ABSTRACT Rolfer™ and author Briah Anson interviews Helen “Jimmer” James about her life story as a Rolfer. From her early life in Pennsylvania, United States, on the family farm, to going through high school during World War II, James’ life path has several exceptional accomplishments. She was an avid athlete, playing basketball and field hockey while going to college for health sciences. She joined the United States Air Force in 1952 and served as a radio operator. Her dream to become a physical therapist for the Air Force was cut short when President Eisenhower discriminated against LGBTQIA+ people in the 1950s with legislation setting off the ‘Lavender Scare’. She overcame this hardship by completing her physical therapy education on her own, becoming a Rolfer, a successful practitioner, and anatomy instructor. James has elevated structural integration work by publishing peer-reviewed studies of fascia-based research and by working with Olympians who have made Rolfing® Structural Integration a part of their high-performance success.
Editor’s note: This article is an excerpt from Briah Anson’s upcoming book. Anson and Helen Grace James have graciously allowed us to publish their conversation. James publishes under the name Helen Grace James; in person, she goes by ‘Jim’, or ‘Jimmer’. The article has two parts. Part one is a first-person narrative about Jim’s life, and part two is a dialogue between Anson and James. Minor edits have been made to fit the publication style of this journal.
Part One – In Jimmer’s Voice
My name is Helen Grace James. I was born in 1927 in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Years later, I was told by my mother that on or around my second birthday, I wanted to be called Jim.
Jimmer’s Early Life
My name is Helen Grace James. I was born in 1927 in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Years later, I was told by my mother that on or around my second birthday, I wanted to be called Jim. I knew even then that I didn’t like the name Helen. I believe I knew who I was, even at the time when I was only two years old. I don’t think my folks truly knew what I was revealing to them. Through the years, I have been called a variation of names, including Jim, Jimmer, Jamie, and James (in the military).
I come from a lineage of Welsh people on both sides of my family. My mother was from a family of eleven siblings, and my dad was from a family of five siblings. My dad’s father and his grandfather were butchers in Wales prior to their immigrating to the United States. On my mother’s side, my grandmother and grandfather Canterbury also immigrated to the United States from Wales.
Once in the United States, for several years, my dad worked in his father’s butcher shop, and in that way, he learned the art of butchery. During this time, he also met Edith Canterbury. They fell in love and decided to marry. They wanted to strike out on their own and get out of the city. During this interim, my dad’s sister-in-law had become critically ill and died, leaving their five children without their mother. Each of the children went to live with one of the family members. Hank might have been six or seven years old when he came to live with my recently married mom and dad. This all happened before my sisters and I were born, so I already had a big brother when I was born.
Mom and Dad wanted to strike out on their own and get out of the big city so they bought a 104-acre dairy farm in Factoryville, Pennsylvania. This is where I grew up. I loved the farm animals and I loved farm equipment. I loved doing things. I remember that I used to climb up the door frames – my mother noticed that and sometimes she would put a candy on the top of the door frames. Then I would find a candy when I’d climb to the top of the door frame. At Christmas time and birthdays, when they would give me a doll and carriage, I would give it to my sister. Finally, they gave me a gift that I just loved: it was a set for melting lead to make lead soldiers. It was probably dangerous, but I loved it.
As I grew older, Hank and I would work together, I learned a lot from my big brother. I loved going out on the tractor with my dad to mow or rake the hay. I knew how to do the things on the farm. I knew how to harness the horses, how to hitch them up to work. I knew how to milk the cows and how to drive the tractor.
My sister did not do those things and we did not play very much together, but I loved it, and I felt safe there on the farm. When I was in junior-senior high school and getting ready for school, we’d go to Scranton to get clothes, and it was always uncomfortable for me because I hated wearing dresses.
I was talking to a young woman the other day, and we were talking about living and dying. We do know we’re going to die at some point, right? As we age, we get varying thoughts about who we are and what we want to do. I believe that each of us has this inner spirit that we are born with. It is part of our makeup, each person, and it is how they act and how they feel about themselves. Our spirit is our guide. It is ageless and goes with us when we die.
School Work and Military Service
My school, which had first grade through to twelve, had seventeen students in my grade twelve graduating class and six in the next class. I loved team sports, and basketball was what we had to play. I was on the varsity basketball team from eighth grade to grade twelve. We played in tournaments against teams from other nearby towns. I was also a cheerleader. My mom and dad often went to the games.
The years that I was in high school, 1941 to 1944, were the traumatic World War II years. Each night at the dinner table, we listened to Lowell Thomas [(1892-1981) American broadcaster] reporting the war news. I think I was a junior in high school when my friend, upper classmate, and our neighbor’s son, Danny Gallagher, was killed in action. My brother Hank was in the Battle of the Bulge [December 1944 to January 1945], was shell shocked, and then placed in the Veterans Affairs (VA) hospital in Coatesville, Pennsylvania. He spent the rest of his life in that VA facility.
Following my high school graduation in June 1944, my folks urged me to go to college. Keystone Junior College was located in La Plume, Pennsylvania. The college was in the area adjacent to the town of Factoryville, where my dad had established a meat and grocery store in the center of the town. I applied and was accepted. While I was at Keystone, I played on the basketball and field hockey teams. This was beneficial to me and the family because it was close to my dad’s store. That was helpful to him because I could work at the store on weekends.
After my first year at junior college, I decided to apply to the East Stroudsburg State Teachers College. The college was sixty miles away but I had decided that I wanted to become a teacher of health and physical education. In 1949, I graduated with a bachelor’s degree. My mother, who was a nurse, had a nursing friend who had married and lived in Fort Myers, Florida. I applied and got a teaching position at the junior-senior high school in Fort Myers. I taught health science and also coached the women’s varsity basketball team.
I still had a yearning to join the military, so I applied for a commission, but the wait became too long. After three years of teaching in Florida, I decided to do what I needed to do for myself and I enlisted in the regular Air Force. I came from a family of soldiers and military people. I had been told that my great-grandfather was a Union soldier. My dad was a World War I veteran. My brother Hank, my uncle Clayton Canterbury, and five of my cousins served in World War II.
On December 7th, 1952, I flew to San Antonio, Texas (my first commercial flight) to enlist in the US Air Force at Lackland Air Force Base to begin months-long basic training. Following that, I was deployed to Keesler Air Force Base in Mississippi to train as a radio operator. I had classes in electronics and spent a few months learning to send and receive Morse Code. Upon completing the required training, I was deployed to Roslyn Air Force Station on Long Island, New York. Roslyn Air Force Station was the command site for the 26th Air Division Defense Command. It was a small, rather secret station located in a wooded area of the town of Roslyn. We were in hourly contact, twenty-four hours a day, using voice or Morse Code with each and all of the Air Force Bases along the East Coast of the United States. This was during the Korean War. Our charge was to guard against any invasion of the United States by land, ship, or plane.
Since we didn’t have anywhere to play basketball on base, our basketball and softball teams practiced and played in the local school. When we had time, we would fly to different bases and play softball or basketball with them. After the games, sometimes everybody would get together before we flew back to base. We’d meet with the other team and some of them were physical therapists, so that’s where I learned about physical therapy.
I wanted to have a career as a physical therapist in the US Air Force. I had applied for a commission [to become an officer] before enlisting, but I couldn’t wait, so I had gone straight into basic training. During my military service, I had become an officer, and gained the Commission of Second Lieutenant, so I knew I’d have money to go to school. As soon as I heard that the University of Pennsylvania had a training school for physical therapists, I thought, “Oh wow!” That just energized me. So I applied and got my references all lined up. My plan was to move my career from the Air Force to studying physical therapy at university. I thought it would be paid for, and I was all set to go. But then the military gave me an “undesirable” discharge, and this opportunity was lost.
The ‘Lavender Scare’1
In 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed an executive order that effectively banned all LGBTQIA+ people from federal employment. This became known as the Lavender Scare.
It was at Roslyn Air Force Station that I was arrested for suspicion of being gay. I think the arrest left me in shock. I was escorted by guards to another building on base and interrogated for hours. The questions went on and on – they threatened to call my parents! You have to remember, at that time people were not openly gay, and I was no exception. They took one of my dog tags. Now, this only occurs when a soldier is killed: one dog tag is taken for military identification and the other tag stays with the body. I was “dead” to the military. They labeled me “undesirable.” I was told that I had fifteen years to contest it, otherwise I had no further recourse.
I was not dead, but I had been erased. I was a good and loyal airman; I did my duty, I served and protected our country. But they took away my identity as a proud member of the military, and that hurt. I was not given any benefits. No GI Bill2 to further my education, and no healthcare benefits. I couldn’t receive a GI loan to buy a house. I had nothing. I was lost, ashamed, and afraid to go home. I had no one I could talk to about my experience. I was twenty-eight years old and found myself pretty much on my own.
Physical Therapy and Dr. Rolf
I did know that I was about to begin my physical therapy training at the University of Pennsylvania, so now I had to find a way to pay for it. I guess I just put one foot in front of the other; I completed my physical therapy training and began my journey to find myself and prove that I was a good person.
One of my instructors had assisted me in getting a job in California, so I came directly to California after I finished my physical therapy training. I was at Cedars of Lebanon and Cedars Sinai Hospital for about three years. Los Angeles was fine, but I was a farmer, so I came to [the more rural landscape of] Fresno, California to treat handicapped children for the California Elks Major Project3. We’d go out into the country and treat patients, workers, and others who couldn’t get into treatment centers. It was all about helping children and teaching the parents how to take care of the kids. I worked there for about eight years.
I always wanted more education and decided to go to Stanford for my master’s degree. The faculty were exceptional. It was the anatomy, kinesiology, and biomechanics education at Stanford that was key to my process. While I was there, I had the good fortune to meet and study with Kathy Robertson, a physical therapist who introduced me to Rolfing® Structural Integration. She worked not as a therapist, but as a researcher. Her research was out of Stanford and focused on patients with the VA, she used electromyography (EMG) with veterans who had been smokers and their respiratory systems were in trouble.
Kathy was also taking the Rolfing training from Ida Rolf [PhD, (1896-1979)], this was around 1967 and 1968. I had never heard of Ida Rolf before, of course I got interested, and that’s when I decided to pursue it. Before I could do that, physical therapy opportunities were before me.
I returned to Fresno after I finished at Stanford and I worked part time for the Elks Major Project and began taking classes in electronics at City College. It was also when I learned that Fresno State University was starting a two-year physical therapy program. Joan Turnquist, who was the director of the new program, called to offer me a faculty position. She needed help because she was there alone and was just starting the program. Right at that moment, she needed someone to teach massage. I was still in electronics school and wanted to finish that up and work with the patients I was seeing – so I declined. I ended up completing twenty-eight units in electronics.
Then maybe six months later Joan called again. She needed somebody to teach anatomy. The students in the initial class were graduating and they hadn’t had any anatomy as physical therapists. Also, the incoming class had to have the required course in anatomy to graduate. I would be teaching both seniors and juniors in my first class. And at that time, we had no classrooms for lectures and we had no cadavers for teaching. Eventually, we were able to borrow a cadaver. The cadaver’s head and face had already been dissected by other students. We ended up with classrooms at the Valley Medical Center, miles from the university, and we had our labs and gave some of our lectures in the morgue at the Valley Medical Center.
Sometime after, I decided to accept the job at Fresno State, and Joan and I decided to apply to the Rolf Institute® [now called the Dr. Ida Rolf Institute®] for the Rolfing training. The Rolfers™ seemed quite skeptical of us. Their letter to us in response to our application for the training was to cancel a scheduled interview that we were planning to have with their committee. At first, they told us they didn’t want us to come to be interviewed, but then, thankfully, they changed their minds and set a date for our interviews. Joan and I traveled to Boulder, Colorado, to be interviewed. We were also asked to write a paper regarding our understanding of the Rolfing training.
The first time I experienced the Rolfing Ten-Series™ was with Kathy Robertson. It was a total awakening.
At that time, I was in the middle of trying to teach anatomy as someone who wasn’t a trained anatomist, and so I was working diligently to prepare for my lectures. For several weeks I did not have an office on campus, I had a briefcase and a moveable plastic skeleton. Kathy and I just did things together. She’d come down from the Bay Area and talk to my anatomy class about EMG. After teaching there for three or four years, I introduced a class to electronics and the body. Kathy was sampling tissues with EMG needles to see how they were reacting. And I was putting a special class together for the physical therapy students.
During the summers of the late-1970s, I went through my Rolfing training. My teachers for the first part were John Lodge [(1922-2001)] and Jan Sultan [Advanced Rolfing Instructor]. Later in my practitioner phase of the training, I had Emmett Hutchins [(1934-2016)] and Peter Melchior [(1931-2005)]. I graduated from the Rolf Institute in 1981. They told us to wait at least five years before taking the Advanced Training, and I finished the Advanced Training with Michael Salveson and Jan Sultan in Berkley, about 1988. And that’s when I met Briah, around this time also.
I did work as an assistant instructor with the Rolf Institute teaching Rolfing® Structural Integration. I was working with Neal Powers [structural integration instructor] as his assistant with his classes in San Francisco. I also assisted with Jim Asher [Advanced Rolfing Instructor, Emeritus] in a class at the Dr. Ida Rolf Institute. I think it was in 1999 that I was the teaching assistant for Sally Klemm’s [Certified Advanced Rolfer, Rolf Movement® Practitioner] class in Washington DC.
I was still teaching at Cal-Fresno State until 1987 or 1988. In the summer of 1987, we took a trip to the Soviet Union with physical therapists and Rolfers. We visited hospitals and treatment centers from Moscow to Sochi on the Black Sea and then to St. Petersburg. It was an amazing and revealing trip.
Rolfing Olympians and Restoring Honorable Status
In 1984, I began working with the world and Olympic figure skating champion Brian Orser.4 I knew Brian through his aunt, Kathleen “Kathy” Orser Cottrell, from when I first came to California. Brian is the youngest of five children in Kathy’s brother’s family. Kathy told me about Brian when we lived and worked at Cedars Hospital in Los Angeles together.
Kathy was from Canada and had worked in a hospital there prior to coming to California. She was looking for a place to live when we met at work. She decided to rent a space in the same complex that I was living in, and so we got to be good friends. She had rheumatoid arthritis, so I’d work with her some. She later married one of the patients she had met while working at the hospital. Jack happened to be an attorney. Shortly after their marriage, Kathy attended law school and got her law degree.
Once Kathy had completed her studies, passed the bar, and became a licensed attorney, she worked as a trial lawyer. Kathy agreed to represent me in order to hopefully change my “undesirable” discharge status from the US Air Force. This would affect my two discharges, one as A/2C Regular AF and one as Second Lieutenant AF reserves. The US Air Force had told me that I had just fifteen years to effect any change in the discharge status. At that point, it had been twelve years. I had left Los Angeles, worked as a physical therapist, and had been working on my master’s degree at Stanford University at the time. It was late at night when I got the call from Kathy. She informed me that she was to fly to the Pentagon in order to defend me before a committee of Air Force Officers.
Kathy was able to obtain an upgrade, a wording change, on both of my two discharges. They were newly titled “Under Honorable Conditions.” Well, that sounded a lot better. I wasn’t asking for anything from the military, so I thought that was fine. This happened in 1968. Now, let’s fast forward forty-nine years to 2017 for a moment. Through the years, I had established a physical therapy-Rolfing practice in Clovis, California. I had retired from teaching at the university and had a friend help me clean the office from time to time. I had known Linda Hernandez for several years. I knew that she was an army medic. While we were cleaning and talking, I mentioned to her that I had been in the military. I told her about my discharge, and she said that I should get an honorable discharge and that she would help me get that started. I’m so grateful to her for leading me through that two-year process. With my attorneys, we sued the US Air Force. Finally, in 2019, thanks to the lawsuits brought by my three amazing attorneys, Kathleen Orser Cottrell, Elizabeth Kristen, and Cecelia Kim, I did receive two honorable discharges from the United States Air Force.
In those early days, Kathleen (Kathy) would be telling me about Brian’s skating, but then she became very ill and we lost touch. I had moved to Fresno, California, and her parents had come and taken her back to Canada. Around the time of the 1984 Olympics in Sarajevo, I had gotten a letter from the therapist that was working with Kathy in Canada because Kathy was trying to find me. They wrote to our national physical therapy office in Washington, DC, who wrote to me saying that this person was trying to contact me and asked – would that be okay? And of course it was okay.
Kathy was in the hospital, and I called her, we were so happy to be reunited. She said, “By the way, Jim, my nephew is skating in the Sarajevo Olympics.” I had a little bitty television and it just happened to be on a Saturday. I wasn’t even thinking about the games, I was totally involved in my work as a teacher at the time. But, oh my God, here comes Brian skating across the ice and he looks just like her. I said to Kathy, “I’m going to come and see you this summer.” And that’s what I did. That’s when I met Brian. He came from his training camp and I started working with him in the summer of 1984.
We did Brian’s first session on the floor in his parents’ house. He came in from his training camp and I went to the store and got a plumb bob. I put it outside on the porch and took his pictures, all the things you do as a Rolfer, and started
his first session on the floor in his parents’ bedroom.
I worked on one side, opened up his chest a little bit, and said, “Now, I want you to take a deep breath.” He took a deep breath, and he looked at himself with his chest expanded out. He was so tight, he said, “Oh, I’ve got to tell Jan,” his sister. Well, pretty soon, the whole family was in the room looking at how his chest on the one side had opened up. I’d done his one side, and you could see the expansion of his rib cage. It was just beautiful. We arranged that if he was doing a show somewhere, he would call me and fly me wherever it was. I’d meet him there and do another session, and we’d meet somewhere else to do the next session after that.
It took a while to get that first series completed, but then he was getting ready for the 1987 World Championships. My Rolfer, Kathy Roberston, and I both traveled to Cincinnati for the event. I would work with him just before he went on the ice. I would work lightly and we’d talk a little bit. He’d just settle in to get ready for the competition. We’d ride over to the venue together. It was very intense and exciting. He won the 1987 World Championship. The following year, I flew to Calgary for the 1988 Olympics in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, to join him for the winter event. The men’s skating event that year was known as “the Battle of the Brians” (Canadian Olympic Committee 2024). Orser’s top rival was American Brian Boitano. Neither of them knew who had won when they finished skating. [Brian Boitano won gold while Brian Orser won silver.]
Later, Uschi, Orser’s choreographer, and I became really good friends. She was a German skater, and she was also Brian’s choreographer. We would travel together, and she would fill me in on everything that goes on in the skating world. Two or three years ago, she told me she had heard about the Calgary 1988 Olympics, sometime later after the event, that there was perhaps a tenth of a point on either side of both the Brians’ scores, and the judges decided to flip a coin instead of giving them each the honor of a gold medal.
I continued to work with Brian Orser for his competitions and for years while he performed with the Stars on Ice. I would work with him when we could get together. Once, I arranged for him to come to the Rolf Institute, where Kathy Roberston and I worked on him together.
I ended up giving Rolfing sessions to some of the other Canadian figure skaters including Tracy Wilson, Isabelle Brasseur, Lloyd Eisler, Elvis Stojko, and American figure skater Nancy Kerrigan. They’d have an ankle problem or something and I’d work a bit with them. We’d see each other while these competitors were all in the same venue. They’d have a problem and I got to help, lighten up their stress. I took Isabelle Brasseur and Elvis Stojko through all the sessions. Lloyd didn’t do all the sessions, but I’d work with him at times.
Part Two – Briah Anson Interviewing Jimmer
Briah Anson: I remember their bodies developed beautifully after your Rolfing work with them; Brian went from being sort of skinny and lean to more filled out. They just started expanding as they had time to integrate the Rolfing sessions and get more work with you over time, almost like there was more structure being created.
Helen Grace James: Brian mentioned that he stayed with Stars on Ice much longer than he had planned to, which was difficult. They were going from one city to another, in different places every night. They didn’t get enough training, but he didn’t get injuries to the extent the others did, and he could recover faster. If he took some time off, he could get back in shape a lot faster.
As you know, you get to know all your clients and if they need a little help with a little problem, you can feel through to it. A lot of the things I helped these figure skaters with were just temporary injuries that had just happened and they would resolve very quickly if I could get my hands in there.
BA: Right, which is a really great application of Rolfing work, to pull someone out of an injury, pull them out of an acute situation so that it doesn’t become chronically set.
So, meanwhile, between those travels, you had a full-time practice in Fresno? How were you balancing teaching and then being a physical therapist and Rolfer?
HGJ: I retired from teaching at the university in the late 1980s, and from that point, I was doing physical therapy/Rolfing® Structural Integration full-time. At first, I was operating my practice out of my home. Then, I rented office space in and around the Fresno-Clovis area, different places depending on the year. My final office was located in Clovis. Two years ago, I retired from my physical therapy/Rolfing practice due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and then I contracted the virus. I was ninety-five at the time and still treating patients.
BA: When you were teaching, the physical therapy department of Fresno State had a reputation as one of the finer departments of physical therapy in the country, and you had a big hand in the evolution of that department. And in 2020, they gave you an honorary doctorate of science degree, an incredible accomplishment (Lee 2020).
HGJ: Yes, and it is an incredible honor. I learned that recipients selected for this honor were selected by the trustees from each of the eight California State Universities and not just through Fresno State alone. I’d studied at Stanford University and I had amazing teachers there, I learned so much. I think those faculty members became the impetus for my wanting our physical therapy program at Fresno State to become the best. I became totally involved in making our program the best it could be.
During that time, I was offering Rolfing sessions full-time. I would see five or six clients a day. Something that was maybe unique in my practice was that I recorded my physical therapy measurements, and these were charted for every patient.
We did a research project and presented a paper at the first Fascia Research Congress, which was held at Harvard University in Boston, Massachusetts in 2007. We presented the effects of soft tissue mobilization therapy and the Rolfing Ten Series on neck range of motion (James, Castenada, and Miller 2007). We compared pain results and range of motion, I had done all the measurements, weights, and reports from the patients.
Two years ago, Robert Schleip, PhD, who is my friend and colleague, asked me if I would like to put my research in along with his in Germany and some of his colleagues, as they were going to submit a research article to the Journal of Clinical Medicine in Switzerland. The article was accepted (Brandl et al. 2022).
Several years ago, Robert and I were going to co-teach a Rolfing class together. I was all ready to go when Robert called me to say that the Dr. Ida Rolf Institute informed him that they did not need an assistant for Robert’s class. Five or six weeks later he called and said it’s on again, but by that time I had other commitments, so I couldn’t do it. I’ve always regretted the fact that we didn’t get a chance to teach together.
BA: I remember you talking about a project that involved Rolfing astronauts at NASA?
HGJ: Kathy Roberston and I had seen doctors and others were involved in the astronauts’ training, and we had submitted a proposal to offer Rolfing sessions to the astronauts. She and I were invited to a conference of scientists on the East Coast. We were there for a full week and met with Sally Ride [(1951-2012), PhD, American astronaut and physicist, first American woman in space] and Carl Sagan [(1934-1996), PhD, American astronomer and science writer]. We went to the Smithsonian with them, heard lectures, and saw instruments that they were using. We attended classes presented by the scientists for a whole week, and we were all set to go. This was just before the Challenger went down in 1986. After the Challenger disaster, NASA’s budget was cut, and they weren’t taking any proposals at all for at least three to five years because they had no funding.
BA: It would’ve been exciting to get that done. The premise around this was that you might imagine that in weightless space, it’s going to be easier to make movements, but if you’re out of alignment, it’s actually more difficult. Was that your whole thrust around the idea of offering Rolfing sessions to the astronauts?
HGJ: Look at what happened with Brian, he didn’t have the injuries the other skaters had. He had the posture; he had the sense of it. He was released in so many different areas, just like when I did the first session with him and his chest opened up.
BA: You mentioned to me recently that you would have all these different specialists sending you patients in Clovis for all kinds of problems, and what you would do is just take them through the Ten Series.
HGJ: That was my practice throughout my whole career as a Rolfer. I did the ten sessions regardless of specific diagnosis. Now we’re finding out that the fascial tissue is actually the sensory system of the body (Suarez-Rodriguez et al. 2022), that it touches every other system (Slater et al. 2024), and nothing is local.
BA: The latest research has shown that even if I touch your body with one finger, I’m touching all of you, and at the same time touching all of myself. Ida Rolf already knew that from the level of sensation and the way she’d talk about the principles. So no matter what symptoms patients presented with, you would take them through the series, and document their height, range of motion, flexibility, or whatever, and they all got better.
HGJ: Yes, with before and after pictures alongside all the measurements before and after.
BA: I understand that these days, you are invited to teach physical therapy students, and you are talking about fascia.
HGJ: That’s exactly right. The connective tissue is part of the sensory system because it engages every other system in the body.
Research has demonstrated that the collagen fibers and fiber bundles of fasciae are found to be like liquid crystals. Collagen is the most abundant protein in the animal world, and it is also the basic building block of the human body. According to Jim Oschman’s 2015 book, Energy Medicine, these liquid crystals create electrical fields that can be likened to semiconductors.
An important property of these fascial liquid crystals is termed piezoelectricity5. When the fascial tissue is put under tension or compression, these materials develop electrical fields. So piezoelectricity responds to tissue pressure.
We know now that the body’s entire sensory system is embedded in the fascial connective tissue, so each and every movement of the body generates microcurrents. It’s also true that the most vital relationship does, in fact, lie between the fascial connective tissue and the nervous system. This relationship should challenge and inspire healthcare professionals at every level. What this means for manual therapists is that treatment using hands-on patient contact allows a continuous and vital dialogue to occur between the hands of the manual therapist and the patient. This cannot occur when we use inanimate therapist devices, now that we know the human body is, in fact, electric.
The body is truly an electrical system; it’s very fast. The nervous system has always been what we look at for the sensation of pain, heat, and cold, and so if you energize any one of the peripheral nerves that are coming off of the spinal cord, they send a message at a certain speed. Any movement of the body, slight or not, creates an electrical field, and you can communicate through this electrical field with the patient, and they get the feeling in every part of their body when you touch them in one place.
Caio Sarmento [PhD, Assistant Professor of Physical Therapy with Fresno State] recently asked me if I consider fascia to be a structure or an integrated system. I would say both. The fascial system is described by Pischinger (2007) as the largest system in the body, and most importantly the only system that touches each and all of the other systems. According to both Pischinger (2007) and Paoletti (2006), fascia will necessarily be involved in every type of human pathology and every aspect of human physiology.
The value of this knowledge is that in seeing a patient through their treatment, you learn where the tightness is and what they can feel, along with the memories stored in the fascial tissue. You’ve probably had this happen with patients. Very often they’ll say, “Oh yeah, I had a dog bite,” or, “I sprained my ankle at one time.” You’re not treating that, but the memory of it is still right there is the tissue. And if you release something in there, you might think you are working on something about the ankle, but you find it changes the elbow. This is exciting for me, having studied electronics, it all fits together.
BA: Yes, you as a fascia expert and a radio operator, you were working with frequencies way back in your early career. [Jimmer was an Air Force radio operator during the Korean War.] Wellness is this whole cycle operating at a sophisticated level, a truly holistic level where the body is interconnected, and of course, Dr. Rolf knew that. She just intuitively knew to go beyond the brain, that the connective tissue system is the intercommunicating organ of the body. Who was talking like that back then? Nobody.
HGJ: She was just absolutely amazing, as was her dissertation on connective tissue.
BA: What a life you’ve had. You’re in this chapter of your life where you’ve been looking back. What do you think are the key elements that contribute to someone having a truly satisfied life, a worthwhile and vital life?
HGJ: Well, I have to go from my own experience. We age, and different ages bring about different experiences in the life traveled. We continue to age, but I don’t think the spirit ages. I believe that we have a spirit within ourselves, at least for me, I have a passion for Rolfing [Structural Integration] and about helping myself and others. It takes a certain kind of energy to enjoy, love, and think about making something better. To make pain go away – that’s amazing. So rewarding to be able to help someone get rid of their pain. It changes their lives.
Energy follows thought, so if you’re so inclined to be investigative of your own life, find things that inspire you. Whether you get into healthcare, research in general, or just milking cows, love what you do and have an energy toward it. Everyone, regardless of where on this Earth they are born, have the ability to think and energy follows thought.
I encourage people to become familiar with the writings of Dr. James Oshman. Dr. Oschman, who I already mentioned, is a cellular biologist, an avid writer, and a researcher. He’s been asked to lecture in some fifty countries around the world. Jim is my major source of information on the fascial connective tissue complex. In the early 1980s, he and I served on a research committee at the Rolf Institute. We really connected. In Jim’s chapter on “Fascia as a body-wide communication system” (Oschman 2012, in Schleip et al. 2012), he quotes a 1951 book by the British neurophysiologist, Charles Sherrington:
“A single-celled paramecium swims gracefully, avoids predators, finds food, mates, and has sex, all without a single synapse. ‘Of nerve there is no trace. But the cell framework, the cytoskeleton might serve.’” (Oschman 2012, in Schleip et al. 2012, 103.)
Take a deeper look at glial cells, which are the connective tissue cells of the brain. They make up about 50% of the volume of the brain. Previously they were thought to only function as mechanical and nutritive support to the brain, however, we know now that the cytoskeleton fibers of the glial cells are, in fact, the nervous system of the cell.
BA: Great notes. Personally, I’ve found Dr. Oschman’s writings give the clearest explanation of the beauty of human energy systems and how fascia works. He’s such a passionately alive biologist, and so clear in his explanation and understanding of the connective tissue system.
HGJ: He doesn’t talk down to you at all. He’s talking up to you, and he clears things up. It’s just logical. It just makes sense.
BA: Every year, he is a major speaker at the symposium for the people that do specific microcurrent therapy, and also for Erchonia, the lasers that you and I have for therapeutic purposes. For years I have been working with lasers and I start every session with the brain protocol, and then I’ll do muscle-nerve protocols in the areas that I’m going to work, so already energetically, I’m opening up the whole fascial network with that laser.
I have a passion for working in this way, and it is my experience that having passion for something where you are able to really help people is key.
HGJ: Yes. It’s something that drives you, that interests you. It’s a part of the spirit that lies within each one of us, and that doesn’t age. Your spirit doesn’t age. It’s going to be there when you’re alive and when you’re dead.
BA: Well, nothing is destroyed. I think your spirit gets stronger the closer we get to that point of taking off into the ethers. What kind of populations have you been working with over all these decades of practice?
HGJ: Well, they’re all in some sense workers: a lot of teachers, ranchers, truck drivers, women, men, children, and for me, athletes that I’ve worked and traveled with. Each of them is so very special, each and every one. I have had the privilege of learning from and being guided by them in my effort to help them. They have inspired me on my life’s journey.
BA: Are there any particular quotes or principles from Dr. Rolf that you have held onto all these years? Things that keep ringing true?
HGJ: For Dr. Ida P. Rolf, I would say her genius was the energy and dedication that she gave to the work. She gave this work to the world; I think it is just phenomenal. I never met her.
She was brave. She loved learning. She went from her PhD at Columbia to her work at the Rockefeller Institute, and then she took off and went to Europe to study more. She studied physics. It’s vital to know how the body moves around itself. I mean, posture is everything, and it goes together with the gravitational field.
BA: You are ninety-seven years old, what do you think about retirement?
HGJ: I never believed in it. I’m busier than ever now, and that’s good, I’m involved with a number of things. I’ve got this wonderful big family here, I’ve got a ranch, and I’m still on my tractor. I’m not harvesting anymore, but there’s a lot of work to do just keeping up with the mowing and keeping it all pretty.
BA: I’m so impressed Jimmer, with your life. You’ve had a tremendous joy and desire to help people, and doing it in a magnificent way. Everything you have done, you’ve done really well, with excellence. I know Ida Rolf would be so proud of you, the kind of work you’ve done documenting the work, and the research you have accomplished.
Thank you for doing this interview with me, sharing your life path, and your learning along the way.
HGJ: Hey, I want to thank you too, for all the things you’ve done. And writing those books, and working with those animals. Animals are so smart and so intuitive, and you have brought more details about this to our awareness.
BA: It’s a beautiful work. Thank you so much, from the bottom of my heart, I appreciate your life.
Endnotes
- The Lavender Scare was the name of the United States policy launched in 1953 under President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Executive Order 10450, “the investigation, interrogation and [sic] systematic removal of gay men and lesbians from the federal government” (Haynes 2020, online). It was an unfounded fear that LGBTQIA+ people were a threat to national security by being vulnerable to blackmail.
- For more information about what the GI Bill is, see https://www.va.gov/education/about-gi-bill-benefits/
- For more information about California Elks Major Project see https://chea-elks org/major-project/
- Brian Orser, born in 1961, is a Canadian competitive and professional figure skater. He is an Olympic champion, winning back-to-back silver medals in men’s figure skating at Sarajevo in 1984 and Calgary in 1988. Orser was the first skater to land the triple axel in the Olympic competition in Sarajevo. After that, Orser became a professional figure skater in the late 1980s and toured with Stars on Ice until 2007. He earned an Emmy Award in 1990 for his performance in Carmen on Ice. More recently, he’s been an elite figure skating coach for top Olympians.
- Piezoelectricity “refers to the ability of a material to convert mechanical stimuli into electrical signals. Since the phenomenon of piezoelectricity was observed in wool in 1949, piezoelectricity has been gradually observed in various biological tissues, such as bone, teeth cartilage, ligament, tendon, etc.” (Zhang et al. 2023, 180).
Briah Anson is a Certified Advanced Rolfer™ and a Rolf Movement® Practitioner with forty-five years of experience. Anson has a Bachelor of Arts from Oakland University and a Master of Arts in Counseling and College Student Personnel with honors from Penn State University. Anson is the author of two books – Rolfing®: Stories of Personal Empowerment (1990-1991 first edition, 2005 second printing of first edition, 2023 second edition); Animal Healing: The Power of Rolfing® Structural Integration (2011) – and produced a children’s video, Growing Right with Rolfing (1996). She also has videos available on YouTube. She has been interviewed nationally on various radio and TV programs. She is a graduate of the Northwestern Academy of Homeopathy, Minneapolis (2019). She is also a practitioner of Frequencies of Brilliance (a form of energetic bodywork) work since 2000. She has training in craniosacral therapy, visceral manipulation, and scar work. She grew up in Costa Rica and was a highly trained athlete, ballet dancer, swimmer, tennis player, and golfer. She was also the four-time Junior National Golf Champion of Costa Rica. Anson has a private practice in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Helen Grace James is a Certified Advanced Rolfer, physical therapist, and United States Air Force veteran who lives and works in Clovis, California.
References
Brandl, Andreas, Katja Bartsch, Helen James, Marilyn E. Miller, and Robert Schleip. 2022. Influence of Rolfing® Structural Integration on active range of motion: A retrospective cohort study. Journal of Clinical Medicine 11(19):5878.
Canadian Olympic Committee. 2024. Brian Orser. Accessed September 3rd, 2024. Available from https://olympic.ca/team-canada/brian-orser/
Haynes, Suyin. 2020. You’ve probably heard of the Red Scare, but the lesser-known, anti-gay ‘Lavender Scare’ is rarely taught in schools. Time Magazine. Accessed September 2nd, 2024. Available from. https://time.com/5922679/lavender-scare-history/
James, Helen, Luis Castenada, and Marilyn E. Miller. 2007. The effects of Rolfing® Structural Integration on neck range of motion and pain. Fascia Research Congress. Available from https://fasciaresearchsociety.org/docs/James_23-The_Effects_of_Rolfing_Structural_Integration_on_Neck_ROM_and_Pain.pdf
Lee, BoNhia. December 19th, 2020. Fresno State awards honorary doctorates to three difference-makers in the community. Fresno State News. Accessed September 4th, 2024. Available from https://www.fresnostatenews.com/2020/12/18/fresno-state-awards-honorary-doctorates-to-three-difference-makers-in-the-community/
Paoletti, Serge. 2006. The fasciae: Anatomy, dysfunction, and treatment. Seattle, WA: Eastland Press.
Pischinger, Alfred. 2007. The extracellular matrix and ground regulation: Basis for a holistic biological medicine. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books.
Schleip, Robert, Thomas W. Findley, Leon Chaitow, and Peter A. Huijing (Eds). 2012. Fascia: The tensional network of the human body. Edinburgh, UK: Churchill Livingstone.
Slater, Alison M., S. Jade Barclay, Rouha M. S. Granfar, and Rebecca L. Pratt. 2024. Fascia as a regulatory system in health and disease. Frontiers in Neurology. 15:online.
Suarez-Rodriguez, Vidina, Caterina Fede, Carmelo Pirri, Lucia Petrelli, Juan Francisco Loro-Ferrer, David Rodriguez-Ruiz, Raffaele De Caro, and Carla Stecco. 2022. Fascial innervation: A systematic review of the literature. International Journal of Molecular Sciences 23(10):5674.
Oschman, James L. 2015. Energy medicine: The scientific basis. London, UK: Churchill Livingstone.
Oschman, James L. 2012. Fascia as a body-wide communication system. In Fascia: The tensional network of the human body, 103-110. Edinburgh, UK: Churchill Livingstone Elsevier.
Zhang, Xiaodi, Tong Wang, Zhongyang Zhang, Haiqing Liu, Longfei Li, Aochen Wang, Jiang Ouyang, Tian Xie, Liqun Zhang, Jaijia Xue, and Wei Tao. 2023. Electrical stimulation system based on electroactive biomaterials for bone tissue engineering. Materials Today 68:177-203.
Keywords
Rolfing career; Lavender Scare; fascia research; physical therapy; Brian Orser; energy medicine; piezoelectricity; fascia communication; Fresno State University; LGBTQIA+; structural integration; Air Force veteran.
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