AHP Perspective is a magazine published bi-monthly for members of the Association for Humanistic Psychology. It includes interviews, articles, essays, updates on member activities, conference announcements, and book reviews. Members receive the complete AHP Perspective as part of their membership.

AHP PERSPECTIVE April/May 2001 Table of Contents

Interview with ILANA RUBENFELD

-- Kathleen Erickson, AHP Editor

Chungliang Al-Huang, Ilana Rubenfeld, and Stan Charnofsky at 29th AHP Midwest Conference 1999.

ED.: It’s an honor to speak with you because of your pioneering leadership in the field of somatics and because you worked and trained with so many other pioneers—Fritz Perls, Ida Rolfe, Charlotte Selver, and Moshe Feldenkrais and Judith Leibowitz. Your broad-reaching influence has been connected with AHP for more than thirty years.

ILANA: Thank you! It’s hard to believe that this is my 33rd year with the Esalen Institute and last year I presented at the 30th year of the AHP Midwest Conference. In the ’60s I was in the midst of creating the Rubenfeld Synergy Method and I felt very isolated. Talk therapists told me I shouldn’t be using touch and body workers told me not to mix in psychotherapy. AHP was very supportive and invited me to give a workshop in 1970. At that time I presented Gestalt therapy, Alexander Technique, and my integrative method. I appreciate AHP’s openness and confidence in me. In fact, in the ’70s, I was very involved with the East Coast AHP and we held conferences (over a thousand people) in Atlantic City and Philadelphia. We were all pioneers and precursors of larger conferences of the ’80s and ’90s.

ED.: Was your method originally a synthesis of Alexander, Gestalt, and Feldenkrais work? And now is it uniquely Rubenfeld Synergy?
ILANA: At the beginning, it was an integration of these components. However, the synergy happened slowly. By the time I met Feldenkrais, I was already an Alexander Teacher for many years—combining it with psychotherapy and developing the concepts of the "listening hand."

ED.: How did you arrive at the name?
ILANA: Buckminster Fuller (who coined the word "synergy") attended my workshop, and informed me that I was not integrating several modalities anymore. "You are creating a new paradigm by synergizing these elements," he said.

ED.: You describe a muscle’s tightness melting as: Alertness–Pulsating–Releasing–and then Relaxing. That sounds like Reich’s life formula, for the pulsation in living things: Tension–Charge–Discharge–Relaxation.
ILANA: We owe a great deal to Wilhelm Reich. In the 1930s, he included energy and soma in his analytical process. However, to assist the changes in the muscle "armor-ing," he used a fairly deep and strong touch. His work was based upon the world of Freudian analysis. I was not aware of Reich when I studied F.M. Alexander Technique. The touch was gentle and did not include emotional work. In the continuum of somatic touch methods, you have Rolfing at one end and Sensory Awareness at the other. In the middle, there are approaches such as Feldenkrais and F.M. Alexander—just to name two. The roots of the somatic tree come from different soils. And they have much to share.

ED.: People have commented that clients are seen to go into a trance.
ILANA: When I demonstrated sessions using this gentle, listening touch, clients entered an altered state of consciousness. People would then ask me if I trained with Milton Erick-son. I didn’t know about Ericksonian Hypnotherapy and so I was eager to learn more about trance states. It seemed so natural, and occurred rather effortlessly. Touch seemed to talk to the unconscious mind.

ED.: One of your chapters is called "Humor and Other Martial Arts."
ILANA: Using humor judiciously is very important. Humor interrupts the suffering trance and confuses the body/mind. It also makes fear manageable. You can develop a sense of humor with practice.

ED.: When I read about your work, the word freedom always comes up for me. The freedom of the individual, the freedom in the way you work, the freedom in that you don’t tell a client how to live.
ILANA: Interesting . . . I would say it is certainly about choice. Freedom is the ability to recognize choices. You do not have to be stuck. Freedom is your ability to see, experience, and experiment with different choices. This is true regarding using various techniques.
In music, you first have to learn the technique and then you can move beyond it. Intuition and creativity enter the therapeutic relationship when the practitioner goes beyond the technique.
This approach is not just technical, it’s also a philosophy about life. So far, I’ve delineated about 18 principles that are at the heart of Rubenfeld Synergy. Today, some somatic practitioners try to integrate methods that are fundamentally different in their approaches to clients, such as the medical model and the healing model. They are partners and are complementary. Yet, their belief systems are different. Practitioners of many somatic methods do not diagnose or offer cures. They may recommend someone else to do this when appropriate.
If "being right" and "fixing" is important to your ego, you’ll have a difficult time giving clients the space to discover their own inner wisdom and to listen to their own body’s story. Methods that "fix" do not integrate well with methods of "allowing."

ED.: I read that in your training program you spend much of the first year re-educating and undoing the "fix-it" oriented touch. That reminds me of F.M. Alexander’s no-goal approach, which seems so simple and yet it’s so hard to learn! I sometimes still rocket launch myself out of a chair without noticing its effect on my body.
ILANA: That’s a great example! Without awareness, there is no change. That is the first basic step in the change process. As you become more aware, you can tell the difference, and you have choices.

ED.: You talk about the triune brain and somatics. Why this model?
ILANA: Dr. Paul MacLean’s model of the triune brain is very important to the field of somatic psychology. Dr. Bessell van der Kolk’s research shows that trauma is lodged both in the body and the brain and that changing traumatic memories is less effected with talk therapies alone. When the body is involved (with insights and emotions), the changes can be deeply integrated. The triune brain offers a very solid model for somatics.
The neo-cortex (the youngest part of the brain) is underneath the top of the skull and is concerned with rational and intellectual matters. Right underneath it is the limbic system (older—millions of years), which houses all our non-verbal, five senses, tactile and emotional life. Then there is the Reptilian brain (the oldest) at the base of the skull. This primitive brain is concerned with fright/flight survivor phenomena. Touch directly contacts the limbic system and triggers early memories which may not be in a languaged form.

ED.: Is touch always necessary?
ILANA: To touch or not to touch, that is the question! There are sessions that have minimal touch and more verbal exchange. The opposite is also true. There can be much movement and touch accompanied by silences. Touch is another language. The touchers’ intentions flow through their hands to their clients. This nonverbal language supports talking and together they can send messages of safety, trust, empathy, healing, and listening. Compassionate, healing, and listening hands are the cornerstone of this method. The quantum leap here is the duet of talk and touch.

ED.: Have you done any research on this combination?
ILANA: Yes. Last year, the United States Association of Body Psychotherapy gave its first research award to a Rubenfeld Synergy graduate, Pamela Petinati, M.D., Ph.D., C.R.S., for her scientific research on the effects of different modalities on chronic pain. After using talk alone, and touch alone, she combined the two and showed that this combination of dealing with emotional issues and a specific touch simultaneously produced a high percentage of relief and lessened the chronic pain. A followup study several months later showed that the improvement continued. We want to repeat this study with a much larger population.

ED.: Do you emphasize self-care in your training? How important is it?
ILANA: This is one of the most important elements that is continually woven into the fabric of somatic work. Body work and using touch invites practitioners to be more mindful of their boundaries. The first step to client care is the practitioner’s self-care.

ED.: Are there any people for whom this work is not suitable?
ILANA: Although there are no contraindications with Rubenfeld Synergy, there may be clients who might benefit from another approach. It behooves therapists to be aware of (and perhaps experience) other methods so that they can network with each other. Hospice now is teaching "compassionate touch" to its providers. I support this way of contacting elders and their process.

ED.: What if one of your synergists can’t work with some clients? What do they do?
ILANA: First, they might take this situation to a supervisor. We underscore how supervision is an important ongoing process throughout the life of a professional. When our students are certified to practice Rubenfeld Synergy, they are also taught to recognize their capacities for dealing with difficult clients. Practitioners are not "failures" when they recognize this dilemma and refer clients to other professionals.

ED.: Can the Rubenfeld Synergy Method be applied to other fields of work, such as teaching and business?
ILANA: Since this work is also an approach to life and a way of "being" with people, it can be used quite effectively in many other fields of work and in situations where touch is not appropriate. Different people have taken the training and some were involved in the world of business. A successful business manager has used many Rubenfeld concepts and techniques with his work team and reported good results.

ED.: I was amazed at your use of humor in a demonstration I saw. Can anyone learn to practice this work?
ILANA: Creating this method was very satisfying and I could have stopped there. However, the pressure to train others to practice increased until I finally agreed to develop an integrative educational and pedagogical system to train synergists. I believe that most people can learn how to develop a listening and compassionate touch if they are taught in a supportive and non-stressful environment. Individual attention and supervision is a vital factor in teaching people how to practice this work. We continually move from theory to practice and vice-versa. Above all, teaching requires a great deal of patience. Some synergists gravitate toward working with especially challenging clients. Others are excited about bringing the work to children. Several physical therapists have successfully introduced Rubenfeld Synergy into their hospital practice. As a byproduct, they have also worked with the families of their severely disabled child clients.

ED.: What’s new on the horizon of Rubenfeld Synergy?
ILANA: I have been interested in using it with couples and families. In The Listening Hand, I devoted a chapter to couples and designed many exercises that they can do together. Sometimes I will sit I in the middle with the pair on either side of me. Their verbal conversations do not match their body messages. He may say, "I understand what you are saying," and his body is rigid—full of anger. She may say, "I love you!" and her body is collapsed and sad. There is a distinct advantage in being able to track their physical state as the pair talk with one another. Also, the family system is special. Jane Parsons-Fein, a protégée of Milton Erickson, said "The deepest trance you’ll ever be in is the family trance." Having family members witness each other’s session brings up all sorts of early memories and feelings. A father had a dramatic sessiohttp://n about his bypass operation. He survived, and yet his children and wife behaved as if he were on the verge of dying. By having the whole family present, we were able to process their fears and anxiety.

ED.: What’s new in your life now?
ILANA: Speaking of family trances. . . I’ve changed two very embedded family traditions. After living in New York City all my life, I left and moved to Oregon. Everyone was shocked. Another family trance was that no one in my family ever drove a car. I began driving lessons several weeks ago and that is scary and exciting.
The book is new! It was a three-year saga—from writing to publishing. Distilling forty years of experiences was difficult—especially writing in a language that anyone could understand. Transforming a touching, kinesthetic, physical work into words has been a roller coaster ride.

ED.: What is the future for somatic practitioners?
ILANA: In order to practice in an integrated way, somatic practitioners need to have integrity and experience themselves as integrated. If we ask our clients to "walk their talk," then we must also "walk our talk." As practitioners, we are like musicians. We assist our clients to find their own song of the soul.

For a description of the Rubenfeld Synergy Method, read The Listening Hand by Ilana Rubenfled, and visit www.IlanaRubenfeld.com

AHP PERSPECTIVE Apr/May 2001 Table of Contents

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