Sessions 4, 5, and 6 organize the medial line by way of what lies above the pelvis — the psoas major, the sacrum, and the spine — and what lies below it, the pelvic floor and the adductors: Session 4 working from the adductors to the area of the pelvic floor, Session 5 the psoas major and the diaphragm, Session 6 the spine and the sacrum.
The figure below shows where Sessions 4 through 6 work. One place is missing from it.
That place is the head and the face. Session 7 takes up the relation between the head and face and the rest of the body.
The medial line reaches to the crown of the head, so in a sense Session 7 is the final session for recovering awareness of the medial line. What sets Rolfing apart from other bodywork is that the work is carried out inside the mouth and the nose as well, releasing the tension in the fascia there.
This blog has touched on the three elements of posture (see “The Three Elements of Posture: Visual, Vestibular, and Kinesthetic“). Working on the face and the head has as one of its principal aims the vestibular sense, which adjusts the balance with gravity.
The theme that emerged from my own past observations of the body is the tension in the psoas major and around the chest, together with the question of how to move the head with the effort taken out of it. The difficulty is that even when the body understands, the head has trouble digesting it. So the layering of Sessions 4 through 7, releasing the deep fascia one layer at a time, is what resolved the task.
In Session 6, bringing the movement of the sacrum into awareness made it clear that the tension in the psoas major eases. In Session 7, then, the first step, seated, was awareness of the spreading of the sit bones. As a result the tension left the psoas major, and a slight sense of hanging came available.
Lying face up, after work that took the effort out of the sacrum and the neck, the tension around the chest — the clavicles and the sternum — and in the muscles of the arm was released, working with the fascia around the radius and the ulna. Remarkably, as the tension in the arm muscles let go, the tension around the chest let go with it. The chest and the elbow lie close to each other, and that presumably exerts some influence on the body.
After that, the muscles on the surface of the face were released, and then the fascia in and around the oral cavity — the temporomandibular joint, the dome behind the upper teeth, the temporalis, and so on — along with the inside of the nose and the area around the crown of the head. On the whole, the left side took longer than the right to let go of its effort.
Finally, since there was a sense of constriction around the abdomen, awareness went to the sit bones resting firmly on the chair; the effort in the psoas major was released by way of the sacrum; and, holding awareness at the tip of the chest, I stood up from the chair. With a hand placed on the chest, releasing the effort there and turning attention to the head resting on top of the body, effort drained from the whole body at once. Bringing the connection running from the sit bones to the chest into awareness, there was also a sense of balance coming into order.
What is interesting is that the dome structure behind the upper teeth served to reduce the pull on the chest. Presumably the fascia inside the mouth had an effect on the vestibular sense and on the settling of balance.
With Session 7, the medial-line sessions running from 4 through 7 come to an end. What follows is Sessions 8 through 10, integrating 1 through 7 — the sessions in which awareness was directed to up and down, left and right, front and back, and to the medial line. From here on, I’d like to take up Session 8 onward.
Note, August 2026
This piece is the first record of an experience of working with the body from inside the mouth.
Session 7 touches the fascia of the oral cavity — the temporomandibular joint, the dome behind the upper teeth, the temporalis. And the piece closes by finding it interesting that this dome structure reduced the pull on the chest. At the time, it stood as an observation from a single session.
Reaching the same place from dentistry
Some seven years after this piece, in July 2022, I began treatment for dental occlusion at a clinic in Sapporo. A mouthpiece was fitted, and maintenance has continued at regular intervals since.
The treatment proceeds like this: while the occipital bone is supported, resin is added to the mouthpiece a little at a time, adjusting the height of the bite. With each addition the range of motion in the neck changes, and eventually a height emerges at which the neck moves easily. Across two years, what changed most was that the stiffness in the shoulders and the neck all but disappeared.
The place approached in Session 7 from the side of the fascia came to be approached, seven years later, from the side of occlusion. The entrance differs; the structure being handled overlaps.
Distant places turn out to be connected
This piece records that releasing the fascia of the arm released the tension in the chest. The account stopped at a supposition: presumably because the chest and the elbow lie close to each other.
What the occlusal treatment brought out was a connection across a far greater distance. The bite was drawing the liver downward, producing a twist. As resin was added and the height changed, the sensation of that twist disappeared. A further observation was raised: that the twisted position of the liver may bear on an insufficiency of iron.
In 2014, what surprised me was a distance of a few tens of centimeters, from arm to chest. The same thing then appeared across the distance from the head to the viscera. Some part of the body serves as a condition for a place far from it. The line in this piece about some influence being exerted on the body was the entrance to that.
The head sits at the upper end of the medial line
Of the three elements set out in the visual, the vestibular, and the kinesthetic — what Session 7 works with is the vestibular sense. The inner ear sits within the temporal bone, and occlusion bears directly on the positional relations among the bones that make up the skull.
This piece ends in a supposition: that the fascia inside the mouth may have had an effect on the vestibular sense and on balance. In later years, that supposition came to be confirmed along an entirely separate line, that of dental treatment.
The medial line reaches to the crown of the head, this piece wrote. When the condition at the upper end changes, the condition of everything below it changes as well.
The speed of change
One thing differs: time. In Session 7, the pull on the chest lightened within a single session. With occlusion, the height has been adjusted little by little across two years, and the record still describes a stage partway along.
Just as the ten-series resolves a task through an ordered accumulation, change in the body carries a speed of its own. This is the same theme as what this piece describes — that even when the body understands, the head has trouble digesting it.