Phase I of the Rolfing training entered its final week, and the three-week schedule came to a close. The final interview took place the following Saturday and was passed as well. From Monday, October 6, Phase II begins in Munich once again.
Earlier accounts of the training and how it came about are collected here:
- Training Phase I — On Letting Go, and the First Day
- Training Phase I — Completing the First Week
- Training Phase I — Completing the Second Week
The third week of Phase I covered touch.
Rolfing organizes the body by working on the fascia through the practitioner’s own body, chiefly the hands. What matters within that is gravity. Come to think of it, gravity is present under any circumstance whatsoever. How can the body be kept from working against gravity? And how can muscle, bone, and fascia be organized so that, rather than resisting gravity, the body makes use of it and comes to organize itself? The work proceeds with attention on these questions.
For that, the practitioner’s own body must be well organized, with care taken that no unnecessary tension enters the hands or arms. This, presumably, is why the first week covered movement and gait, and the second week covered how the body is constructed — anatomy — as preparation for touching it.
The third week, then, took as its premise that the practitioner’s body is organized, and centered on how to work on another person’s body. Specifically: how does effort leave the practitioner’s body? And once the tension is out, how is the work delivered to the person receiving, using the invisible force of gravity? What technique meets each part of the body — the legs, the thighs, the hip joints, the pelvis, the ribs, the arms, the shoulders, the neck, the mouth, the nose, the head? A great deal of fineness was required.
What proved interesting was how often the corrections came on this point: in organizing the practitioner’s own body, planting the feet firmly on the ground to build a foundation, then lengthening the head and the spine of the upper body, and finding the way into an easy posture. The various exercises in movement during the first week of Phase I existed for this, though in practice it meant learning through the body, receiving suggestions for improvement from the teachers while giving the work.
Something else: when the teachers taught, nothing was imposed. There is this suggestion — how does it seem, worth trying? There is this idea — does the meaning come through? The phrasing ran that way, and there was much to learn not only in the technique of Rolfing but in the use of language.
The three weeks of Phase I closed this way, and the results of the interviews held at the end of each week arrived finally in written form. The feedback came in more detail than expected, and among the items were some interesting ones: whether help was sought when something was unclear; whether cooperation with those around took place; whether participation in questions and discussion was active. Ten items per week, thirty in all, each rated on a five-point scale. On that basis came a statement of whether the move to Phase II was agreed to — all three weeks came back affirmative.
The following day brought the final evaluation interview. An evaluation committee exists apart from the six teachers, and a final review from them, weighing the written assessments from the day before, cleared the way to Phase II without difficulty. Phase II begins Monday, October 6.
Everything so far has been introduction. In Phase II comes the actual question of how the ten sessions are delivered to another person — eight weeks of dense training. The teacher in charge teaches both Rolfing and yoga, so the applications to yoga should be learnable as well, which promises a great deal. Returning to Munich around the end of Oktoberfest is something to look forward to.
