Marion, I heard you say that it isn’t necessary for us to talk about spiritual dimensions to people. Why is this?

This is something that has to come from the person’s own spiritual dimensions. When this happens, then it is valid, and we can talk about it further. But to say it from the outside, it is not something that means anything to anyone. It’s like when they preach at you in church, and you don’t get it …unless, you came with the experience of God and listen from that place. Then you hear it. It is the same with our work.

Sometimes when you are working with people, they say they feel they are being touched by the hands of God.  

That’s what they say. And the nicest thing was when a person who said that to me, told me she worked on a person a few days later, and her client said the same thing to her. All of a sudden it made her understand that this work is way beyond just her doing something, or me doing something. There is something more coming through when you surrender.

People sometimes feel this surrendering. Is it like surrendering to God? 

This is what I have experienced. Then of course, when you surrender, you have to surrender to something. You don’t really surrender to yourself.

This surrendering could be to God, or to that sense of connection to a larger whole, to something beyond yourself. It means surrendering the feeling that it is all up to me that I have to do it all. It means somehow knowing, no matter what may happen, at some deep spiritual dimension, I’ll be okay. It’s knowing that I am in the hands of God, that I am a part of the Universe.

The trust comes first, actually. When you have the trust, then you can surrender.

My own experience is that these come at the same time, hand-in-hand. It is an experience that can’t be thought out. Surrender cannot be planned.

Nor can trust. When the diaphragm lets go, then the feeling of trust very often comes in. We allow ourselves to let go of what we are worrying about, what worries us, we just give up our insecurities. Another space begins to open as the diaphragm swings, and we feel at peace with our aliveness.

How did you come to focus so much on the diaphragm and breathing in your body work?

It came from a very physical point. This other thing, the spirituality experience, came as a secondary benefit. I had asthma as a child, and people told me how to breathe, so I learned about the diaphragm and its movement. I started looking at it in a different way from how the books talked about it. I saw that in the body, when the diaphragm would let go, something special would happen in a person.

I had an experience in Munich, Germany, when I was first learning to do body therapy work. The woman who was with me had an anxiety attack. AS I worked on her diaphragm, it let go, it released and her anxiety disappeared, and she felt strong. She felt okay. She felt at peace. From then on, there were many similar experiences people had when this physical release happened in the diaphragm. There was very definitely a connection between the diaphragm and that particular state, I could see in the expression in their faces. One person said, “I’m at peace. I didn’t know something like this was available.”

In the first teachers training, when people were asked, “what did you get from this training?”  They talked about the diaphragm, how it moved, and stated that they felt a release, they felt happiness. And they all said they felt a connection to God—irrespective of what religion they were.

So let’s talk about this feeling after people have had an experience like this.

When I have experienced your work, your touch is so gentle, there is so much warmth and comfort and help in it that it reminds me of the ancient  practice of “laying on of hands”, where there is a deep and spiritual healing that comes with faith, or that comes with the touch of a faithful person. This is a longstanding tradition that goes back before Christianity. Would you tell us more about what happens when you place your hands on the client?

For me? It’s like caressing someone. There is the felling of caress. And then there is this feeling of this person entrusting himself or herself to me. And I feel glad. This is how I start out, putting my hand on them. It’s like when you have a child, and you caress them, and you put your hand on them, too, to tell them something with touch, to tell them, “I’m  here, I’m with you, I love you.” It is something like that. Even before I know that I love them; for sometimes, I don’t love them when I first put my hand on them. But the love is maybe there, if I am allowed to work on someone.

I feel it is a privilege to be allowed to put my hand on someone, and that they have the trust to allow me to do that.   And I also feel some kind of connection, when I have my hand on someone. It’s like an animal connection of closeness. I just feel very close to the person when I can do that.

Do you think of your work as loving touch? Do you that is a good way to describe Rosen Work? 

 I would hate to have that in print, because the same thing is true as with spirituality: it only holds true when you have the experience of it. If you say to somebody, I feel love when I touch somebody that sounds very corny. But if that person experiences what I experience, or you experience, when we touch someone, there is that feeling that is released in us that brings forth sympathy for that other person. Sympathy…that’s not quite so corny.

Do you use the word compassion?

No. It’s not compassion. I feel awed by the other person. Respect.

Appreciation?

Appreciation, yes. That’s more like it. Appreciation for whomever I touch.

It reminds me of Albert Schweitzer’s term “reverence for life”.

That’s right. Reverence.  That word I could accept. How this came to me, I don’t know. When a person comes into the room, and I think I have to work with them, I don’t feel loving at all, they are just other people. But the moment I put my hands on them, something happens, something shifts in me. I couldn’t tell you what it is. But I know whatever it is, transmits itself. I know it.

It’s something in the way we’ve learned to touch; we really take in the person as she/he is. This requires an open ended touch, a non- manipulative touch. And that open hand, without agenda, already communicates to the person an acceptance. There is the quality of curiosity, too, that we bring into the touch. Feeling with our hands, “how is this person, really?” It is just wanting to know who they really are. This communicates something of appreciation, engagement and love.

Is there any religious practice that you find helpful?        

No, except that I know, somehow, that God exists. And I feel a connection to whatever it is, whomever it is; that is, something beyond me.  It seems like it is a given. I think this has been with me for a long time. It occurred during the Hitler time in Germany. I had this experience of seeing a woman’s face up in the sky. I don’t know if it was a dream or a half dream. And the whole sky was this face, and it said, “I will take care of you, don’t worry.” That was all. And I have had the feeling of being taken care of ever since. I don’t know who the woman was. I don’t know what it meant. I cannot tell you anything about it. I can just tell you it was an experience where the feeling of it and the knowing of it, lasted.

I do have a spiritual practice, and it does help. And practicing the Rosen Method helps me with my spiritual practice. I recognize parallels between the two. Rosen invites us to acknowledge reality just as it is. It helps us to contact another with awareness, not seeking to change or fix, only to meet the truth and notice what occurs. The feeling of connection as we open in this process is beyond the personalities, beyond all other considerations we might have. It’s awe inspiring, that sense of meeting the soul or essence of another.

It is the inner truth of the person. But see, if we would start by talking about that, they would think, “what is all this nonsense?” There has to be a way for people to find it themselves.

We cannot know what we will mean ahead of time. Our work is living with the unknown. Respect for the unknown is an accepted aspect of this method, as are many spiritual teachings. What occurs through relaxation or through opening to the spiritual is more open ended then anything we can predict. Bring curiosity and respect for the unknown to hands-on contact brings both practitioner and client to be together in the realm of discovery. To listen to people discovering their truth, their own spirituality or sense of God, is amazing.

How does the spirituality arise in the work we do? I feel it is the natural outgrowth of our human nature, when we are not interfering with who we truly are. Chronic muscle tensions are the physical reflection of these interferences. The easing of the breath though relaxation is a physical reflection of opening to truth.

What you are saying reminds me of the quote from the Bible that “the truth shall make you free.” This is similar to the quotation from the Gospel of Thomas: “if you bring forth what is within you what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.” How does that guide your work?

It is about the holding and the un-holding. What we hold back makes the tension; the holding is what makes the body become rigid and lose its life. And what we bring forth is the aliveness in us. Jesus believed this. I believe it too.

And the tensions are what make our spirits go astray?

Holding back is what makes the body and the soul go astray. Opening to the truth is what allows the soul to be free. To tell the truth, and to have someone to tell us the truth, this is what will set us free and save us from destruction.