Up Leg, Down Leg
Christine Ruffolo Part 1. Pairs. Roles. Asymmetry. The body knows and the body has ways. Understanding the differences between the halves helps you appreciate them. One side isn’t ‘good’. The other isn’t ‘bad’. They hold a function within the system. Here’s a big picture view that shows how to distinguish up leg and down […]
Students & the System
Christine Ruffolo Amongst other things, COVID-19 revealed how fragile the American educational system is, and how unadaptable it is to changing and evolving times. Designed to churn out compliant workers, it conflicts with the world around them — a burgeoning economy of self employment (one marked by passion, creativity, and innovation), as well as […]
An Attentive Walk & Talk
Christine Ruffolo In an unassuming day in July 2022, I attended a workshop entitled “The Musicality of Being” in Washington DC. It was lead by Seth Dellinger, a Feldenkrais practitioner with a story so wild I’m not going to touch upon it here. That is for him to discuss. We met at a picnic […]
Labeling Relationships
Christine Ruffolo For the second time this year, I told a client they no longer need to pay me. We were peers, and the level of engagement and conversation I got from talking with them far exceeded my $65 per hour asking fee. The interest was mutual, the reciprocity organically leveled up, and I […]
Reflecting on Relationships: Peers
Christine Ruffolo Part Four in a four-part series of relational examinations. Part One: Parents Part Two: Pets Part Three: Students The definition of peer that I most relate to is “looking at”. The people who were supposed to be ‘like me’, were never like me. They might have been of similar age or […]
A Conversation Between New Friends
Seth Dellinger Getting to know: connection as conversation.
The Transverse Arch
Christine Ruffolo Everything I know about the transverse arch, I owe to Adarian Barr. The following is my attempt to take his words and concepts and relate them to my own body and understanding. It is, in effect, my translation. The layers and spirals in which I learn and interpret are laid out here […]
What Compels You to ‘Do’?
Christine Ruffolo The idea for this post first came in the summer of 2021, down time for most teachers here in the States. When you have a secured income (our salary is split evenly between the twelve months), and are given the gift of time and freedom of what to do with that time, […]
Deconstructing Care
Christine Ruffolo Everyone thinks they know how to care. They know what it looks like, and so, they know how to replicate it. What they care about is their reality, their axis of being. It is both their benchmark and their goal. A stagnancy by which to improve upon means doing more and trying […]
Defining Body Mapping
Christine Ruffolo The phrase ‘body mapping’ has many interpretations. It appears as nebulous as it is exact, with the user either struggling to communicate their construct or utilizing words so specific that it pigeon-holes the potential meaning into a singular stranded notion — too big to grasp or too miniscule to get a hold […]
Capitalizing on Color
Christine Ruffolo It’s been about a month since the Embodiment Conference came and went. Since, there have been many claims and a good amount of evidence that the headpiece to the summit, Mark Walsh, isn’t a great guy. As someone who spoke at his summit, I’ve been sitting with possible courses of action (which […]
Yoga Detour: Integrated Upper Body
Christine Ruffolo Cecily Milne is the mind behind yoga detour, movement education that encourages the yoga population to go beyond ‘nailing poses’. She immediately reminded me of Marlo Fisken – a “pole person” who’s actual draw is that she is a brilliant cuer, observer, and communicator of hows. Aside from being able to do […]
Safety & Behavior
Christine Ruffolo The following is part one of my course notes and findings from Stress, Movement, and Pain. Linked through the perception of threat and cause to protect, Seth Oberst generously delivered on the hows, whats, and whys between sensation (or lack thereof) and chronic stress. Ultimately, he offered up a framework to identify and […]
The Fallacy of Individualism
Christine Ruffolo ‘Different’ has always implied some sort of separation. You are there I am here, you have your ideas I have mine. Though existing divorced from shared experience, when something as major as COVID upheaves us all, we can feel the collective angst and impatience. Universal despair brings with it a consciousness of […]
The Work of Bal-A-Vis-X
Christine Ruffolo Please note that this is documenting one person’s experience with a single Bal-A-Vis-X training weekend. Like any other system presented here, it is an interpretation of meaningful components personally gathered and selected, NOT a representation of the accuracy and/or scope of the system itself. One cannot talk about Bal-A-Vis-X without first […]
Care & Capitalism
Christine Ruffolo I just got off a group call about determining value, and it basically ended up being a therapy session about my aversion for capitalism. Summed up, I care much more about creating a culture that lives up to my idealized vision of how things could be than I do about the messed […]
A Curious Cultural Experiment
Christine Ruffolo For many reasons and convergences of fate, I recently took on the assignment of coaching high school volleyball. It was a sport I knew very little about and had the least experience coaching and playing. It was also a position to lead JV2, traditionally known as the ‘freshman team’. I was the […]
What is the Ido Portal Method? (part 1)
Jason Round, Chris Ruffolo The following is an email exchange between the two authors that sought to tease out the what the ‘Ido Portal Method’ actually is. [Chris asks for a longer video submission and Jason offers this as one of his options]: “Here’s an old video that gets a lot of attention as […]
A Non-Central Axis
Christine Ruffolo The medical, fitness, and wellness worlds are fixated on correcting imbalances. Amidst all the readily available treatment plans, too few remain curious about why so many asymmetries exist. The undoubted anatomical and functional differences between the hemispheres give structural scientific cause, but it may be negating the brain’s role in left-right dominance. […]
Critical Look #3 – My Own Work
Christine Ruffolo ‘Critical Look’ challenges the way systemic information is presented and questions the story being told. SYSTEMIC IDEOLOGY: Create a New Normal in Physical Education. Personal background with system – Fifteen years of trial and error at a public high school. What New PE is getting right Reconsidering the purpose and […]