The previous piece in this column took up the Esalen Institute (see “The Esalen Institute (1): Psychology and Bodywork“), and the response was greater than expected. So Shinichi Yoshifuku’s thinking on what a therapist is will wait for the next piece, and I would like to write a little more about Esalen here.
From the late 1960s, centered on California, a movement spread across the United States: the Human Potential Movement. It is known as a movement that spread widely on the basis of the humanistic psychology of Abraham Maslow, who proposed the five-stage theory of needs. Yoshifuku called this psychology “pop psychology.”
Through this movement, bodywork, the newest psychological therapies, and meditation were taken up and experienced. Why did such a movement flourish? A dead end reached by Western values and by intellectualism — the judging of matters by reason — may have counted for much. But it was also, the explanation goes, that the encounter with Eastern thought and the experience of LSD made the emotional range of a person easier to accept (on LSD and psychology, see “The Esalen Institute (1): Psychology and Bodywork“).
What is of interest is that ordinary people became the subject, and that as the base widened, those who were not specialists could take part as well.
Serving as the theoretical pillars of the Human Potential Movement were Maslow’s humanistic psychology; Carl Rogers, who founded Client-Centered Therapy; Fritz Perls, who founded Gestalt therapy (Gestalt therapy forms the basis on which NLP was built, which I plan to take up in this column before long); and Alexander Lowen of Bioenergetics, among many others. Bodywork centered on the body belongs here as well.
Esalen served as the base of the Human Potential Movement. Dick Price and Michael Murphy traveled to India, visited the Aurobindo ashram in southern India — a place for spiritual practice — and, wanting a place of that kind in the United States as well, made one at Big Sur.
A distinctive feature of Esalen was its scholar-in-residence arrangement, under which Fritz Perls stayed for a long period as a resident. Other pioneers of psychology, along with religious figures and gurus from the East, are said to have stayed there as well.
Yoshifuku stayed at Esalen in its early period, and what he named as its strength was the abundance of experimental spirit. No single technique took possession of the place; the place was offered, and every kind of discipline and therapy came in. Near Esalen there was also the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, and 200 km away in San Francisco the San Francisco Zen Center — Zen, the explanation goes, influenced the Human Potential Movement more than might be supposed.
For reference: the San Francisco Zen Center was founded by Shunryū Suzuki Roshi of the Sōtō school. He is the author of Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, a book Steve Jobs read closely, and I have touched on him once before in this column (see “Beginner’s Mind and the Expert’s Mind“). Unlike D. T. Suzuki, who brought a theoretical framework to the West, Suzuki Roshi is distinguished by having brought a system of practice to the United States. His book, mentioned above, makes for interesting reading on how Zen came to be received in the West.
Before setting out on the journey around the world, I found something of interest in a conversation between Randy Taguchi and Shinichi Yoshifuku. It concerns a remark by the historian William Irwin Thompson. Japan learned the automobile from car-centered America and went on to export cars back to America; meanwhile Japan brought Zen to America. Which of the two, Thompson asked, carries more value? By his reckoning, the American side came out far ahead.
It is an episode that shows how great the influence of Zen on America has been.
Thinking that Rolfing was born out of an atmosphere of this kind, what comes across about America is not only its role as a leader in the most advanced science but the depth of the ground beneath it. Next time, then, I would like to take up Yoshifuku’s thinking on what a therapist is.
Note, August 2026
There is a passage in the latter half of this piece set down as a matter of geography. Near Esalen stood the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, and 200 km away in San Francisco, the San Francisco Zen Center. Zen, the passage records at second hand, influenced the Human Potential Movement more than might be supposed. In May 2015 that line carried no further meaning.
Ten years later, it joins the lineage of my own learning.
From April to July 2025, I took the Advanced Training in Tokyo. The instructors were Ray McCall and Hiroyoshi Tahata. What served as the theoretical support of that training was Jeff Maitland’s five principles and Taxonomy. Maitland is a philosopher and at the same time a Zen priest, with the Dharma name Hōgaku. His teacher was Joshu Sasaki Roshi, who taught for many years in Los Angeles. And Ray learned under Maitland.
From Joshu Sasaki Roshi to Maitland, from Maitland to Ray, and in 2025 to me. Tracing three generations back arrives at the period when Zen took root in America. In the California of that period, a Zen center stood close by Esalen, and at Esalen Ida Rolf was teaching Rolfing.
The route by which Zen entered Rolfing was not grafted on afterward. It was on the same ground from the beginning.
One further thing this piece records is the face Rolfing wore before it had a system.
Yoshifuku called humanistic psychology “pop psychology,” and named as features of the movement that ordinary people became its subject and that non-specialists could take part. As the strength of Esalen he named its abundance of experimental spirit: no single technique took possession of the place, the place was offered, and every kind of discipline and therapy came in. Rolfing is written about there alongside the Alexander Technique and the Feldenkrais Method, as one part of that movement.
In the note to the final Sharon Wheeler piece, I wrote that Ida had no method for teaching how to see the body, and that this gap became the starting point of roughly fifty years leading to the split of 1989, the introduction of Maitland’s philosophy, and the five principles and Taxonomy. What this piece describes is the state before those fifty years began. Method not yet settled, no system in place — and this working not as a shortcoming but as the character of the place.
The face Rolfing wore before systematization, and the lineage of the teacher of the man who carried out that systematization, sit side by side in the same piece as separate topics. At the time of writing, neither meaning was clear to me.