On November 11, 2016, the third day of the Bone Work came to an end. The first and second days were covered in the previous entry (see “The First and Second Days“). This time I would like to take up the atmosphere of the workshop, which the previous entry did not cover.
The first two and a half days are given over to practice among the participants. From the neck to the feet, the instructor Sharon Wheeler introduced the basic Bone Work techniques.
Now, let’s try it!
— and the practice began.
There are two basic approaches: Bone Change and Bone Rolling.
Bone Change brings about a change in the bone by applying direct compression to bone that requires repair, such as a fracture. Bone Rolling compresses bones against each other in order to return the space between them to an appropriate position.
In both, the bone is taken hold of by hand and appropriate compression is applied. According to Sharon, it resembles the throwing motions of aikido and karate, which use the flexors and extensors.
The key is to wait for a while after taking hold and applying compression. What is strange is that the bone eventually begins to move. And following that movement, the body finds its appropriate position and comes to rest.
Sharon happened upon this method in the 1970s, and since she did not understand at the time why it worked, she asked Ida Rolf. Even having been asked, Ida could not answer what was taking place. And to this day, why the bone moves and finds its own position is not scientifically understood.
Teaching it because it is useful, despite the absence of scientific understanding, seems to me exactly the practical quality that is characteristic of Sharon. From 2017 onward, scientific research is apparently set to proceed with Robert Schleip’s research group in Germany, and how it will come to be explained remains to be seen. Something to look forward to.
In the afternoon, seven clients were brought in from outside, and the fourteen participants moved freely among the tables to carry out the work. The allotted time was two and a half hours. It made for a good chance to try the various techniques learned from Sharon. After hearing about each client’s issue before the session, I moved among three tables, observing Sharon’s way of approaching and asking about what she keeps in mind while working (to be covered in the next column).
What is interesting is that she simply does not give up. She stays with the client to the end and works to resolve things. That kind of stubbornness — the word she used — is what made her who she is, she said.
On the fourth day, fourteen clients are expected across the morning and afternoon. What may come of it is something to look forward to.
Note, August 2026
At the center of the Bone Work procedure was waiting. Take hold of the bone, apply appropriate compression, and wait for a while. The bone begins to move. Follow that movement, and the body finds its appropriate position and comes to rest. The practitioner does not move it to the correct place.
Ida’s words from the previous entry — that working on the body means each of its parts will come to know on its own where its home is — take shape here as a procedure. And eleven years later, when Neutral was formulated in the Advanced Training in 2025, it was explained as placing oneself in the right balance between the force that tries to make something happen and the quiet that waits for it to happen.
What Alan did in the 2014 Mentoring, taking twenty minutes to narrow the distance before touching, is the same thing. Waiting is what the technique consists of.
Something else is preserved in this entry: my own reaction at the time. When Sharon happened upon the method in the 1970s and asked Ida why it worked, Ida could not answer either. And it remains scientifically unexplained.
Teaching it anyway, because it is useful — to that disposition, the entry says: how it will come to be explained remains to be seen, something to look forward to. That is the response of someone who wants an explanation.
The person named in this entry as the one who would take on that explaining is Robert Schleip. At the time he existed as a name only. By the period of my basic training in Munich he had already stepped away from the Faculty, so despite being inside the same ERA, there was no occasion to meet.
Ten years on, the research took actual shape. Schleip turned his attention to the fascia itself and took a doctorate in physiology; he was involved in launching the first Fascia Research Congress in 2007; and in August 2025 he published a paper analyzing twenty-three years of data from 563 clients (see “Twenty-Three Years of Records, Brought to Light by a Leading Fascia Researcher — From a New Study of the Rolfing Ten-Series“).
Among those who completed the ten-series, significant changes were confirmed in hip and knee flexion range of motion, trunk symmetry, and thoracic expansion.
It is, however, a retrospective study without a control group, and Schleip states its limitations explicitly. The paper’s own title uses Influence rather than Effect. Why bone moves is still not known.
What changed over ten years was not whether an explanation arrived, but seeing what form the work of continuing to record the unexplained eventually takes. The paper rests on records kept by the Rolfer Helen James, who measured for twenty-three years without once altering her procedure.
She kept even the cases that had not satisfied her, rather than removing them. To handle what cannot be explained and remain honest about it means something like that. The disposition Sharon held in 2016 was one form of it.