Ballet – Healing – Rolfing – Norman Cohen – And the Beginning of My Journey to Become a Healer

 

During the process of learning and performing Monotones II, I ended up with an odd sort of injury. The ballet for the first few minutes was with me in a split from the floor, then I am lifted up to the tip of my left foot (as the men picked me up and promenaded me around slowly like a planet spinning in space). My psoas muscle decided to cramp up and lock up into my hip … in a horribly painful way.

I know it may sound weird but the process of holding that position tightened my psoas muscle to the point that it would not release. So, lowering that leg, actually hurt … badly.
Because this muscle is a hip flexor and one of the primary ways to lift your leg up forward, and it allows you to pull your upper body down onto that leg. You can see that the split position in this ballet and holding it for so long in an unmoving way, was clearly the culprit of my hip pain. I was getting not just hip pain, but lower back spasms, and I was starting to limp.
Being a person very interested in body motion and healing modalities, the chiropractors had detected that my leg lengths were shortened on my right side, which was where the pain was as well.
Chiropractic work was not fixing it or allowing the fix to stick … so I had to try another approach.
In healing, all choices cost money and as a dancer, we did not at that time have an on staff physical therapist or massage therapist, as many companies do now. I was also only making $19,000 a year and money was tight.
Exploring all my options, I came to the conclusion that I should try Rolfing. Rolfing is a technique created by Ida Rolf over 50 years ago to help the body reorganize the collective tissues and stretch the fascia that encases the muscle bundles.
It looks at one’s posture and helps the body restore flexibility and regain better balance in posture … thus freeing up movement.
Where massage is relaxing and helps flexibility and circulation, Rolfing intends to release blocks in the deeper systems and realign the body back towards balance and thus causing a natural reduction of muscular tension.
Normal massage is great for finding more relaxation in the body and feeling looser.
But Rolfing intends to shift chronic pain and integrate the whole body towards a better alignment and balance.
Normal massage uses about forty pounds of pressure per square inch. But Rolfing uses more like eighty to a hundred pounds of pressure per square inch. Because of that Rolfers go very slowly. It feels like an intense slow burn. As the therapist is moving so slowly and deeply, it stretches the fascia and breaks adhesions that are blocking the normal flow and function of the muscle.
In Salt Lake City, at the time, the person most skilled and trained was Normal Cohen. He had been trained by Ida Rolf and had a lot of experience in the healing arts.
I had many massages from being a teenager in New York City, to Berlin, and now to Utah. So, I was more familiar than most with the various modalities and types. But I had not had Rolfing done before.
I liked deep tissue massage more than just a normal Swedish Massage, so I thought I knew what I was in for.

Famous last words!

I appreciate those that have skills that I do not. I appreciate those with the courage to do the things that are uncomfortable and that they can do them in very sensitive areas of the body and keep their energy focused and clear.

Norman Cohen was able to do that.

And Thank God!

Because I learned that the psoas muscle is a big deal because it controls a large network of lumbar nerves and blood vessels that pass through the pelvis to the legs. Tightness in this muscle will impede blood flow and nerve conduction to the organs and the legs.
It originates at the anterior and lateral border of the spine and intervertebral disc. It joins with the iliacus muscle in the groin at the inguinal ligament and then attaches to the lesser trochanter on the femur.

In case that is too much anatomical jargon, it means that it goes from your lumbar spine, down the inside of your pelvis, and ends at a bony prominence on the inside of your femur (inside your groin).

OUCH!

That means that the Rolfer is going to loosen the muscles in the back but then he would need to put his fist slowly into my pelvis from the front, move the intestines to the side and touch the bowl of your pelvis with his fist going deep into your pelvic bowl.

OUCH!!

Then he will have to go into the groin and stretch the last attachment on the deep inside of my thigh at the top of my leg.
Just so you know, that is very close to my “woo-hoo”. If you know what I mean!!!

OUCH!!!
The first part at the back was not too bad.
The second part inside the pelvis was bearable … just barely.

But the inside of the thigh he warned me was going to be painful.
He told me that he was going to count backward, from the number 8 to 1 and then release. He told me to breathe and off we went into a place of pain that was so severe that I honestly saw, black walls closing to the count of 8 … 7 … 6 … 5 … 4 … 3 … 2 … 1.
I was sure I was going to pass out from the pain.
It was a type of pain I never remember experiencing before. I have never been that close to fainting.

But once it was over, and I caught my breath, he asked me to stand up and feel my hip and lower back to see if it felt better.

In those 8 seconds I was suddenly 90% better. It was not 100% but still … that was an incredible feat.
I was astonished and incredibly grateful.

He needed to work on it again, not so intensely. (Or perhaps because of the release, it just did not feel so bad.)
But by the end of the session I was back to my old self again.
And I am very grateful to someone who can go up into such a sensitive area with that type of skill and make a correction that he knew was going to hurt … a lot, and still have the confidence and knowledge that he could fix the issue.

I want to say here that I do not know how anyone, lives without massages!

Even now, my routine is to get one every two weeks. They are essential for my sanity, and they help my coping mechanisms stay steady in such a continuously changing reality.

I am sure there is a special place for body workers, healers, chiropractors, and massage therapists in heaven.

They have saved me again and again in this lifetime.
I should probably say here … that I have a bizarre body. But clearly one that I picked to do the extreme things that ballet and this life would require.

I have a congenital hip defect that my sister was born with before me.
When they turned her upside down, her hips dislocated and so she spent the next few months in a hip cast to allow hip sockets to form.

The end result is that she has no flexibility in her hips.

But with me, they did not notice I had the same thing during my birth process.

It was only when I broke my ankle badly when I was four and a half that the doctor x-rayed me up to my hips and came in asking, “Suzanne do you have trouble walking?”

I said, “no.”

Then he said, “When you walk, do your hips pop out of the socket?”

I said, “Oh Yea! That happens all the time!”

Incredulously he said, “It’s not supposed to do that! You have a flat plate and a flat plate in your hips. No ball and socket! You are holding your legs together with your muscles. You will always have to keep your hip muscles strong to keep your legs in!”

When I was a kid, my hips would feel … stuck! The only way to release them was to sit in a chair (often at school) and open my knees wide and put the soles of my feet together. Then my hips would make a huge noise like a gun going off and everyone would turn around looking for the reason for that noise, and I would look around also and pretend that I had not made the sound.

That moment in Norman Cohen’s offices signaled a shift for my mind and moved me towards a new career of wanting to understand and learn more about healing. It was amazing to me that such a small thing could have a profound impact on an athlete such as myself.
Norman was the catalyst for me at the moment and just like Bruce Marks introduced me to Ballet when I was 5 years old. Norman introduced me to the healing arts in a way that I saw I might have a profound impact on others.

Later, when he created the first Massage School in Utah, called: The Utah College of Massage Therapy, I would be in that first class and graduate with that class as I shifted out of the ballet world and into the world of healing modalities.

There are people that come in to guide us towards our hidden self. And he was such a person.

Teachers and guides are always around us. They inspire us and set us on a new course for this life. I am grateful to him and all those who inspired my curiosity, ability, and deeper intuitive knowing.
And today, I am off to see my massage therapist for another journey to unwind and heal myself from the stresses and strains of this life that collect in my body.

Life will throw things at us that we will all need help in releasing. I hope you too will find those amazing souls that can help you reconnect to this wonderful and magical body in such a way that you learn the value of relaxing and find the space inside to be flexible in not just the body … but the mind and heart as well.

~Suzanne Wagner~