A week has passed since the Phase II training began. The aim of this training is to acquire the Rolfing work as it is given across ten sessions.
The curriculum proceeds in this order:
- Theory for each session, including how the body is observed (body reading), along with explanation and practice of the manual technique.
- Two clients are brought in from outside, and the teacher and the assistant teacher each give a demonstration of the session — about an hour and a half, or two hours including commentary.
- The students give each session to one another. Here, once student A has worked on student B, student B does not work on A but on student C instead.
- Discussion, review of the technique, and supplementary teaching.
What is interesting, first, is bringing in two clients from outside, one taken by the teacher and one by the assistant teacher, and giving the Rolfing work across all ten sessions. The changes in the client, the flow of the sessions, the differing characteristics of the two clients, and the differences in how the two teachers work all become observable.
Second, photographs are taken before and after the first, third, and seventh sessions, so that the changes in the body can be followed visually. A digital camera is fixed to a tripod, and the person, in underwear, is photographed against a black backdrop from the front, sides, and back, turning clockwise.
Third, reports are submitted on the work given by the teacher, the assistant teacher, and oneself. Two printed forms are used for this: an observation guide and a Rolfer’s notes. They include questions such as:
- What was observed in body reading, and what was discussed?
- How was the goal determined for each session?
- What specific work was arrived at based on that goal — in Rolfing, the strategy?
- Was the strategy changed partway through?
- How did the sequence of the work proceed — timing, regions of the body, and so on?
The observation guide runs to sixteen questions, and the Rolfing notes are divided into seven items. Reports are due within two or three days of finishing. Working this way lets the teacher grasp what each student is observing, and where the information falls short, feedback follows.
Classes are conducted by writing on large Post-it sheets, and everything — including the related literature, since scientific research on Rolfing is well underway — is shared as files on Dropbox.
There are also a midterm review and a final review this time, each providing feedback on where capacity needs developing.
Having covered how the teaching proceeds, what follows on this blog will take up the specific discoveries and realizations that came out of it.
Note, August 2026
This piece was written a week into Phase II. How the curriculum proceeds, how the demonstrations are structured, and how records are kept.
What stands out is the volume of the record.
Sixteen questions and seven items
Reports are submitted on the work given by the teacher, the assistant teacher, and oneself. Two printed forms serve for this: an observation guide and a Rolfer’s notes.
The observation guide runs to sixteen questions, the Rolfing notes to seven items. Reports are due within two or three days of finishing.
The questions this piece gives as examples ran like this. What was observed in body reading, and what was discussed? How was the goal determined? What specific work was arrived at based on that goal? Was the strategy changed partway through? How did the sequence of the work proceed?
What was observed, what was determined, what was actually done. All of it put into words and handed in. The teacher grasps what each student is observing, and where the information falls short, feedback follows.
Eleven years later, the questions came to three
On the afternoon of the first day of the 2025 Advanced Training, three questions were written on the whiteboard as the emblem of Jeff Maitland’s thinking (see “Jeff Maitland – Three questions, state, perception, self-organize“).
Where do you start?
What do you do next?
When are you done?
It is not only that the number fell. The nature of the questions differs.
The first in particular. To the question of what approach to bring to a session, what Ray McCall holds to is placing the client in a state of perception where safety is felt. From there, the client connects with the resources they need, and communication beyond words becomes possible.
Put in terms of perception, he says, this comes to trusting that the body of the other is capable of self-regulation.
The sixteen questions and seven items of this piece can be answered as a record of what was done. What was observed, what was set as the goal, how it was assembled, how it proceeded. All of it a form for writing down what is finished.
The three questions of 2025 point not to what is done but to a state. What perception to come with is not something a record can answer.
The Basic Training teaches through the volume of the record. The Advanced Training teaches through the quality of the question.
What writing left behind
This piece sets out the recording apparatus in detail. Photographs before and after the first, third, and seventh sessions. Classes written on large Post-it sheets, everything shared on Dropbox, related literature included. A midterm review and a final review.
The training of putting what was observed into words and handing it in began here.
Writing these notes eleven years later stands in the same line. Without the record made then, reconstructing what was being thought would not be possible. The self who answered those sixteen questions is handing material to the self writing now.