The second week of Rolfing training has ended, and Phase I has moved on to anatomy.
Earlier accounts of the training and how it came about are collected here:
Anatomy had come up before, in yoga teacher training in Japan, but always with either a Japanese teacher or a foreign teacher working through an interpreter. Either way, learning it in English was a first, so a Japanese dictionary stayed at hand throughout. Both teachers this week were German, and their English came through clearly — the careful listening required the previous week, with an Italian and a Spanish teacher, was largely unnecessary.
Across five days, the mornings covered physiology centered on the cell — its composition, nerve cells, and so on — and the afternoons went to locating muscles, exploring with the hands alongside a partner. From the toes to the crown of the head, divided into twelve rounds: very fine-grained work.
What came as a surprise: anatomy tests were given twice, on the third day and the final day, both without warning. Going in unprepared meant the results were not good, but the exercise made clear which parts of anatomy warrant study, which was interesting in itself.
Something else that proved interesting about training in Munich was the difference in how Westerners think about touching the body. The work involved removing clothing from the upper and lower body down to the underwear so that the body could be touched, and the people here — men and women alike, four women taking part in this training — carry no resistance to it whatsoever. Lacking much experience of that, there was some initial hesitation, but with everyone around behaving that way, familiarity came quickly.
Come to think of it, at the very start of the training the question had been put: any resistance to being touched? The answer at the time was none at all, given the yoga practice — and only later did the point of the question become clear. Studying anatomy under these conditions does not happen in training in Japan, so it made for a fresh experience.
On cultural difference, one more thing proved interesting. Gait, apparently, varies with where a person lives. In Japan the tendency runs toward walking with the chest closed and the arms still; Americans walk with the chest open; Brazilians tend toward a walk that pushes the hips back. Attending to how someone walks may well reveal something of their background.
Anatomy resembles learning a new language, and it is knowledge that bodywork requires. The intention going forward is to keep hold of the terminology while attending to the cultural dimension as well, and to continue studying Rolfing.
