Western Science Makes Us Forget What We Already Know - In Rolfing everything is about connection and communication

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I have barely said hello, when I walk into Marcella’s office while beginning to take off my clothes with every step. She begins to laugh, “you can keep them on until we start, you know.” As I realize what I am doing, I start laughing too. Right, we always talk first, then I strip down to my underwear. I only fell asleep after 3am last night and had felt exhausted when my alarm went off at 8:15am to make my way here. The nights before I had also slept horribly. This menstrual cycle my cramps lasted longer, though the most intense part almost seemed shorter, and have been nagging at night.

I had started with Rolfing Structural Integration, a form of bodywork that reorganizes the connective tissues, called fascia, that permeate the entire body. The method is named after its founder Dr. Ida Rolf. A friend of mine had been gushing about Rolfing and this particular Rolfer, Marcella Hausen, and her enthusiasm finally convinced me to try a session. From the first session onwards, I was hooked.

As a tall person (even in the Netherlands) and someone who works on their laptop a lot, my shoulders seem permanently crouched forward. And so I started Rolfing with the purpose of walking more upright. Little did I expect that the effects of Rolfing would encompass much more than that.

Today is the fifth session and my Rolfer, Marcella, a loving, calm soul with my sense of humor, asks me how I am doing. I feel myself grounding into the sofa. How am I doing? Besides the last few days of struggling with my menstruation and two horrible nights of sleep (or lack thereof), I have actually been doing amazing.

It feels as if weeks have passed in the one week since our last session. I start telling her that since our session last Friday, I have felt really good. “It could have also been the New Moon,” I say.

The peak of the New Moon had happened on the night between Saturday and Sunday. Saturday, right before that peak, I had had the sudden urge to clean my house — and believe me, or ask my former roommate, that urge, rather than someone commanding me, is very rare. Moreover, around the New Moon, and actually from the moment I had walked out of this very room last week, I had gained a vision and strong feeling of what I want for the upcoming years.

And so, suddenly, I have a five-year-plan. A plan that includes a strong connection to the two main locations where I wanted to root and build my life.

As someone who has lived nomadically for the past 1,5 years and has spent an insane amount of months abroad during my studies in the Netherlands before that, I am used to looking forward only three months in advance. That is, the time span of most visas. So, for me to have a multiple-year plan is… new. What is also new for me, as a nomad doing my studies online and spending most of my time in the Americas, is the desire to root somewhere. To stay somewhere not just for a few months, but for a few years.

Within days after my last Rolfing session and in that weekend of the New Moon, I had decided that I want to do a PhD. Each year of that PhD, I want to spend one semester in the Netherlands, one semester here in Salvador, Brazil, and then the other months wherever, maybe doing fieldwork or travel elsewhere. I want to have an office space in both places and a house with some more things — we are talking ideal scenarios, forget about the finances for now.

As I am explaining this plan and the changes it reflects, I also share with Marcella about how long I have held onto the wish to be independent and free, barely looking further than a few months ahead.

“Hmm,” I interrupt my own monologue, “actually, it makes a lot of sense after last week’s session. I have been physically feeling more open,” I motion my chest forward and up, my hands mirroring that same movement in front of it.

“So I literally look further into the world. And I have been feeling my body steadier on the ground, feeling my feet more when I walk, I guess I feel more rooted.” Marcella smiles, she knows that this is the effect of Rolfing. Indeed, Rolfing works with the body, recognising that the body, and specifically the fascia, hold emotions and memories.

I thought I only came here to walk more upright and that that would mean working on my shoulders, but our last three sessions have taught me that your posture is connected to every limp, bone, and muscle tissue in your body. And that your body and the way you stand, sit, and move in the world — the way you are embodied in the world — matters on an emotional, mental, and spiritual level.

Marcella says something about the branches of a tree spreading out wide, and I realize as I am speaking, “and the branches can grow as wide and large as the roots of a tree are, so the more rooted I am, the freer I can also be”. It is a life-changing realisation for me that will need some days or even months to fully sink in.

Several minutes later, I can finally take off my clothes and lay on the bench in her office space. Marcella is pressing into the muscle tissue around my calves, sometimes instructing me to soften or bend my knee. I am still processing the effect of last week’s Rolfing session on my emotional and mental state, which I only realised when verbalising to Marcella how my week had been. Thinking back on my phrasing, I have another important realisation.

When I was talking about the root of the energetic shift I had felt over the weekend, I explained it as if “it could have been the Rolfing, or it could have been the New Moon.” In other words, I explained it as if it had to be either one. As if the possibility of multiple causes merging would be ‘confusing’ or, more accurately in scientific terms, confounding.

I am a philosopher and social researcher, schooled in the current Western scientific paradigm. In my studies and current research, I am constantly working on making my positionality and assumptions explicit. In other words, how are my methods, ideas, and explanations coloured by my cultural and cosmological background?

In the Western scientific method, to draw conclusions about causal relations you supposedly have to keep all factors but one stagnant, controlled. Of course, in social sciences we recognize that you might be able to do this in a lab, but in the real world out there it is absolutely impossible. The illusion of being able to keep factors constant falsely suggests that factors are independent from each other in the first place. Whereas in reality, everything is connected and intertwined.

Yet, this rhetoric of controlled empirical experiments had influenced my explanation just now, without me realizing.

When I was describing my emotional and mental changes after last week’s session, I had said that it could have been either because of the New Moon orbecause of the Rolfing session. As if… it could not be… both? As if the timing of that particular Rolfing session could not have been synchronistically timed with the New Moon.

Shifts in our emotional, mental and energetic state always are preceded and surrounded by other events, whether they are personal, collective, or astrological — if you don’t believe in astrology, which has been practiced for thousands of years in different cultures across the globe, you can just end that sentence after ‘personal’, the argument remains the same.

These events are meant to be merging and flowing and strengthening each other. We are meant to live life with an open heart and open mind, being able to perceive and receive changes within ourselves and our environment. We are meant to listen to what is happening within and without. We are meant to read the messages of our intuition and to calmly observe the processes in our lives that are arduous and the ones that flow easily, the things that are ripped away and the things that fall into our lap.

The Western scientific rhetoric — of seeing everything as separate and only trusting what you can empirically observe or rationally explain, rather than feel — doesn’t allow for that way of living and thinking about life. As a result, we are confused about what to do and why things are or aren’t working out.

We try to paste the “5 steps to success” from someone else onto our lives without taking into account our personal mental and emotional situations, our desires and dislikes, our strengths and challenges. And then we are annoyed as to why things are not working out for us, but what if we are each missing more than half of the picture?

So, let me share with you some of the processes and events that were happening that caused this particular change in my life — a change sparked by the Rolfing session, the New Moon, and much more.

For weeks up to the Wednesday before that Friday’s Rolfing session and Saturday’s New Moon, I had felt overwhelmed. I had been feeling that a lot of changes were going on in my energetic field and the larger one. My mind had been racing, I could sense connections but could not phrase or grasp them, I had been dreaming vividly, symbolically, and so much that I rarely woke up rested. I was tired, uninspired, and frankly, nearing what seemed like a burn-out.

So, on Tuesday night, I spontaneously decided I would enter a fast for at least 24 hours. Fasting for me entails no food and depending on the type and length of the fast, either only water and tea, or no drinks at all, or only juices. I also limit my screen and reading time — because even books can make you escape your reality –, meditate and journal, and preferably go out in nature (unless that includes passing many people in the process, which can feel draining when you’re on a fast).

I have been doing fasts like these at least once a year for the past four years, the fasts ranging anywhere from one day to one month. For me, a fast works as a physical and energetic reset. It also gently forces me to take things slow, cancel appointments, tune into my intuition, and sit down to reflect on my life with a clear mind.

After cancelling one appointment on Wednesday, my two remaining ones cancelled themselves — a sign that this fast was a good thing to do, the universe (or God, or however you want to call it) was with me.

After 24 hours of fasting, on Thursday, my appointments made me feel energized, my volleyball went better than ever, and after weeks of tiredness, I finally felt rested when waking up Friday morning.

That Friday, I had my Rolfing session, which later proved to be the best one yet. Somehow, being in my Rolfer’s office that day, made me realize that I also want that. I want an office that feels like home, just like hers, where I read my books and write papers, and where I can receive people if I want to.

That same afternoon, after the session, the cleaning urges started. I had also freed up time to work on an essay for which I had not had any inspiration until now. In the evening, I even had energy to go out for dinner with friends.

On Saturday, the day of the New Moon, I went to my online class energized and finished my paper draft. I spent a long journal session, writing out my vision and feelings about doing the PhD across countries in the upcoming years. I cleaned my house further, made my bed, cooked a new meal for myself.

Then, Sunday evening, I hung out with a good friend. Sunday and Monday, I finally got the 5-minute tasks done that I had been postponing for weeks. I called multiple family members and friends, one after the other.

For being in my luteal phase of my menstrual cycle, I was strangely energised. At the same time, Sunday and Monday were slow days in which I felt connected to my womb, sensing the upcoming pain, honouring it and quitting coffee, opting for chamomile tea instead.

Then my menstruation came, which was rough and more focused on surviving than tuning into anything I wanted beyond that day, but with the knowledge that for now surviving was enough. My menstruation was different than previous ones.

Several days later, various opportunities and connections came falling into my lap, including a magazine that wanted to republish an article I had written a year ago, and pay me for it.

Something was definitely shifting, I could feel it in my body and I could see my life adapting to it. That shift is not because of one thing only, it is a combination of factors outlined above (and probably missing many subconscious ones). My astrology transits were spot on with what was happening in my life. My dedication to a spontaneous 24-hour fast, cancelling my appointments, feeling the urge to clean my physical space as well as my schedule right before the New Moon. Friday’s Rolfing session that was focused on grounding my legs and feet into the ground, while opening my chest/heart that helped me feel more oriented into the world and able to look further ahead, while also standing firmly on the ground. Then, recognising that my cycle was different and new opportunities coming into my life. As Marcella aptly summarised in response to this story:

“Fascia is all about connectivity and relationship, and so are these processes”

Making sense of certain changes in our lives (and the world) without accepting that everything is connected is difficult, if not impossible. If you sense or see change happening, you do not need to understand the cause as a clear, one-to-one, and linear relationship. Change that you sense and see does not become unsure, confusing or confounding, or untrue when you cannot explain it within the Western scientific rhetoric of controlled empirical experiments.

The biggest changes occur exactly when many things are happening at the same time. We will understand that only when living in tune with our bodies and cycles, the bodies and cycles of the cosmos, and with the rest of nature. Resist the urge to explain or rationalise what you already feel is true.

We know more than we think — literally.

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