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Discovered Human Potential By Darren Buford
Tom Myers’
first Anatomist’s Corner column appeared in June/July 2000. Since
then, he’s gone on to write 20 compelling columns for Massage
& Bodywork and publish a book on his myofascial approach to
treatment entitled Anatomy Trains. M&B: I believe many of our readers are familiar with your name and area of massage, but are probably curious as to how you got started in the profession? TM: In
1973, I travelled to Boulder (Colorado) to try and fly an airplane.
I was in a crazy state of mind, a few years out of college, trying to
figure out what was going on. I was just searching for social contacts.
I ended up in a group called Arica. That was a wonderful smorgasbord
of meditation, physical techniques, martial arts and psychological clearing.
It was a great thing for me. M&B: So, where some massage therapists can recall a moment they were “called” to the profession, it seems as if it was a more gradual process for you. TM: Well,
I remember it was during the third session I was having Rolfing done
that I asked, “How do you do this stuff?” The guy who was
working on me said, “Forget it, you’ll never do this.”
And I’ve spent the past 25 years proving him wrong. M&B: Was taking on massage a reaction to your family environment or an exploration of attitudes that were more or less shunned? TM: I think I would express that there was an honesty; there was a real feeling involved. And that’s what the rest of my professional life has been about: Nuclear families, the pace of modern life, etc. Pick what demon you want, but we are living in a very body-alienated culture. So all of these are ways of getting back in touch with kinesthetic feeling, which is the basis of a lot of intuition. People think the culture has been too masculinized, too electronicized or it’s removed from the Earth, or we’re removed from each other. I think all of those things are going on, but in any case bodywork and movement work are wonderful ways to reverse that trend. M&B: I’ve read that in college you were headed in a very different direction. TM: I spent
two years at Harvard majoring in English literature because they won’t
let you major in anything with a practical application. There wasn’t
any theater major, but I spent most of my time at the theater. That
was in 1968 when we were taking over the place and all the courses got
cancelled and turned in favor of socialist rhetoric. M&B: Did working with Fuller later affect your massage and bodywork practice? TM: It
affected my worldview and work very profoundly. There are two major
things: One is I believe Anatomy Trains in particular, and my view of
anatomy in general, is a systems view. What has characterized anatomy
in the 500 years since Vesalius and the renaissance of anatomy is that
it’s all been informed by Newtonian mechanics that says if you
understand the parts and you put the parts together, you’ll know
what the whole does. M&B: Can students in today’s massage schools really grasp anatomy from a book, or would it be more in their favor to study using cadavers as medical school students do? TM: I’ve
done a number of dissections and I’ve learned a lot from books
and from student questions. I’ve also learned a lot from clients
who have come in with problems that I didn’t first understand
and that I would then have to go back to the Internet or friends to
get more information. Many things push your study and it shouldn’t
just be in school. I think this thing between mechanical anatomy and
systemical anatomy has bedeviled the massage schools because very often
they’ll go get a physical therapist, a chiropractor or a nurse
to teach the anatomy so they’ll have good medical school anatomy.
Well, if you start with medical school anatomy, you’re going to
have medical school conclusions. And most people did not get into this
profession because they wanted to be a lower-class doctor. They got
into this because they wanted to be a real wholistic healer. If we’re
going to have a wholistic profession, we’re going to have to have
wholistic anatomy studies to go with that profession. So, that’s
why I’ve been writing the books and writing the articles for your
magazine and others to try and develop a wholistic anatomy that’s
not based on the mechanistic principles that inform medical anatomy.
M&B: Being that much of bodywork was in its early American development when you visited Colorado in the 70s, were you skeptical of the field at first? TM: Oh sure. I was very skeptical of a lot of “new agey” things and still am. But my skepticism has also been hinged by my experience. When I first went to massage school and learned reflexology, I thought what a load of horsecrap. You press somewhere on the foot and it’s supposed to do something someplace in the body? Then, over the years of working with people’s feet, I’ve been impressed again and again at how true this thing is. I’m not sure how wonderful it is as a healing method, but as a diagnostic method it’s totally accurate. If you have a hormone problem it shows up in the pituitary point on the feet. So, there are some ideas which presented themselves to my skepticism at first. There are other ideas which I’m still skeptical about. I try to keep an open mind in this field. M&B: Why the focus on Rolfing as opposed to another modality? TM: I liked Rolfing immediately and have kept liking Rolfing because it’s halfway an art and halfway a science. Art is a passion pursued with a discipline, and science is a discipline pursued with a passion. So I like combining the two. I really feel like both halves of my life are satisfied. I keep practicing this thing because the science keeps advancing of how we think about what we’re doing, and the art keeps advancing. M&B: After you were trained in Rolfing at the Rolf Institute, did you remain in Boulder or move to another location? TM: I moved to Little Rock, Ark. I wanted to move somewhere where I had no antecedents and with no big “new age” movement. Where I would really have to begin things from the bottom up. Little Rock was very good to me in that way. I had someone who offered me the beginnings of a practice there. It was great to just get down to work. I did 20–30 sessions a week, week after week, until I had paid off my debt and until I felt that I had this work under my belt. I highly recommend that to anyone who takes on a method. Get somewhere and work like hell. M&B: How was the work received in the South? TM: The work was very well received. I had women who couldn’t tell their husbands they were doing something like this, though. I had people who were skeptical, but I was skeptical myself. I always encourage people to maintain their skepticism. I’m quite leery of the client who comes in and says, “I’m sure this is going to be the best thing since sliced bread. I’m sure you’re going to solve all my problems.” I go, “Whoa, wait a minute dude.” The person who comes in and says, “I’m not sure but I’ll pay for a couple of sessions and see what it does...” That’s a good attitude. I appreciate that. And I’m up to the challenge of making them feel enough change in a few session to see if they want to keep going. M&B: Now that it’s been some time since you studied with Ida Rolf and Moshe Feldenkrais, what’s it like reflecting on those whose names have become seminal to the industry? TM: Buckminster
Fuller, Ida Rolf, Moshe Feldenkrais and a few others whom I was able
to study directly with — I feel extraordinarily lucky to have
been back to the source for these things. You have to understand, though,
that these people we call sources now were also part of a long line
of educators and healers that stretch back to a long history. Ida Rolf
learned from her osteopaths and from her yoga; Feldenkrais learned from
(Frederick Matthias) Alexander and from martial arts; so, it’s
not like they came out of a vacuum. M&B: Was this at Esalen? TM: No,
this was at Amherst. I went to his training in Amherst because I had
met him in London. I moved to London after Little Rock. I was in London
and I was invited to dinner by a piano player who was a client of mine.
Often in London when someone invites you to dinner they are going to
set an intellectual question running and you’re going to have
to speak for your supper. The piano player had over a psychiatrist,
a psychologist, a Feldenkrais person he had run across and myself. The
question of the evening was: Do you learn more from pleasure or more
from pain? He figured because he had experienced my sessions —
and these were the early days of my Rolfing session, which were pretty
painful — that I would be on the side that you learn more from
pain and everyone else would be on the side that you learn more from
pleasure. And his intentions were probably that I would get a lesson
out of this. But by the time the smoke had cleared that evening, the
psychiatrist and the psychologist were reluctantly saying people learn
more from pain avoidance than pleasure seeking and both the Feldenkrais
practitioner and I were saying that people learn more from pleasure.
I always thought that the pain was simply a byproduct of Rolfing and
not essential to it. M&B: Tell me about the creation of the International Association of Structural Integrators (IASI). TM: When
Ida Rolf formed the Rolf Institute, Boulder became the training center
for Rolfers. Over the years, various people split off: Joseph Heller
broke off and formed Hellerwork; Bill Williams splintered off and formed
a similar school called SOMA; CORE; and there was postural integration;
rebalancing. You name it, there were several of these Rolf spinoff schools
turning out graduates. M&B: Is the goal to have the people of these varying fractions begin to communicate? TM: I’m really wanting to bring all of these groups together to give a professional image. We all either join the American Massage Therapy Association or we join Associated Bodywork & Massage Professionals to get our insurance, and that throws us in with most massage therapists, which is great, but there’s no organization specifically designed for our needs. You can imagine that oriental bodyworkers might try to get together, sports massage therapists might try to get together, to advance their cause. So that’s what we’re doing. M&B: Because of the fractioning of the Rolf Institute, were you forced to take sides? TM: I respect
each for their approach and I have good friends as individuals in both
organizations. I feel a bit like a child of divorce, though. “Why
is daddy going here and mommy going there?” Looking at it from
the outside, it seems silly and ego driven to have two separate organizations
in the first place, but having two separate organizations allows Ida
Rolf’s work to develop into two different directions, both of
which are probably valuable. M&B: Is “structural integration” the umbrella term under which Rolfing falls? TM: Ida Rolf only referred to her work as Rolfing in the last few years of her life. But she hated that moniker. It was one that was given at Esalen where “structural integration” had too many syllables for Californians at that point. “You should be Rolfed over.” Then shortened to “Rolfing,” “Rolf.” But it’s the Rolf Institute of Structural Integration. It’s the Guild for Structural Integration. My thing is called Kinesis Myofascial Integration. The idea is generally the same. I think Ida Rolf called it “postural release,” then changed it to “structural dynamics,” and then to “structural integration.” M&B: When most people mention structural integration, they are referring to the 10-session series mainframe, correct? TM: The
knowledge of that recipe I would say would be the closest thing we have
to a journeyman’s card. If you’re a journeyman electrician,
you have a card that you flash if you want a job. Whereas here in the
structural integration world, you flash your knowledge of the recipe.
Even if you’re working outside the recipe, it’s a reference
point. And to my mind Ida Rolf’s recipe is her central contribution,
not the individual particular methods she uses, but the way these techniques
are organized by this recipe — which is a brilliant piece of work.
M&B: I really like the idea of her work being called a “recipe,” because it provides a looser definition than “formula,” “method” or “treatment,” and it sounds as if it leaves a lot of room for exploration. TM: Yeah,
if you have a recipe it depends on what you have in the kitchen as to
how you are going to proceed. The recipe could be taught, and in some
schools is taught, that first you go here, then you go here. I think
that’s a very, very low basis for the recipe. M&B: What would you want SI students today to know about Ida Rolf? TM: Her
unflinching courage and honesty with herself and anyone else. The thing
that attracted me toward this to begin with was that it was very honest.
If you do a move and it works, you keep it. If it doesn’t work,
you have to try something else. So there wasn’t any of this bowing
down in front of the teacher or bowing down in front of a method. It
was very much, “Let’s look at what works.” M&B: When people think about participating in a Rolfing session, they often believe pain is an essential component of the work. Is that something still involved in the practice today? TM: Yes,
it can be. But it’s sure a lot less than the days when I learned.
When I moved to England and when I talked with the osteopaths there,
they said she (Rolf) had a wonderful method, but she just put too much
pain into her clients and they couldn’t follow that method. M&B: Are there “tune-ups” thereafter, year to year? And is this something you still receive? TM: Sure.
I still get sessions from my teachers to see what they’re doing.
And I get sessions from my colleagues when I need some help. I’m
54 years old, I can use that help. The series of sessions are designed
to take you from one place of balance to another place of balance. Not
necessarily to nirvana, just to another state of balance. That’s
what we hope to get within those 10 sessions. Then we ask people to
wait awhile. To let that settle in. That’s a lot of information,
a lot of change in the connective tissue. And it takes awhile for the
body to settle into what has been done. Often we take pictures at the
end of the sessions, then we take pictures six months later. They’re
not worse, they’re better after those six months. M&B: Do you have sports enthusiasts come to you in hopes of increasing their performance? TM: If
you look at what you can use this thing for, performance enhancement
is one of those things. I have actors, dancers, yoga people, sports
people, whose bodies are normally great, who are looking for enhancing
their performance. An actor needs to be able to put their bodies into
all kinds of situations to take on a role. And needs to know their body
very well to take on a role. And dancer needs to know their bodies very
well to take on a dance. I was working on an Olympic track runner last
year for quite a while. Her body was already at where I would hope I
could get some of my other clients. So it was a matter of fine tuning
and getting the last few seconds off her time by improving the alignment
of her legs, by improving the movement of her arms in relationship to
her legs. I love that kind of work because I have to pay very close
attention, because we’re looking at very fine details. M&B: How did you end up in Maine? TM: I started
in Maine. I was born here and grew up here and returned here 12 years
ago. I’ve now moved back onto my family’s property to try
and maintain that. It’s a saltwater farm right on the sea. I have
my horses and my boats here. Sailing is still a big part of my life.
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