Client Experiences

My external life has changed as well

Owen Marcus and his approach to Rolfing has had transformational affect for me. For years I’ve felt a niggling that all the reading, meditating, coaching and spiritualizing I’d been doing wasn’t getting me very far. Unless I could re-route the old patterns in the body I wasn’t going to really let go of the power of the mind.

My Rolfing experience proved my suspicions to be true. I feel like my body is finally catching up to my mind and I’m actually living and experiencing a true synchronicity between mind and body awareness. And as my internal life changes, my external life has changed as well – all for the better.

Owen brings his certainty and expertise to the Rolfing table, combining it with his compassionate and wise bedside manner. He embodies the expression ‘capable hands’ as a Rolfer and as a human being.

I can walk and hike without pain

Injuries from a motorcycle accident more than 30 years ago and a great deal of stress made whole body tight to the point that walking was painful. After being Rolfed by Owen, who also taught a new way of walking, I can walk and hike without pain, and my whole body is more relaxed.

I didn’t have a problem

I have problems with my neck. Last year [1989] I got Rolfed one time, and I didn’t have a problem the whole year.

I can now move with a freedom I have not known since my early youth

I was Rolfed one and a half years ago at age 61. I am physically active but had accumulated two chronic pains that had been with me for 25 years. There was pain in the back of my neck and in one hip, all the time. Both became worse when I played hard. Muscle relaxants and or chiropractic treatments provided only temporary relief. Acupuncture felt good but didn’t get to the core of the issues, especially the hip. In addition and of course related, I had very tight legs and a locked up pelvis. Funny thing, I had always though my hard athletic body was a big plus. It turns out that hardness does not equal strength and my hardness came with both physical cost (pain) and emotional cost (pain).

Rolfing with Owen Marcus changed my life for the better. The chronic pains are now gone 95% of the time. They come back like a reminder when I over work or play too hard. The miracle is my body self heals in a day or two. My body is now loose enough to take care of itself.

I can now move with a freedom I have not known since my early youth. There is less effort and more flow. It is like swimming in air! I ski better with less work and greater joy.

The bonus is that people relate to me in a softer way. Instead of me encountering them with a body that appeared to be poised for attack I appear to be and I am more relaxed. People are more receptive to me.

Recommend Owen without reservation.

As a physician who works with patients who present with chronic, recurrent pain problems such as arthritis, chronic fatigue syndrome and others, I found his work helpful personally and professionally. I recommend Owen without reservation.

I surprised myself as to what I am actually able to physically accomplish

For the first 40 years of my life I was physically able to run fast, jump, and do any lifting that I needed to do. I must say that I have often accomplished the latter activity in particular with a fair amount of unconsciousness over the years. Since I was thirty, I have been a teacher in a private school system, but still active as a gardener and a landscaper at home, and professionally.

Once I started experiencing pain I took greater care in how I moved, went to various kinds of chiropractors, acupuncturists, massage therapists and movement specialists. I knew about Rolfing but did not try it until I was about 50. By then I was generally in constant pain and my movement was limited by two herniated lumbar discs and sciatica.

I finally chose to be Rolfed on a regular basis for a while by Owen Marcus, which I continue today, three years later, on a periodic basis. I feel twenty years younger, and am able to do many of the activities that I love to do, especially in the garden. I have sometimes surprised myself as to what I am actually able to physically accomplish.

Through Rolfing I deepened my understanding of how the emotions affect the physical body. Besides being able to move without pain, I have more energy, strength and move differently. My experience of being Rolfed has been an integral part of a new experience of life and an approach to it that I feel is positive and invigorating. I am extremely grateful for the experience.

Restoration of my physical posture and ease of movement

I had a complete series of Owen's Rolfing treatments and what Men's Group has done successfully for my social dilemma, Rolfing has done for the restoration of my physical posture and ease of movement (I'm 68).

Recover from a 10-year dance with chronic pain

Owen, through Rolfing, helped me recover from a 10-year dance with chronic pain, the result of multiple abdominal surgeries and intestinal dysfunction. I had tried numerous other Western medical and alternative therapies and none ever approached the lasting effectiveness of Rolfing. It felt like blood flowed again to muscles that usually just ached. I have wholeheartedly recommended Owen as an expert and caring practitioner to many of my friends.

One of the best

I have received Rolfing from Owen, and in my twenty plus years as a massage therapist, he is one of the best practitioners I have EVER received care from

I recommend him to anyone

Owen Marcus is the Rolfer’s Rolfer. His techniques and skills are the best. He has treated me for five years and literally has changed my life. I recommend him to anyone.

Rolfing that healed my neck

After neck surgery and therapy, it was only Rolfing that healed my neck.

Change in short order

His ability to effect significant change in short order is, to say the least, impressive. I highly recommend Owen to anyone.

I’m now hooked on Rolfing

Rolfing enabled me to get back in shape.

Chronic hip pain was making it difficult to ski and play other sports. Owen’s Rolfing enabled me to get back in shape.

Restore my balance and stamina

Rolfing helped me regain my balance physically, as well as mentally, after multiple foot and ankle surgeries. The psychological impact of losing my active lifestyle was equally as bad as losing the physical activity because of pain and imbalance. As a consequence of Rolfing, a lifetime of stress melted away, as Owen helped restore my balance and stamina.

Giving me back my flexibility

Years of sporting activities, injuries and a stressful career were having an impact on my physical mobility. Rolfing helped bring my body structure back into alignment while giving me back my flexibility.

Owen's techniques and skills are individually-tailored to treat a variety of disorders. He offers excellent therapeutic manipulations, exercises and advice that make a noticeable difference. I cannot recommend Rolfing with Owen's abilities enough. He is a wonderful community resource who provides outstanding services for chronic health difficulties

What amount of money would anyone pay to learn that?

I first went to see Owen Marcus because I was suffering acute pain in the heel of my right foot. This was my first time I had gone to a Rolfer. I went on the suggestion of a friend.

I learned several things at my first visit, things that have helped me improve my life. I'll share two of

them:

First, the intense pain I felt in my foot did not originate from my foot. After nearly two hours of consultation and treatment, Owen had me relearning to walk. Due to being overweight, I had altered my gait so that it was putting undue stress upon my heel. More importantly, I had lost the sense of "natural walking", that is, allowing gravity to move me forward, rather than willing my body to do something it was really not suited to do. After leaving his office, each day for the next several weeks, I consciously "re-taught" myself to walk in a more natural and less harmful (to my heel) way. That was a joy. It was easier to move around, much easier to get from A to B, which reminded me of all kinds of other things in life that I unconsciously had been making more difficult for myself. Minimum effort, maximum efficiency, was still a law that could work for me in a simple, practical way.

The treatment of my heel (the presenting problem) led to physical treatment of my entire body, with the acute realization that I felt pain in nearly every area that was touched. Yet, I observed, by the end of the course of treatment that day, that what I felt as "pain" an hour before now I felt as simply "pressure".

What I realized was that the pain was not from the pressure applied by Dr. Marcus, but was a direct result of my tightness, or resistance. I vowed that I would do everything in my power to let go of my resistance, because I knew that Owen was not "hurting" me, that I was "feeling pain" due to my own resistance, or fear.

Subsequent (two or three) appointments bore that out. By retraining myself to experience "pain" as simple release, and then "pleasure", I actually came to enjoy the pressure applied throughout my body at our final appointment, accepting the treatment and experiencing no pain at all.

Therefore, my second lesson was that I was responsible for creating--not only through the movement of my body in unnatural walking but in how I held my body through tension or fear--the discomfort and pain that I would experience in my daily life.

It is difficult to adequately express the importance of this discovery in my daily life. I know now to relax, to allow my breath and my own thoughts to assist me in achieving maximum health and a life free of pain. Any healer that can use his/her art and skill to bring relief of pain and greater health to a client is a healer worth seeing. But one who brings to the client ways that the client can heal him/herself is invaluable. Owen Marcus as a healer is invaluable.

What amount of money would anyone pay to learn that? And the method of learning, with Owen's firm, reassuring hands and voice, allowed me to experience the truth of that lesson in dramatic fashion, with just three or four appointments.

I look forward to revisiting Dr. Marcus when I return to Sandpoint, setting up an appointment when I am NOT in pain, in order to learn where and how I am holding tension (fear) in my body, releasing that, in order to head off pain, illness, disease before it even has a chance to locate somewhere in my physical being.

After an automobile accident

After an automobile accident, I had a tremendous amount of pain in my neck and back. Medication and chiropractic sessions were not handling the problem. After one session with Owen, I immediately felt relief.