A day has passed since the training ended. I would like to write mainly about what I could not fit in.
Wednesday, 18 March 2015 was the last OPEN day of Phase III, with no client sessions, and the time was given over to questions and answers. In this column I have taken up what the teachers shared about what they went through around the time they became Certified Rolfers and how they arrived where they are (see How You Have Dealt with Your Own Body Comes Through in the Session).
Points to watch when working with children also came up in that session, so I would like to make that the focus this time.
When Jörg and Andrea were asked
‘How about kids?’
the answer that came back was unexpected:
beautiful to work with…
Children are small, of course, so their responses come very quickly. It follows that what the body can take in is limited, and this has to be kept in mind. What the two of them said was that ten minutes is enough in terms of time. Children generally will not settle, and even lying on the table they will sit up once that much has passed.
And if a child wants to come back, apparently the way it reaches the mother is: I want another session with that strange man.
What matters is conducting a proper interview — and with the child directly, not with the parent. It is better to ask the child how they are feeling. This is because there are cases where nothing is wrong with the child and something is wrong with the parent.
Andrea gave an example. One day a child came a long way with a parent, and on arriving at her office said they did not want a session, which led to a discussion with the parent. In a case like that it is of course better not to give the session.
If a ten-series is to be given, it is best after puberty, once the body has gone through its changes, from around sixteen to eighteen.
What matters in meeting a child is not to compel anything. Rolfing sessions are given with the person in underwear or something close to it, and with children it is important to be careful about that as well.
Questions also came up that day about Rolfing sessions for musicians and for people who play sport. It is good to have them actually perform the sporting or instrumental movement at the beginning and at the end of the session, and to have them see how it changes, or grasp it for themselves by making that connection.
There is room for invention in a Rolfing session, and that is what makes it interesting.
Note, August 2026
The answer given that day about musicians and people who play sport was to have them actually perform the movement at the start and at the end of the session. Play the instrument, do the movement of the sport. Then let them see for themselves what has changed between the two.
This is an answer to the impasse I had been carrying throughout this period: how to bring movement into a session. Nothing special has to be prepared and offered. What the person already does could be used as it stands. In the article on movement I wrote that when I actually tried to bring it in, I would stop knowing what to do and lose contact with the client. That was because I had been looking for something to bring in.
The same shape appears on the teaching side. Harvey Burns, who was teaching Phase II in parallel with Phase III, had been a professional percussionist. His first Rolfing session came in the middle of playing a drum kit. It was not held apart from the playing; the playing itself was the setting. The way in, for someone teaching in the same building at the same time, had the same shape as the method described in the classroom that day.
And this way of thinking is central to the course that would begin two years later. Rolf Movement is described as an educational approach that can be used alongside any technique of movement — yoga, Pilates, dance, sport, martial arts. It guides clients toward connection with their own sensory perception and supports them in integrating new coordination into daily life. Carrying it back into the everyday is built into it. What was handed over in that question-and-answer session in March 2015 was the simplest form of the same thing.
There is one more thing to note, about how this series ends.
The record of Phase III runs to thirty articles, and this is the last of them. Certification was written up in the one before, and that brought the closing. Something was still left over, and what was left over turned out to be details: that ten minutes is enough for a child, that the interview should be with the child rather than the parent, how to be careful about what they are wearing.
The details come after the summing-up. As an order it looks reversed. But given that what this training handed over was never a system to begin with, only an accumulation of particular judgements, I think this is right. What remained in hand at the end had that shape.