The first three sessions of Rolfing focus chiefly on ordering the superficial parts of the body. Session 1 is the upper body, Session 2 the lower body, and Session 3 follows the order of integrating the upper and lower body — taking the red pins on the superficial layer one by one and bringing the body into order.
In Sessions 1 and 2, the work proceeded with attention to the up–down of the body, the upper body and the lower body; this time, with attention to the side of the body, the approach is one of feeling the widening of space in addition to up–down (two dimensions). That connects to re-grasping the body in three dimensions.
The explanation that likened this to the history of painting was very interesting and made me think about the body and the perception of space, so for this Session 3 I would like to write the blog in two parts.
In explaining Session 3, Giovanni clarified the awareness of the three-dimensional body, and how the body sees the external space, by walking through the history of Western art. In the medieval era, when Christianity was at its height, much of the painting gave simple bodily and spatial representation, grasping the body in two dimensions. Sessions 1 and 2 grasp the body from this viewpoint, working mainly with attention to up–down (the upper body and the lower body).
As the era moved from the medieval to the Renaissance, Giotto came to bring three-dimensional spatial representation and the natural expression of figures’ emotions into painting. At last, the way of seeing of Session 3 appears in art history.
Raphael pushed this further: in The School of Athens, he incorporated mathematical thinking, attending to left–right and front–back symmetry and reflecting it in the work. This work gives the impression of a deeper awareness of space. As for symmetry, in Rolfing’s Body reading, in Session 2 — when building the foundation of the lower body’s feet — the left–right symmetry of the lower limbs is observed, while in Session 3 the front–back symmetry is observed.
In time, the Impressionists Van Gogh and Pissarro succeeded in bringing depth into painting by incorporating the vanishing point of perspective into spatial perception.
The vanishing point is the point at which lines that are in fact parallel meet when drawn as not parallel. When observing walking: where is the walker’s gaze — the vanishing point of their line of sight — directed? Toward something concrete (for example, an object such as a desk or chair, a window, a building)? And is the field of the gaze narrowing, or widening? In fact, when the vanishing point is taken small, too much force enters the walk and it does not become proper walking; but when the vanishing point is taken large, force releases from the walk. In Session 3 of Rolfing’s Body reading, this point, too, is attended to.
And finally, Matisse and Monet. Looking at these works, spatial representation comes to place its emphasis not only on the foreground of the subject depicted but on the background as well.
When, through Session 3, the space of one’s own body widens in the front–back direction, an appropriate sense of distance can be taken between the body and the external environment (the background, in terms of painting). For example, it may be easier to understand by considering: how much distance does one take from other people, from space? Through this, depth increases in the movement of the body, and working on the deep parts of the body (from Session 4 onward) becomes possible — this is the Rolfing view.
Painting is interesting for what it lets us know about how human beings, through the body, see the world. I would like to keep looking at painting through the body from here on as well.
Note, August 2026
The idea of the background taken up in this piece — that emphasis falls not only on the foreground of what is depicted but on the space behind it — went on to reappear repeatedly, in changing forms.
First, the reason Rolfing training calls a joint an Articulation rather than a joint connects here. Articulation means space, or interval, more than it means connection; bringing awareness to the presence of space within the body lets unnecessary muscular effort drop away. Palintonicity, bidirectionality, derives from this same conception of space (see “Letting Go of Tension (2) — The Importance of Being Aware of Space“).
In the Rolf Movement training that began in 2017, this had been organized into four Articulations: upper body and lower body, front and back, left and right, inside and outside. What matters is how the balance among these four spaces is organized (see “Rolf Movement – Part 1 (2): An Introduction to the Basic Concepts“).
The progression described in this piece — sessions 1 and 2 working up-down, session 3 working front-back — corresponds exactly to the first three. And the fourth, inside and outside, corresponds to the move from Sleeve to Core.
Then, in the 2025 Advanced Training, came a foot exercise that Ray McCall reportedly introduces every time. The Eye of the Foot: one assumes there is an eye in the sole of the foot, and observes what changes in the body and in the surrounding space as it opens and closes. Standing with it closed, the whole body contracts and the sense of contact with the ground changes. Opening it brings a sense of release in the pelvic floor and the diaphragm, and the relation to gravity shifts.
What that work gave me was a capacity to switch back and forth between foreground and background. What this piece describes about Monet and Matisse — emphasis falling on the background as well as the foreground — had arrived as bodily perception.
What deepened there was an understanding of space as something other than nothing: as a field in which the relation between oneself and an object arises, an existence carrying quality. One participant described feeling space as something moist, something with density. Space is not mere background but a counterpart to which the body responds and with which it holds a relation (see “Space Is Not “Nothing” — It Is “Something”: A Perceptual Shift Beginning with the “Eye of the Foot”).
We do not exist within space. We exist in relation to space.
What was learned in 2014 as the background of a painting was, eleven years later, being treated as the responsive relation between body and space.