Rosen Method

What is Rosen Method Bodywork?

With Rosen Method, I explore the connections between the body and emotions through touch.

People use their musculature to express their emotions. When those emotions are not accepted, or when those feelings are not allowed, we also use our musculature to repress or hold ourselves away from our feelings. Muscular holding over time becomes an unconscious habit and can cause chronic pain. The muscles have "forgotten" how to relax.

I work to "enliven" the muscles rather than to manipulate or "make" them relax. To deepen your awareness, I talk to you about how your body is responding under my hands, or about the sense I receive from your body, or about your holding. When we work in this way, we can often get in touch with what has been held down by the unconscious muscle tension. When the feeling is then allowed, the muscle softens because the tension is no longer needed to hold the feeling down. As I reflect your muscular barrier with my touch and words, I am inviting your abandoned self to surface and your truth emerges. I believe everything we need to heal ourself is within each of us. Sometimes we need help to see ourselves. I act as a midwife to your authentic self.

As a Rosen worker, I am also very focused on the diaphragm and what happens to the breath although I don't talk about it in a session (because I don't want to draw attention to the breath - I am interested in the"unperformed" breath). Marion saw that when the diaphragm lets go something would happen to the body. "When the diaphragm lets go, then that feeling of trust very often comes in. At that point worries, considerations and insecurities no longer matter; another space is opening up. The diaphragm swings and we are at peace with our aliveness," said Marion in an interview with Mara Lynn Keller, Ph.D. And when the trust comes to the body then surrender can also come. "This surrendering could be to God' or to that sense of connection to the larger whole; to something beyond self. It means surrendering the feeling that it is all up to me, that I have to do it all myself," said Gloria Hussellund in the same interview.

To facilitate this kind of experience, Marion taught me as a student not to have an agenda, not to have an answer, but to sit in stillness, patience and acceptance of another's suffering. I attempt to just be present with myself and with the client and to sense the authentic self beneath the holding.