This is the second 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 Ida Rolf conceived the ten-session series of Rolfing, there was no scientific theory behind it; it was built out of her own experience with yoga, osteopathy, the Alexander Technique, and the like. The one who gave Rolfing its scientific grounding was Hubert Godard, a French Rolfer who teaches at a university.
How do the muscles work in relation to gravity? And why does Rolfing have an effect? Pursuing these questions, Godard considered what takes place within the body in order to keep the quality of the muscles under the condition of gravity — to “keep tone” of the muscle.
His thinking crystallized into the account known as Tonic Function. Tonic means sustained; rendered literally into Japanese, it means working continuously. What Godard attended to was the function of muscles working continuously against gravity. He therefore divided muscle into Phasic, which works briefly, and Tonic, which works continuously.
Phasic Muscle works transiently and comes into play in sprinting, weightlifting, lifting an object. It engages in lifting something by effort, and takes glucose as its energy source. Fatigue follows, and the body tires. Phasic Muscle is governed by the alpha motor neuron system. Since the alpha system is one of the nervous systems driven by the human brain, the brain can influence it directly. Alpha accounts for two-thirds of the motor nervous system. When daily stress brings tension into the body, Phasic Muscle is likewise what works chiefly.
Tonic Muscle works continuously and is said to be involved in maintaining posture. Taking oxygen as its energy source, it works slowly and continuously, so fatigue rarely sets in. What characterizes Tonic Muscle is holding a large number of muscle spindles. The muscle spindle is the muscle’s sensor, a sensory organ that registers lengthening and shortening. What is ordinarily meant in yoga or meditation by bringing awareness to the body can be understood as switching the muscle spindles on. Since the spindles work through gravity, Tonic Muscle, rich in spindles, can work automatically without gravity being consciously attended to. It is governed by the gamma motor neuron system. Gamma accounts for one-third of the motor nervous system. What characterizes the gamma system is that it comes into operation through movement that has become habitual — by way of the cerebellum, the medulla oblongata, and the like.
Another characteristic of the gamma system is that it can engage only the muscles required, without bringing the antagonists into play. Muscles work by reciprocal action. To release a muscle — the hamstrings at the back of the thigh, say — the body is built such that putting effort into the quadriceps on the opposite side, at the front of the thigh, releases the hamstrings. In the arm as well, when the biceps shortens, the muscle behind it is released. This is called reciprocal action (relative to the quadriceps, the hamstrings are the antagonist). With the alpha system, the antagonists come into play.
Activating the gamma system also calls for a state in which the kinesthetic sense is available. In Rolfing this is termed haptic and palpatory, meaning whether the external sensory organs — the hands, the feet, the head and face — take in external information fully and carry it to the interior of the body (see “The Three Elements of Posture: Visual, Vestibular, and Kinesthetic“).
Rolfing, then, comes down to how the gamma system is activated and how far Tonic Muscle, efficient in the body’s energy, can be drawn on. It may be said that the ten sessions are assembled for that. And for that, the practitioner too needs a body in order, with the gamma system at work. Sharpening bodily sensation through Embodiment (see “Bodily Sensation: What Is Embodiment?“) serves to activate this same system.
Come to think of it, ninety-five percent of the human body goes to gathering information from the external environment. The remaining five percent uses the force of muscle. Given that the alpha system holds the advantage in the world as it stands, the need for Rolfing feels considerable.
What is interesting in Godard’s account is his view that Tonic Function, centered on Tonic Muscle, is influenced by four elements: structure (the posture and composition of the body, gravity, and so on), coordination (how the body moves), perception (how the world is seen), and meaning (how meaning is assigned to the world). Seen this way, Tonic Function becomes an idea that joins mind and body.
In the Rolfing training, Giovanni Felicioni spoke of Rolfing working on structure, the Feldenkrais Method on coordination, the Alexander Technique on perception, and counseling on meaning — each altering Tonic Function through its own element.
Tonic Function is an important idea in Rolfing, and I would like to take it up across several installments.
Note, August 2026
This piece ends by saying it would take the subject up across several installments. In the event, Part 3 handled bidirectionality and Part 6 handled space. What took longer to come into view was the distance between the person who conveyed this theory and the person at its source.
The route to Godard
This piece relays Giovanni Felicioni’s account: Rolfing works on structure, the Feldenkrais Method on coordination, the Alexander Technique on perception, counseling on meaning.
At the time it was set down as a framework the instructor had taught. Where the framework itself came from was not something I considered.
Giovanni is Italian, and his native language is English. He was also fluent in French. Godard is French, and his teaching is given in French. Giovanni, then, could receive Godard’s teaching directly, with no interpreter and no English rendering in between. To have had Tonic Function explained in the Basic Training was to stand at the far end of that route of transmission.
The same structure recurs later. Aline Newton, who explained Tonic Function in Part 2 of the Rolf Movement training in 2018, also read French and had learned from Godard directly. Along the route by which the theory arrives, language sits in between.
Then, on September 2, 2016, came the chance to receive mentoring from Godard himself, in Paris. His base is Milan; Paris is where he stays in order to teach, and the visit fell within that brief window. Because the session was taken with two others from the Munich training, three of us together, a span of three hours was available (see “ERA Mentoring Session (4) — An Experience in Paris: Valuing the Foundations — Hubert Godard“).
Godard had worked as a contemporary dancer, and a knee injury turned his interest toward osteopathy and bodywork. He holds close to fifty years of experience.
What was spoken of there was not theory but fundamentals.
“What matters in Rolfing is grounding — feeling the two feet on the ground, the whole foot available, toes and heel alike. For the whole body to come to rest on those feet, attention goes to the sagittal plane. Movement front and back matters, and that is where looking at the breath has its meaning. Which is why there is a first session.”
The person who established Tonic Function, explaining it face to face, spoke about why Session 1 is the breath. The order ran from principles to the techniques required after them. A review of the fundamentals of body reading followed, and it served as a review of the Basic Training.
Two years after this piece was written.
Four elements became five
This piece writes that Tonic Function is influenced by four elements: structure, coordination, perception, meaning.
In January 2018, in Part 2 of the Rolf Movement certification training, Aline Newton took time to explain Tonic Function. What she set out were five perspectives (see “Rolf Movement – Part 2 (3): Confusion in a Good Sense, and on Tonic Function“).
Tissue; the perceptual; thinking and words; meaning, significance, and the symbolic; coordination.
Two things had changed in four years.
Tissue was added. Through the approach to the fascia carried out in Rolfing, structure and Tonus are affected — that is the item. The structure of this piece pointed to outward conditions: posture, composition, gravity. By 2018 the tissue the work touches directly stood as a factor of its own.
Thinking and words became separate. What had been folded into meaning in this piece was set apart. And an example came with it. Take a single phrase such as “straighten the back”: whether that means lengthening the spine, putting effort into the spine, or letting the spine lengthen of its own accord differs from person to person, and settles into the body as differing experience. The choice of native language, and body language, belong here as well.
What this piece wrote — that Tonic Function becomes an idea joining mind and body — had, four years on, been handed over as a finer grid. Observing the body through these five perspectives, it was explained, makes clear where the work should be directed.
Four correspondences became five categories
What Giovanni set out was a map pairing factors with methods.
In the 2025 Advanced Training, this pairing had been organized as Taxonomy. The body is one integrated being, yet it holds distinct layers — structure, function, emotion and the nervous system, the energetic field. Choosing which vantage to work from at a given moment calls for categories (see “Journey to Becoming an Advanced Rolfer — A Summary of the Road to Certification“).
Five were given: structural and segmental, biomechanical, functional, psychobiological, energetic.
The difference lay in whether these sit outside or inside. In the 2014 pairing, each factor is handled by a different method: what Rolfing addresses is structure, while perception belongs to the Alexander Technique. The 2025 categories place all of it inside Rolfing. Which category to prioritize, according to the state of the client, becomes the practitioner’s own judgment.
Over eleven years, territory that had been apportioned to other methods came within the range of the work I do.
Standing on the side of habitual movement
This piece writes about the practitioner as well.
“For that, the practitioner too needs a body in order, with the gamma system at work.”
At the time it was written as the reason for practicing Embodiment. By 2025 this was being handled as a question of Being. Three points for cultivating Neutral: Shape the Hand — letting the client’s body form one’s hand; Finding Back Space — sensing the space behind; and connecting to Hara.
None of these does something deliberately; each places the practitioner on the side of movement that has become habitual. That is the same layer as this piece’s account of the gamma system coming into operation through habitual movement, by way of the cerebellum and the medulla.
The observation made then — that the practitioner’s body needs to be in order — was not about technique. It was about a way of being.