Island Hellerwork
Sequoyah has run Island Hellerwork in the Cowichan Valley and Victoria, BC for 17 years. She has worked with thousands of clients and has dedicated her life to living the principles of Hellerwork.
Hellerwork may be able to help you
Hellerwork invites you to feel the living connection between how you move and how you are held together. It weaves three threads into a single process: deep fascial bodywork that frees the connective tissue, movement education that teaches your body easier ways of standing, walking, and reaching, and a dialogue that listens to what the body has been carrying. Together they open new possibilities, physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
This work restores your body’s natural balance from the inside out. Fascia, the connective web that wraps and supports every muscle and bone, can thicken and shorten around old injuries, habits, and held emotion. As it softens and lengthens, your structure begins to reorganize around its true centre. When your body comes into alignment within the field of gravity, chronic pain and tension dissipate. A comfortable sense of support replaces the stress and strain of carrying yourself through life.
What emerges is more than relief. You begin to inhabit your body with ease, to move with less effort, to feel at home in your own form. Your body hurts less. You also feel more like yourself.
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“Hellerwork Structural Integration sessions and series is the best way to realign and transform the body and release traumas and tension patterns that contribute to pain and suffering on all levels of mind, body and spirit!”
What Will My Sessions Look Like
Your first experience with Hellerwork Structural Integration is likely to be in an eleven session series format. Hellerwork Structural Integration is different from most forms of bodywork because it focuses on improving the organization of the entire structure (often visible as better posture), rather than on just the area of complaint, a place that hurts, feels stiff, etc. Although massage is relaxing, you may find the same area bothering you again shortly after you leave the session. This is because the area that hurts is often a compensatory or secondary issue.
You may have neck pain because you’re not getting the proper support from your feet, or because your pelvis is askew, or because your shoulders are rounding forward, or all of the above. Until we balance the entire structure, that neck is going to stay strained trying to keep your head upright. Focusing where it hurts is going after the symptom and not the cause of the problem.
Designed by Dr. Ida Rolf, the Series is like a tune up for your body. The Series is a systematic approach to aligning your structure; each session builds upon the last and prepares the body for the next.
The 11 Session Series provides Hellerworkers with a map. But as anyone who travels knows, “the map is not the territory.” Although structural goals may be similar, the same session may look very different for different clients based on their structure, learned behaviours and movement patterns. Each session is as unique as the person receiving it. For most people, the series progresses as follows:
The 3 Components of Hellerwork Structural Integration:
Connective Tissue Fascia Bodywork
Fascia is what creates your posture; it is also where we will experience injury and tightness. In Hellerwork we start with releasing the tension that currently exists in your connective tissue (fascia), and systematically return your body to an aligned position. Hellerwork works with the field of gravity. We will optimize your structure to align within this field. This part is a “hands on” process, in which Practitioners work with their hands to stretch your fascia back into its optimal position. Releasing chronic tension and aligning your body within the field of gravity allows you to feel free and rested, producing what might be an uncommon, yet normal, state of well-being.
Functional Movement
We all have patterns in our body. Some of our patterns are helpful, while others can keep us in a loop of poor posture or pain. In the series you will become profoundly aware of your body and your movement patterns. We will discover together easier and more functional ways of moving that will serve your body better . We will explore the use of your body in common daily life activities such as: sitting, standing, walking, and reaching, along with movement patterns in your favourite sports, hobbies and other activities.
Somatic Inquiry
Trauma is stored in our bodies. The way to work with old patterns and traumas is to acquire the tools for embodiment and mindfulness. Become aware and present for how your thoughts, feelings and beliefs relate to your posture and overall health of your body-mind. Somatic skills in perceiving and discerning sensations, feelings and images allows you to touch into natural healing elements of the human experience. When we are able to feel our lived experience in the present moment, while feeling safe and connected a whole new world of healing starts to open up. When we learn to feel and listen to the whispers of our body and nervous system, we allow for deeper healing to occur and to rewire the body-brain connection. This can expand your body’s health, alignment, and the way that you perceive and express yourself in the world.
The 11-Session Hellerwork Series:
Sessions 1-3
The first three sessions work on the superficial layers of the connective tissues.
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A free and open breath prepares the body for the demands of the upcoming changes. A full breath provides support for the chest, shoulders, and neck. Some work on the arms may occur. Session 1 opens the diaphragm and connects the client to their breath. The breath will help with the rest of the series and help to open the body. Our breathing directly affects our feeling of inspiration-breath is the primary source of energy for the body, and it is our prime connection with Life Force.
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Opening the breath changes the physical demands on the feet, we will create flexibility and adaptability in the feet so that the whole body can feel supported. In this session we align the 3 arches of the feet and bring more alignment with the legs and pelvis. We inquire into the issues of security, self-support and sufficiency. With a firm foundation underneath us, we are better able to understand, comprehend, and ground with life’s stress and demands..
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Now we open up the sides of the body and differentiate soft tissue of the pelvis from that of the ribs to allow the pelvis more movement options. Reaching out has two meanings, the first meaning is that of making contact, giving and receiving, asserting yourself, and asking for what you need. The second meaning involves aggression and the expression of anger. The arms are the embodiment of both meanings..
Sessions 4-7
Sessions four through seven address patterns from deeper core layers of the body.
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The core begins from the base of the pelvis up through the roof of the mouth. We start this session by finding support through the ankles up along the inner leg before accessing the core. Healthy control involves sensitivity to feedback and a willingness to be flexible, creative and decisive. Heathy surrender involves letting go, trusting your environment and your relationships and relaxing about your destiny.
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We focus on the deep tissues dealing with the front of the spine and core space to establish flexibility in the low back. The guts are often where we feel our strongest feeling or emotions often called “gut feelings” What gut feelings do you most often feel? Are there any that you suppress or avoid?
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We address the deep tissues of the back of the spine and core space to establish flexibility in the low and upper back. Holding back which literally describes tension or holding in one’s back, and figuratively describes the way we limit our self-expression, power and creativity. These limits are physically embodied as tension in the extensor muscles along the spine.
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This is the last of the core sessions and allows us to address the head and neck, bringing better alignment of your head on top of the body. Here we work with the cranium, mouth, face, neck and shoulders. This is also the area where the vagus nerve innervates the face, neck, and heart and is our social engagement system. Here we will explore how we can drop from the head and more into the heart center. Bringing more awareness into connection and presence in the heart, as well as bringing more tone into the vagus nerve.
Sessions 8-11
Sessions four through seven address patterns from deeper core layers of the body.
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Depending on the needs that present themselves, we solidify changes in the upper or lower body. Integration sessions help reprogram movements and make changes last. The pelvic girdle and the legs represent the feminine principle. The pelvis houses the womb-the ultimate symbol of nurturance-and the legs connect us to mother earth. The feminine way manifests through intention and receptivity.
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Changes in the other part of the body are reviewed in light of the changes of the previous session. The arms, shoulder girdle and chest embody the masculine principle: of doing, accomplishing, achieving. The masculine principle is the path of initiation, penetrating, force, insight and action. Western culture emphasizes the masculine style, perhaps to the point of imbalance. Many people strain to work hard: “no pain-no gain”.
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We coordinate soft tissue movement across multiple joints so that movement can be as unfettered and free as possible. Integrity means wholeness, completeness and totality. In this session we are revealing integrity that is already there-not adding anything new. We are simply uncovering the natural integrity and balance of the body.
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The theme is this session is “Coming Out” We mean this in two ways. First, coming out means taking what you have learned out of your practitioners offices and into the world. In this session we support you in owning your experience of Hellerwork in such a way that the results of Hellerwork manifest throughout your life. Second, coming out also refers to allowing your full self-expression to radiate through the vehicle of your body.
What is Fascia
Hellerwork Structural Integration specifically addresses the fascial system, Fascia is the body’s connective tissue; it is an interwoven system that provides a framework for our bones, muscles, organs and blood vessels.
Fascia forms to function, so every movement you make affects how your framework is built it is also protective by nature, therefore if you have an old injury that did not heal properly, your entire framework is affected by this compensation. Addressing this unique and complex system allows a “re-structuring” of this framework to improve overall physical alignment. This hands-on approach with your fascia, allows the fascia to change and be “re-molded” to an optimal state. Clients notice less tension, increased energy, more fluidity and ease of movement, improved flexibility, increased energy and overall improvement of well-being.
Fascia is the key element of those that holds the body together.
Fascia is the connective tissue that plays the most central role in holding the entire body together. A major component of soft tissues, fascia runs throughout the body in planes that tie together the entire network of body parts. It wraps around muscle fiber, bundles of muscle fibers, organs, and bones, etc. The body’s fascial system functions as a multi-layered matrix, whose sheaths wrap around tissues as they weave in and out of layers through the body. In that sense and manner, everything in the body is connected to everything else. There is no part of the body that is on its own—all parts are wrapped together by fascia and have the potential to affect other parts.
Fascia has fluidity and is stress-responsive.
Although fascia has a pronounced fluidity, it is also phenomenally stress-responsive. If a particular part of the body is under severe stress, the fascia supporting that area will harden to accommodate the demand. Over time that fascia toughens and binds body parts closer and closer together so that the structures become tighter and tighter. Since fascia runs in planes, if one part of a fascial plane becomes bound up, it pulls on and shortens the rest of the plane much as a snagged place on a piece of stretched cloth distorts the adjoining area of the fabric.
I have known Sequoyah personally and professionally for many years. I have received bodywork from her and refer people from my own therapy practice to her regularly, because she is extremely skilled, and has helped me tremendously!
Lindsay Campa
“Fascia is the connecting line between the psyche and the soma”
~ Ida Rolf