The ten sessions among students and the two client sessions came to a safe close (see “Client Sessions“), and on November 25, 2014, a celebration was held at a tavern on Marienplatz in Munich.
It made for a fitting close to an immensely full thirty-three days of training, and the next day was the last.
On the final day (November 26, 2014), the morning included a final interview with the Teacher and the Assistant Teacher, the three of us together.
At the time of the midterm interview (gathered in “The Midterm Interview“), we had discussed how to develop ability across the following seven items.
- Clarity about the goals and structures of individual sessions
- Pattern recognition and body reading
- Quality of touch
- Quality of body use
- Contact and relationship with clients
- Timing and orchestration of sessions
- Openness and attitude for learning
Four weeks had passed since then. This time the marks were 4 or above on a five-point scale (5 being excellent and 1 the lowest score) across the board — a wonderful evaluation to receive.
There were two items on which the instructors could comment (the format was the same as the midterm interview).
Are there other specific areas in which this student shows ability?
Great progress in all subjects. Marked improvement in touch and how you can use this in bringing strategies towards goals. Much much more centered and valuing your own experience.
Are there other specific areas in which this student needs support?
Continue to give you and your client time to allow the work to travel through. This will allow your felt-sense to support you while you work.
What struck me most was how highly the following was rated: that instead of concentrating on the work, my attention had tended to break off quickly and turn in other directions — and that I had become able to create, within myself, the time and space to engage with concentration toward the client and toward the person receiving the work.
Rolfing, as one form of bodywork, is carried out on the body, and it inevitably tends to rely on sight. What matters is organizing one’s own body. When that happens, the state of the other person’s body becomes easier to grasp through the five senses.
The reason, first, is that a margin — a space — opens up inside, and what the other person needs becomes apparent of its own accord. Interestingly, as time is given, the noise gradually disappears and the mind settles the way a river runs clear. As though in meditation. Once that happens, the readiness to face the client is in place, and an openness toward the other person follows.
Second, it becomes possible to stop making determinations about the other person. The head works quickly, and intrudes as idle thought. A thought forms along the lines of “this is the kind of person, so this kind of work is what matters.” As the sense of time settles, it becomes possible to look at the other person not judgmentally but with a beginner’s mind. Shunryu Suzuki’s Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind expresses this well:
In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few.
Moving on to Phase III, I would like to proceed while holding these aspects as important.
Note, August 2026
What was written under the item for areas needing support was a single sentence: to give myself and the client time, to allow the work to travel through — and that in doing so, felt sense would support me while I worked. Not a deficit of technique, not a deficit of knowledge. The way time is given was named as the one thing to work on.
Eleven years later, the central subject of the first half of the Advanced Training was what it means to be Neutral within a session (see “How to cultivate ‘Neutrality’“). Three ways of cultivating it were given there: Shape the Hand, letting the client’s body form one’s hand; Finding Back Space, extending awareness into the space behind; and connecting to the Hara. All three face the same direction — releasing, at least once, the effort to make something happen.
The comment from 2014 and these three are the same thing said differently. To give time does not mean to wait; it means placing oneself in a state where waiting is possible. The text from that period already describes it: as time is given, the noise disappears, the mind settles, and it becomes as though one were meditating. That description overlaps almost entirely with the account of Finding Back Space — that when awareness leans too far into the here and now, the body contracts, so the space behind is felt deliberately.
The difference is that in 2014 this was named as my own shortcoming. Eleven years on, it has a name, Neutral; it has procedures for cultivation; and it carries the distinction between Intention and Intentionality. One could say it took eleven years for a comment to become a concept, or that everything was already contained in the comment. In the phrasing that felt sense would support me while I worked, the direction in which the practitioner ceases to be the subject was already indicated.