This is the first of three pieces in the Letting Go of Tension series. The series was written during Phase II of the Rolfing Basic Training.
Before entering into the specifics of Rolfing’s full ten-session series, I would like to touch on the relationship between letting go of tension — here, in the sense of letting go of excess force — and Rolfing. This also leads into an explanation of why Rolfing makes up for what yoga lacks.
Something learned during yoga training: anatomically speaking, there are three ways to let go of the force held in the body, which could also be put as keeping excess force from entering.
The first is that force can be released to some degree by applying force.
To let go of force, it matters first to know how the force is getting in there. When stiff shoulders occur, for instance, without knowing which muscle the force is entering — the trapezius, in the case of stiff shoulders — there is no way to know how to release it. Most people with stiff shoulders, it is said, have no sense of how the force got in there. And by putting still more force into that place, it can eventually be relaxed.
The second is to make use of reciprocal inhibition of the muscles.
The body is built so that, to release a muscle — the hamstrings at the back of the thigh, say — putting force into the opposing quadriceps at the front of the thigh relaxes the hamstrings. In the arm, too, when the biceps is contracted, the muscle behind it is released. This is called reciprocal inhibition of the muscles.
The third is to be aware of the central axis.
For a human being to sit or to stand is to resist gravity. Which means that unless the central axis can be felt firmly, excess force enters the body. When sitting, if the line from the crown of the head to the sit bones becomes a firm axis and the spine extends, there is no need to put force into the other muscles, and force is released smoothly.
Seen this way, letting go of force calls for a certain degree of awareness of the muscles and of the central axis. It is something acquired through trial and error, by way of experiences that throw the balance off.
And as force is released, the spine extends, the chest opens, and so the breath deepens as well. When the breath deepens, the mind grows calm, leading to ease.
How can a person sit for a long time and breathe deeply? Yoga poses were developed for that purpose, and within them, how to apply force and how to let it go becomes important.
With regard to letting go of force, however, even after attending several yoga instructor training courses, I never came across a grand theory that made me think, this is it. And so I came to turn my attention to the bodywork developed in the West.
The first thing I encountered was the Alexander Technique. By attending to the relationship between the head and the spine, a person becomes aware of the body’s unnecessary automatic reactions and learns to stop them — a method of teaching the body, through the body, to let go of force. It was developed by the Australian actor Frederick Matthias Alexander. Encountering this method made my own yoga poses dramatically easier to take. In that process, I happened to encounter Rolfing as well (see “How I Found Rolfing — Searching for a Way to Deepen the Postures“).
Rolfing is a method developed by Ida Rolf. Ida Rolf, Frederick Alexander, and Moshe Feldenkrais — who developed the Feldenkrais Method — are said to be the three great masters of bodywork in the West, and it seems they lived in the same era and greatly influenced one another regarding the methods they developed. Indeed, during the Rolfing training, the names of Feldenkrais and Alexander come up again and again.
Rolfing is a method in which the fascia within the body’s structure is worked on, and the body comes into order through the influence of gravity. And through the process of the ten-session series — the superficial part of the body (Sessions 1 to 3), the deep part of the body (Sessions 4 to 7), and the final integration (Sessions 8 to 10) — the body ultimately becomes one that does not use unnecessary muscles, with force released to some degree. That the body comes into still greater order by working on its structure and having a specialist carry out the work was, for me, a considerable discovery. Having experienced it, I became convinced of its effect (see “After Completing the Ten Sessions“). My stiff shoulders and stiff neck improved more than before. It became a major reason for coming to Munich and deciding to explore further.
From here on, this column will be written with attention to this perspective — the relationship between body, mind, and Rolfing — including how Rolfing affects the body and how it works on the mind.
Note, August 2026
After this piece, two more on letting go of tension followed, making a series of three.
Part 1 (this piece): the three ways of letting go of force, and what yoga was missing.
Part 2, “The Word Articulation — On Making Space Within the Body.” Why Rolfing uses Articulation rather than Joint for the joint. The idea of making space within the body.
Part 3, “The Body Holds Six Spaces — Gravity, g and g’.” The six spaces of up and down, front and back, left and right, and the indicators for where weight is carried.
Part 2 was written before entering the account of Session 4 onward, Part 3 before Session 8 onward. They sit as pauses within the run of pieces following the ten-series in order. At the close of the superficial sessions and again at the close of the deep sessions, letting go of tension was returned to.
What follows is where the three ways set out in this piece ended up.
Reciprocal inhibition had an account in the nervous system
This piece writes about reciprocal inhibition as a rule of thumb. To release the hamstrings, put force into the quadriceps. The body is simply built that way.
The following month brought Hubert Godard’s Tonic Function (see “The Muscles That Tire and the Muscles That Don’t — Tonic Function and the Support of Posture“).
What that gave was an account of why. Muscle divides into Phasic, which works briefly, and Tonic, which works continuously. Phasic is governed by the alpha motor neuron system, Tonic by the gamma. And what characterizes the gamma system is that it can engage only the muscles required, without bringing the antagonists into play. With the alpha system, the antagonists come into play.
The reciprocal inhibition this piece describes was the working of the gamma system.
This piece also holds the phrase acquired through trial and error. The following month, that had become something the work addresses. Rolfing assembles its ten sessions from the standpoint of how the gamma system is activated. It was territory that could be worked on from outside, rather than felt out alone.
The central axis became four sessions
As the third way, this piece names the central axis. When sitting, if the line from the crown of the head to the sit bones becomes a firm axis and the spine extends, there is no need to put force into the other muscles.
In the ten-series, four sessions are given to that axis. Session 4 works from the adductors to the pelvic floor, Session 5 the psoas major and the diaphragm, Session 6 the spine and the sacrum, and Session 7 the head and the face.
On receiving Session 7, I wrote that the medial line reaches to the crown of the head, so in a sense it is the final session for recovering awareness of that line (see “Session 7: The Head and the Face“).
The range this piece gives — from the crown of the head to the sit bones — was accurate. What it did not yet know was that the route there runs four sessions long.
The three masters fit into a single table
This piece introduces Ida Rolf, Frederick Alexander, and Moshe Feldenkrais as the three great masters of Western bodywork, who lived in the same era and greatly influenced one another.
The following month, Giovanni Felicioni taught a set of correspondences that includes those three. Rolfing works on structure, the Feldenkrais Method on coordination, the Alexander Technique on perception, and counseling on meaning — each altering Tonic Function through its own element.
What had been a historical relation became a division of roles within a theory.
And in the 2025 Advanced Training, that pairing had been reworked as Taxonomy. Structural and segmental, biomechanical, functional, psychobiological, energetic. All five categories sit inside Rolfing (see “Journey to Becoming an Advanced Rolfer — A Summary of the Road to Certification“).
In 2014, separate methods handled separate territories. Eleven years later, all of it lies within the range of the work I do.
The work of the three this piece describes as greatly influencing one another had come to fit within a single system of categories.
What yoga was missing
The subject of this piece was why Rolfing makes up for what yoga lacks. The reasons given: never having come across a grand theory, and receiving the work from a specialist rather than carrying it out alone.
In the practice eleven years on, both have taken another shape.
As for theory, Tonic Function arrived as a framework. It was not, however, a theory for everything. The Non-Formulaic approach learned in 2025 holds to neither procedure nor theory, building each session individually on the basis of principles. The grand theory being looked for — the this-is-it — never did arrive.
As for receiving the work, a reversal occurred. From the side that receives to the side that offers.
Both continue, even so. The yoga practice has run more than twenty years, and receiving Rolfing sessions continues as well. Making up for what the other lacks did not mean one replacing the other.