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Rosen Method Bodywork: A Recent Arrival in Australia

by Judith Nicholson*

Marion Rosen, the founder of Rosen Method, is an extraordinary woman; at eighty-four, she is vital, vibrant, wonderfully enthusiastic and curious; and still travels the world teaching, practising, promoting her Method. Born in Nuremberg, Germany, Marion initially completed a two year apprenticeship in massage, breath work and relaxation in a clinic in Munich where these disciplines were practised in conjunction with Jungian analysis; later she worked a further six months at the Tavistock Psychiatry Clinic in London, putting into practise the techniques she had studied in Germany. She fled the Nazis before World War II, first to Stockholm, where she studied physiotherapy; and finally to the USA where she trained again as a physiotherapist. Thus her basic training was in breath-work and the bodily strains and stresses arising from muscle malfunction.+

Working as a physiotherapist for the next thirty-five years, Marion began to notice that, although she relieved muscular tension and consequential pain for her clients, many later returned; same tension, same pain. Slowly she realised that some, who had unburdened themselves during her work, talking of the events in their lives at the time the pain commenced, recovered more quickly, and in many cases did not return.

Gradually she developed an hypothesis, later to become the theoretical basis of her method of bodywork, that the muscles habitually used in expressing a particular feeling tighten as it is suppressed or held back. At first this may be a conscious response: thus the small boy firmly told by his mother that brave little boys do not cry, tightens his scaleni muscles every time tears threaten. If this becomes a regular pattern in his life, the tightening becomes an unconscious response of which he is no longer aware. Ultimately this unconscious habitual tightening may render the feeling itself inaccessible; he grows into an adult with tight muscles in his neck for whom tears are well nigh impossible.

Her training at the clinic in Munich and her later work with many asthmatic patients, attracted Marion's particular attention to the diaphragm, the largest muscle in the body, having both autonomic and non-autonomic functions. Her second hypothesis developed around the release of tension, or holding, in the diaphragm, and consequent changes in the movement of breath. She came to regard the diaphragm as the interface between the conscious and unconscious: a release in the diaphragm, a change in the movement of breath through the body, indicating a change in an emotional state.

Thus, the underlying theory of Rosen Method reflects Marion's experience as a physiotherapist: the muscles used to express a particular feeling will be tense if that feeling is held back; as that muscle relaxes and the feeling is contacted, there will be a movement of breath in both diaphragm and muscle. Stated this way it seems almost impossibly simple. Yet this simplicity is one of Rosen Method's greatest strengths: it is pure bodywork, if one can use that phrase, aimed at contacting the holding in a body with minimum interference from the conscious minds of both client and practitioner.

If muscle tension and breath are two corner-stones of Rosen Method, reflection is the third. As a practitioner I match the tension in a muscle with the pressure in my hands - no more, and probably no less. In effect my hands offer a non-verbal reflection of the tension, "look, you are tight here, remember". A body often responds to this: a little sigh, a quiver, a tremor, an opening at the possibility of being heard, being understood. I work on: "what's happening in the body?" I might ask, "how come you have to hold in this way?"

In addition to the physical reflection a practitioner orally reflects how she** finds her client's body, making these observations in an open-ended, neutral manner. Similarly, when later in the session a client begins to talk, the practitioner keeps track of the words used, not her interpretations or associations with the word, just the words themselves or their synonyms, quietly reflecting them back. At some point there may be a response in the body, a flutter in the muscle, a slight movement of breath, an insight: the unconscious has revealed itself. Many teachers describe the process to students in terms of a midwife present at the birth of contact with a long repressed feeling.

Fundamental to the notion of reflection is the absence of judgment, diagnosis, or even a fixing attitude in the practitioner. These come from the conscious mind, in the Rosen view, and impede on-going contact with the unconscious. The Rosen intent is to be fully present in a quietly curious non-judgmental manner, thus permitting contact with the holding in the unconscious and then, by reflecting it to the client, facilitating further contact. If on receipt of the reflection there is no change, no movement, no insight then that too is reflected and accepted. The silence of the body is honoured.

It is in this non-fixing, non-intrusive aspect that Rosen Method differs from some other forms of bodywork. To watch a Rosen practitioner is to be struck with the simplicity, the gentleness, the non-intrusive nature of the work, at the same time as one watches in wonder at its power and effectiveness.

The theoretical simplicity of Rosen bodywork is reflected in the practitioner training. The only book theory studied is that of anatomy. Students require a knowledge of basic anatomy and physiology, a good grounding in the muscular-skeletal structure and larger surface muscles of the body, and thorough knowledge of the physical function of those muscles. Marion refuses to draw a map of muscles and corresponding feelings: that fear, for instance, will always be found in the rhomboids, or anger in the deltoids. She does, however, maintain a probability that a repressed feeling will often be found in the muscles normally used for its expression. Courses in Experiential Anatomy, introducing students to the possible correlation between physical function and emotional content of the larger muscles, are regularly conducted by skilled physiotherapists who are also Rosen practitioners.

Rosen practitioners are not trained as counsellors or in oral therapy, although they have worked through much of their own psychological baggage as part of their training. Clients who make contact with traumatic childhood events, are referred to a counsellor for help in integrating the feelings involved. Many others, however, simply integrate the released feelings in the course of their daily lives over a period of time without need of professional help.

A Rosen student, a Rosen practitioner, gradually moves into a new way of being. In an age in which great emphasis is placed on the conscious mind, and on doing and fixing, Rosen bodywork looks to the unconscious and to the body: tension, holding in the body, reflecting holding in the unconscious. Holding in the unconscious, in its turn, limiting or capping the personality and the pursuit of its fulfillment.

*Having completed a three year training in the Rosen Method of Bodywork at Axelson's Gymnastica Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, Judith Nicholson was certified by the Rosen Institute in Berkeley, California, in 1991. She is currently the only certified Rosen Practitioner living in Australia. With the help of Senior Teachers of Rosen Method in the USA and Sweden, she has established a training program based in Canberra. The first practitioners from this program will be certified in late 2000.

+ For detailed discussion of Rosen Method bodywork and paractitioner training, see Rosen Method: An Approach to Wholeness and Well-being Through the Body, Elaine L. Mayland, Ph.D., privately published by the author, fourth reprinting 1991.

**or he; although it is a fact that a higher proportion of the Rosen community are women, happily it is also a fact that there are men teachers, students, practitioners and clients.