Rubenfeld Synergy: The Missing Piece

Rubenfeld Synergy: The Missing Piece


Learn how Rubenfeld Synergy helped Author Shelly Meurer avoid surgery through Rubenfeld Synergy:

For massage therapist and Rubenfeld Synergist Shelly Meurer, Rubenfeld Synergy provided the missing piece that helped her avoid having major surgery. Here’s her story:

“In 1993, I was diagnosed with a debilitating bladder disease that caused excruciating pain. Initially, I went the route of traditional medicine, visiting Mayo Clinic several times. After years of searching for relief, I was told the disease had progressed to advanced stages. The only option I had was to remove my bladder, which was not a good option; I decided to try alternative therapies.

"I began treatment at a holistic center, and within a few months there was marked improvement; however, I was still not completely pain-free. I remember expressing to my acupuncturist my feeling that there was a piece missing. She handed me the January/February 1998 issue of MASSAGE Magazine, which featured a write-up about the Rubenfeld Synergy Method. After reading this article,

I knew immediately that I needed to work with a synergist.

“I decided to join the Rubenfeld Synergy training program and experienced a turning point in my healing when I volunteered for a demonstration with Ilana Rubenfeld. Her warm touch and sincere interest in what I was saying communicated a safe, supportive environment.

“During the session, I felt I was being listened to in a way I had not experienced before. A traumatic experience from my childhood that was buried deep inside of me began to emerge. As I shared the events that took place, Ilana listened to my physical story with her gentle touch and supported my verbal and emotional story with words that validated my experience. I was able to rescript my responses to the people who had hurt me, saying things I was not able to say in the past. As my body let go and my muscles relaxed, I felt a tremendous sense of freedom and relief.

“What I know today, from my experience as a client and a synergist, is our minds and our bodies are not wired separately; our physical experiences are connected to our emotional experiences.”

What are you waiting for - visit http://www.bodywhisperer1.com/ or http://www.vastwellnesscenter.com/ for more information.

Touch Meets Talk: The Rubenfeld Synergy Method

Touch Meets Talk: The Rubenfeld Synergy Method


Have you ever worked with a client who had some emotional issues and sensed it was affecting her physical healing process? Have you ever experienced the surfacing of these emotions while doing a massage and wondered if there was a method that would address both body and mind?

Jodi Peppel, an experienced massage therapist with a successful practice in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, wondered about this. She felt confident in her skills when working with the body; however, her therapeutic touch often evoked deep emotional responses from her clients, leaving her feeling confused about how to proceed.

Professionally, I knew deep down that a major piece was missing for me as a clinician and the people with whom I was working," Peppel said.

While attending a weekend Rubenfeld Synergy workshop, Peppel found a modality that addressed her desire to support the physical and emotional well-being of her clients. She enrolled in the Rubenfeld Synergy training program and now has a successful Rubenfeld Synergy practice.

Guided by touch

The Rubenfeld Synergy Method is a holistic approach distinguished from other methods by its combined use of gentle touch, talk and compassionate listening. Sessions are done on a cushioned table or in a chair. Clients are fully clothed.

Throughout life, stress, memories and emotions are stored in our bodies. They show up as aches, pains and tension, which can cause us to feel chronically tired, emotionally drained and disconnected. Gentle touch with supportive listening, a defining characteristic of Rubenfeld Synergy, is used to heighten the client’s awareness of these areas.

Unlike massage therapists, Certified Rubenfeld Synergists do not use techniques to directly release muscular tension. Instead, they support and pay close attention to any changes in the body that may reflect a holding on or a letting go.

By incorporating talk with touch, the client becomes an active participant in the process. As clients notice what is happening in their bodies, guided by gentle touch, they are invited to express their experience verbally.

This combination of talk and touch helps clients listen to themselves more fully, which can help access stored memory and emotions. Clients begin to see how the stress and tension in their bodies relates to the stress and tension in life, making the body-mind connection.



Creating awareness

Rubenfeld Synergy client "Sophie" began receiving sessions when her husband was diagnosed with cancer. The stress of his disease and the responsibility of his care weighed heavily on her shoulders. Her body was dense, often tight and constricted, as if she were trying to hold it all together.

As Sophie lay on the table, Rubenfeld Synergist Theresa Pettersen-Chu gently made contact with her feet and ever so slightly moved each foot from side to side. The movement to Sophie’s feet startled her.

"Every time I relax, something else happens," Sophie then said. "So now I just stay tense."

"It’s like the ground is always shifting and you have nowhere to land," Pettersen-Chu responded.

This resonated with Sophie, and Pettersen-Chu wondered, as a synergist, what it would be like for her to experience the sense of having her feet on solid ground. She gently lifted Sophie's right leg, invited her knee to bend and placed her foot on the table. She did the same with the left leg, and placed the palms of her hands on Sophie's feet. Sophie felt the warmth of Pettersen-Chu's hands and the solidness of the table.

“This feels safe and comforting,” Sophie said. “I wasn’t aware of how unsafe I felt.” Her body relaxed, and she felt her shoulders sink into the table.

Orchestrating a technique

During the late 1960s, Ilana Rubenfeld, an orchestral conductor, suffered from severe pain caused by the repetitive arm-and-hand gestures required by her profession. Seeking relief, Rubenfeld went to a practitioner of the Alexander Technique, a method that teaches how to use posture and balance.

Touched by the gentle hands of her teacher, Rubenfeld felt the tension in her back soften and a sudden welling of intense emotions. Untrained in the realm of emotions, her Alexander Technique teacher referred her to a psychoanalyst. When she met with her psychoanalyst, the intensity of her emotions subsided, and Rubenfeld was unable to access her feelings the way she did when she was touched. Recognizing the need for an approach that combined touch with talk, she embarked on a journey to create one.

Rubenfeld's first step was to become an Alexander Technique teacher. She then trained with Moshé Feldenkrais, who taught people how to become aware of and release habitual holding patterns in the body.

At the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, Rubenfeld met Fritz Perls, co-founder of Gestalt therapy. Perls’ approach to psychotherapy focused on the client’s experience in the present moment. As Perls worked with the client’s verbal story, he asked Rubenfeld to use her experienced touch to track the body’s story. She noticed subtle muscle responses, as clients shared their emotional experiences. Rubenfeld realized the next step was to have one practitioner facilitate the somatic and emotional work simultaneously.

Like orchestrating a symphony, Rubenfeld brought together the work of her three teachers, creating a duet of talk and touch. She found a powerful, yet gentle, way to address body, mind, emotions and spirit.

The word synergy, which means “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts," was suggested for her work.

“Using gentle touch, I try to help people listen to the emotional undercurrents of their experiences that are frozen in their bodies," Rubenfeld said.

Multiple benefits

There are many benefits of Rubenfeld Synergy, including the relief of stress and tension, improved self-esteem, increased ease of movement, transformation of unhealthy habits and recovery from physical or emotional trauma.

You may have worked with clients who experience the same physical issues over and over again, and nothing seems to help. Maybe you have clients who are so stressed out they can’t relax, or they say the only time they can relax is during massage. These are the people who could benefit from Rubenfeld Synergy.

“As a massage therapist, I know when it’s time for my clients to go deeper, to let go of tight muscles and stuffed emotions," said Cindy (who requested her last name not be published), a massage therapist in Cincinnati, Ohio. "That’s what I call ‘hitting the wall.' I find Rubenfeld Synergy to be a wonderful complement to resolving hidden issues … an incredible tool for self-exploration.”

Rubenfeld Synergy adds a whole new dimension to bodywork and provides the tools for developing more presence, in mind and body, with yourself and your clients. Learning to listen to the body in a different way gives you the ability to empower people to make the body-mind connection, which enables them to release both physical and emotional tension. This can improve the quality of their life.

Mastering the technique

In 1977, Rubenfeld began teaching students in the first Rubenfeld Synergy training program. Although many students in the early years of the training built professional practices, including Joe Weldon and Noel Wight, now co-directors of the training program, others used the training for personal growth.

Ten years ago, Rubenfeld and the faculty revamped the Rubenfeld Synergy training program, making it an intensive, four-year professional certification program. The last year of the program is an internship, with an emphasis on supervised Rubenfeld Synergy sessions, mentorship and practice building.

The training program meets three times per year. Each of these training modules is seven days. Each student also participates in three regional group meetings per year, scheduled between the main training modules. Students in the same geographic area meet with faculty to practice, review and deepen their skills. During the training, students are required to have 20 personal Rubenfeld Synergy sessions per year.

The Rubenfeld Synergy Method does not strictly fall under the category of bodywork or psychotherapy. It is a unique body-mind paradigm. Currently, Certified Rubenfeld Synergists accept and adhere to extensive standards of practice and ethical code. A governing board monitors and oversees practicing synergists in the areas of certification maintenance, professional practices and ethical principles.

By Shelly Meurer and Theresa Pettersen-Chu

To find out more about Rubenfeld Synergy visit www.bodywhisperer1.com or www.vastwellnesscenter.com.

Body Mind Therapy

BODY-MIND THERAPY

By Jeanne Reock

“What are you experiencing in your body right now?” “Where in your body do you feel the sadness?” “When else have you felt that sadness?” “If the pain in your back had a voice, what would it be saying?”

Modern science is now confirming what traditional cultures have known for eons: we are whole beings. Our feelings, our beliefs and attitudes, our physical well-being and our spiritual life are all one piece; what happens in one part, affects each of the others.

The father of the movement to recognize that body and mind are one was unquestionably Wilhelm Reich, an Austrian psychoanalyst and student of Freud. One of Reich's primary contributions was the concept of "armoring". Reich believed that we all experience emotional and physical trauma to varying degrees and that, as infants and young children, we "armor" ourselves by constricting our musculature in order to deal with the pain and to protect ourselves.

For instance, the child who is constantly told not to touch things in the house may become the adult who walks and moves in a fearful, hesitant way. These are the physical manifestations of his constriction. On an emotional level, he is likely to be fearful of reaching out and trying new things; he feels unwanted and unwelcome. He sees the world as a dangerous place where it’s easy to get into trouble; he wants to figure out the rules so he can do it right and be safe.

These constrictions remain throughout our lives and become so much a part of who we are that we lack even the awareness of them. They exist on several planes-physical, emotional and mental (in our beliefs and attitudes)—and limit our ability to live life to its fullest. They often distort our perceptions, our relationships and our bodies in painful and dysfunctional ways.

Reich applied very deep pressure to certain parts of the body and worked with the emotions, images, memories and sounds that were released. Through invasive touch, Reich was able to break through the armor and reach the underlying, unconscious beliefs, memories and feelings that had been locked into the muscles and the fascia (surrounding tissue) at the time of the trauma.

What the child takes in as trauma might not fit our normal definition of the word. Trauma includes subtle messages from significant others, even such commonplace ones as “Don’t cry,” “Don’t be noisy,” “Smile” or “Be nice." Whenever children are told not to feel or express what they are, in fact, feeling, they must exert an effort to suppress their feelings and the urge to express them. Failure to do so can jeopardize survival since children are dependent on the good will of their significant others.

Since feelings are literally felt in the body, they can be deadened by contracting the muscles surrounding the area. When this is done again and again or a major event causes a severe contraction, the muscles and the surrounding fascia remain contracted, frozen in place, even when the individual is as relaxed as he/she knows how to be. And so we have adults who are out of touch with their feelings and their bodies and who operate unconsciously out of belief systems they adopted long ago and that may no longer work for them.

Reich’s work inspired many to explore further and develop their own ways of helping people free themselves from their armoring so that their life force or energy can flow freely through their whole being. Some continued the focus on deep body work, adding new techniques for breaking down the armoring and helping the true self emerge. The use of sound, movement and breathing techniques were developed even further by others such as the Neo-Reichians, Core Energetics, Bio-Energetics, Rolfing, and Hellerwork.

Beginning in the 1950s, other forms of work developed that are premised on the body-mind connection, but are distinguished by their gentleness. These include the Rubenfeld Synergy Method, the Hakomi Method, Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy, the Rosen Method, and the Focusing Technique. Gestalt Therapy, with its emphasis on what is happening in the whole being and in the moment, was part of this body-oriented flow in the ‘60s and ’70s.

Ilana Rubenfeld, the founder of the Rubenfeld Synergy Method, describes her work as “melting” the armor rather than breaking it down. Believing that we learn more through pleasure than through pain, she uses gentle, non-invasive touch as a way of communicating a caring and supportive presence. Rubenfeld’s “listening hands” also serve as a valuable source of information about what is happening with the client on the deepest levels; her hands are an important two-way form of communication. In the safety of that touch and with the use of visualization and light humor, Rubenfeld encourages the client to go deeply into the hidden places.

Although a Certified Rubenfeld Synergist starts with what the client is experiencing physically at the moment or what is happening in his/her life, the session often moves to the early years when the feelings and beliefs that undergird present experience came into being. The use of touch helps the client experience rather than just talk about feelings, facilitates the release of old holding patterns in both body and psyche. Trusting the inner wisdom of the client is basic to the work.

Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy, developed by Michael Lee, takes a somewhat different approach, fusing Yoga postures with elements of contemporary body/mind psychology to identify and release physical and emotional tensions. By combining a sequence of Yoga postures supported by the practitioner, with breathing techniques, visualization, meditation and dialogue, the process enables the client to recognize and dissolve habitual holding patterns.

Other body-centered therapies such as Focusing and Hakomi use special techniques to direct clients’ attention to their feelings, bodily sensations, breathing, muscular tensions, voice and movements. The Focusing technique, created by Eugene Gendlin, does not include touch and can be incorporated into traditional talk therapy with relative ease. In the Hakomi Method, as taught by Ron Kurtz, the therapist uses supportive touch at times to facilitate the client’s inward journey to awareness and release. First the Hakomi therapist creates a relationship that allows the client to feel safe and to establish an attitude of mindfulness, a special way of looking at himself and how he organizes experience. In the state of mindfulness, experiences are then evoked and processed to help the client understand and change. For instance, working with a client who has chronic shoulder pain, the therapist, after learning that the man carries a lot of responsibility in his life, has two assistants in the group take over the job of supporting the man’s shoulders, letting his muscles relax, so that he can experience what it is like not to shoulder so much responsibility. Then he might recognize that he has a choice, both in his body and in his life.

Empowering people to make conscious choices is what body- mind therapy is all about. This process is facilitated by recognizing that the choices we made long ago are locked into our bodies as well as our psyches and that change is most effective when it involves all levels of being- physical, emotional, mental and spiritual.

For more information, visit http://www.bodywhisperer1.com/ or http://www.vastwellnesscenter.com/.

Roots and Wings of Rubenfeld Synergy

Roots and Wings of Rubenfeld Synergy


We are all children of the earth riding the wind. This became a reality the moment we stood upright. From this position, through our hips and our feet our bodies take root on the ground. We are not planted. We are step creatures, always moving and contemplating the next step. Sometimes we give ourselves the next step, sometimes we are taken. The hips are always swaying to keep in time with the turning of the earth. When the hips lose their ability to sway or to be swayed, life feels dead. We don’t feel the ground. From the hips down to our feet, the body reaches to the earth looking for its support. The connection to the earth allows the upper body to fly.

In this upright position, we fly. We fly as humans fly. This means we can align our spines to reach, resonate, and recoil. In this body flight will not happen without roots and roots will not happen without flight. They need each other. This flight we speak of today as we already said is human flight. We are lifted into the atmosphere by the alignment and natural curvature of our spines. It is not the flight or fight or flight which is really running away in body terms. It is the flight of lifting off into our length, which houses our longings and sense of a soaring spirit. It is as if the spine and shoulders are instruments of light, soaring and turning in the airwaves. The four curves in our spine make us aerodynamic and allow us to lift up even with great burden on us. Our shoulders are like the wings that allow us to float freely in the air, our head and neck the navigational gear that orients us in time and space.

At some point in each of our lives, we are thrown an unexpected curve that lands in our spine and disrupts our flying. In these moments the spine is dealing with an unnatural curve. One put there by the world. Usually the unexpected curve is one of pain, trauma, guilt, or shame. We could make a list of all the unexpected curves we have experienced. The unexpected curves of trauma take us out of roots. We become up in the air with no ability to fly. We are then moved by weather patterns whatever way the wind blows. This is also known as being dominated by our feelings. We do things or don’t do things just because we feel like it.

The unexpected curve was the learning curve for Ilana Rubenfeld, responsible for the founding of this work. The pain in her back took away Ilana’s flight into the musical sky. When her back hurt she lost her wings. Her brilliant discovery was that in order to have wings again, she had to know, experience and express the thoughts, emotions, and spirit along in the body of her crashing. Her story is the underpinning of all we do in RSM. WE reinvigorate movement. The body is looking for movement, for the restoration of movement. Ilana wanted her movement back. Movement is most important to the body. The mind is interested in meaning. When we put the mind and body together we have meaningful movement. For most of us an unexpected curve tends to cut us in half leaving our feet with no flight and flight with no feet. In human flight, this is called crashing to the ground whether it is collapse or falling over.

In RSM, we help a person to get their feet back under their heart. When our feet are back solidly under our hearts we become givers instead of seekers. The natural rhythm and ability of the body to give and receive is restored. This is what is important about having our roots and wings. It allows us to reach and receive simultaneously. It brings touch and talk together, tapping the root of our work and our existence --- THE BODY!

The body is the root of our work. The roots are different than the underpinnings. The underpinnings of RSM are Alexander, Feldenkrais, Rubenfeld touch, and Rubenfeld talk. The foundation of our life, the place where we are found is in the body. When we dialogue with the body we tap the roots of our existence. It is the place we root from, searching for nutrients and cheering ourselves on.

The body reveals a treatment plan. It tells us how a person needs to be treated and what would feel like a treat. The body tells us when the heart is in the stomach, and that is needs to be put back in the chest. The body tells us what it is like to walk around without a neck. The body tells us what it is like to walk around without a turning radius. The body tells us about our ability to reach or recoil. The body tells us about a spinal cord that has lost its harmony. It tells us the tale of its life by how it moves its tailbone. The body is the root our work. We constantly tap it trust it touch it and treat it.

We give a person their neck back. We rewire the nervous system. We help a person to lengthen to lighten. We put the heart back into chests and we invite the feet to come under it is support it. We help the body to regain its spine to line up the foraman in each vertebra so that the spinal cord can once again become a spinal cord full of harmony and harmonious resonance. We help the body to regain its natural ability to turn, turn up turn down turn in turn out turn over. Having our turning radius helps us when we don’t know where we are going. We can turn around to make sure we know where we’re coming from. We help the body to move in the direction it needs to move forwards backwards side to side up or down.

Ultimately, what we help a body to do is return to its natural state of giving. This allows the spirit to soar. In its natural state of giving two things happen. The body doesn’t make mistakes, because it is not in a taking mode. It doesn’t mis-take one thing for another. It may have misgivings. The other thing is, it reconnects us with the natural state of receiving. Receiving is the natural true complement to giving. Taking is the false compliments to giving as in give-and-take. Give-and-take is usually dominated by taking. We are a culture of takers. You can hear it in our everyday language. We take time to take a shower, take a seat, take a moment, and take a breath. Let’s do an experiment. Take a breath and notice what happens in your body. Now give yourself a breath and notice what happens in your body. When the body returns to giving and receiving, we hear in the body’s language the roots for flight and flying from a human place. We no longer fly off the handle.

This article was written by Master Synergist Joe Weldon with permission to publish

For more information, visit http://www.bodywhisperer1.com/ or http://www.vastwellnesscenter.com/