Your body needs attention
You’re a human being and eventually, you start noticing that your body is not move as fluidly as it did, it’s getting weaker and you’re slouching more. You know you need rest and move more but life’s pretty demanding, and you’re having trouble making it to an exercise class. You want some good direct attention. Your hip, shoulder, jaw, gut or that old scar from your surgery is feeling pretty intrusive and what is worse, it distracts you from feeling present and engaged in your life.
And you’ve tried…
Despite everything you have tried, you notice that you get temporary relief, but the problem hasn’t yet been completely solved and the aching muscles and joint tension tries your patience. You don’t like that you feel disconnected from your body, or maybe you wonder why you don’t really even feel your body except that it hurts and it needs some attention. Is there anything that can help you make sense of it all?
I help people who struggle with chronic pain and tension, who feel restriction in their movement & they want more comfort in their bodies.
Testimonial about working with Liesje as a practitioner.
“Your use of the term ‘being met’ gives me the idea that this somatic work is unwinding through an exploration resonates with me very deeply. I want to meet myself and give myself permission to be and also to express”
-Diane West
Is Gravity a Healer or a Harmer?
What you may not yet have recognized is that you have an ongoing sense of connection with the gravitational system.
Ground. The observable fact that, even if you would say you feel ‘numb to it all"‘, you can still sense (with a few exceptions due to neurological situations) that you’re feeling the pressure of the ground touching your feet and that you push off it, you are traveling through space.
Space. You probably have sensed that your surroundings have an effect on you, For instance, have you noticed that you feel like you can expand with breath when you’re in a beautiful open field with a gorgeous natural sky?
Or have you noticed how you feel about being inside a generic office building year after year because it’s where you do your work.
In many places that we go, where we work, or the gym, or places where we shop, they are actually giant weahouses with no outside light. Can you see how, because of that, our bodies are literally losing touch with Life and quickly falling apart.
Space calls us and beauty is the way.
We need to get back to our bodies in a wholistic way so we can feel more alive.
The Incredible Force of Gravity
When you start learning how to pay attention to Gravity you start to understand how much the World is always connecting with you and always talking to you, and you are also talking back. You can start to understand that you live and grow within What is Life since Day One.
When you sense that there’s space and ground around and within you, you begin to access better information about your physical life and you stop wasting effort getting stuck resisting or ignoring this constant and incredible Force of Gravity.
Learn to recognize Gravity’s force as what it means to YOU; an unconditional Living force that empowers Life into exist so Life can flourish;………or an unending pressurizing, suffocating and heavy force that stops you right in your tracks, making it seemingly impossible to move forward?
Where do you fall on that spectrum?
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In our local communities, we have health care providers who specialize in helping us with our body and therapists who help us with our mind, or sometimes we say, ….with our life.
But isn’t Life more than our relational issues? Isn’t Life about learning how to Live with Aliveness?
Rolfing, Structural Integration is about connecting ALL Three! Body, Mind and the Environment; it’s truly wholistic. I’m here to help you actually come to understand that you have a body which needs wholistic attention in order to function well.
Have you actually found a bodywork system that can both rebalance your connective tissue to align muscles to bone while also teaching you movement experiences that help you awaken to the actual language of life, the Force of Gravity and our senses?
Dr. Ida P. Rolf said famously, “Gravity is the Therapist.”
It will help you notice that you feel better when you move in a way that responds to that continuum. You can relieve tension when you feel that you can let go of something that you didn’t know you could. Rolfing brings deeply transformation.
Liesje Smith, Certified Advance Rolfer™ & Somatic Movement Educator™
Athens, GA
Hello! I’m Liesje (lee.sha-a dutch name),
I’ve been committed to the study of Rolfing since 2011 and dedicated to the somatic field since 1994.
Before that, I was a kid at the end of a quiet dirt road in the mountains of Vermont, with great forests all around me.
My home was beautiful, but confusing and my very first love became dance and movement in nature because I felt how much language there is between movement and the world.
I’m now a Certified Advanced Rolfer, as well as a Somatic Movement Therapist and dancer. I've been helping people with their bodies using - somatics, massage, yoga, dance, energy medicine; as well as scar work, viscera, scoliosis and trauma repatterining, Rolfing, Rolf Movement, Body Mind Centering and Contact Improvisation - since graduating from Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado in 1993 and Moving On Center in Berkley California in 1996.
All through the years, I also have maintained a continuous spiritual path, starting in Shambhala Buddhism and now South American Shamanism. I integrate all of these experiences by offering workshops, classes and private bodywork sessions.
I love working with people because I want them to have a better experience with their bodies….
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