Rosen Method Bodywork

Rosen Method Bodywork offers the conditions that allow your body to “rewire” your nervous system to get out of its old ruts and learn new pathways to the present moment. By becoming conscious of what is going on in your body, you make the connection between body and mind that is physiologically necessary to restore health. You feel pain relief, both physically and emotionally. Your body is more flexible, and so is your thinking. You are better able to make choices in your life that align with your best interests and deeper values.

Many of us unconsciously tighten muscles and shorten our breaths to hold in feelings, memories and reactions. In a Rosen session, you will experience a combination of touch and talk to help you let go of chronic tensions patterns and their corresponding unhelpful behaviors.

As a client, you will be touched in a non-manipulative way that “listens” to your body. This kind of attentive contact helps you realize where, how and why your muscles are unconsciously staying tense. Paying attention together is a kind of “meditation-in-relationship” that supports you to wake up to yourself.

During the session, we'll talk about your experience. You will learn how to speak what is in your body, not just what's in your head. The two will be connected, so that you don't just tell the same “stories” over and over without making progress. The talking is always connected to your body's reactions. When you speak the truth (meaning, lived experience you previously held back from knowing), your body relaxes and your breathing is easier. A freer diaphragm not only has many health benefits for your heart and digestion, but reduces anxiety and depression.

The benefits don't end there. When your diaphragm relaxes, you open the gateway to your deeper self. Marion Rosen, the founder of this work, calls the diaphragm the “spiritual muscle.” She affirms, “When there is trust and acceptance, the diaphragm muscle releases. When [it] lets go, there is surrender, and peace, and a connection to something larger than the self. This is where healing takes place.”


Click a question below:

What is Rosen Method Bodywork and Movement?
According to its founder, Marion Rosen, Rosen Method is “a way to access feelings and experiences through the body.” Clients can receive either “table work” (on a massage table) or attend movement classes. Both aspects of Rosen Method free the body of tension patterns and allow self-awareness to emerge. Rosen Method integrates the use of touch with verbal interaction; words are always grounded in actual experience.
What is the Science behind Rosen Method?
Scientists have discovered that the brain and nervous system are “plastic”--they change with new experiences. Rosen Method practitioners create the physiological conditions that allow the client's nervous system to “rewire” itself. For details on how this is accomplished, click here for more about the science behind Rosen.
How is Rosen Method different from other kinds of bodywork?
The Rosen practitioner's hands do not manipulate muscles, connective tissue, bones, energy or anything else to “fix” the client. We use the “sensing” or “listening” hand to create safety and reflect what is happening in the body. Most people have never experienced this kind of unconditional contact. It invites and allows them to let go, embody themselves, and become aware.
How is Rosen Method different from psychotherapy?
Although Rosen, like psychotherapy, elicits and works through unconscious material, the Rosen practitioner is not primarily interested in the client's story, in mental understanding, or in changing the client's thinking or behavior. Our work is to create safety through touch, words, and presence so that the client's unconscious muscle tension and breathing patterns can relax and open to more freedom. This allows clients to experience what is happening in their bodies, emotions, and psyches. When deep relaxation of the diaphragm is achieved, the client is able to experience his or her true being. The result is an unforced change in the person's functioning in the world. For many people, Rosen is a beneficial adjunct to psychotherapy.
What does a Rosen session feel like?
The usual format is a 50-60 minute session with the client lying covered on a massage table, having removed as many outer layers of clothing as is comfortable.  No oils are used. The touch is gentle, seeking to make contact and support relaxation. Sometimes buried feelings emerge, insights occur, physical pain eases. Clients often use words such as “grounded,” “expanded,” or “oceanic” to describe their experience. They say, “I feel as if I've come home.”
Sometimes, off the table, people are amazed at postural changes that occurred without effort. Later, they report changes in their reactions and behavior in daily life, and even changes in how others treat them.
How many session does it take to receive benefits?
For some clients, even one session can bring about a major shift or address a particular problem. Some have taken advantage of three introductory-rate sessions to successfully resolve issues such as overcoming fear (of an upcoming surgery or test or other event), making a major life decision, or healing physical pain. Others use Rosen on a longer-term basis to work on chronic issues or childhood traumas.
What kinds of problems does Rosen Method help?
Rosen Method is uniquely helpful when other modalities have not addressed how physical, emotional, and even spiritual issues are intertwined. To a Rosen practitioner, there is no difference between a tense muscle, a hidden feeling, and a loss of self. The body and the mind are one. That's why healing happens on the physical, emotional, and psychological levels at once. That's why Rosen can make your back pain go away at the same time as you find out who you really are.

Clients come for different reasons:
  1. physical problems,
  2. emotional problems,
  3. destructive behavioral patterns, and
  4. searching for identity and a more authentic life.

In my practice, clients have benefited in each of these areas:
  • relief from physical ailments such as backaches, headaches, neck aches, insomnia, asthma, chronic intestinal difficulties, distorted postures, and limps. Marion Rosen reports additional success with heart problems, Parkinson's disease, and infertility;
  • relief from emotional problems such as anxiety, depression, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, dissociation, eating disorders, and chronic, habitual feelings such as sadness, anger, fear;
  • freedom from destructive behaviors, which people often confuse with their “personality.” These include the inability to be intimate, to reach out for what you want, to think flexibly or creatively, to have appropriate boundaries. When we access and open the places in our bodies where these behaviors are locked in, life changes. As one client said about his obsessive-compulsive traits, “O.C.D. is a compulsive habit that stops when I show up.”
  • support for what I call spiritual inquiry, or wanting to connect to a deeper, truer self beneath one's personality or roles. Marion Rosen says this work helps you “become the person you are, not the person you think you are.” This opens you to a connection to something larger than the self, allowing deep healing and transformation to take place.
Benefits