Can People change? Marion Rosen's answer lies on the bodywork table.

Many clients feel that the sympathetic presence of a Rosen therapist helps them explore feelings locked in their bodies that are too threatening to face by themselves. "Alone, I tend to shrug things off and minimize my experience," says one client. "But in this work, the presence of another person supports a more expansive feeling. It's like a tent frame holding up a tent, supporting the space inside so I can move freely in it."

The compassionate quality of Rosen work makes it especially well suited to sufferers of chronic pain or victims of accident or abuse who have developed strong self-protective responses. The method is also useful to for people who have survived a crisis or volatile family situation and are ready to reevaluate the habitual ways in which they have coped with trauma.

Rosen work has its limits, however. "We do not diagnose or evaluate conditions," notes Sue Brenner, the director of Rosen Center East in Westport, Connecticut. "This work is not intended to replace psychotherapy. If clients have a recent history of drug or alcohol abuse, or if they have been suicidal, hospitalized, or on medication, we require them to have psychotherapeutic support in addition to this work."

Among bodywork methods, Rosen work is distinguished by its emphasis on the client's process of self-discovery. Alexander Technique and Feldenkrais Method practitioners, for example, focus on conscious reeducation, using manual guidance and verbal directions to show the client new movement configurations. Rubenfeld Synergy practitioners employ Gestalt therapy to address the client's emotional issues directly. In contract, a Rosen Method practitioner is more like a midwife, providing gentle support to help the client direct his or her own self-transformation.

This spring, after my wife had finished her training and certification, I decided to try a bodywork session with Fred Carlisle, a Rosen Method trainee who practices in Northampton.

At the start of the session, Fred gave me a few minutes to settle in. I was experiencing my usual stiffness between my shoulder blades, along with a persistent achiness in my lower back - a sensation of "middle age," I thought.

As Fred's hands made contact with those places of holding, I realized that my soreness was the result of muscles fatigued from trying to hold myself together, keeping a stiff back against outer challenges. I understood that my lower back pain was caused by my basic assumption that this was a "mean old world" and the best way to cope was through unceasing effort, fueled by fear.

During the session, I began to feel that this state of perpetual struggle might not be necessary. Fred asked me a question every now and then, such as "What just changed? Your back feels different now." I didn't always try to answer completely, as I sensed that casting thoughts into sentences made me lose connection with my bodily experience.

Still, I knew what he meant. I had let something go and had dropped into a deeper state of relaxation. I had the sense of being outside ordinary life, with thoughts and memories occurring to me as if I were drifting off to sleep. For a moment, I experienced what it was like to release my defenses, to stand apart from my constant struggle for survival, and to see how my way of holding my muscles was a habit formed as a much younger, less mature person.

When the session ended, Fred encouraged me to remain on the table and take whatever time I needed by myself. Resting there, I felt peaceful, sad, and relieved, as if finally free to put down suitcases from a long trip. Even afterward, time appeared temporarily slowed. It seemed less necessary to believe that my world would fall apart if I didn't constantly try to hold it together. The experience helped me consider the possibility of taking things a little easier. Fred did not transmit these realizations to me, but he helped me see more deeply into my own experience.

Joyce explains: "I think people are drawn to Rosen work because it gives them the opportunity to hear what's true for themselves. There's no one else telling them; the awareness is coming from within. It's a special opportunity to be supported in hearing yourself"

Marion Rosen believes that by hearing ourselves and softening our habits of holding, we can change. "When we stop holding back," she says, "it is possible to discover what we can do, who we can be, what we can experience, how we can love."

Copyright  New Age Journal, November 1997