Embodied Being by Jeffrey Maitland

Author:Jeffrey Maitland [Maitland, Jeffrey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HEA032000 Health & Fitness / Alternative Therapies
Publisher: North Atlantic Books
Published: 2016-01-08T05:00:00+00:00

Conclusion

Just as you cannot find the unity and harmony in a piece of music by breaking it down into individual notes, you cannot find the wholeness of the body when you consider it a thing made of parts. Rolf said, “To a seeing eye, the surface contour of a body delineates the underlying structure. To the practitioner of Structural Integration, the problem becomes one of learning to see spatial masses and to sense their balance.”37 Upon first reading this quotation, you are likely to think, “Well, yeah, every Rolfer knows that.” But notice Rolf’s entire theory and practice is present with this simple statement. What did she mean by this highly suggestive term, “spatial masses”? Was she just speaking loosely or did she mean something deeper? To wonder about balance is already to wonder about gravity and integration. If there were no such thing as gravity, it would make no sense to ask about balancing spatial masses. Finding balance in gravity is the very core teaching of Rolf. As we consider what is meant by sensing balance and learning to see spatial masses, we are once again drawn into wondering about a qualitative/aesthetic perception. Although she was not adverse to objective assessments (she was a scientist after all), the level of experiential, pre-reflective understanding that Rolf was pointing to cannot be grasped through objective measures alone. To appreciate the lived reality of the knowledge this kind of understanding brings, our indicators of order have to be sensed the way we sense all holistic phenomena, aesthetically.

Before we end this discussion, I want to make a few remarks that require further development. What I call the infusion of the cognitive in perception Goethe and his followers call the work of the imagination. When you are seeing by means of the sensory, you see the separation between things. But when you suddenly see the giraffe or horizontality appear, that is the work of the imagination. The senses reveal the world of separation, while the imagination reveals the holistic world of relationship and connection. We can depict the separate objects given to us through the senses, but we cannot depict the relationships and connectivity of holism. Even though we cannot depict holistic phenomena, we can, through the power of imagination (or cognition), see it. Seeing in the enhanced manner of Rolf or Goethe must be cultivated to where there is an integration of the sensory and the imagination (cognition). When integration is achieved, we experience separation and the relationship and connectivity of holism simultaneously in one simple act of enhanced perception. Through the practice of exact sensorial imagination, the senses are also enhanced. As a result, our enhanced senses make it possible for us to participate in the living presence of the phenomenon and experience it coming into being.

There is more to Goethe’s approach than I have sketched here. The complete explication would require a lengthy delineation of his discovery of the ur-phenomenon.†

Where Goethe sees two factors at work in perception—the sensory and imagination—I see a third.

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