Hellerwork

Alignment with Gravity and Movement with Fluidity

Hellerwork is structural bodywork developed by Joseph Heller. Joseph Heller was a student of Dr. Ida Rolf and he later became the first president of the Rolf Institute. In Rolfing, there is a 10-session series of bodywork aimed at restructuring the body. Joseph has based his work on Dr. Rolf’s techniques. He also added movement education and dialogue to promote long-term, permanent change for the newly realigned body.

An important component of the work is to uncover and investigate habit or holding patterns. Habit patterns can be postural, emotional, or expressed through the way we move. The dilemma is that our holding patterns are strong and can lead a newly realigned body back to its old ways of moving or posturing. It is the Hellerwork Practitioners goal to facilitate increased awareness or a change in attitude to start the process of breaking harmful holding patterns. Habit patterns are not necessarily bad, they may simply be a response that may once have been appropriate to a situation that no longer exists.

Movement education and dialogue are techniques to assist the client in recognizing and altering their holding patterns. Movement education includes learning to sit, bend, walk, and perform activities of daily living with balance, ease, and fluidity. Dialogue encourages a client to explore the feelings that the body work raises to discover how and when they began to incorporate certain emotions or mental attitudes into their being.

Hellerwork has 11 sessions of bodywork, movement education, and themes that build upon one another. The themes address major polarities in life.

  • The first three sections of this program focus on the superficial layers of the body’s myofascial tissue. The themes look at inspiration, independence versus dependence, and giving versus receiving.

  • These are called the core sessions. The bodywork accesses the deeper fascial layers and the intrinsic musculature. The intrinsic muscles are used for fine motor movement. These muscles must be used to produce graceful fluid movement. Themes investigated are control versus surrender, gut feelings, holding back feelings, and passion versus reason.

  • These are the sessions that integrate the superficial layers and the core of our bodies. Themes include masculine versus feminine energies, completion, and self-expression. Hellerwork is composed of three main aspects. Bodywork is used to improve structural alignment. Dialogue work starts to uncover unconscious holding patters. Finally, movement education encourages permanence of the newly aligned structure. Because Hellerwork integrates work on structure, emotions, and function, it stands out as a unique and holistic form of rehabilitation. Adapted by Christine McKnight PT, from Joseph Heller and William Henkins book title Bodywise.

Movement Education is designed to address ways to use our body in our daily activities or more specific athletic performances. Our therapy sessions teach awareness of our bodies, our breath, our contact with the ground, and our sensations, in order to change habit patterns and create new possibilities for freer movement. By changing our movement, we can change our attitudes and presence in the world. This subtle body awareness prevents tension and disease from entering the body unnoticed. Somatic education enhances fluidity and ease of motion thus preventing fascial restrictions from occurring or reoccurring.

Integrative Dialogue provides the opportunity to explore our relationship with ourselves, with others, and with the world. The body holds a wealth of information about our history and potential. Dialogue gives us the opportunity to examine actions, postures, and beliefs. Shifts or changes in our body posture may change our attitudes or feeling state. Likewise, changes in our attitudes can affect how we posture in our body. Examples of this are if we were to sit slumped in a chair and ask ourselves how that feels emotionally. Then what if we felt excited and alert? Would we still sit slumped or would we readjust to sit more upright with opened attention?