Hellerwork is an integrating process combining structural bodywork, movement education and dialogue. Hellerwork utilizes a dynamic multi-level system of deep-tissue bodywork known as Structural Integration that helps release areas of the body that have become tense, strained, compressed, twisted, rotated and misaligned. Hellerwork elongates the spine, straightens the joints, strengthens the core, and restores alignment, balance, length and flexibility to the tissue, spine and muscles while centering and grounding you.

Unlike most bodywork, Hellerwork takes emotional stresses and strains into account and addresses the emotional attachment to body misalignment. Over time, chronic emotional states like stress, fear and sadness get recorded into our muscles and connective tissue causing us to hold our bodies unnaturally. Whether from emotional or physical stress, once we are misaligned for long enough our connective tissue (fascia) molds to the misalignment and we physically cannot change our structure back to proper alignment without bodywork. By addressing the body, the body’s movement and the mind simultaneously, Hellerwork corrects structural imbalances in the body and increases flexibility and energy, while releasing stress, anxiety and depression. Hellerwork is designed to make us experts of our own bodies and to help us create a sense of empowerment by emphasizing self-responsibility, prevention and education in self-care. This work promotes learning to live vitally, move fluidly and allows us to feel deeply transformed.

The release of these patterns and the re-alignment of the body through its connective tissue are liberating both physically and emotionally, enhancing your ability to adapt more easily to life’s changes. You’ll feel a largely heightened physical and emotional strength after completing the 11 session series. Hellerwork creates new awareness and lasting change based on the concept that healing comes from within.

History of Hellerwork

Hellerwork was developed in 1978 by Joseph Heller, a California Institute of Technology graduate who worked as an aerospace engineer in the NASA space programme’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA. He left NASA to pursue his interest in humanistic psychology in the 1970s. He began by studying bioenergetics and Gestalt therapy. He studied under architect and futurist Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983), John Lilly who developed flotation tank therapy, family therapist Virginia Satir, body movement pioneer Judith Aston and Dr Brugh Joy, a noted physician, author, and innovator in the fields of preventative medicine and energy healing. He trained for six years with Dr. Ida P. Rolf (1896-1979), the founder of Rolfing, became a certified Rolfer and was appointed President of The Rolf Institute. Finally, he developed his own unique combination of structural integration patterned after Rolfing while incorporating a dialogue to address the client’s emotional attachment to their stress patterns and movement education to keep clients conscious of their bodies. In 1979, he established the Hellerwork Institute in San Francisco and a training facility in Mt. Shasta, California, where he continues his work.

Bodywork/Sessions

Hellerwork is a dynamic, multi-level system of deep-tissue bodywork known as Structural Integration that helps release areas of the body that have become tense, strained, compressed, twisted, rotated and misaligned. The focus of Structural Integration is on the fascia rather than on the muscles (as in massage)

• Hellerwork elongates the spine, straightens the joints, strengthens the core, restores alignment, balance, length and flexibility to the tissue, spine and muscles while centering and grounding you
• The 11 session in the Hellerwork series combine Structural Integration (bodywork), dialogue, and movement education
• The series is designed to balance your body in segments, with each session addressing a different aspect of your structure and movement. Each 90 minute session builds upon the last, addressing layers of tissue throughout the process
• Sessions 1 through 3 focus on unwrapping the surface layers of fascia while address breathing and inspiration, grounding and balance, and aggression and fulfillment.
• Sessions 4 through 7 are the core sessions, where deeper layers of fascia are released, allowing the body to lengthen. In these sessions we discuss control and surrender, intuition and your guts, holding back and feeling through our bodies instead of navigating with our minds.
• Sessions 8, 9 and 10 are the integrative sessions which address the rotations in the joints that have been compensating for physical imbalances. The topics are masculinity, femininity and integration.
• Session 11 brings the whole process together and concludes the series.

Dialogue

• Hellerwork addresses the entire body as one integrated system, and dialogue is used as a tool to develop an awareness of how emotional stress contributes to muscular tension and rigidity re-balancing the entire body to a more aligned state.
• Sometimes, as the tissue is released and balanced, clients experience the release of emotions, memories or traumas that have been stored in the fascial tissue. Such releases can create the opportunity for change and/or resolution surrounding the issues presented.
• Dialogue helps get to the emotional root of the misalignment.
• Physical realignment is insufficient without addressing and improving emotional health.

Movement Education

• After each structural integration session (the bodywork) there is a movement lesson to teach the client to keep themselves from relapsing back into their old patterns. The movement lessons focus on being conscious when sitting, standing, walking, and sleeping. We stop using our strength and alignment with our spine and our joints when in these stress/lazy/exhausted patterns.
• Hellerwork teaches very simple awareness lessons that can change the body’s form, pain and aging process in a life altering way.
• For example, just by sitting close to the edge of one’s chair, having their hips and knees at ninety degree angles and pushing their feet into the floor, the lower back straightens and there in no more slouching. This very simply lesson after being re-aligned can cure the client of lordosis (swayback), Kyphosis (humpback) and sunken chest.
• Hellerwork movement teaches you to use your body in the best possible manner.
• Practitioner can help you become aware of your habitual and inhibiting movement patterns and assist you in bringing balance and alignment to your movement.

Benefits

• Hellerwork helps develop the awareness of mind, body and spirit connectedness.
• Hellerwork elongates the spine, straightens the joints, strengthens the core, restores alignment, balance, length and flexibility to the tissue, spine and muscles while centering and grounding you.
• Hellerwork movement education can affect your level of daily functioning by helping to change unhealthy patterns in common activities such as sitting, walking and breathing.
• Hellerwork has been said to be a fast track to yoga. In 11 sessions you will see the benefit that you would after years of yoga.
• By addressing the body, the mind and the movement simultaneously, Hellerwork straightens out structural imbalances in the body, increases flexibility and energy, while releasing stress, anxiety and depression.
• Hellerwork teaches and empowers you to do things for yourself to help bring your body back into alignment.
• Clients become more in tune with their bodies. They can move with greater ease, fluidity, grace, efficiency and feel a sense of alignment within their bodies.
• More efficient use of your muscles allows the body to conserve energy, resulting in increased levels of energy and alertness.
• Feelings of stress can decrease while your level of relaxation can increase.
• Hellerwork seeks to recondition the body and make the connective tissue less rigid.
• Hellerwork helps release an individual’s potential, promoting positive change, lowering anxiety, improving sleep, increasing confidence, and maturing emotional expression.
• Hellerwork creates new awareness and lasting change based on the concept that healing comes from within.
• Hellerwork is designed to make us experts of our own bodies and to help us create a sense of empowerment by emphasizing self-responsibility, prevention and education in self-care.
• Hellerwork promotes learning to live vitally, move fluidly and allows us to feel deeply transforms.
• The release of these patterns and the re-alignment of the body through its connective tissue are liberating both emotionally and physically, enhancing your ability to adapt more easily to life’s changes. You’ll feel a largely heightened physical and emotional strength.
• Hellerwork allows you to use your body in the best possible manner.

Compensation

• Your whole body is interconnected. Everything in the body and mind affects everything else, so a problem in one place, mind or body, will eventually cause problems in other areas.
• The body’s way of compensating for a variety of physical and emotional pains is to manifest them in other places.
• If you think life is tough, your body will show it. Your body will compensate by looking exhausted. Your shoulders will be hunched over and your head will be down, like life is a burden.
• If you sit slouched over in a chair all day at work your connective tissue (fascia) will mold to that misalignment and your body will feel most comfortable this way. Once the fascia has molded you cannot break this stress pattern without bodywork.
• Back pain can come from repressing anger, which causes back muscles to tense up.
• Someone who is under constant stress may clench their jaw all day unconsciously, causing temporomandibular problems. Jaw clenching may also cause paint in other parts of the body. If the jaw is tight then the muscles in the front of the neck shorten, causing the head to be held too far in front of the body. To compensate, the muscles in the back of the neck become locked in a lengthened and stretched position, which will lead to chronic pain. The tightness in the neck can also cause the person to carry their shoulders too high. High shoulder can cause pain and imbalance in many places of the body.
• What you think is causing pain—a sore hip, for example—is often actually a symptom of a problem coming from a misalignment somewhere else. For example, if you are distributing all the weight to the outsides of your feet or you lock your knees or your pelvis is anteriorly tilted, the pain can manifest in the hips.
• Emotionally traumatic experiences can be held in specific areas of the body creating physical tension, distortion, strain and chronic pain. If you always cross your arms because it makes you feel safe eventually the connective tissue in your pectoral muscles (chest) will mold to this misalignment causing your shoulders to be forward even when you are not crossing your arms. This can cause constant pain and knots in your upper back and neck.
• If you wear high heels frequently…
• If you look down at your keyboard all day…
• If you hold your shoulders too high…
• If you stand with all your weight on one leg…
• If you’ve sprained your ankle in the past…
• If you’ve had knee problems…
• If you’ve had lower back pain or Sciatica…