What’s This

About

Gravity

Balance

and

Your Body?

There is an ineluctable relationship between 1) the quality of your life, 2) the force of gravity, and 3) the balance of your body. The head to toe balance of your body determines whether gravity is friend or foe. How well you relate to this force has consequences for the level of your health, well being, performance, and expression.

The human body, just like every other structure on this earth, is subject to the effects of gravity. It is the single most potent force the human body has to deal with. The energy field of the earth exerts a downward pull on all physical bodies. No one is exempt. The operation of gravity is a prime ecological fact. It is always there. Yet, because it is so constant, it operates under our awareness. We take it for granted.

When the body is in its correct natural balance its major segments stack up vertically and horizontally. We know from Anatomy that the structural design of the body calls for it to be centered on what is called the “central vertical axis.” For most individuals, however, this center line is not fully present. In the average person it is only virtual. All but the rare few are out of balance in respect to the practical demands necessitated by the pull of gravity. True balance around the center line of the body—which is the same as the line of gravity—exists for most of us as an undiscovered potential. Did you know that some visionaries consider balance around the center line of the body and the resultant harmonious relationship with earth’s energy field to be an important indicator toward the direction of human evolution?

Most of us live with the centers of gravity of the major segments of our bodies slipped away from the central vertical axis. Since our bodies are broader at the top than below, when imbalances exist, gravity tends to bring us down. Then we have to work to keep ourselves together. The human body is not a static, solid structure. It is a segmented and designed to operate in a dynamic balance. Moving around counteracting the downward pull exerted by gravity diverts vital energy and limits our range of functioning. We become habituated to this as part of our usual experience of living. We experience this losing fight with gravity as chronic pains and stress, limited performance, and inadequate expression. We don’t live up to our potential and settle for less than what is in us to be.

Why do so few of us enjoy living at what basic Physics and Anatomy indicate as normal for the architectural design of the body—symmetry and verticality? What is obvious is that we automatically get bigger and stronger as we grow up. Proper structure, however, doesn’t come about spontaneously. That is learned. In this regard we are mostly self-taught. We grow up learning to use our bodies mainly through trial and error. We each enter adulthood with a shape which bears witness to our unique history. We may have come to define ourselves from our familiar physical sense, itself based on a complex pattern of compensations ingrained into our flesh.

How we are is the result of a unique mix of many factors—modeling adults who often aren’t good examples of appropriate structural balance themselves, insufficient training, bad habits, accidents, and traumas. These all get integrated into the very fabric of our bodies. They become so familiar we take the situation for granted. Compounding this is that being out of balance in the makeup of our bodies is so commonplace in those around us that it goes unnoticed and under-diagnosed, as such.

Are we not an integrated unity of body, mind, and spirit? It is easy, nonetheless, to miss the connection between the difficulties we have in living our lives and the lack of “understanding” we put up with in our literal flesh. We take how we are as given. We make do, resigned to “that’s just the way I am.” Nothing can be done. We focus on treating the local chronic symptoms of pain and stress with palliative remedies. We can even be so attached to our familiar patterns, as ineffective and inefficient as they may be, that we bristle at being told that change is desirable, let alone possible.

Doesn’t it ring true for you that things would work better when the head to toe arrangement of your body is balanced so that you live integrated within the field of gravity? Can you imagine how such balance would be advantageous to your health, well being, performance, and expression? That said, isn’t growth not only about recognizing good ideas but putting them into practice so they become actual realities in our lives? We have a clear choice in this matter.

Structural Integration is the name Dr. Ida P. Rolf gave to her definitive approach to train individuals into a balanced relationship with the gravitational field of the earth. David D. Wronski is a Certified Advanced Practitioner of Dr. Ida P. Rolf Traditional Method Structural Integration. He offers expert individualized assistance to evolve the arrangement of your body to a balanced, unstressed, effortlessly upright stance.

xxx

Rolfing New Jersey
Rolfer New Jersey
Structural Integration New Jersey
Rolfing Montclair, New Jersey
Rolfer Montclair, New Jersey
Structural Integration Montclair, New Jersey