In Rolfing, body reading calls for observing gait and standing posture very often (for concrete instances of body reading, see “Session 1: Organizing the Breath“ “Session 2: Organizing the Feet“ and “Session 3: Organizing the Sides of the Body“). At the outset the effort went toward observing the body with an emphasis on seeing. Six weeks into the training, that gradually shifted. Feeling with the body had begun to register.
Three experiences bear on the matter of seeing with the eyes.
The first: a Rolf Movement session with Kaori Nakamura, the Munich-based Rolfer (on Nakamura, see “Training Phase I — On Letting Go, and the First Day“). Working in pairs, one person closes their eyes and walks through the city hand in hand with the other, the Rolfer guiding. Thirty minutes walking through Munich without sight brought voices, the sounds of the city, the sound of wind, the sound of English; wood underfoot, gravel paths, paved road.
It was a moment that made plain how much reliance rests on the eyes. And with the eyes unavailable, walking mobilized skin sensation, hearing, information from the feet, information from the other person’s hand — the world apprehended that way. The senses shifted.
After thirty minutes came walking with the eyes open. Using the eyes as little as possible and drawing on the whole body brought two discoveries: that information from the surroundings can be caught without looking, and that walking with the arms swinging and no effort in the shoulders or neck had become available.
The second experience took place back in Japan, at Dialogue in the Dark, an event developed in Germany where conversation happens in complete darkness. It came by way of an introduction from Ayami Yokobatake. For fifteen minutes, seven participants went into the darkness guided by a person with a visual impairment. In total darkness, with the eyes unusable: passing a soccer ball, walking hand in hand across uneven footing, calling out positions to one another. How are the senses used when sight is gone? The sense of distance from another person, calling out and helping one another, the value of connection — these came into view.
The third: receiving a massage in Shanghai, a stopover on the journey around the world, September 12–13, 2014, from a practitioner with a visual impairment. Nearly an hour at a shop where every practitioner was visually impaired raised the question of how the sites of tension could be located and worked with such accuracy. Alongside the surprise came a sense of the possibilities in the human use of senses other than sight.
What the three experiences share is that when sight is unavailable, the other senses come forward. What gets said often in learning body reading during Rolfing training is likewise: feel with the body. In Rolfing terminology this is called felt sense.
In practice, watching a session — watching the teacher work with a client — brings moments when a change occurs in one’s own body, when it entrains with the change, when something of the client’s feeling carries across. A degree of neutrality on the practitioner’s part matters, of course, but that a change in the body registers, a change in felt sense, is interesting.
What this has covered is what comes to be felt by closing the eyes. The range of possibility that opens when sight is set aside. The whole body becomes an antenna, and the sound of breathing, scent, the air around a person, the overall atmosphere, the movement of emotion all come within reach.
Going forward, in body reading — and in teaching yoga postures as well — the intention is to refine this: to see through the whole of the senses rather than relying on the eyes alone.
Note, August 2026
The Rolf Movement session with Kaori Nakamura described here took place during Phase II. At the time it amounted to a brief encounter within the basic training, but from 2017 through 2019 came the ERA Rolf Movement training, with certification received on December 1, 2019 (see “Journey to Becoming a Rolf Movement Practitioner in Europe — The Road to Certification“).
Felt sense, too, registered at the time as something that simply “gets said often.” In the Rolf Movement training it sits at the center of the work. Where the basic training carries the procedure of the ten sessions, Rolf Movement has no fixed procedure; what is asked instead is what relationship gets built with the client, and in what bodily state the practitioner arrives. The state described here — the whole body becoming an antenna — becomes the premise of the work itself.
Those thirty minutes walking with the eyes closed led, three years on, to a training that was still to begin.