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CLOUDY Temp: 40 °F Wind: CLM at 0 mph Saturday, December 21, 2002 SECTIONS Home Page Local News Sports Business Obituaries Life Opinion - Politics AP News Weather Classified Archives Site Map EXTRA HomeLife Magazine W3 Magazine Jobs @ Mail Tribune Tempo A & E Oregon CarZone Wellness Connection Real Estate Newspaper in Education Prime Times Outdoor Journal Personals Movie Times TV Times E The People CLASSIFIEDS Find a Car Find a Home Find a Job Find Everything E SOUTHERN OREGON Automotive Communities Entertainment Publications Recreation Calendar ABOUT US FAQ What's New Advertise Home Delivery Classified Ad Contact Us Media Kit Email Story to a Friend November 21, 2002 Psychotherapist Ilana Rubenfeld, who recently moved to Ashland, is the creator of a type of therapy that combines talk and touch. It�s called the Rubenfeld Synergy Method and is outlined in her book, �The Listening Hand.� Mail Tribune / Jim Craven Hear your body talk Ashland psychotherapist will demonstrate synergistic method of ‘The Listening Hand’ By BILL VARBLE Mail Tribune As a young conductor wracked by a back spasm so painful she couldn’t raise her arm, Ilana Rubenfeld sought help from a practitioner of the Alexander Technique, which taught balanced posture. "She would touch me and say to relax, and I would say with gritted teeth, ‘I am,’ " Rubenfeld says with a mock grimace. "That was the beginning of my first a ha ." As she got in touch with the tension she’d been holding in her body, Rubenfeld felt a need to talk. "We don’t talk," the therapist said. So the young conductor started seeing a Freudian psychotherapist. Soon she had a therapist who talked but didn’t touch, and one who touched but didn’t talk. The a ha that came out of that led to the Rubenfeld Synergy Method of talk and touch, a combination of psychotherapy and body work that Rubenfeld developed in the 1960s. She became a pioneer in body-oriented psychotherapy and for the last 25 years trained Rubenfeld practitioners across the country. Recently she wrote a book about the method. Also recently, she moved to Ashland. Rubenfeld plans a signing Friday at Bloomsbury Books in Ashland for "The Listening Hand" (Bantam Books, $25.95). The event will include hands-on demonstrations with volunteers. Surrounded by art and seated near the Steinway piano that was a gift from her music teacher, Rubenfeld says she just got back from a workshop in Philadelphia and has others coming up in Seattle, New Mexico and California. In a typical therapy session, Rubenfeld has a client lie face-up on a table. As the person talks, the therapist "listens" not only with her ears but with her hands, slipping them under the back, touching a shoulder, maybe cradling the head. "What we think and our body’s condition are two different worlds," she says. She tells the story of a woman in her 70s who laid down and began to cry because her husband of 45 years had left her "to find his own space." "Her body felt wonderful," Rubenfeld says. She asked what was happening at that moment. "I have two boyfriends," the woman said sheepishly. The woman thought her behavior was bad and that her grown children would disapprove, but her body’s message was that she was happy and excited. A psychotherapist but not a physician, Rubenfeld does not diagnose illnesses or call clients patients. She grew up in New York City, the daughter of Russian Jews who fled the Bolshevik revolution and lived in Palestine until getting out on the last boat before World War II shut down emigration. Growing up in New York City feeling displaced, she found a friend in music. She went to the Manhattan School of Music, then to Juilliard, where she could study conducting. It was there that she learned to listen to many instruments at once, hearing the whole through the sum of its parts. She became an assistant conductor under Leopold Stokowski. The crisis with her back and her therapy left her determined to be a healer. She did graduate work in science and non-verbal media language at the University of California at Berkeley, City College of New York and New York University. She studied for eight years with Moshe Feldenkrais, the founder of Functional Integration and Awareness Through Movement. She worked with Fritz Perls, founder of Gestalt therapy. He said she was a composer because she was putting together a new method. It was inventor/theorist Buckminster Fuller who gave her the name "synergy method" for what she was doing. Other mentors were hypnotherapist Milton Erickson and family therapy pioneer Virginia Satir. "Trauma is in every tissue of your body," Rubenfeld says. "Every memory and emotion of your life is in every cell. You may not remember, but your body does. From the moment you’re born, everything that’s happened in your life is encoded in your body. "Memories don’t get integrated by talk alone. I find the metaphors. Your body is a wonderful metaphor. It can tell you what’s going on." Rubenfeld says writing a book after all those years of practice just sort of came together. "The right people appeared," she says. Rubenfeld came to Ashland to visit a friend, fell in love with the town and moved into Mountain Meadows retirement community. She likens healing to music, and the healer’s job to listening to the songs of others. And as in music, the silences, too, are important. Reach reporter Bill Varble at 776-4478 or e-mail [email protected] Printer Friendly Version Email Story to a Friend Subscribe Archive: Click to Search Mail Tribune Home Local News | Sports | Business | Obituaries | Life Opinion - Politics | AP News | Archives | Site Map E Southern Oregon | Classified Copyright 1997-2002 Mail Tribune. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy webmaster feedback A D V E R T I S E R S