not the goal. And you get to rise to this challenge to your own adaptability.
Your Client’s Goals and Capacity
Your clients come to you with goals and expectations. It’s important to weigh their goals against your assessment of what they need. Often their goals and your assessment match up, but sometimes, for the purpose of sustaining rapport, you’ll need to revise your agenda.
In addition, there’s a broad range in people’s capacity for body awareness. Many can easily name what they are feeling and doing. They almost teach themselves, and they return for the next session having discovered even more about their bodies during the intervening time.
With other people you will need to teach and re-teach the most basic of lessons, patiently showing them how better sitting support—for example—can relieve their neck pain at work. Once you help them discover the practical value of body awareness, they’ll develop curiosity about what else they might discover on their embodiment journey.
Stay tuned for Part Three of this series, coming in May—Movement Lessons: Packing your Bag for the Client’s Journey.
© 2022 Mary Bond