I love metaphors. They are the images for the soul. When hearing a metaphor, my psyche knows how to create the image into reality. It’s like a roadmap that I know how to follow.
I find that my clients are also very good at being able to grasp the images and create them in their bodies as I work with their tissues. My favorite metaphor in the recent months has been the feeling I get when hiking or snowshoeing. It feels as if my legs ‘hang’ off my pelvis. It is as if they aren’t connected at all and I can walk like a marionette, legs hanging on thin strings. The legs can move in any and all directions. It feels really good.
When I work with clients who need some work on their quadriceps muscles, I use the marionette metaphor to help them release the leg from unconscious tension. What happens is at first a burning sensation which is the fascia differentiating. When more of the layers around the femur differentiate, a sense of lengthening of the whole leg follows. It feels just like a marionette’s leg would feel.
Most clients report they have never felt such a sensation before. There is a reason for that. All of our activities involve tightening of particular muscles to give us the movement we want. Even while relaxing, the proximity of the bones in the joints stays constant. The only activity when we challenge the distance between the bones is during stretching. And even there, we have a programmed mechanism to only stretch a certain amount and not go beyond to protect us from potentially injuring ourselves.
Rolfing is a unique method to let the deeper layers give in while it feels good. The deep connective tissue can lengthen and release to give us the range of motion in the joints that’s possible and a sense of lightness of the legs follow. How would you like to feel like a marionette?
