In the latter part of a Rolfing series, particularly the eighth and ninth sessions, the weight shifts away from working on a part of the body and toward movement, in which the client approaches that part actively, by moving. In Phase III there are many occasions to practise this and to bring it into a session.
I have written before in this column that Rolfing consists in rewriting the body map that has become unconscious, the body schema (see Case Presentation (2): After the Seventh Session). Bringing movement in makes it possible to work on the body map through movement itself, and this widens the range of choices available to the client.
Rolfing in fact has two certifications, Certified Rolfer and Rolf Movement, and the movement training is carried out as a separate course. Takami Kamata, a Certified Rolfer who also holds the Rolf Movement certification, has given a clear description of what movement means in Rolfing in a recent post on her blog, titled Rolf Movement and the Body Map (in Japanese only).
Rolfing—and Rolf Movement in particular—is a process of bringing unconscious bodily patterns into conscious awareness. It involves becoming aware of the sensory-motor system—the neural processes that allow us to sense our own body and coordinate movement—and, through that awareness, recognizing patterns of movement and response that normally operate outside conscious control.
Why is this important? Because it can open up movements that were previously unavailable to us.
Rolf Movement makes extensive use of imagery. Through imagery, it may be possible to reawaken sensory-motor pathways that were never fully developed, or whose functioning has been disrupted by injury or other events. In this way, the work can potentially be applied to rehabilitation after a stroke or accident. It can also be useful for professional athletes, dancers, and other movement specialists who want to refine their existing movement patterns and develop a higher level of coordination and performance.
The point is that movements that could not be done become possible. The training that day (13 March 2015) was an OPEN day with no client sessions, so a practice meeting and a question and answer period were held instead.
I had understood why movement should be brought into a session. But when I actually tried it in a Phase III session and worked through it together with the client, I would stop knowing what to do, and would often lose contact with the client. So I asked, during the Q&A, how movement could be brought into a session without losing myself in the process.
According to Jörg, what matters in movement is this:
to make space within the body and to have it hold two directions (create space and orientation)
The details belong to earlier articles, but in broad terms: as for space in the body, the idea comes from the Rolfing understanding that directing awareness to the presence of space within the body — evoking it — allows unnecessary muscular effort to drop away (see The Word Articulation — On Making Space Within the Body).
Rolfing also builds its work in the direction of activating Tonic Muscle, which works continuously and is efficient in its use of energy, rather than Phasic Muscle, which works temporarily and tires easily. And Tonic Muscle comes into play when the body is given two directions (see Bidirectionality Brings the Body into Order — Tonic Function in Walking and Sitting).
The client’s needs are then considered through the five principles of Rolfing (see The Five Principles).
Does this client need Support, or Adaptability? If the lower body is needed as Support for the upper body, from what position should the movement session be carried out together with the client? And how far can the client go with the movement without strain? These are the things to think through.
There are times when contact with the client cannot be established. In that case, two things are worth considering:
- Slow down
- Decrease the range of motion
In bringing awareness to a movement the client has never used, a small range is perfectly acceptable, and there is no rule saying that movement has to take some particular form.
This is one framework among others, and Jörg introduces a framework of this kind in each session, for which I am grateful.
Movement is a method I very much want to bring in, because it widens the range of choices available to the client. It is also the method taking up the most time in the training at present. I have recorded the long training days on video, and I hope to review them and to arrive at sessions of my own that include movement.
Note, August 2026
What Jörg handed over in this article was a single phrase: create space and orientation. To make space within the body and to have it hold two directions. Along with it came looking at the client’s needs through the five principles, slowing down when contact was lost, and decreasing the range of motion. It was called a framework, but what was actually in hand amounted to this much.
Of these words, Orientation appears two years later in the Rolf Movement Training as a formal term, paired with Fixed Point. Pre-movement and Phoric Function were handed over in the same course. The question raised in The Body Map and the Phantom Limb — how the map is rewritten — is not answered in the 2015 article. The answer came two years later, but in the vocabulary of Tonic Function rather than in the vocabulary of body schema. The terminology broke off, and only the matter it dealt with continued, translated into other words.
One of those words, however, had already been spoken in the classroom before the break. Not as a system, but as something to hold on to, handed to a student who had come to a standstill.
The advice to decrease the range of motion has the same character. Working on the stage before a movement occurs is later explained again through the concept of Pre-movement. At the time it arrived without any explanation of why, in the form of: do this and it goes better.
That the phenomenon comes first and the name arrives afterwards is a shape I have written about several times in this series. What happens here runs the other way. The name came first, and the system came afterwards. For two years the word sat in my hands without its meaning.
The line at the end of this article, that movement is a method I very much want to bring in, was fulfilled in March 2017. Gael Rosewood, who taught then, met Ida Rolf at Esalen in 1969 and was a participant in the first Rolf Movement Training, which began in 1971.