Chapter One,
Session One

Twenty-two students, four faculty, and Joseph Heller met at Westerbeke Ranch in Sonoma, California, to begin this new way of life.  What was promised was a professional career in helping people be healthy and fully self-expressed. The training is patterned after Ida Rolf’s original recipe for bodywork. Each of Ida’s 10 sessions has a specific physical intention, which of course, greatly affects the body, mind, and spirit. Joseph Heller added dialogue to the physical work and an 11th Session for completion. Otherwise, Hellerwork is the same as every other Structural Integration School. (They are all great.)

Session One is to balance the rib cage over the pelvis, to bring full movement to all parts of the chest and thoracic cavity, and to expand and facilitate breathing capacity. Inspiration is the medical term for breathing. The word comes from spiritus, the Latin word for spirit. In the early days of medicine, it was obvious that if someone was breathing, then some kind of spirit was providing the movement. Each culture has its own version of invisible power to explain this, but it is essentially the same notion throughout the world regardless of the words used to describe or label it. All people, when they die, cease to move, and this invisible power that moves us leaves or disappears or whatever. No one knows for sure what the whatever happens after death is either.

During life, however, all people breathe and will hold their breath when they are afraid. Once the danger has passed, then they may “breathe easy”.  Some of us spend most of our lives holding our breath in various ways. Some acceptance of a spiritual force that breathes us provides some sense of safety for us to breathe easier.

I started smoking cigarettes at age 11 and was still smoking when I began Structural Integration training.

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