October 3, 2014: back in Munich. A little over a month has passed since leaving on August 23. Earlier accounts of the training and how it came about were collected across four posts on this blog:
- Training Phase I — On Letting Go, and the First Day
- Training Phase I — Completing the First Week
- Training Phase I — Completing the Second Week
- Training Phase I — The Third Week and the Final Evaluation
The previous three weeks were introductory; this time it runs eight weeks, a long stretch. The group has shrunk from fourteen to eight: two Swiss, one Dane, one French, two Germans, one Belgian, and one Japanese. Sessions usually run with more women, but this time everyone is male, with the assistant teacher Patricia von Weichs the only woman — an unusual composition.
Phase II covers the manual work in detail. After the theory, clients are brought in from outside and the teacher gives each of the ten sessions. Practice follows, and then the students work on each other. In the final week, clients are again brought in from outside, and by then the students give the work themselves.
Eight weeks learning the Rolfing ten-series alongside the specific techniques. Phase III begins April 13, 2015 — not in Munich but living and studying in Boulder, Colorado. Practice will be needed before then, so the question of when to cut the travel short remains open; at present the return to Japan is set for early February 2015. Planning the journeys through South America, Africa, and Oceania is something to look forward to.
The teacher for these eight weeks, thirty-three days, is Giovanni Felicioni. Originally a yoga teacher, he pursues the question of how yoga and Rolfing complement each other and draw out what each does well. Since Rolfing seems to supply what yoga leaves wanting, studying alongside someone thinking along the same lines is genuine good fortune.
Giovanni lives in the UK and speaks English natively, which makes him easy to follow. He taught the third week of Phase I in August 2014, the week on touch, and nothing in his manner comes down from above: “This is how it seems to me about such-and-such — how do you feel about it? Are you comfortable with that?” He speaks at eye level. How things change from here is something to look forward to.
What this blog aims at is going deeper into what the Rolfing training brings: the intent behind the ten-series, what gets learned, and how it affects the body.
Note, August 2026
At this point Phase III was scheduled for Boulder, Colorado, beginning April 13, 2015. In the event, Boulder never happened. Phase III was moved up and held in Munich instead, from February 2 to March 25, 2015, under Jörg Ahrend-Löns and Andrea Clusen. Certification came in its final week, on March 25, 2015.
The whole of the basic training — Phase I through Phase III — was therefore completed in Munich. Studying within the European lineage rather than in Boulder, where the work originated, is what led onward to the Rolf Movement training and to an understanding built around Hubert Godard’s Tonic Function.
Of the travel through South America, Africa, and Oceania mentioned here, what actually took place between Phase II and Phase III was a circuit of South and North America.