Awakening Awareness through Touch: Rosen Method Bodywork
By Paula Kimbro, MA, LCSW
There has been an explosion of interest in somatics work in recent
years, adding to the dizzying array of possibilities in personal
growth, self help, psychotherapy, and spiritual practice. There is a
growing recognition that working with and through our bodies is a
necessity. We embody our lives. Our lives are limited and expressed
through our embodiment.
Rosen Method bodywork is internationally recognized as a powerful
vehicle for this somatic work. Marion Rosen, a physical therapist in
Berkeley, California, created this work out of decades of experience.
At 85 years of age she is still actively practicing and teaching and is
acclaimed as a pioneer in the somatics field.
Rosen Method bodywork seems simple: touch the tight spots, watch the
breath, listen to the words, witness the body's response. It looks
somewhat like massage: the client lies on a massage table, the
practitioner uses her hands to gently explore muscle tension. The focus
of Rosen Method is not on doing something to the client or fixing a
problem, but rather on awakening awareness through physical touch.
Chronic muscle tension is often used as an unconscious defense or
protection. At an earlier time in life some experience or event may
have been too overwhelming or seemed too threatening; the body
responded by creating a barrier or defense through muscle tension.
Over time this organic, natural response to take care of, or protect
ourselves, ceases to serve us. In fact it begins to constrict and limit
us. Literally, a chronically tight muscle limits what is possible; it
inhibits our full and complete expression; it limits our life. Through
contacting these forgotten constrictions and reawakening awareness,
these tensions--the old defenses--may soften and dissolve. The client
may re-experience emotions or revisit memories and more completely
resolve earlier wounds. As physical constrictions open, a new sense of
space, ease and possibility emerges. Even if the client isn't ready to
let go of the protection, there can still be a new awareness of the
tension, a clearer sense of the way the body is being shaped and
limited.
Rosen Method bodywork has an affinity with
mindfulness meditation practice and with Taoism. It supports a
deepening awareness of what is--through the body, through touch. It
follows the flow of the openings and the closings. It is not an
approach rooted in technique or changing something through an
intervention by the practitioner. It is not invasive or forceful.
Rather it is rooted in the practitioner's use of her hands, her
awareness and her words to support and awaken the client's awareness.
Being with things as they are. Not trying to change or fix something.
Not doing. It's powerful. It's gentle. From this somatic experience of
deep acceptance, resistance can dissolve and a renewed aliveness can be
discovered. Rosen Method rests in not knowing what is wrapped in the
layers of protection; not knowing how life will be expressed if the
limits and barriers are released.
Rosen Method bodywork grew out of a dark, painful time in our history:
the Nazi era in Germany. Marion Rosen was a young woman experiencing
the impact of oppression, limitations and abandonment. This is what
life delivered to her: she was identified as a Jew, and the relative
ease and security in which she had lived collapsed. The opportunity to
study relaxation and breathwork with Lucy Heyer was a window opening to
possibility for Marion. It was a time when it was illegal for Jews to
be taught and it was a quiet act of rebellion on the part of Lucy Heyer
and the other students to take in Marion. Lucy Heyer was a student of
Elsa Gindler, one of the leaders in the German somatics movement.
Bodywork was a lifeline in that crazy, dangerous world, a turning back
toward simplicity and the basics. Marion was steeped in the
interconnection of mind and body.
Lucy Heyer was married to Gustav Heyer, a Jungian psychoanalyst. The
bodywork students practiced their work on the psychoanalytic patients.
This direct work with body had a significant positive impact on the
psychotherapeutic work. Marion also had the opportunity to work for six
months at the Tavistock Clinic in London where her brother was a
psychiatric resident. In this leading psychotherapy center Marion was
able to continue the exploration of mind-body connection.
In 1940 Marion came to America and for many years worked as a physical
therapist, first at Kaiser Medical Center in Northern California and
then in private practice. Her work always reflected her early education
in the interconnection of the mind and the body. It was in the
mid-seventies that she began to teach and explicitly draw on her early
training in relaxation and bodywork. As the body mind renaissance
flourished in California in the early days of the Esalen Institute,
students were drawn to Marion and her gentle, powerful work.
Eventually, the Rosen Institute was formed and Rosen Method training
centers were established worldwide. Rosen Method is now a recognized
modality for somatic exploration and personal growth, as well as a
powerful complementary or alternative healing therapy.