The third day of the Supervision Workshop (15 December 2016) has ended. We have reached the halfway point, and there was a dinner in the evening.
Before looking back on the second and third days, I would like to write about Pierpaola Volpones (Paola). I happened to be seated directly across from her at the dinner, and in talking with her I heard some interesting things, so I will start there.
Paola took her training in the 1980s. Her teacher then was an American Rolfer, and she took it in Munich. What is striking is that it was an entirely different approach from the one I received in 2015. Rather than Phase I, II and III as it is now, there were two stages: an Audit (observation) stage of nine weeks and a Practitioner stage of nine weeks.
In the Audit stage, one only observes the Practitioners and does no work oneself. Moving on to Practitioner, one carries out four sessions in total for each session of the series — exchanges among students and three clients. And for every session, time was taken to do body reading thoroughly and from many angles. What is surprising is that there were no texts, no photographs, no practice of technique whatever; the training proceeded simply by carrying out sessions. That is what she shared.
Then, in the 2000s, at the invitation of Harvey Burns and Robert Schleip, Paola came to assist Harvey Burns. It seems genuinely to be the case that she had never thought of becoming an Instructor; it happened before she knew it, she said. Assisting Ray McCall and Pedro Prado, and taking in the influence of Hubert Godard, she was eventually certified as an Instructor in 2006.
What I find good about studying under Paola is that she expresses things simply. She said herself that since she began teaching, putting into words what she had been doing without thinking had taught her a great deal — and her words really are easy to follow.
For example, in giving a Rolfing session there are cases where the client is asked to move (Active Movement Participation, AMP, meaning active participation in movement).
AMP has two purposes:
Palintonicity (bidirectionality)
raising awareness of the body
Bidirectionality means that one part of the body stays still while another moves.
Raising awareness of the body means giving the part being touched a name so that it can be pictured easily — it need not be a strict anatomical term — and having the person experience, through movement, which parts move separately from which.
Receiving an explanation like this let me understand in clearer words what I had learned in Phase II and Phase III. There was also how to do the seated work before a session ends (called Sitting Work). The approach is mainly to the spine while keeping awareness in the feet, and having it explained in connection with AMP made its meaning much clearer to me.
On the second and third days, the mornings went to practising work on the arms; after lunch, sessions with invited clients began at two o’clock. The second day was Group A (seven people) and the third Group B (six people); Group A takes a client on days two and four, Group B on days three and five.
After four o’clock came sharing impressions of the sessions and practice again, finishing at six.
I was in Group A, so I had my client session on the second day. Compared with how it felt in Phase II and Phase III, I could relax and move through body reading, planning and the work itself without difficulty.
Half the training remains. On what I have made my particular focus this time — how to approach a body without tiring, without injuring myself — I have been getting valuable feedback from Paola, so after returning to Japan I should be able to bring into my sessions, in a somewhat better form, how to produce an effect without putting effort into the work.
Tomorrow brings the second client session. I intend to enjoy it.
Note, August 2026
Among the things I heard sitting across from her at the dinner, one has kept working on me since. Paola said that since she began teaching, putting into words what she had been doing without thinking had taught her a great deal.
The course Paola took in the 1980s had no texts, no photographs, no practice of technique; it proceeded simply by carrying out sessions. Someone who received what had not been put into words found, on moving to the side that hands it on, that putting it into words had become necessary.
And she says she had not intended to teach. Harvey Burns and Robert Schleip asked her to assist, and it happened before she knew it. Fuensanta, in the same room, became a member of the ERA faculty two years after this day, having assisted for some years before that. Nobody set out to be on the teaching side. And still, once there, the work of putting things into words begins.
I have written elsewhere in this series about the standpoint that doubts articulation. There are people who turn a sceptical eye on putting method into language at all, and from that standpoint the absence of a textbook is a necessity. What is happening here is the reverse. The act of teaching compels articulation. Both stand within the same lineage.
What that articulation produced is what I received that day. AMP, Active Movement Participation: the operation of asking a client to move during the work. It has two purposes. One is bidirectionality — one part of the body stays still while another moves. The other is raising awareness of the body — giving the part being touched a name and having the person experience which parts move separately from which.
Bidirectionality was learned as a concept early in the basic training and taken up again as one of the five principles. Here it has become a procedure: when to have someone move, and how. As a concept it does not settle what to do with the client in front of you. Only when it comes down as far as giving a name and having someone feel where things move separately do the hands start moving.
That, I think, is what this article means in saying that the explanation let me understand in clearer words what I had learned in Phase II and Phase III.
What was handed over without words gets put into words and handed on again. Because someone somewhere does that, the next person can receive it. That there is no textbook never meant that little was handed over.