This is the first of six pieces in the Body and Mind series. The series was written across the periods of Phase II and Phase III of the Rolfing Basic Training. This piece belongs to the Phase II period.
When taking the Rolfing training, psychological theory does not come up all that much. The view is that as the body comes into order, the mind comes into order along with it, and the focus falls on something with substance — the body — rather than on something without it, the mind.
Even so, the Rolfing training does touch on trauma. Once the deep sessions are entered, a slight change in the deep layer can bring things the person would rather not have known, or emotions held down, welling up. This is not a matter of receiving specialized training; it is purely a question of what kinds of ideas exist.
Peter Levine’s Waking the Tiger – Healing Trauma is among the books on the assigned-reading list for the Rolfing training. According to that book, an animal meeting an enemy takes one of two means, to fight (Fight) or to flee (Flight); where neither is available, a third is known to follow — to freeze (Freeze). Footage on YouTube shows a bear, shot with a rifle, discharging the energy of that shock after the freeze response (MUST SEE: How to Discharge Trauma: Trauma Release Seen For the First Time).
Trauma refers to a state of being held for a long time in the grip of an event, or of continuing to carry a psychologically negative effect from it. Ordinarily, trauma tends to be approached by focusing on what caused it. Levine held instead that the causal event is not the problem: what brings it about is the shock energy arising as a result and remaining within the body in an incomplete form. And, as with animals, he has shown through his work with patients that recovery from trauma proceeds by way of a process in which that energy is discharged. What Levine emphasizes is that resolving trauma means evoking the bodily sensation felt within the person’s body, and treating that as central.
Going into the deep layer, unresolved trauma of this kind may lie hidden. In this training, for instance, after the deep sessions began, I encountered a moment where a force that would not easily release lay deep within, and emotions welled up as it let go. However deep the emotion, what matters is the standpoint of bringing the body into order, and treating bodily sensation as central. What Rolfing teaches, I think, is that with psychological matters, a solution found by the person themselves comes into view as the body comes into order. That said, there may be cases where resolution does not come. Rolfing is not all-powerful either, and it matters to think about this work with that kept in mind.
Body and mind have been discussed here from the standpoint of trauma. I would like to return to this theme at some point in this column.
Note, August 2026
This piece ends by saying it would return to the theme at some point. In the event, five more followed.
Where the series went
In the order written, the six run as follows.
Part 1 (this piece): trauma. What remains in the body, by way of Peter Levine’s thinking.
Part 2, “The Muscles That Tire and the Muscles That Don’t — Tonic Function and the Support of Posture.” Hubert Godard’s Tonic Function. Muscles that work continuously and muscles that work briefly; the alpha and gamma motor neuron systems.
Part 3, “Bidirectionality Brings the Body into Order — Tonic Function in Walking and Sitting.” Bidirectionality (Palintonicity). The lower body to the ground, the upper body to space.
Part 4, “The Face Makes Safety — Polyvagal Theory and the Two Vagus Nerves.” Stephen Porges’s theory. The freeze this piece describes is placed there as the work of the older vagus nerve.
Part 5, “Freezing, and Immobilization Without Fear — Neuroception and Social Bonds.” Neuroception. And a state of stillness held without fear.
Part 6, “Space Is Felt Differently by Each Person — Peripersonal Space and the Body.” Godard on space. Peripersonal space.
It begins with trauma, passes through a theory of muscle, moves to the nervous system, and returns to space. The Fight/Flight/Freeze this piece takes up is repositioned in Part 4 as a hierarchy within the autonomic nervous system, and in Part 5 it turns over: a state close to freezing also carries a part in forming bonds.
The first three were written during Phase II, the last three during Phase III. They were set down in the order the training took them up, not designed as a series.
Three years on, learning how to apply it
This piece places a limit on itself: not a matter of receiving specialized training, purely a question of what kinds of ideas exist.
Levine’s book was read as assigned reading. How to apply what it holds to a Rolfing session was not something the training covered.
That part came three years later. On March 15, 2017, the day before the Japan Rolfing Association general meeting, Lael Keen led a one-day workshop. She holds thirty years as a Rolfing advanced instructor and twenty as an instructor of Somatic Experiencing (SE), the method Levine developed (see “Trauma Workshop – Lael Keen — How to Incorporate the Thinking of Trauma into a Session?“).
The subject was how to bring the SE approach into a Rolfing session.
One proportion given there has stayed with me. Fifty percent of sessions go well with the ordinary ten-series; the remaining fifty call for some approach to trauma. The “not all-powerful” of this piece came back as a figure: half.
The underlying thinking carried over from this piece’s understanding of Levine intact. Rather than attending to the traumatic event itself, look at what effect it had on the nervous system as a result.
What was added as technique was a distinction between states appearing in the body. Discharge — flushing, trembling, sweating, tears — and catharsis, such as convulsions. Where energy remains in an incomplete form, release through discharge is what serves; entering catharsis makes release harder rather than easier. With someone in catharsis, the eyes are opened and a voice offered, switching on the side of social engagement. Standing, feeling the ground. Sometimes, attending to something beautiful in the room.
What matters, she said, is slowly, and while feeling the body.
This piece records encountering a moment where emotions welled up. Three years later, what to look for there, and how to work with it, had been given as technique.
On writing that Rolfing is not all-powerful
Near the close of this piece stands the following line.
“Rolfing is not all-powerful either, and it matters to think about this work with that kept in mind.”
At the time it was written as a statement about limits — a record of noticing, mid-training, that some things fall outside what the work reaches.
In the 2025 Advanced Training, this was handled as a question of the practitioner’s way of being. Ray McCall described the manner of relating to a client as Kind Indifference: not becoming excessively caught up in the client’s experience, while at the same time watching over it with deep interest (see “Journey to Becoming an Advanced Rolfer — A Summary of the Road to Certification“).
The words of the osteopath Jim Jealous were offered as well.
“The process is none of your business. Observe, but do not become part of the story.”
Not all-powerful was not, it turns out, a statement about the limits of ability. It was about the range a practitioner should take on. Change is not produced by the practitioner; it arises from within the client. The practitioner’s part is to set the field in which that change comes about, to trust it, and to wait.
Where this piece writes that a solution found by the person themselves comes into view, it stood at the entrance to that.
Beginning from bodily sensation
What Levine emphasized was that resolving trauma lies in evoking the bodily sensation felt within the person’s body.
Eleven years later, the same thing was being said on the side of observation. What Jeff Maitland stressed most was training the capacity to see. Not mere looking, but listening to the body with the whole of the sensory apparatus — gathering information through the Somatic Sensorium.
Levine begins from the client’s bodily sensation; Maitland from the practitioner’s. The same principle is placed on both sides, the one worked with and the one working.