After working almost solely within the paradigm of Rolfing Structural Integration® since 2003, Ray Allen’s personal evolution has led him to shift to a hybrid therapeutic approach. While he will continue to incorporate the direct release of fascial restrictions associated with Rolfing®, his practice is now grounded in a modality called Craniosacral Therapy (CST).
The Unfolding of a Session
The success of the therapeutic process is enormously dependent on the level of trust and quality of communication established between client and therapist. The process is not formulaic; each session is designed in response to a client’s individual needs. Consequently, all sessions begin with a discussion of a client’s concerns and an assessment of their individual structure. Sometimes, clients are asked to walk or move in specific ways and specific areas may be palpated. To protect the client’s privacy yet maximize visual and tactile access, clients remain in their underwear throughout each session.
This means underwear for men and underwear and bras for women. (Please no sport bras, cross straps or high backs)
As fascial restrictions and skeletal joint fixations are identified, they are assessed in relation to the whole structure and a strategy for their release is created. Most of the work is then accomplished with the client lying on a massage table, sitting on a bench, or standing and moving in directed ways while the therapist works with hands and elbows to address specific areas of the body. The quality of touch and its duration are tuned to the character and layer of a particular restriction. Often, the client will be asked to move in very specific ways while the work is being done. The intensity of this touch can sometimes be uncomfortable but should never cause a client to tighten or clench in order to take in the work. For that reason, there is a continual dialogue between client and therapist as to the intensity of each intervention. And because any restricted area is but a part of a continuous body wide — and deep network — the success of a release is always evaluated on its local as well as global effect on the body.
No matter what technique is employed, the therapeutic process always seeks to enlist the active awareness and participation of the client. Each session seeks to create a deep connection to the inner world of each client’s living anatomy and physiology.
Borges said that his despair as a writer came when he was unable to translate the limitless nature of the aleph: that point in space which contained all other points. While some fell back on birds and spheres and angels, he himself was unable to find the metaphor for this timeless repository of everything. Language was successive: it could not, by its nature, be frozen in one place and therefore couldn’t catch the sheer simultaneity of all things. Nevertheless, said Borges, he would recollect what he could.
The aim of treatment, whether functional or structural technique is applied, is to re-establish motion that is consistent with the associated structure. The goal of manipulative therapy is harmonious motion. Motion is the added dimension to the structure.
— Fred Mitchell Sr. 1967