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Plan of Action

by Mary Jo Ruggieri

A massage a day keeps the arthritis away! Reflexology, shiatsu, sports massage, polarity, herbal wraps, reiki, craniosacral therapy, rolfing--medicine in the new millennium will focus on striving for balance and using bodywork as a tool for living well. Balancing your energy can create a lifeline to health and vitality.

So, how do we make changes when we find ourselves pulled out of balance by life? When in doubt, get rolfed!

Rolfing is a specific form of bodywork, which strives to bring the body back into balance. It is a unique system of deep tissue work balanced with energetic unwinding that creates structural changes that move the system into balance.

I interviewed a colleague, Michael Lucas, who is a certified rolfer, about the process of rolfing and its focus on striving for balance. He believes that it takes a strong commitment to change personal core habits. But a good work ethic, he says, will change the unhealthy patterns in your life that may not be serving your best interests.

Let's explore with Lucas his concepts of balance:

We often find that if we start to work on one aspect of our health, such as our bodies, the other parts of our health also improve. The mind and spirit often like to follow and partake in the mutual benefits.

As a rolfer, my focus for balance is in forming a plan of action with manageable steps, and for patients to educate themselves about how to achieve this balance in their lives. For example, if you are going to change your diet, read several books on the subject and consult a certified nutritionist, then make an informed choice about what will work for you. Another option is to track your nutritional intake, to see what works or doesn't work. One of the biggest obstacles to changing our health is feeling overwhelmed by what's involved. By taking responsibility to change your health, you become empowered and can significantly transform your life for the better.

It is also wise to change at a rate that is manageable for you personally. Expect reasonable and realistic results for yourself. Once you've committed to something like a change in diet, give it a chance with time to feel the results. Ask yourself, do I feel stronger, am I loosing weight, are my allergies diminishing, or do I have more energy?

There are many ways to improve your health through balancing your body, mind and spirit. Improving one's diet is an important way to address the physical body, because it can dramatically change how we feel and look. The basic nourishment of our bodies affects our well-being down to the cellular regeneration. The bottom line is that we will normally be healthier if we eat good food to fuel our body.

Other ways to improve the vitality of the physical bodies include using various forms of exercise, which focus on increased lung capacity, range of motion and flexibility, and balanced muscle tone. One good exercise is yoga, which is an excellent body-balancer.

I strongly believe that balance is at the core of good health. The very nature of the human organism, in the purely physical sense, is to stay in a state of balance. In normal conditions the cells of the body are in constant regeneration, to keep a healthy balance within the organism. Out with the dead and aberrant cells, and in with the new and vital cells. We are in the process of this cellular regeneration every moment in time.

Our immune systems are constantly working to keep bacteria and viruses at bay. We have a new external layer of skin on our bodies every month, new organs change every three to four months, new bones change every seven years. Think of the potential possibilities for creating a new image by simply taking care of ourselves with conscious healthy choices.

Obviously this seems easier said than done. Nothing is static in our world or universe. Everything is changing continuously around us. Our lives' momentum ebbs and flows with change according to our life conditioning, our environment, and other forces of our world. As a result, we find our lives in or out of balance with that flow. With so much going on around us, we become caught in this vortex of life, making us susceptible to minor aches and pains and/or disease.

We will join Michael Lucas, our resident rolfer and polarity practitioner, in the next several issues of "Healing" in exploring how to create space for balance through rolfing.

As a new bodywork experience, rolfing can bring incredible changes into your life. A note to the wise from E. Erikson: "Experience is anchored in the ground plan of the body."

May the longtime sun shine upon you.

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