Vertical Truth: The Fourth Dimension of Touch
by David Lauterstein
Two forces rule the universe: light and gravity. --- Simone Weil
Our evolution from quadruped to biped is an accomplishment we are each still aspiring toward. How miraculous and risky it is! Look at a child first walking. Precarious! Teetering from side to side, attempting to balance simultaneously the front with the back, the oblique ever-changing planes of walking, the coordination of limbs with each other and positioning the flexing, rotating and swaying axial body segments over each other - it's an unlikely behavior!
Not only that but, in up-ending, we expose what was previously the most inaccessible and vulnerable parts of ourselves - the underbelly and the genitals. The quadruped in us is in a more or less permanent state of shock at this state of affairs.
Here we are precariously balancing on two legs, moving over this earth with a wing and a prayer, our undersides exposed, and we're supposed to be OK with this!?
The fourth dimension of touch is created by the structural and energetic impact of posture. And, it turns out, so-called "posture" contains within it a whole world. For how we stand, how we carry ourselves through our lives, along our various paths, how we grow, is a matter of the deepest feeling and concern.
To understand posture in its fullness, it helps to look at our models for growing up, for how we shall stand and move literally and figuratively through our time and space. In our society, attaining adulthood is often viewed as a loss. To say "Grow up!" to someone is usually to insult them. "Adults" often grumble about the scarcity of time and excessive responsibilities. Being an adult conventionally implies losing of the joy, innocence, and freedom of childhood. I don't know about you, but my childhood wasn't all that great! On the other hand, as adults, if we drop the conventional view, we see we get to create the life we consciously want. I love my work, have a happier family life than ever, am as creative and strong as I've ever been with more psycho-physical sophistication than ever before. How about you? Let us avoid the conventional trap of identifying growing with aging. For one thing, energy, since it is neither created nor destroyed, does not age. And, with the appropriate care, structure continues to evolve and unfold new possibilities, new levels of health, as we learn.
"Grow up!" in this new way of looking then becomes an invitation to ecstasy (ecstasy literally meaning "out of standstill.") Adulthood is the invitation to move ever upward and out of our old skins into the new life we create. Let us emphasize the last syllable - grow UP.
>From this perspective growing involves standing and moving in ever greater harmony with nature - both our inner and outer nature. Standing in balance structurally with the nature around and within us Aldous Huxley has described as "animal grace". With animal grace we align with the great force of gravity and our brilliant structure which uses the inherent buoyancy of water and the mechano-electrical arrangements of fascia in harmony with our other systems to assure us of buoyancy and balance within the gravitational field.
Bodywork and the Vertical Energy Flow
Both the bio-mechanical and the energetic models of posture aim at standing and moving in balance. Western biology, while not often acknowledging energy per se, offers detailed description of the predominantly vertical orientation of our anatomy. Picture the skeletal, nervous, muscular, digestive, cardiovascular and lymphatic systems. When we remember that energy is defined in physics as the capacity for action or actual work done, we see that the work of our physiological systems takes place predominantly in the vertical.
Equally remarkable, deeply consoling, and exciting is that all the models for energy flow are also in agreement with respect to the overall direction. Whether the model be that of polarity, the meridians of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Reich's orgonomy, the chakras, kundalini, ayurveda, or more recently Zero Balancing, there is general agreement. The major currents of energy within us flow vertically.
What implications does this have for growth, defined as living in ever greater harmony with nature, and for touch therapy?
Growth is a process of gradually shedding the physical and emotional tensions that, we discover, no longer serve us. As we let these tensions go, the freed body lengthens, it ascends. The sum total of brute force we used to hold ourselves in a certain position is lessened. Consequently we have more energy freely available for our lives. Self-growth is not just a psychological concept. It is literal. Let us grow a new body, get bigger, more open inside, let us grow the body - and the mind and heart - that we want.
As we become more easily balanced, a qualitative change of being is experienced. As energy flows more freely through us, we are literally nourished by the vertical energy flow. We feel ourselves balanced by natural forces, not merely by our own will. In balance we feel the washing away of unnecessarily held tensions. In this rigorous sense, alignment is inherently purifying. mention yoga, movement education as fundamental to any further evolution/growth For touch therapy this situation gives us a straightforward ticket to the miraculous. We can, as Rolfing and other verticalizing therapies have shown, lengthen and facilitate a new buoyancy for our clients. Releasing the fascia and the physiological and psychological tensions interconnected with it, we usefully bring limits and new possibilities of freedom to the light of their consciousness. We also facilitate the release of tensions that normally lie below the client's usual level of consciousness. As we facilitate clients¹ deeper psycho-physical letting go, we help accelerate and balance their growth process. The educative impact of this, hopefully, results in a self-sustaining momentum for further opening and growth.
Since they need less to siphon off their life force just to "hold" themselves up, increased energy is available for life. They learn, letting go into gravity and the inherent buoyancy of human structure, that nature has organized our balance just fine thank you very much! And, when their balance is experienced as a function of the natural world, then they feel more connected to nature, akin to all life. They experience themselves more deeply as truly belonging here.
As energy flows more clearly and strongly through the input of the therapist, the client experiences more energetic nourishment. As Ida Rolf said with regard to aligning effect of gravity - Gravity is the Therapist! Everyday energetic and structural tensions now flow out of the aligned system more thoroughly and more quickly.
The neutrality of gravity and in-built postural grace are freely and equally given to everyone. If God is indeed everywhere, it is certainly manifest in the unconditional support given to every one by gravity and the buoyancy inherent in human structure.
Gravity is the Therapist
Gravity, physics says, is a weak force. That's not a usual thought. But consider that when you jump, with just a few twitches of the gastrocnemius, you rise up off the earth, successfully resisting the gravitational force of the entire planet! In this sense we see that gravity is indeed relatively weak. Or perhaps it is rather that gravity is not so much weak, as rather gentle, mild, not heavy. Consider these words to express the nature of gravity - "white snow falling without wind." This gentleness is experienced as we work with the gentleness of the gravitational field, rather than with muscular force.
We can see then another sense to gravity being the therapist. When we balance and lean in to our clients using gravity, we are working on them using the energy of an entire planet. When working out of balance and pushing into the body with muscular effort, we are working with the limited and conditioned efforts on one individual. Shall we not indeed depend rather on the freely available force of an entire planet?
Not coincidentally, working in this manner, because it's so much easier, extends our lives as therapists. Perhaps in sharing the abundance, the power of gravity and the natural buoyancy of our structure, we also extend the lives of our clients. Viewing gravity as a nutritive force, we begin to see the concept of the nurturing earth as rigorously scientific, not just sentimental. Relevant here is the discovery in outer space that astronauts in zero gravity not only lose muscle and bone but also experience a dramatic decrease of red blood cell production in the marrow of their bones! Gravity as nourishment indeed!
The Electricity of Touch
Returning to "mammalian" touch, a good question is why does getting massaged by a hunched-over person feel not quite right? The answer leads to a stunning discovery. Since energy flows through us predominantly in the vertical, the extent to which we depart from the gracefully vertical we cut ourselves off from energy flow. Hunched over or locked into an overly fixed posture, we literally unplug ourselves from the main energy circuit available to us.
The corollary of course is terrifically exciting. The more gracefully vertical we are, the more energy there is in our work - the more we "plug" ourselves into the vertical energy flow, our cosmic "light socket".
Touch emanating from enhanced verticality is experienced as having a higher voltage. It participates in the energetic connection of heaven and earth, like lightning (the vertical energy flow made dramatically visible). Experiment with your clients and ask the difference between their experience of touch with a hunched-over posture versus touch arising from a graceful verticality. They can tell, for example, even lying prone with eyes closed, whether the therapist is grounded or not. Hyperextended knees will diminish the energy flow by locking it up instead of being a freed conduit for it. Similarly there's a sense of heaviness, a lack of heavenly connection, when the therapist hunches over and works with a flexed spine and medially rotated shoulders. The mammal feeling comes from a body that's excessively earthbound.
In gracefully vertical movement and bodywork we get a greater quantity of force easily by adding to our movements the natural energy of gravity and the anti-gravitational forces of our body. Empowered bodywork replaces effort, as much as possible, with balance. When we do this, there is as well a dramatically higher quality of energy. When we are balanced, the force from which we draw runs through the body but is not of it. Using gravity and the natural lightening of our buoyancy, we drop the brute force of will, the pushing energetic quality of muscular effort. This touch acquires a heavenly dimension, not an earthbound quality. Being part animal/part angel - this graceful human touch brings in a literally angelic quality while yet not losing our connection to the earth. The electricity of touch clearly establishes the connection and the necessary polarities of the angelic and the earthly.
Lightness
Commonly after bodywork a client stands up and says, "I feel lighter!" During the hour the person has not actually lost weight, how do they feel lighter?
The sensation of weight is not a function of mass. The sensation of weight arises largely from tension. We feel heavy the extent to which we are tense. We feel lighter as our tension drops away.
Fascia is thixotrophic, meaning it is more or less fluid depending on the level of activity within it. So, with chronic tension, we become literally more solid.
Andrew Taylor Still said, "Movement is health" and formulated the "law of the artery" which said the body contains all the healing substances it needs - it is the therapists' job to facilitate them getting there. We are mostly water. It is largely the free flow of water in us which is healing. The dissolution of heaviness, the restoration of lightness accompanies the free flow of water. Our therapy uses the enlightening power of touch to restore this freedom.
The human world is often in danger of becoming too solid. Our upbringing, education, culture, the ways we tend to think and live can make the world seem not open to change, opaque, heavy. It is important for us to share and cultivate compassion for this feeling of weight in living. Gravity may be the therapist, but in some senses gravity also is the problem. What can we do with the sense of spiritual heaviness, the perception of the world as too solid and not open to change?
Science helps us out here. We know that open space is predominantly what there is. Matter is dissolved and flows within open seas of energy. I once was working on a radiologist. He was talking about how excited he and others in his field were with all the new things they were seeing thanks to Magnetic Resonance Imaging. So I asked him, "What are you seeing?" He said, kind of surprised, "Mostly we don't know what it is!" Surprised too, I asked, "What do you think it is?" "We think,² he said, ³it's water."
The writer, Italo Calvino, said "knowledge of the world means dissolving the solidity of the world". We are now seeing the solidity of the body dissolved as we develop the ability to look more deeply. As bodyworkers we have a deep intuitive loyalty to energy as well as structure. The experience of energy dissolves the solidity of the world.
As we work in alignment with the vertical energy flows, we ourselves are literally more fluid, in effect, lighter, because in balance we have let go of unnecessary tension. As we've shown, in balance with nature, we become a conduit for a greater quality and quantity of energy. Clients experience more energy flow through them when touched by the therapists who embody energetic and structural balance. The solidity of their being eases and they experience more lightness, more openness to change.
Therapy helps to restore the flow within form. As we feel energy flow within us, not only do we experience greater lightness. We experience moments in which a light turns on in us. As each bodyworker has seen in their practice, our work is often a source of dramatic illumination for body, mind, and spirit. Sudden insights, emotional breakthroughs, thorough shifts of self-image, or leaps into a new levels of spiritual connectedness commonly accompany the most successful moments of our sessions.
Perhaps the inner light turned on by graceful human touch is the bodily felt answer to the question - what does it feels like to live an unforced life? We often seek bodywork after all because of the sense that life has become too hard. Touch therapy by harnessing the vertical energy flow dissolves the illusion of the world's solidity. We see the light, not just opacity. We are open to change. We don't need to force it. The goal of health care is true ease in this highest of senses, not merely the absence of dis-ease. In structural and energetic balance, we have a bodily-felt experience of peace on earth. May this experience resonate homeopathically throughout our life and our world!
Stand By Me
In 1962 Ben E. King recorded the song, "Stand By Me." In this appeal - to whom? his lover, God, his massage therapist? - he calls up the courage it really does take to stand up and live our lives each day .
It is sad, terrifying, joyous, maddening, inspiring, and mundane to live our lives. And the joining of our lives in the human community is so complex as to induce an almost immediate sense of overwhelm.
But the most we can do and in some ways all we can do is to truly stand by each other.
We can stand up on our own and we stand by our clients. We stand by them in their attempts to balance with their wings and with their prayers in this incredible world. Touching them, from a balanced place, we hope to facilitate their evolution and our own - this growing up of humanity.
Let us, as touch professionals, all rise and stand by each other in fullest appreciation of this incredible opportunity.