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Untethered in Ten
Written By: Ashby Underwood - Yoga Highlands | Issue: 2018/07 - July
On the indigenous medicine wheel the stages of life are represented by the four directions. The southern direction or “facing south” correlates with our youth, childhood and summer! This inspires me in my work with clients with natural cycles. We can all relate to summer as a joyful time, child-like with play! Freedom to move is in the air with warm breezes and long evenings. We feel expansive and communities gather for reunions and connection. But what if you are feeling less well this year, less active, or tethered by some kind of stress?
What if your current struggle were just a completion waiting to happen- a threshold to cross over to become well and thrive? You are not a condition to treat, but a person in motion. In traditional rites of passage people fulfill themselves by completing something. We are moving through the stages of birth, childhood, adulthood, and elder, embracing them with grace or remaining stuck in challenge.
The Basic Ten Series is Dr. Ida Rolf’s original education of ten principles for untethering the human body for creating length, dynamic balance, and core stability. The method unblocks neural pathways and frees restrictions in the soft tissue that have been holding us back from living fully. After an injury, surgery, heartbreak, or something as joyful as childbirth we can feel segmented, in parts that are tied together. The goal of Rolfing is to evoke harmony by getting seemingly disconnected parts to wake up, communicate and to work together.
Because we are not just softening muscles or releasing them, but actually reorganizing the connective tissue network, the person gains a new sense of “body agency” or self-ownership. When what was lost is gained, when what was tied is freed, the person moves over the threshold to claim health. The Basic Ten Series supports the natural flow of things by recreating a rite of passage. A person can return to the continuum of life rather than being stuck in imbalance.
Yes, modern science can explain the ability to sustain change and be anew with research in neuroplasticity and proprioceptive re-orientation. But what makes a man a man, and a woman a woman, makes a a broken person a whole person is still ineffable.
