ABOUT THE ROSEN METHOD
WHAT IS THE ROSEN METHOD?
Rosen Method is both a bodywork and a movement modality that is about presence, breath, body awareness, releasing tension, reaching the unconscious, and creating new, more regulated pathways in nervous system.
Unlike cookie cutter methods, both Rosen Method Bodywork and Rosen Method Movement are about allowing an individual’s experience and who they truly are (as opposed to who they were taught they ought to be) to flow through them and into how they move through their lives.
This work is born out of the pioneering work of Marion Rosen. Marion Rosen was a physical therapist for 70 years. Her broader background prior to becoming a physical therapist meant that she approached her work with patients with more of a whole person approach.
ABOUT MARION ROSEN
Born in 1914 in Nuremberg, Germany, Marion Rosen was a young adult as she and her family began to experience the anxiety and fear of the Jewish community in Germany in the 1930’s.
In 1936 she began studying touch therapy in Munich with some of the leading innovators in body-oriented therapies in Europe. During her apprenticeship, she worked with many patients undergoing psychoanalysis and working with a Jungian analyst named Gustov Heyer. In this context, she drew on touch therapy to help people to access unconscious feelings. This was a seed that would inform her work many years later.
She left Germany in the late 1930’s as war broke out, and became a physiotherapist while she waited for US passage in Stockholm. She later completed her US licensure in physical therapy at The Mayo Clinic.
Her experiences meant that she understood the connections between the physical body and the emotional self.
As she worked with her physical therapy patients, she could explore more deeply how people's deeply held tension in the body was related both to the functions of the muscles themselves (from her physical therapy background), and also how this tension was related to unconscious patterns of emotional holding (related to her Jungian background). These explorations eventually became The Rosen Method.
In 1982 she founded her school to train others in The Rosen Method here at The Berkeley Center. She was the founder and guiding light at the Berkeley Center during its first three decades.
WHAT IS THE ROSEN METHOD HELPFUL FOR?
People seek out Rosen Method for a number of different reasons. For some people, it is more about staying limber or releasing chronic tension in the body. For others, they may be seeking to release patterns of holding in their lives or their personality. Many people seek both the body and psyche benefits of Rosen.
With Rosen Method, there is the potential for a person's whole system to change with touch and easeful movement through the experience it creates of feeling safe and met.
Regardless of why one seeks out the Rosen Method, it can:
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Bring out your natural capacity for movement, for emotion, for expression
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Stop old habits that are reinforcing tension and discomfort
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Cultivate awareness of your body in the present moment
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Find a somatic way to be more present and practice deep listening in relationship
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Learn to mobilize your parasympathetic nervous system
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Reveal and release unconscious beliefs and feelings