Friday, September 2, 2016, 7:45 a.m. We met at a restaurant near Paris Gare de l’Est. After a simple breakfast of a croissant and tea, I took Metro line 4 to Montparnasse-Bienvenüe. The ride took about thirty minutes and I arrived ahead of schedule. After a short walk around the area, at 9 a.m. I went to the apartment Hubert Godard keeps from his years living in Paris.
According to “Phenomenological Space,” Caryn McHose’s interview with Hubert Godard, he was originally active as a contemporary dancer, and it was through a knee injury that he came to take an interest in osteopathy and bodywork. He is said to have close to fifty years of experience. Hubert Godard holds an interesting set of ideas about space, which are taken up in “Space Is Felt Differently by Each Person — Tonic Function and Peripersonal Space.”
Three of us took part in the Mentoring: Suzanne, who was with me in Phase I of the Munich training, and Arnaud, who was with me from Phase I through Phase III. Taking part in Mentoring as a group was a first for me, but with a large block of three hours available, it made for a genuinely full session. What is more, his smile at that first meeting gave a strong impression that any question was welcome.
He is normally based in Milan, where he gives Rolfing sessions, and stays in Paris in order to teach. The chance fell within that brief stay.
Not only did he share what he had learned without holding anything back, he took care not to forget anyone’s name — taking notes on his laptop at the start, then glancing at the screen from time to time as he addressed each of us. A degree of consideration that would surprise even a French acquaintance of mine moved me, and at the same time conveyed his respect for Rolfers.
Those who have mastered something say the same thing without exception: value the foundations. Hubert was no exception.
“What matters in Rolfing is grounding — Feel the 2 feet on the ground. Being able to use the whole foot, toes and heel included. On that basis, so that the whole body comes to rest on those feet, attention goes to the Sagittal Plane. Movement in the front and back of the body is what matters, and that is where the meaning of looking at the breath lies. That is why there is a first session.”
Speaking this way, he laid out the idea of grounding as the foundation of Rolfing in accessible terms, touching on the principles first and then stating the techniques required afterward.
There was also a review of the basic content of body reading. The body is observed in order to check whether the feet are supporting the whole; and in doing so, where should the attention go? Where is the tension in the shoulder girdle and the pelvic girdle? What is the spine doing? Since the observation was approached through an explanation from the fundamentals, it became, in the best sense, a review of the basic training. That the three of us were each a different type was good as well.
Then, on to technique.
What took up the largest share of our questions was sitting work — treatment carried out while upright, mainly seated in a chair — rather than table work, treatment carried out lying on the table.
In sitting work, when looking at the spine, the attention goes to front and back. Incorporating the movement of the back in the case of the front, and the movement of the front in the case of the back, while approaching the fascia with focus; and for lateral flexion, he introduced work that includes the rotator cuff of the shoulder girdle.
What became clear this time is to value the foundations: that skill rises only through practicing what has been learned and accumulating it.
That my approach so far — staying faithful to the fundamentals and simply carrying out the skills as they were learned — is what matters came across well, and I intend to continue in that direction.
I would like to close this column by mentioning the meal after Hubert’s session ended.
Note, August 2026
Meeting the person at the source of Rolf Movement and Tonic Function, what came back was the fundamentals. What matters in Rolfing is grounding, feeling that both feet are on the ground. Being able to use the whole foot, toes and heel included.
From there the descent runs to the sagittal plane, to the breath, to the meaning of the first session. For body reading as well, the content of the basic training was reviewed as it stood: where to look in the body in order to see whether the feet are supporting the whole.
Entering through the principle and descending to the technique — the order is the same one Keith took in London two years earlier. A master of tai chi and the person who built the theory of Tonic Function both began by talking about the feet.
And what was given as the way of cultivating Neutral in the Advanced Training in 2025 was likewise three fundamental actions: Shape the Hand, Finding Back Space, and the Hara. Advanced content, it seems, does not mean more complicated technique. The fundamentals return again and again, at a different depth each time.
The substance of the questions in this session marks where I stood at the time. What we asked about most was sitting work rather than table work — treatment with the client seated in a chair rather than lying on the table.
A year and a half after certification, having begun to carry actual clients, what a practitioner needed was a way to handle the situations the training had not covered in full. In London two years earlier the question had been how to deal with my own neck tension; two years after that, what to do about the fingers tiring; and here, how to work with someone seated.
The questions were rising from the side of the practice.
Valuing the foundations meant that skill rises only through practicing what has been learned and accumulating it. Ten years have passed since that sentence was written in 2016. Whether the years since were spent doing exactly that is answered better by the number of people who have completed the ten-series, and by the number of years the practice has continued, than by anything written here.