On March 5, 2016, I attended the general meeting of the Japan Rolfing Association (JRA), held at the Lutheran Ichigaya Church. It is nearly a year since I was certified as a Rolfer in Munich in March 2015.
In the morning, I was able to hear the talk of overseas Rolfing instructors (Carol Agneessens and Ray McCall) for a full two hours (9:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.). It was also that they had come to Japan for the Advanced Training for Rolfers held up until the day before, but it became a precious opportunity.
Of the 124 Rolfers in Japan, thirty-eight attended. We were able to hear about how Ida Rolf thought about Rolfing.
Here is a brief summary.
- According to the Rolfer Emmett Hutchins, when Ida Rolf sold the rights to Rolfing to the Rolf Institute in Boulder in 1978, along with writing a percentage of teaching fees into the contract, she asked the Institute to establish three kinds of schools: one in California covering the psychological side, one in New York covering the medical side, and one in Colorado covering the spiritual side. Which means that Ida Rolf considered the emotional and spiritual dimensions of Rolfing important as well as the physical. Schools of that kind never came about.
- Why, then, did she emphasize a physical approach? Because, in her words, the only thing that I can get hands on is physical.
- As time went on, manual techniques from osteopathy — craniosacral work and visceral manipulation — entered Rolfing, and it became clear that the body has the capacity to change of its own accord, without active intervention from the practitioner’s side.
- It also became clear that with the touch of the hand, not only firm contact but the touch of simply being present is useful, and that there is a form of contact suited to each individual.
- As the range of touch widened, so did the range of people who could receive the work. Apparently a woman had to weigh over 160 pounds to receive Rolfing; that changed, and women in general could receive it. This was offered as an anecdote.
- Ida Rolf was interested in the energetic dimension as well. She once asked one of her students to go find an energy spot in the mountains around Boulder, where the Institute is, and report back on what it was like to sit there. And when a client became emotionally disturbed during a class, she advised touching the solar plexus to settle them. In some cases the person did settle.
- So Ida Rolf knew a great deal about many things. At first, apparently, she thought of conveying what she knew to physicians. That did not go well, and in the end the work spread through her teaching manual laborers — cooks, cleaning staff — at the Esalen Institute.
- While listening to the talk, we did pair work of touching a hand to the partner’s thigh. The first time was in a state of preparing nothing; the second time, in a way of bringing awareness to my own body, being aware of the center line of the body with space behind, and floating the hand while letting information come to the hand from the thigh. As I felt it, when the body was touched with the latter hand, I received the impression that the whole body changed and became organized.
While we listened, we did pair work, placing a hand on a partner’s thigh. The first time with no preparation. The second time by bringing awareness to my own body, holding a sense of space behind me and of the center line of the body, letting the hand float, and allowing information to come from the thigh to the hand. As I felt it, touching with the hand in the second condition gave the impression that the whole body was changing and settling.
At the end I asked how Ida Rolf arrived at the Ten Series, since it is not written down anywhere. The answer began by acknowledging that such things are not in the literature and are not known. But: she had at first taught orally, and students would take what they heard and appropriate the ideas, which is why she came to prepare the ten-session format.
It was suggested that this may involve not only the marketing appeal of a ten-session format but also a numerological way of thinking, in which each number carries meaning. It was also mentioned that the work was first called Body Rebalancing rather than Structural Integration.
What I found interesting was the remark that the question to ask, if anything, is what is not Rolfing. Perhaps this reflects a concern that the range Rolfing covers has grown wide.
Talking this way, the two hours went quickly. I came away thinking it matters to hear from teachers like this from time to time.
Note, August 2026
Three pieces of testimony about how Ida Rolf handled energy are recorded here.
That when she sold the rights to the Rolf Institute in 1978, she asked for three schools to be established: the psychological side in California, the medical side in New York, the spiritual side in Colorado. That she asked a student to find an energy spot in the mountains around Boulder and report on sitting there. And that she advised touching the solar plexus for a client whose emotions had been stirred during a class, and that the person settled.
And then, placed alongside these, the remark that the only thing she could get her hands on was physical.
It was not that she did not deal with energy. She entered through the body because the body was what the hands could reach. That is how this piece records it.
Reading the same argument later, in print
In 2008, an exchange among four people appeared in the Rolfing association’s journal, under the title “What Did Dr. Rolf Want?” The four were Bob Schrei, Ray McCall, Jeff Maitland, and Duffy Allen.
The previous year, in 2007, a course based on SPT had been announced as continuing education, and a controversy had broken out over whether the association should be sponsoring an energetic course. The exchange came out of that.
Placed at its opening was a remark of Ida Rolf’s from the 1974 annual meeting: that she wanted to see what happens to the energy field within and around a person as their structure is organized, and how behavior changes alongside it.
I wrote this piece in March 2016 — eight years after that exchange appeared, and ten years before I would read it.
And the person who spoke that day about her interest in energy was Ray McCall: one of the four in that exchange, and the man who had opened the 2007 course with Bob Schrei. The instructor of the 2025 Advanced Training, the course that took energy work up directly, was the same person (see “Journey to Becoming an Advanced Rolfer — A Summary of the Road to Certification“).
I would not learn any of this until nine years after that day.
Already handed over, in the pair work
One more thing is set down briefly here.
In the pair work we did while listening, the second condition ran like this: bring awareness to your own body, hold a sense of space behind you and of the center line, let the hand float, and allow information to come from the thigh to the hand.
In the 2025 Advanced Training, two of the three ways of cultivating neutral were sensing the space behind you and shaping the hand — not trying to do something with your own hand, but letting the client’s body form it. And awareness of the midline is handled in SPT as the Midline (see “What Is Healthy Information for the Body?”).
What I would receive nine years later as a system was already there, inside those two hours, as a pair exercise. From the same instructor.
What I wrote at the time was a single line: that touching with the hand in the second condition gave the impression that the whole body was changing and settling.