The lumbar curve and the cervical curve speak to each other
Ida's first claim about the lumbars is relational. The lumbar curve does not stand alone; it is mechanically and developmentally bound to the cervical curve above it, and any attempt to change one without changing the other will fail. In one of her public-tape lectures she presses this point against the silence of the anatomy books — they name these curves as 'secondary,' she says, but they never explain why their balance with each other is structurally necessary. The reciprocity is not poetic. It is the reason every first hour ends with neck work and a pelvic lift together: you cannot reorganize the lumbar segment and then leave the cervicals where they were, because the cervicals will pull the lumbars back into their old position within hours. The two ends of the stick move together or they don't move at all.
"that the cervical curve and the lumbar curve, these secondary curves are related. That your cervical curve talks about your lumbar curve, that your lumbar curve talks about your cervical curve. Therefore, if you aim to change the one or the other permanently, you have to change the twin, the two ends of the stick."
Late in a first-hour demonstration on the RolfB1 public tape, Ida names the reciprocal relation that governs the whole sequence.
The reciprocity is also why the first hour's neck work is not a separate task tacked on at the end. It completes the lumbar work. When Ida brings her practitioner's hand down the spine in a pelvic lift, she is doing one thing with both ends — bringing the lumbars back to lengthen between the individual vertebrae, and freeing the sternocleidomastoid and trapezius so the cervicals can come back to meet the new lumbar. The passage below is the operative description of what the practitioner is actually doing in those final minutes of the first hour. It is also the passage where the lumbars first appear, in Ida's teaching, as something the skeleton itself voluntarily brings back — not as something the practitioner forces.
"support And you see when that skeleton does his own voluntary bringing of his his of his lumbars back, Then you begin to get lengthening between the individual lumbars and you very often feel how the sacrum will reorganize itself on the And fifth this is what happened with Frank when Don here became quite lyrical about how differently his whole lower half was feeling."
Continuing the same first-hour demonstration, Ida describes the moment in the pelvic lift when the lumbars themselves come back.
The lumbar lever — why the lumbars are the segment that gives
Across the Mystery Tapes of 1971-72 — recorded at the IPR before the recipe had hardened into its final published form — Ida makes a structural argument about why the lumbars, and not some other segment of the spine, are the part of the body that adjusts. The dorsals cannot give: they are locked to the ribs, and any independent motion of one dorsal vertebra on another would put intolerable strain on the cardiovascular structures the ribs protect. The cervicals are mobile but small. The lumbars are the only segment built large enough and free enough to absorb the structural demand of bipedal stance. This is why the lumbar curve is the first thing to deform under poor use, and the first thing to change under skilled hands. In her teaching this is also why Peter — 'Mr. Indian,' as she calls him in the transcript — can say he sees the lumbar change in the first hour: it is the segment that gives, and therefore the segment where structural change first becomes visible.
"But I also recommend that you look as to why this is the way it is. And this story that I have just told you about the fact that the lumbar lever is going to be the one that can adjust, is going to be the one that has to adjust to the structural demands of any body, It has, something has to give and it can give. The dossiers can't give. If the dossiers could give and gave, you would have everybody so that one vertebra can slide back and forth on the other, it would put so much strain on that whole cardiovascular mechanism. Every time you fell it's really a most important point. It's the most important point as to why it is what we have works. And Mr. Indian has said, You start seeing the lumbar change in the first hour if you are trained to see it that way and he is. And this is a very important thing that he has told you this morning. It's a very important thing because it means that you can go in and talk to the rest of the osteopaths in a language which both of you can see, hear, getting the menopause mixed. Now what has the lumbar structure to do with the case? Take it over again. Are you referring specifically to the third hour now?"
In a 1971-72 IPR class, Ida makes the structural case for why the lumbar segment is the one that adjusts.
Peter's observation — that the lumbar lordosis begins to change at the end of the first hour, before the lower leg work has even begun — became one of Ida's repeated teaching points. In the same class she pushes him to name the mechanism, and accepts his answer only partially: the hip work matters, but more important is the inherent reciprocity. You cannot change one vertebra in isolation. The moment you put hands on the dorsals you are necessarily affecting the lumbars, because the dorsal primary curve and the lumbar secondary curve are mechanically interlocked. The first-hour change in the lumbars is not the result of direct lumbar work; it is the result of the dorsals being touched and the whole reciprocal system reorganizing.
"It's a primary curve because in its growth pattern, the vertebra being connected with the ribs and the firmness process of the ribs being such that they sit so that there can't be too much change. This is inherent in the growth pattern. This now becomes the primary curve and whereas it can be changed, it can't be changed that much. Forward, you have to balance the cervicals where you have a rather, a rather similar situation. But you see, as soon as you begin to affect slightly the curve of the dorsals as you do right the minute you begin to put your hands on there, you are necessarily affecting the curve of the lumbar. Because you cannot change one vertebra. It's impossible. As soon as I saw the end of the first hour and the most recognizable thing to me was the change in the lumbar lordosis. Yeah, because of the last few pastoral I was living for lumbar lordosis."
Continuing the same 1971-72 class, Ida explains why the lumbar change appears early.
The lumbodorsal junction is the last to be established
In the August 1974 IPR lecture — one of the most concentrated teaching sessions on the junctions that survives in the archive — Ida walks her class through the major vertebral junctions: occipitocervical, cervicodorsal, dorsolumbar, lumbosacral. Each, she says, is a place where one configuration of vertebrae meets another. The dorsolumbar is the meeting point between vertebrae whose spinous processes angle steeply downward and vertebrae whose spinous processes extend nearly horizontally back from the body. The geometry changes there. And of all the junctions, she names the lumbodorsal as the most important in terms of establishing the vertical line — and the last to be established in the course of the work.
"The luminal dorsal is the most important in terms of the straight line. And it is the last one to be established if you are processing. And you know this, you have seen it, you have seen it through the last month, you have seen how you work on a guy to get enough freedom, take Margery for instance, she still has not got that lumbar dorsal established."
In the August 1974 IPR lecture, Ida ranks the junctions and names the lumbodorsal as the most important for the vertical line.
She immediately specifies a precondition. The lumbodorsal cannot be established as long as the rib cage sits too low on the pelvis, because there is then no space between the lower dorsals and the lumbars for any movement to occur. The whole project of the second, third, and fourth hours — lifting the thorax off the pelvis, freeing the quadratus, organizing the lateral line — is, read in this light, preparatory work for the lumbodorsal junction. The junction itself is not 'worked' as a discrete unit. It opens because the structures above and below it have been brought to a relation that permits it to open.
"And one of the reasons she hasn't is because those ribs are so far down that there cannot be movement between the dorsal and the lumbars until the ribs get raised up."
Ida names the precondition for the lumbodorsal junction in the same 1974 IPR lecture.
Later in the same August 1974 session, a student offers Ida an experiential confirmation that lands her teaching point: when the lumbodorsal opens, the head and neck come up by themselves, levered up from below without any conscious effort. Ida accepts this with unusual enthusiasm — she gives the student 'a hundred percent' for the report — because it confirms her contention that the lumbodorsal junction, when established, generates extension automatically. The vertical line is not held; it is levered.
"of when that lumbar dorsal junction is open and When it's open, it just kind of levers the head and neck right up."
A student in the August 1974 IPR lecture describes the experience of the lumbodorsal opening, and Ida endorses the description.
The lumbodorsal junction has no anatomical parallel
Ida pushes the doctrine further. The lumbodorsal junction, she says in the same August 1974 lecture, is unique among the body's junctions — there is no other animal for which this junction carries the structural weight it carries in the human, and no other junction in the human body whose two principal levers sit on opposite sides of the spine. The rhomboids and the trapezius pull from behind the spine. The psoas and the rectus pull from in front of it. The junction is held — and can be destroyed — by structures that meet not at a single anatomical layer but across the entire depth of the body. Any small disturbance reaches it. A headache, a sore throat, a stomachache will close it down before it closes any of the other junctions.
"Any and all of these will destroy that lumbar dorsal junction. Sometimes you can keep some of those other lesser junctions going under these adverse circumstances. But never can you keep that lumbodilosal junction going. Now this is a very interesting thing. And it's also significant in the sense that, as far as I know, there is again no other animal for whom a lumbodorsal junction is an important position place in my anatomical situation."
Ida elaborates the singularity of the lumbodorsal in the August 1974 IPR lecture.
She then names the operative mechanism. The lumbodorsal junction is established by two opposing groups of muscle — the rhomboids pulling on the back of the spine between the scapulae, and the psoas pulling on the front of the spine through the lumbar bodies. This bilateral, anterior-posterior arrangement is what makes the junction unique. No other junction in the body is held by structures that operate on both sides of the spinal column simultaneously. The doctrine that the rhomboids and the psoas are functionally linked — that they form a single mechanism for the lumbodorsal hinge — is one of the more striking structural claims in her late teaching, and it organizes the deep work of the later hours.
"that one of those groups is on one side of the spine, the rhomboids are on the back of the spine and the psoas is in the front of the spine. This is a unique junction, no other junction is like this."
Ida names the unique anatomical signature of the lumbodorsal junction.
The rhomboid-psoas reciprocity also explains why the lumbodorsal cannot be addressed by working only on the back, or only on the front. The practitioner is dealing with a tension system whose two ends are anatomically remote from each other. In the same August 1974 session Vivian — an anatomist sitting in on the class — develops the fascial side of this picture, walking the students through the layered sheath of the lumbodorsal fascia and showing how, in the lumbar region, the rectus abdominis and the psoas are linked through the transversalis fascia to the back's deep extensor sheath. The lumbodorsal junction is not a hinge made of bone. It is a region of fascial continuity that wraps from front to back across the body's narrowest segment.
"You're getting then certainly the interconnection in terms of potential function between these three layers by a very distinct fascial layer. The psoas then of course has its own fascial covering on its ventral surface which becomes continuous with that of the iliac fascia or that fascia covering the iliacus. Again, I've started going back to the other way to think more of the continuation and the potential functional interactions just using the fascia as one of the keys. Now this, there's an extension from this fascia then going out to form really the aponeurosis of the transversus muscle, the transversus abdominal muscle. This continues underneath this transversus muscle as the transfer salus fascia. Going all the way around and forming then part of the under side of the rectus sheath. This again in addition to the concept which Doctor."
In the same August 1974 IPR class, Vivian shows the fascial layers around the lumbar spine and names the continuity between psoas and rectus abdominis.
What the second hour does to the lumbars
The second hour does not work the lumbars directly; it works the back. But in lengthening the erector spinae and bringing the laterally-migrated extensors back toward the midline, the second hour produces the first conditions under which the lumbar segment can lengthen. Ida is explicit in the 1976 advanced class that the lengthening of the body happens through the bringing-together of the spiny erectors — that the shortened body shows extensors spread apart and the lengthened body shows them brought in. Read structurally, this is the second hour's lumbar work: the back is lengthened, the lumbar fascia begins to span, and the lumbodorsal segment is prepared, though not yet established.
"Who needs to see it in the anatomy books? You all know what I'm talking about. You all know those pictures with those three strands going up. Now in the old, old days, when there weren't as many people who had seen the demonstrations of Rolfing, It used to be quite incredible to people to see that the shortening of the body comes in by virtue of the spreading apart of those spiny erectors and the lengthening of the body can be produced by the tightening together of those spiny erectors. Now everyone in this room, in the course of his second hours, has seen this, but it used to be nothing short of a revelation. You see how when you brought those two strands together, all of a sudden, you had length in the body. And you see this is telling you something else. It is telling you what to do next."
In the 1975 Boulder advanced class, Ida describes how the back's lengthening happens through the medial movement of the spiny erectors.
The end of the first hour already begins to do something to the lumbar fascia, and a student in the 1975 Boulder class presses Ida on what exactly that 'something' is. He had felt Dick — one of the senior practitioners — produce a marked lift in his back by working the lumbar fascia and bringing it in, and he could not replicate it on his own models. Ida's answer is characteristically structural rather than technical. The student is trying to copy one factor; Dick was working the relationship. The end of the first hour is about lengthening the back because the front has been lengthened, and the disorder created by that anterior lengthening piles up at the lumbodorsal junction where it must be organized. This is one of the clearest statements in the archive of the lumbodorsal as the junction where the first hour's structural debts come due.
"But Dick, you see, got his fists in there, not with just a little wave of his hands. He got several things going at once. And he's trying to copy him by just getting in to the lumbar fascia or this or that. Do you understand what the end of the first hour is? Lengthening the back. Why? Because you've lengthened the front. Yes. You've lengthened the front, and in lengthening the front, you've disturbed the relationship that lies around the spine. You've disturbed it and in some parts you've ordered it, but in some parts you have disordered it. And the disorder is apt to be right around the lumbodorsal junction because that's where disorders pile up for various reasons which you will understand better as you keep looking at this."
In a 1975 Boulder class, Ida responds to a student trying to replicate a senior practitioner's lumbar fascia move.
The third hour and the deeper approach to the lumbars
By the third hour the work descends to the quadratus lumborum, and through the quadratus the practitioner reaches the lumbar segment from the side. The quadratus spans from the iliac crest to the twelfth rib; its shortness is what holds the lumbars forward and the pelvis tipped. In the 1976 advanced class Ida pushes her students to name what the third hour does, and the answer she is waiting for is the quadratus. Lengthening it is the operative third-hour move, but the consequence for the lumbars is decisive — once the quadratus releases, the lumbar bodies are no longer pulled so far anterior, and the rib cage rises off the pelvis, the precondition Ida had named for the lumbodorsal junction to open.
"If we look at the quadratus being here and the spine behind it, in terms of verticals and the sternum in front of it, if you lengthen the quadratus and allow I'm trying to say that my hunch is that the lumbars aren't pulled quite so anterior in the insulating. That is true. That is very true. And that's not the answer. It's not the answer."
In the 1976 advanced class, a student names the third-hour effect on the lumbars and Ida partially accepts it.
In a 1976 class Ida walks the chain explicitly: third-hour work on the quadratus reaches the ilium, which frees the pelvis on its lateral aspect, which begins to release the twelfth rib, which is the structural anchor on which the upper ribs sit. The twelfth rib, she notes, is one of the most vulnerable structures in the body — there is nothing to brace it laterally — and yet it is the sturdy base for everything above. The lumbars sit immediately medial to it. The whole lateral approach of the third hour, in this reading, is a way of getting at the lumbar segment without working it directly: free the quadratus, free the twelfth rib, and the lumbars find room to come back.
"Now where does the fibratus attach? It spans from the twelfth wave to the rest of the ileum. To the rest of the ileum. So if you're doing something for the quadratus, you're doing something for the ileum. You're doing something to additionally free the pelvis. And you are freeing it more or less on the side now. Not the back, not the right. On the side. Do you see what I'm trying to present to you? I'm trying to make you really understand in your guts how you haven't done one darn thing in all these four hours except get a little more youthful available for your pelvis. Okay, so that's the third hour and in the third hour we begin to go deeper via the quadratus. By the time you begin to get the quadratus where it belongs, you begin to release the twelfth rib if the twelfth rib has been in danger at some point."
In the 1976 advanced class, Ida walks the structural chain from quadratus to twelfth rib to the lumbar position.
The deeper anatomy of this approach was laid out in detail by Vivian at the same August 1974 IPR lecture. The erector spinae lies in the space between the spine of the vertebra and the transverse process; the quadratus lumborum lies just below the transverse process; the psoas fills the remaining space between the transverse process and the centrum. All three are wrapped by extensions of the lumbodorsal fascia. The third hour's work, on this reading, is not just on the quadratus but on the fascial wrap that ties quadratus, erector spinae, and psoas into a single functional sleeve around the lumbar spine.
"We have the connection with, starting probably with the twelfth vertebra at ribs. So it is forming this sheath then which is enclosing the erector spinae which is made up of the three bundles of muscles in this region. However, there's a difference in the arrangement between the twelfth rib and the iliac crest. We have one of my famous drawings here which this is now about think L3 which is just a nice easy level to take in terms of lack of complication but we can carry it then in either direction. We have then, if this is the spine of the vertebra, this is the transverse process and this is the centrum so it's upside down. This mass of muscle which I've drawn in here is representing the erector seating. That heavy bunch of muscles lying then between in the space between the spine of the vertebra and the transverse process. Just below the transverse process and extending out from it at this point then would be the quadratus lumborum. And filling in the space then the remaining space between the transverse process and the centrum is the psoas."
Vivian describes the geometric relationship of the deep lumbar muscles in the August 1974 IPR lecture.
The pelvic lift and the sacrum on the lumbars
The pelvic lift, repeated at the end of every recipe hour, is Ida's primary tool for organizing the lumbar segment directly. In a RolfB2 public-tape demonstration she describes the lift as a turning down of the sacrum and a separation of the lumbar vertebrae, with particular attention to the fourth-fifth and fifth-sacral articulations. Short lumbars produce a sacrum whose base is forward and whose apex is back — the reversal she observed repeatedly in untrained bodies — and the pelvic lift is the move that lengthens the lumbars and lets the sacrum rotate into its proper relation to them. She is also careful to distinguish the pelvic lift from chiropractic manipulation: the lift is not a thrust on bones but an organization of the soft tissue that holds the bones in their current relation.
"And that pelvic lift is a turning down of the sacrum, a separation of the lumbar vertebrae so that they can begin to straighten out. You have seen and you will continue to see short lumbars and necessarily if you have a short lumbar you are going to have that reversal of the sacrum. This being the base and this being the apex. The apex will be back, the base will be in and the lumbar will be short. And as you lengthen the lumbar and bring them back, this has to happen, there is no way nothing else can happen. And this is what you are accomplishing in your pelvic lift. You are organizing every one of those lumbar articulations but particularly fourth to fifth and fifth to sacral. And with your fingers you are very often stretching and reorganizing the muscle in its containing fashion that overlies the sacrum. You'll find many many sacrum that feel as though they were say, is anybody down at the gate keeping it getting it open for Frank?"
In a RolfB2 public-tape session, Ida describes the pelvic lift as the move that lengthens the lumbars and reorganizes the sacrum.
The teaching problem Ida faced repeatedly was that students could not get clients to let the pelvis turn under voluntarily. Asked to 'let your tail turn under,' clients would boost their pelvis into the air instead — the only motion they knew how to make. The pelvic lift, in Ida's teaching, is not a maneuver the practitioner performs on a passive client; it is a move the client must learn to allow. She frames this as the central difficulty of the work: the holding of the lumbar spine anterior is something the person does to themselves, and the pelvic lift is the moment when they are taught — through the practitioner's hand — to stop doing it.
"But what you have to know is how to hold it, where to put it, what commands to give him to get him to do it. Now the Lord has been very, very good to me this summer. Both of the classes this summer have listened and learned and said, now just let your pale turn under. It has taken me almost twenty years of teaching before I got a class that would do that. Because they will all say, now turn your tail under. That's right. Now lift. And the first thing that happens is that that guy takes his hind end, and he boosts it up into the air because this is the only way he knows how to use his hind end. He doesn't know how to use his hind end by letting the apex turn under. And you have to teach him. And any teaching function takes time, and it takes a step by step understanding. And when you tell a guy, that's fine now. Boost your tail up. Turn your tail under. Oh, I can't tell you how many ways they can get of avoiding that little sentence. Just let your tail turn under. Because if you do let it alone, it goes back there. And I congratulate all of you. One for being so intelligent, two for having such an intelligent teacher. Anyway but I really mean this. You see, it is as the individual holds himself that he holds, literally holds, his the lumbar spine anterior. And he has learned to do this since he was a kid. The time he first learned to do it was when he stood on his feet, and nobody could show him or did show him. They didn't know how to show him."
Continuing the same RolfB2 demonstration, Ida describes the pedagogical difficulty of teaching the pelvic tilt.
The lumbars are the lumbodorsal hinge's lower lever
In a 1975 Boulder class, Jim Asher and Bob — two of the most experienced practitioners in the room — discuss the late-career shift in Ida's emphasis. They notice that she has been talking less about the pelvis and more about the lumbars and the lumbodorsal hinge. The reason, as Bob frames it, is pedagogical: by talking only about the pelvis, students miss the lumbars, and without the lumbars the pelvis cannot find its horizontal. The conversation also names the structural logic of the whole recipe — each hour as a step along a spectrum, with the lumbars and the lumbodorsal hinge as the destination toward which the early hours build.
"The spectrum also applies to rolting. Each hour is one more step along that spectrum of realigning the pelvis so that it can do its thing. It's actually more than the pelvis, as we see Ida's putting more and more emphasis on the lumbars and the lumbodorsal hinge and so forth. The reason she's doing that is because in her integration of the educational process, she has seen that by just talking about the pelvis and not possibly reemphasizing the importance of those large lumbars, that people tend to forget that."
In the 1975 Boulder advanced class, Bob names the late-career shift in Ida's pedagogy toward the lumbars and the lumbodorsal hinge.
The same Boulder session contains one of Ida's most quoted teaching aphorisms — the first hour is the beginning of the tenth hour, and each subsequent hour is a continuation of what was opened before. Read through the lens of the lumbars, this aphorism is precise. The first hour begins the lumbar work by lengthening between the individual lumbars in the pelvic lift; the second hour continues it by lengthening the back; the third hour deepens it through the quadratus; the fourth and fifth establish the floor of the pelvis and the psoas balance that lets the lumbars come back; and only by the later hours does the lumbodorsal junction itself become available. The recipe, in this reading, is a slow approach to a single junction.
"It's just the second half of the first hour. Okay? And the third hour is the second half of the second and first hour. It's literally a continuation. I clearly I clearly saw, you know, last summer that continuation process and how and, you know, Dick talked about how, you know, the only reason it was broken into 10, you know, sessions like that was it because the body just couldn't take all that work. Couldn't take it right. But I just sitting on just trying to figure out how the hell she ever figured out that process, and then began to see it. What she did is what most of of us need to do more. She just sat and watched bodies. And she just kept on doing it. And put unfortunately, she's a little bit more brilliant than the rest of us."
Jim Asher, in the same 1975 Boulder session, names the recipe's continuity and Ida's method of arriving at it.
The lumbars and the psoas — the front lever
If the rhomboids are the lumbodorsal junction's posterior lever, the psoas is its anterior lever. In a RolfB6 public-tape lecture Ida describes the sixth-hour work as the moment when the lumbars come back — not because the lumbars themselves are worked, but because the sacrum has been organized below, the psoas has been freed in front, and the rectus has been balanced as the psoas's antagonist. The lumbar position is the consequence of these three relationships, not the target of direct intervention. The same passage names the lumbar discs themselves as part of the picture: only when they have the proper chemical quality, the proper energy, can the cervical reorganization above them succeed.
"the span. And through the breathing over and over again, you are doing this automatic spanning and changing and shifting and reorganizing the sacrum on the lumbars and thereby allowing the lumbars to come back. Now you see not until you get those lumbars back and the position of the sacrum is going to determine that, but also the position and the freedom and the organization of the psoas is going to determine that. Also, the organization of the antagonist of the psoas, the requs is going to determine that. And you see now what we're doing? We're backing right down the line and showing you what it was what were the steps on which you had to stand and climb in order to get where you are. So that by the end of the sixth hour, all of these things should be approximately established so that the lumblance come back. So that the lumblance are able to have the degree of movement which lumbars are expected to have. You all remember Sharon's lumbars when she came in here, and yet Sharon had had ten hours. But there was no movement in those lumbars. And I'm not blaming I'm not throwing rotten eggs at the at the processor."
In a RolfB6 public-tape lecture, Ida names the structural chain that brings the lumbars back by the end of the sixth hour.
The same lecture contains a striking case observation — Sharon, a young woman who had completed her ten hours but whose lumbars had not gained mobility. Ida uses Sharon as a cautionary example: ten hours is not enough if the underlying chain is not addressed, and the lumbar segment, despite being the largest and strongest in the spine, can remain immobile if the practitioner has not built the necessary supports beneath it. The lumbars, she insists, are not stubborn by nature. A healthy young body's lumbars should reorganize within the standard series. When they do not, it is because the work upstream has been incomplete.
"You all remember Sharon's lumbars when she came in here, and yet Sharon had had ten hours. But there was no movement in those lumbars. And I'm not blaming I'm not throwing rotten eggs at the at the processor. It may have been a problem, which was too complicated to get done in ten hours. But in general, this isn't so unless a man is really in trouble like Frank here. That certainly isn't gonna be done in ten hours. But a healthy young woman, even though she has had an accident, shouldn't have a lumbar that can't be reorganized. Now only when you get that lumbar back where it belongs with the degree of mobility that it should have with the energy which depends on a proper chemical quality of the discs, lumbar discs. Only then are you going to be able to get up there and really reorganize the neck."
Ida uses the case of Sharon — a young client whose lumbars had not reorganized — to make a teaching point.
Why the lumbar curve is large — the structure follows the demand
In the 1976 advanced class Ida walks her students through the developmental logic of the spinal curves. The primary curve — the thoracic kyphosis — is the curve of the ovum, the curve the spine has when the fetus is still folded. The secondary curves, lumbar and cervical, develop in response to the structural demands of upright posture. The lumbars become large and strong because they are asked to support all the weight of the trunk above them. Structure, she says, follows the function demanded. The lumbar vertebrae are the biggest, strongest vertebrae in the body for exactly the same reason they are the segment that 'gives' in the structural sense — they are the segment carrying the load.
"I seem to remember hearing sometime that that system of curves is ultimately structurally stronger in terms of weight bearing than a perfectly straight spine. I don't doubt that it is. I don't doubt that it is. But this I'm not doing a teleological preaching that you put it in because it's stronger. I'm simply saying here is the structure. Now let's look at it and see how it got that way. How do you suppose you got those great big heavy lumbar vertebra? You've heard me say and I don't doubt you've heard Peter and others say that structure depends on the function that you've demanded. Did you ever hear that? So when you are demanding of those lumbar vertebra that they support all that overlying weight they are going to become the biggest, strongest vertebra in the body. And this is the teleology of it, the ultimate goal in terms of human understanding, which is pretty cool. So that there you talk about the lumbar curve having formed in response to the demand demand which has been put upon it by the overlying weight."
In the 1976 advanced class, Ida explains why the lumbar vertebrae are the largest in the spine.
The lumbar curve, in this reading, is not a defect to be flattened. It is the necessary secondary curve whose proper relation to the primary curve allows the human spine to function as both shock absorber and support column. Ida's project was never to abolish the lumbar lordosis but to bring it back from its excessive anterior pull to a moderate curve whose vertebrae could lengthen between each other. The pathological lumbar lordosis is not lordosis per se; it is a lordosis whose vertebrae have lost their length and whose adjacent dorsals can no longer span across it.
"Well the thing that brought to mind was how many times I have seen myself right in discogenic pathology, a person with true pathology, decreased lumbar lordosis, a flattening effect in lumbar spine. Yeah. In conjunction with pathology. Yeah, you see it in here in conjunction with that structure rather than pathological structure. Then you see how to what extent it changes. Pathology is not pathology. It's a provision of physiology. And you get the structure put where the physiology can function, you can change it very quickly by simply changing structure. At least that's where I stand. And inasmus and in emphacimus, you never get them, without you get a very distorted rib cage."
In the 1971-72 IPR class, Ida distinguishes pathological lumbar lordosis from the structural lordosis the work produces.
The lumbar curve and the support from below
By the time the practitioner reaches the work below the knee — the second hour's ankle and lower-leg organization — the lumbars become the structure that has to receive the support coming up from the ground. In a 1975 Boulder class Ida walks a student through the logic: the first hour lifts the thorax off the pelvis; the second hour establishes vertical and horizontal lines through the legs; and the result, when it works, is that the legs provide the support beneath the pelvis that allows the lumbars to lengthen. The lumbars are not just the segment that adjusts; they are the segment that receives. Without support from below, they cannot lengthen, no matter what the practitioner does to them from the side or behind.
"That is you have to be able to organize this cervical to lumbar thing. That's the last thing you do there, and you organize the lumbars by your pelvic lift. Now it's very important that you present this as a a an outline. Otherwise, you're going to forget it yourself. Alright. Now go on to the second. K. The second session Mhmm. Is also designed towards the general optimum and that is to horizontalize the pelvis. What we're doing is we're working below the pelvis pelvis and establishing vertical lines and horizontal lines through the legs. What we're trying to do is establish support below the knees in order that that we're supporting the pelvis from below, supporting the the body structure from below. Well, you can call to my attention or yours if you like that that hasn't been that in the first hour. This was the part of the body which was Which hasn't been touched right That's right. Below the knees. And so now we've got to start organizing below the knees in order to get support."
In a 1975 Boulder advanced class, Ida walks a student through the first and second hours' contributions to the lumbar work.
The pelvic-lift moment described in another 1973 Big Sur session shows the same logic from a different angle. In the first hour, the practitioner is freeing the pelvis from above by lifting the thorax, and freeing it from below by working the legs to the knee; the pelvic lift at the end of the hour is the moment when the sacrum begins to come under and support the lumbars. The sequence of operations is precise — superficial fascia around the pelvis, legs under the pelvis, the pelvis tilted, the sacrum coming forward — and the result is that the lumbars find their first lengthening of the recipe.
"So what you say is true, but if you Now together and we're freeing the pelvis, and by freeing the pelvis, we're allowing the sacrum to start coming under so that they can start supporting those lumbars. So how do you do that? In the first hour? So we're working on the superficial fascia all around the pelvis, and we're starting to get good legs under. Said to bring the positioning of that pelvis in relation to the lumbar curve. It happens through yielding one, tilting the pelvis under and raising so that the process of laying on a hand then of coming under and and helping that person to get length through the lumbar spine. In fact, could length through the whole spine. By lowering then onto the floor, the lumbar spine in relation in a different relation at this point. So what's happening also is that we're preparing for the relation curve which is the cervical curve to the lumbar curve, we're preparing now to deal with the cervical curve. You can't have any idea of the cervical curve."
In the 1973 Big Sur advanced class, a senior practitioner narrates the first-hour sequence that brings the lumbars back.
Coda: the spine as a unified structure, the lumbars as its fulcrum
Ida's late teaching pushed against two prevailing conceptions of the spine — the chiropractic conception of bones to be pushed around, and the textbook conception of a stack of vertebrae each supporting the weight above. Neither, in her view, captured the spine as a unified structure. In the August 1974 IPR lecture she develops her own framing: the spine is a system of united areas, with the lumbar segment functioning as the body's structural fulcrum and the lumbodorsal junction as the point where the body's vertical line is finally established. The lumbars are not just one piece of the spine. They are the segment around which the whole spinal mechanism is organized.
"Well one of the things that impresses me experientially as well as as I try to invest that skeleton with some flesh Is the essential nature of the spinal, not the spine as such, but the spinal structure? It is again as though a body was something built around a spine. Now a lot of people have had this idea, the osteopaths have had it and the chiropractic have had it. But none of them have ever gotten out of their spine a unified something going along there. They always manage to have a series of bony segments and that's what they figure a spine is. Now this is not my concept and this is not the concept around which structural integration works. You have to get that picture of the whole spine, the whole spinal mechanism as a unit, as a unit of united areas. It is a much more sturdy sort of a concept than, for example, the chiropractic concept, where you simply have bones that you push around. And I'd like you to take this idea home with you and try to get more reality on it. As you yourself get more processing, you will understand this. It is quite impossible, I think, to understand this before you have had the kind of processing that puts these things together. And this is the reason why, at this point, the whole world, relatively speaking, accepts chiropractic, accepts osteopathy, because that is the level where their bodies are living."
In the August 1974 IPR lecture, Ida states her position on the spine as a unified structure rather than a stack of vertebrae.
What survives, across the years of recorded teaching, is a position that took decades to firm up. The lumbars are the segment that gives, because the dorsals cannot. They are the segment that responds first to skilled hands, because their reciprocity with the cervicals makes them the body's structural readout. They are the segment whose lengthening is the goal of every hour, because the body's vertical line passes through their bodies and the lumbodorsal junction above them is the last to be established. And they are held — uniquely among the body's junctions — by levers on both sides of the spine, rhomboids behind and psoas in front, so that the practitioner approaching them must work the whole depth of the body to reach them. The lumbars, in Ida's teaching, are not a part of the body. They are the place where the body becomes vertical.
See also: See also: the 1973 Big Sur advanced class material (Tape 12) for further practitioner-voice description of the lumbar fascia's role in sacral positioning and the coccyx work that completes the lumbar-sacral relation. SUR7322 ▸SUR7323 ▸
See also: See also: the 1973 Big Sur advanced class recap (SUR7316) for a practitioner-voice review of how the third-hour quadratus work and the fourth-hour central-line work together set up the lumbar segment for the later hours. SUR7316 ▸
See also: See also: the 1975 Boulder advanced class third-hour and ninth-hour material for further treatment of the deeper-than-quadratus work and the role of the lumbar fascia in the seventh-hour completion of the lumbodorsal hinge. T3SB ▸T9SB ▸B2T3SA ▸
See also: See also: the 1976 Rolf Advanced Class lectures on the third-hour mechanism and the developmental logic of the secondary curves, which expand the framework outlined in this article. 76ADV41 ▸76ADV61 ▸76ADV71 ▸76ADV81 ▸
See also: See also: the Mystery Tapes CD1 material on lumbar mobility and the seventh-hour completion of the lumbar-sacral organization. 72MYS101 ▸72MYS141 ▸
See also: See also: the public-tape first-hour and second-hour demonstrations for the operative descriptions of the pelvic lift's effect on the lumbar segment. RolfA3Side1 ▸RolfB2Side2 ▸RolfB3Side1 ▸