This is the third of three pieces in the Letting Go of Tension series. The series was written during Phase II of the Rolfing Basic Training.
Before moving on to the account of Rolfing from Session 8 onward, I would like to take up letting go of tension once more — here, in the sense of letting go of excess force. For me, letting go of tension was a challenge in yoga, and it became the impetus for exploring various forms of Western bodywork (see “Untangling a Body That Won’t Let Go — What Yoga Was Missing“).
Rolfing holds that directing awareness to the presence of space within the body — articulation, to evoke it in English — is what releases the excess force of the muscles (see “The Word Articulation — On Making Space Within the Body“). This time I would like to consider how that awareness of space is widened.
In Rolfing, how gravity is felt is treated as important. A major reason is that the body can feel weight in any situation.
For the body to move freely against gravity, taking the body as one large mass, the upper body and the lower body need to be felt — an awareness that upper and lower are distinct. What this means is that each holds a space of its own. On the foundation of the lower body, the body is ordered so that the upper body moves freely (for details, see “Basic Concepts — Bidirectionality (Palintonicity)“).
The body can hold the spaces of front and back, left and right, as well.
The body therefore holds six spaces: up and down, front and back, left and right. In Rolfing, awareness of up and down and of front and back is widened through Sessions 1 to 3, and awareness of left and right — awareness of the medial line — through Sessions 4 to 7, by working on the fascia.
Through this, change arises from within the body. A body gone superficial-dominant through tension and daily stress sheds its excess tension and, given space, the deep layers begin to work. In the end, gravity gives appropriate stimulus to the deep layers, so that the body settles, experientially, into a more fitting place (for details, see “Phase II (12) — The Deep (Core) Sessions“).
As indicators for bringing the body into order, what kind of weight is carried where is what gets looked at. Two indicators serve: g and g’. The g stands for gravity, and each carries the following meaning.
- g: relative to the whole body, is the weight toward the front or the back?
- g’: seen from the hip joint, is the weight toward the front or the back relative to the upper body?
When either g or g’ tilts to an extreme, front or back, excess force enters, and awareness of one of the six spaces narrows. Where g’ tilts toward the front, for instance, the muscles along the spine lengthen while those around the chest and abdomen shorten.e, when g’ tilts toward the front, the muscles on the spine side stretch and the muscles around the chest and abdomen shorten.
For Sessions 1 to 7, the point is how the six spaces are widened and freed, with g and g’ as the indicators. Holding an awareness of widening space against gravity, force is released of its own accord.
In that process comes an encounter with a force at work against the current trying to widen space against weight.
There, together with the client, we consider: what is preventing it; why, as a matter to be worked with, there is attachment to it; what happens if it is let go, what benefit there might be, what possibility there might be.
What is interesting is what follows in Sessions 8 to 10. The body, which until now held six spaces, is ordered so that each can move in concert with the others. How can up and down, front and back, left and right move with a relationship — a link — to one another? That interconnection is ordered in Sessions 8 and 9, and in Session 10 the widening of space between one’s own interior and the external environment is considered.
There is no substitute for experiencing Rolfing firsthand, but by the stage when Session 9 was finished in the training, my awareness of space had widened considerably. Once I begin offering Rolfing sessions, I would like to approach the work without letting go of this kind of awareness.
Note, August 2026
This piece closes the series. Part 1 set out three ways, Part 2 looked into the word Articulation, and this piece arrives at the six spaces and at g and g’. It was written as a pause before entering Session 8 onward.
The indicators g and g’
This piece introduces two indicators, g and g’. Relative to the whole body, is the weight toward the front or the back? Seen from the hip joint, is it toward the front or the back relative to the upper body?
This is a way of looking drawn from Hubert Godard’s Tonic Function. It was not something considered at the time, but the Basic Training received in Munich rested on Godard’s theory as its pillar.
Three years later, in the Rolf Movement certification training, the same way of looking grew finer. In Pierpaola Volpones’s account of Phoric Function, what was set out was the pairing of Fixed Point — the part that feels the weight — and Orientation, the part relatively free of weight (see “Bidirectionality Brings the Body into Order — Tonic Function in Walking and Sitting“).
Phoric means to carry the weight, a term Godard began using. Insofar as the body feels gravity, it carries weight. And once the body begins to move, the weight falls unevenly.
The g and g’ of this piece looked at that unevenness in two units, the whole body and the upper body. Three years on, it had become a matter of looking at where the weight sits each time movement occurs.
The indicators themselves are still in use in daily sessions. The starting point — looking at where the weight is carried — has not changed.
Working with the force that prevents
This piece holds one observation from practice.
That in the process comes an encounter with a force at work against the current trying to widen space. And it sets out three questions. What is preventing it? Why is there attachment to it? What happens if it is let go?
At the time it was written as something to consider together with the client.
A piece written two days earlier gives that preventing force a name: the old pattern (see “Old Patterns and New Patterns“). It is the habit of movement the person held before the work — not right or wrong, but one option among others.
And when a client wavers between the old pattern and the new, there is said to be room for Negotiation and Re-negotiation.
The three questions in this piece were the substance of that negotiation. Seeing what prevents, asking after the reason for the attachment, imagining what lies past the letting go. The choosing belongs to the client; the practitioner stands on the side that asks.
What the 2025 training taught was the premise beneath that: trusting that the body of the other is capable of self-regulation. The practitioner’s part is to set the field in which change arises, to trust it, and to wait.
The stance of asking questions and considering together turns out to have been pointed in the right direction.
On the six moving in concert
This piece ends by touching on Sessions 8 to 10. The six spaces are ordered so that each can move in concert with the others; the interconnection is set in 8 and 9, and in 10 the widening of space between one’s own interior and the external environment is considered.
A piece on the integration sessions had been written three days before this one (see “The Integration Sessions“). What was written there is that the integration sessions move toward a single goal, and that the goal is closing.
If that piece looks at the three sessions from the side of time, this one looks at them from the side of space. Within three days, the same three sessions were being seen from two angles. The six spaces moving in concert, and the movement toward an ending. Both are the shape of integration.