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Rolfing Healing Crisis – transitioning into wellness – Post 5

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What is happening?

Now that you have a sense of why a healing crisis occurs, let’s discuss what is occurring. Essentially, your body and your mind are detoxing. The simplest reason why Rolfing creates this detox is because the fascia, the connective tissue that Rolfers release, held all the toxins and stress of the body. When the fascial network begins to relax, and become suppler, the circulation into once restricted areas begins to increase. The blood flushes out deposits which were locked in the soft tissue of the body including its organs.

When this occurs, it may not feel like a good thing, but trust me – it is. What was deposited in the tissue was preventing the body from functioning optimally. It is not much different than attempting to increase the flow in an old pipe. For it to happen the gunk needs to be roto-rootered out.

The body is always processing the by-products of life, much like a sewer plant does. It is when the sewer plant gets backed up that there is a problem. The liver handling the oil soluble and the kidneys handling the water soluble waste can get overloaded when the blood is carrying too much of the flushed out. Then when the back up organs such as the lungs, colon and skin can’t handle the toxins, there is a healing crisis. It’s not much different than when storm sewers running into the sewer system after a heavy rain cause the sewer plant to discharge untreated effluent directly into a river.

Other holistic traditions have their explanations of what occurs during a healing crisis. Oriental medicine speaks about the five elements (the ten organs) either supporting each other or conflicting with each other. If one organ pair is not doing its job, and the others can’t pick up its load, the entire system becomes sick.

Homeopathy tells us how the most recent symptoms will be released first and the older ones later. This means if you injured your back three years ago and your leg 20 years ago, you are more likely to have a healing crisis that affects your back first. It is worth mentioning that I have seen, including in myself, how old injuries and illnesses are forgotten.  Regularly, I ask clients if they have ever injured a certain area or have had a particular illness.  Since  it happened in the past, and the current problems do not seem connected to these older problems, we don’t remember.

Homeopathy does a good job explaining how our normal medical treatment, allopathic medicine, often represses symptoms of illness and hinders the natural healing process. Consequently, when a truly holistic approach, such as homeopathy, or Rolfing, impacts the body, the incomplete cycle of healing that a drug might have stopped is reactivated to be completed. In the course of treatment, layers are peeled away, much like the proverbial peeling of the onion.

Constantine Hering, M.D. (1800-1880), the father of American homeopathy, observed three phenomena concerning the progression of symptoms through the course of healing:

The first progresses from the deepest part of the organism – the mental and emotional levels and the vital organs – to the external parts, such as skin and extremities The second is the reversal of their original chronological order of occurrence The third flows from the upper to the lower parts of the body

Rolfing Healing Crisis – transitioning into wellness – Post 4

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Scope

These healing crises can occur within the first few sessions of Rolfing, or they can occur months after the basic series of sessions are completed. The healing crisis can last a few hours, such as a headache, or for months as with a feeling of exhaustion.

The body may progress through cycles of contraction and expansion several times in several areas. This represents a natural process the body goes through as it heals. The body will go into its aberration, which is to say it will exaggerate its strain before it is released. In homeopathy, the worsening of a symptom is an indication that the correct remedy was used. It is as if the body was prevented from doing this aberration, and once allowed to experience the strain, the body can relax.

I can remember back in the mid ‘70s when I healed my back healing through Rolfing. For no apparent reason, my back would start getting tight and twisted. One day it would be my low back twisting to the right, the next day my mid-back would twisting to the left, then it would finish with my neck on the third day, twisting to the right.

The body also goes through cycles of building up to a plateau of a new level of health. Then, after a period of time, the process of disruption can resume until the next plateau is reached. Often, after experiencing a new level of health, a healing crisis occurs. I know it is disconcerting to be feeling great and the next day be sick. Hang in there – eventually, you will find a stable level

Healing crises can repeat themselves. Everyone has their unique set of healing crises based on their stress and experiences. In the course of getting Rolfed, the first time a particular healing crisis occurs is usually the worst. As the process  repeats  these crises should decrease in intensity and length..

Healing crises can be identical to the symptoms you had in the past or they may be something you have never experienced. In most cases, if you had a chronic problem, even if you had not experienced for years, it will probably manifest itself as a crisis. This re-experience is usually a holographic slice of what the condition used to be. It is not uncommon for you to encounter a reaction that you never recalled having, I have had a few of those.

Rolfing Healing Crisis – transitioning into wellness – Post 2

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Rolfing Healing Crisis – transitioning into wellness – Post 2

Concept

When an imbalance has existed for a while, the entire system exhausts its ability to compensate, causing sub-systems to begin to fail. Any gardener knows that the soil can only be depleted for so long until the plants start showing signs of weakness. The weak plants become vulnerable to attack and disease. Our bodies are no different.  Years of stress and exposure to toxic substances weakens them.

Scientists call this adaptation to the constant stress “allostatic load.” It happens where a new baseline of homeostasis is created. Your body is meant to sustain a high level of output to survive; it is just not designed to do it for an extended time. Post traumatic stress (PTSD) is one specific illustration of how you can exhaust your coping mechanisms.

To permanently alleviate symptoms, the whole system (the entire body) needs to be released. The hyper-state, the “allostatic load” that was created to survive must be turned off. When the body starts to come down from being wired, many of the consequences begin to be released. This is not much different than a person withdrawing from an addition. Not only does the body excrete the additive substance, but it also can release many of the other substances and emotions that were linked to the original substance.

The most common complaint that brings a client in to see me is back pain. In most cases, this person has tried other therapies that helped for a while, but inevitably, the back pain would return. In the process of seeing me, the client began to realize that the back pain was tied to many other long term conditions, such as a short leg, an old sports injury, chronic stress, or maybe kidney toxicity. Through the course of Rolfing, the body begins to unwind. The first experience one has is that of relief – in this case, his back became looser. A few more sessions frequently causes deeper structures to let go. When this occurs, the held state of chronic stress, the allostatic load, starts to release. This is when true healing occurs. It is also when a healing crisis is more likely to occur.

The disassembling of the old world order – the disruption of what was a pseudo-balance state as the prelude to creating a higher state of balance, can bring about the healing crisis. I have had many clients say they felt as if their world was falling apart. Their internal world was. This purification process restores the body’s natural ability to exist in a more relaxed, adaptable and balanced state. The shift from a body that is getting worse to one that is getting better is the turning point, the healing crisis.

Rolfing Healing Crisis – understanding how we get well – Post 1

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Why do I feel worse when I should be feeling better?

You decided to get Rolfed to feel better, and now you are feeling worse – how is this possible?  The reason is not much different than the reason why you would feel worse after starting to get back into shape. Your body is getting rid of what is preventing it from being healthy. You’ve stepped from addressing just the symptoms to healing the underlying causes.

After 30 years of my own healing crises and supporting thousands of clients through theirs, I began to understand that, just like remodeling an old house, to achieve a higher state of order the old order must be disturbed. For better or worse, Rolfing does an excellent job of breaking up old patterns that limit your vitality.

Let me affirm that you are not going nuts: the old or weird symptoms you feel are not imagined. I doubt they represent anything serious, and they will pass.

My intent in writing this is to create a larger framework in which to understand the entire process of getting well. It is also to give you some things you can do to mitigate the downside of the process. This article will be longer than my usual posts, since I have learned that when a client is experiencing a healing crisis, more information is frequently better. I have divided the article into 13 posts:

  1. Introduction
  2. Concept
  3. Leaving survival
  4. Scope
  5. What is happening?
  6. What is happening? Continued
  7. Symptoms
  8. Emotions
  9. Support
  10. Support through expressing emotions
  11. Social and emotional support
  12. Preventing a healing crisis
  13. Conclusion
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