About Roger

Roger Weinerth has over 40 years combined as a certified Hellerwork Structural Integration (S.I.) Practitioner, a Movement Integration Practitioner, a Licensed Massage Therapist and a Neuro Linguistics Professional. Roger is an innovator and the founder of Body Mind Power, The 7 Day Body, Conscious Movement & Self-Bodywork Workshops, and C.E. Classes for Manual and Massage Therapists. His latest offering, during this time, is Online Zoom Sessions and Classes. He is a Faculty member for the Hellerwork S.I. Training and serves as the vice-president of the American Hellerwork S. I. Practitioner Association. He is also a Trainer for The Institute of Structural Medicine.

Personal History (How I got Here)

When I was 4 years old, I was thrilled to be invited to watch a football game my oldest brother and his friends were playing. The older boys were running, throwing the ball, catching it and then jumping on each other in big piles. It looked like great fun and I wanted to play, but I was too small and could only watch.

Then someone threw the ball and it came bouncing toward me. I picked it up and, oh boy, I’m playing I thought.

Immediately the boys came “piling up” on top of me and I found myself in horrendous pain. My upper left leg had been severely broken as a result.

I spent 4 weeks mostly alone in the hospital with both legs in traction. Then one day they lowered my legs, put a heavy plaster cast on my leg from my pelvis to my toes and sent me home. For weeks I laid and sat around watching all the other kids playing. Finally, weeks later, the Doctor cut the cast off. That was 1954 and, at the time, physical therapy wasn’t even offered, so they just released me with no follow up. I didn’t care I was just happy to get out and play again and be a part of everything.

Years later, in 1975, I met Joseph Heller, a Rolfing Structural Integration Practitioner. Joseph looked at my body, listened to my broken leg story and began to help me understand what the bodywork could do for my body. He asked me to stand with my feet on two separate bathroom scales where I discover I had 110 pounds of weight on my right leg and only 60 on my left. Then he had me stand in front of a mirror and showed me how my body had misaligned to adjust to the imbalance. I discovered immediately that the stress, tightness and pain I felt in my body was consistent with the misalignment. I was having such a powerful experience I said to myself, “I am going to do this work”. As I heard that inside I had the profound feeling I wasn’t just going to get sessions, I was going to be a Practitioner.

A month later I moved back to Missouri, found a Rolfing Structural Integration Practitioner, started the bodywork series, and began discovering how my body had helped shape my whole life. I realized my left leg had gotten thinner and my right thicker adjusting to the weight imbalance which compressed my whole right side, twisting my pelvis and lowering my right shoulder. I realized that the imbalance had contributed to an unconscious lack of grounding leaving me unbalanced and uncoordinated playing sports, breaking things, and possibly even contributed to my confidence and attitude toward life. As the Practitioner worked into my upper left leg I had a tremendous fear he was going to break my leg. He showed me that he wasn’t pressing that hard, though asked if that was where I had broken my leg. He asked me to close my eyes and notice what I saw as he worked. The memory of the Doctors resetting my leg at 4 years old came up and I cried. As the memory relaxed, the pain relaxed and my leg felt like it was waking from an old numbness. I learned right then that my body and mind work together and that a lot of my daily stress, numbness and pain in my body could be old past patterns. I realized a new freedom.

Realigning my body through the Rolfing bodywork helped me release a lot of that old detrimental patterns. By the time I learned to be a Hellerwork Practitioner, Structural Integration Practitioners were adding Movement Education to the Bodywork. Movement Education seemed like the empowerment key, because it taught me how to empower myself. I learned that realigning my body through Movement gave me the ability to embody a better sense of balance, coordination, a greater presence of mind, a keener self-awareness of myself, body language and a greater energetic connection to others.

Was breaking my leg a negative experience? In some ways, absolutely yes. But looking back, I can see the blessings: the opportunity to know myself at a profound level, and the inspiration to help others be their best in life through this work.