At last, the explanation enters the final session. In session 10, treatment is carried out while taking in the whole body. As stated in sessions 8, 9, and 10, what matters most is incorporating into daily life what has been learned through the ten sessions, and encouraging the client’s independence (see “The Integration Sessions“).
In session 10, rather than treating the places left over, what matters is the perspective of leaving space and then, over time, encouraging the body to organize itself naturally through gravity.
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Building on the treatment done in sessions 8 and 9, the perspective of what needs to be done last, or what is to be learned going forward, also matters; but session 10 places its focus on drawing the whole together (the closing).
The treatment, too, releases the fascia of all the places — the lower limbs, the area around the pelvis, the torso, the upper arms, the neck, the head — but does so by relating each to the others. For example, the lower limbs and the head, the torso and the lower limbs, the neck and the pelvis; and, while releasing the jaw, organizing the awareness of releasing the whole body. Through this, an organic connection finally becomes possible.
My own issue centered on how to organize the balance of the left vestibular sense — or how to ease the imbalance on the left. After treatment relating it to the whole body, I had the body learn, within itself: awareness from the sit bones to the head; walking with the sensation of oil being poured in from the left of the head, from the neck up to the head; and — since there is a habit of the jaw stiffening as soon as tension arises — loosening the head while releasing the jaw. Because the feeling of blockage in the chest had also cleared, it is good to be able to concentrate on releasing the force in the head. I learned several treatments good for the vestibular sense afterward, so I’d like to incorporate them into daily life from here on.
With this, session 10 ended. Afterward, there was a celebratory toast with sake. Needless to say, being weak with alcohol, I turned red right away.
Of the eight weeks, seven have passed, and three days remain until parting with the companions with whom I studied so closely in Phase II. At first it began from entering a labyrinth, utterly at a loss as to how to carry out treatment and observe the body.
For the eight students, each underwent great change by receiving the ten sessions. Under the profundity of the sessions and a safe environment, each could honestly share their own experience, and among them were several — not just one — who were so overcome with emotion that they shed tears. There were also those seen suffering between the new pattern and the old past pattern as a result of receiving treatment (see “Old Patterns and New Patterns“). What I felt there was that organizing the body is also organizing the mind. The image now is of all of us together drawing near the goal line. That all eight advanced without failing is significant. And fortunately, since we will be together in Phase III as well, it is reassuring.
The training, too, has come to where only three days remain. It will be the first time calling in clients from outside to carry out treatment. In Phase III, one Rolfer takes charge of two clients and handles the ten-session series. In what form will I level up during that time? I truly look forward to it. On this blog, along with that, of course, I’d also like to delve into how far the latest science understands Rolfing.
Note, August 2026
At the point where the ten-session series ended, the balance of the left vestibular sense was not in order. The writing in this entry does not conceal that. “The cause is unknown, but how far can Rolfing address it?” — that was written in the entry on session 9, and even after session 10 was over, it closes in the form of having learned several treatments good for the vestibular sense, to be incorporated into daily life from here on.
The entry on the shoulder girdle and the pelvic girdle, the entry on session 9, and this one: the same left–right difference appears three times in a row. The neck tension eased, the blockage in the chest cleared, walking became possible without consciousness of the pelvic girdle and the shoulder girdle. Only the imbalance in the vestibular sense remained. The ten-session series has an end; the issues of a body do not necessarily have one.
Eleven years later, this left–right difference came to be addressed by another route. Through SSP (Safe and Sound Protocol), begun in December 2025, the balance between the left and right inner ear became clearly discernible as bodily sensation. An intervention working on the muscles of the middle ear reached what had been pursued by hand in 2014.
What is worth keeping here is not a record of resolution but the fact that a lack of resolution is written down as it was. While learning a structure that completes itself in ten sessions, my own body did not complete itself in ten. Precisely because this account survived for eleven years, it is possible to say what changed in 2025. That session 10 is the session of “leaving space and then, over time, encouraging the body to organize itself naturally through gravity” is not unrelated to this outcome. The actual length of what is meant by taking time is here.
