May/June 2003 Featured Stories
"Music saved me." The story of Ilana Rubenfeld
the godmother of talk-and-touch therapies

  
Ilana Rubenfeld

Ilana Rubenfeld graduated from the Juilliard School of Music and enjoyed a conducting career (unheard of for a woman at that time!) until a debilitating back spasm reorchestrated her life journey to become an inspirational teacher and workshop leader for over 40 years. In Rubenfeld’s attempts to be healed and to be able to continue her conducting career, she experienced and then went on to train in the F.M. Alexander Technique, a method designed to teach balanced and efficient posture, and with Moshe Feldenkrais, in his two-tiered method of Functional Integration and Awareness Through Movement.

Ilana became convinced that posture and touch played an important role in accessing emotions. She had spent years going back and forth between an Alexander practitioner who was able to address her physical symptoms, but who was unprepared to help Ilana process the emotions that surfaced during her treatment, and a Freudian psychotherapist—a practitioner who would talk with her but wouldn’t touch. "Why not combine the two?" she kept asking herself.

"Moving Like A Bamboo Tree"
(for head, neck & upper back)

If you’ve ever experienced a pain in your neck and a stiffness in your shoulders, you’re like billions of others around the world. This exercise will help you listen to what your neck is saying and to relax your shoulder and neck muscles, thereby allowing your head and flexibility to move and see in all directions.

  1. Sit comfortably in a chair, place your feet on the floor, and move away from the back of the chair.
  2. Roll your eyes to the right and let your neck and body follow as far as you can go.
  3. When you cannot move any farther, take a mental photograph of that spot.
  4. Return to the starting position facing forward.
  5. Move your left hand over the top of your head, covering your right ear.
  6. Gently pull your head down and lean to the left. As you bend close your eyes and imagine a bamboo tree bending in the wind. Become aware of what your body—ribs, neck, spine—is doing. Return to the forward position with your left hand remaining over the top of your head.
  7. Roll your eyes to the left and twist around as if you’re looking at someone behind you, then come back to the front.
  8. Twist your whole body again to the left, and this time roll your eyes to the right (opposite direction). Do this a few times and come back to the front, relax your left arm and rest it on your lap.
  9. Now go back to the beginning—roll your eyes to the right and let your neck and body follow as far as you can go. Did you pass the original photographed spot?
  10. Now come back to the front, and notice how your back, neck and head feel.
  11. Stand up slowly and walk around. What do you feel right now and has this exercise changed your posture and waling in a way?
A Rubenfeld Body Mind exercise, adapted from The Listening Hand.

"Both the Alexander Technique and Feldenkrais’s method taught people how to release tense habitual patterns held in the body. Neither, however, addressed the emotions behind those patterns, or their often vivid expressions when the patterns were unlocked. Conventional psychotherapy relied on talking through problems, and the bodywork addressed their physical aspects. To me, these disparate approaches were fragmented, denying the unity of the body, mind and emotions."

In the mid-1960’s Ilana met Fritz and Laura Perls and they began working together, Ilana touching clients as Fritz talked to them. She soon reconfirmed that there was a subtle and clear muscular response to every thought and emotion people felt. She began to orchestrate anew ... putting together mind and body and emotions. She asks the question: "How do you have a conductor for the woodwind section and one for the brass?" And answers, "No, you have one, one who brings it all together." And that is exactly what Ilana Rubenfeld did.

"Putting mind and body therapy together was as exciting as making music – quite literally, it was the discovery of harmony of a different sort."

This became Ilana Rubenfeld’s Synergy "movement" … a movement that Ilana has practiced and refined during the last forty years. Today she celebrates the anniversary of the creation of the Rubenfeld Synergy Method® , the release of the paperback version of her book, The Listening Hand, and the 25th anniversary of the Rubenfeld Synergy Training Program, a 1600-hour training that spans four years and includes a year-long internship. The Association of Humanistic Psychology honored Ilana with its Pathfinder Award for outstanding contribution to the field of humanistic psychology; and the United States Association of Body Psychotherapy honored her with a Lifetime Achievement Award last year.

Rubenfeld recently visited a friend in Ashland, fell in love with the town, and moved from New York City to Ashland in 2001. She will be lecturing in Portland for the first time on June 5th at New Renaissance Bookshop from 7-8:30 p.m., where she will present the background of how this method was created, share self-healing techniques as explained in her book, The Listening Hand, and demonstrate the method with a volunteer from the audience. The evening promises to be one of healing, humor and heart. To register for this presentation, call New Renaissance Bookshop, 503-244-4929.

Ilana Rubenfeld is the creator of the Rubenfeld Synergy Method® and author of  The Listening Hand, Bantam Books, 2002, from which the excerpts above were taken. On Saturday and Sunday, June 7 & 8, she will conduct an intensive two-day workshop. For more information about the workshop, call Deborah Merkle (503-307-3456) or Georgena Eggleston (503-309-3966).