What's my story? It was asked on a Rolfing practicioner discussion list I am lucky to frequent.
It's something a fellow practicioner asks clients when they come in for sessions.
Well. What's MY story.. It's not something anyone can encompass in one go, but I'll give it an abridged effort right here.

Most people get Rolfed and then change their existence. As usual, I went backwards. I changed my existence, left a rotten marriage, changed my Self through martial arts and time and meditation in the natural world. I changed my diet, changed my approach, changed the country I lived in. All in a kind of involuntary response to my heart's desires. I never planned it, never asked for it (consciously) and certainly never really understood, beyond messages from my heart which I had, at the time, no way to answer.

There is one incident I can point to which I believe led to my "unmooring" and the beginning of my Adventures. I saw a gifted massage therapist on a far too infrequent basis in the Bastrop City Hall. There is a point in my body which I have always equated with an old spear wound, as if I had been run through centuries ago and my soul had never forgotten.

As a child, I woke stiff and arched in my bed, nightmares of demons butting or stabbing me in the back echoing. I never spoke a word of it to my parents, who were not well-to-do and made me aware of the cost of every ailment I had. I never felt comfortable being ill, I never felt comfortable being hurt or needing help. The Reichian definition of compensated oral begins to define what defined me. Rigid, never needing help, never needing anyone, never admitting pain or need, even to myself. Even telling my dear and loving husband that I've had some tiny problem or need a foot or hand rub, was at first a real effort. His loving nurturance has shrunk that wall to a shallow curb.

This massage therapist, with her 350 hours of training and her Texas license, worked manually on this spot like a champ. At some point, breathing into the pressure, I said "it feels like there is a spear in my back" and she paused.

Then, with a bloodcurdling shriek, she pulled the virtual spear out.

What kind of intuition and bravery does this take? This borders on the shamanic. This woman is probably still a massage therapist in the city hall in Bastrop County.

I have never felt the spear again, though the wind used to drift through the hole in me it left. The beautiful ministrations of some of the best bodyworkers on the planet have minimized it to a kind of functional echo in my body.

So, I say to my elite colleagues, especially in the US, where the prejudice seems most keen... you just don't know when the mantle of the angels will fall on you. It doesn't fall because you are ever so special and have special training, or don't. It falls where it falls. Deaf, dumb, blind, stupid, toothless, mindless -- we may all have the honor of helping another. We should never think that it's because we are special in some way, that it comes to us. It is simply our responsibility, when it does.

Mind you, I am free of (save a devotion to Marishiten) deities, but I still believe this: We are angels for one another. In this real and practical world, we must be.

So yeah, I'm backwards. I came to enlightenment, and then Rolfing. Not the other way around. It doesn't mean I'm not grateful or amazed by the furthering of personal growth, or the opportunity to do the work myself, but let's face it.

There are other means to enlightenment, and we can't specify what they are, for everyone. Nor should anyone, ever, for any reason, decide that they have in hand a tool to enlighten everyone.

This way lies, truly, the hellfire and damnation of the Taliban, the Catholic ("Spanish") Inquisition, Hamas, and yes, especially the American Fundamentalist Movement.