The first three sessions of Rolfing focus chiefly on ordering the superficial (sleeve) parts of the body, while Sessions 4 to 7 go into the more inward parts, the deep layer (core). Through Sessions 1 to 3, the surface parts of the body are opened, and the body is ordered in its up–down, left–right, and front–back dimensions.
When the superficial sessions are finished, the preparation for the deep (core) work of Sessions 4 to 7 is complete. Sessions 4, 5, and 6 order the area above the pelvis (the psoas major, the sacrum, and the spine) and below it (the pelvic floor): Session 4 from the adductors to the area near the pelvic floor, Session 5 the psoas major, and Session 6 the spine and the sacrum. Session 7 orders the balance of the head and touches inside the mouth and nose. Ultimately, by the end of Session 7, every location of the body has been touched. What characterizes Sessions 4 to 7 is that they deal with the deep parts. Because the deep parts lie far within, they are difficult to train. For this reason, they are activated by directing “awareness” to the deep muscles. And so the work calls for a different approach from the superficial layer.
For example: with bodily sensation honed, how does one approach the interior of the body? How does one widen the awareness of the deep space within the body? And so on. The impression is that the capacity for bodily sensation, not vision alone, is called for to a greater degree. In particular, as the deep space within the body widens, the person on the receiving end of Rolfing goes more deeply inward, and the degree to which the body comes into order improves all the more.
As for the approach, it is easy to understand if the hand is likened to a stethoscope. The hand explores the deep layer and identifies the location of the problem. Once the location is found, stimulus is given from the hand and the response from the deep layer is awaited. What matters is that change arises from the inside. In Rolfing, the view is that when appropriate stimulus is given to the deep layer, the body settles, experientially, into a more fitting place. And when change occurs in the deep space, the unconscious becomes conscious, so the effect can be felt and experienced more fully.
To work with the core, it is also important that a relationship of trust has been built with the client. Part of it is that unless there is space in the mind, the core does not open either — but it is also because the deep parts are generally bound up with emotion. This can be felt firsthand through doing yoga. For example, doing backbend-type poses opens the chest, and when the chest opens, the emotions accumulated deep inside until now come out all at once — and this appears even in people who are not yoga practitioners. To make one feel that the human being is an emotional animal is, I think, a characteristic of the core sessions.
Through Sessions 4 to 7, the problem the person is carrying also becomes clearer. That problem will ultimately be dealt with in the integration sessions, Sessions 8 to 10.
Note, August 2026
This piece describes the approach to the deep layer by likening the hand to a stethoscope. The hand explores, identifies the location of the problem, gives stimulus, and awaits the response. The hand was an instrument for going out to fetch information.
Eleven years later, in the Advanced Training, the same use of the hand was described in the opposite direction. Shape the hand: in touching the client, rather than trying to do something with one’s own hand, one lets the client’s body shape the hand. Information about the body is received through the hand, and one stays with what is there. This, they say, is the basis of neutral touch (see “Journey to Becoming an Advanced Rolfer — A Summary of the Road to Certification“).
Not exploring but receiving. Not identifying but awaiting what shows itself. The direction of the hand has reversed.
One note: a 2022 piece written from the practitioner’s side uses the same stethoscope figure while adding that the practitioner becomes neutral and confines the role to guiding, and that the one holding the answer is the client. The reversal in the direction of the hand did not begin in 2025 (see “The Approach from Sleeve to Core — From a Personal Sense of Place to Acquiring a Personal Standard of Judgment — Sessions from the Fourth Onward“).
That said, this piece does contain the lines about change arising from the inside, and about awaiting the response from the deep layer. The understanding that the practitioner is not the one producing the change was already present. What differs is the step before it, where the hand went actively exploring.
On the connection between the deep parts and emotion, a later account approaches the question through fascia, the autonomic nervous system, and body psychology (see “Why Do Emotions Stay in the Body? ──Understanding Rolfing Through the Body’s Memory — The Science of Fascia, the Autonomic Nervous System, and Trauma“). The experience described here — the chest opening in a backbend and emotion surfacing — turned out to be explicable as a response of the nervous system.