Thursday, January 26, 2017. The second day since arriving in Seattle. Sharon Wheeler’s workshop had finally begun. This was my first workshop with Sharon since the Bone Work held in Japan (for details, see “Bone Work (5) — The Final Day: What Sharon Said (2)“).
私自身、Bone Workのワークショップに参加した際に、デモやクライアント・セッションの時にSharonが行ったCranio Workに興味を持ったこHaving taken an interest in the Cranio Work that Sharon carried out during the demonstrations and client sessions at the Bone Work workshop, I had wanted very much to take this workshop as well.
As luck would have it, Sharon’s website carried notice of a session in Seattle in late January 2017.
This is one I want to take!
— and I emailed the organizer, Louise Almgren.
The reply came back:
There’s still an opening!
— and I decided to attend.
I left my accommodation at around 8:15 a.m. and walked thirty minutes to the house of Louise, an Advanced Rolfer, where the workshop was held.
I arrived at 8:45 a.m. Waiting at the entrance to the session room, past the red door behind the house, a truck carrying Sharon pulled into the parking area a few minutes later. She waved in greeting, and the reunion came about unexpectedly.
The class was extremely small, with four participants. It ran from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., with an hour and a half for lunch. Tea from a Zojirushi hot pot, fruit (blueberries, raspberries, small mandarins), and Danish pastries were laid out, so there was no shortage of food throughout the workshop.
The morning brought a demonstration session with a client. While explaining what a Cranio Work session consists of, before and after photographs of the client were taken. Watching the work from the clavicles to the cranium, it was, like the Bone Work, extremely simple. Almost no anatomy came into it; it was practical and easy to remember.
Cranio Work, unlike Bone Work, was something Sharon began teaching only after she had done the Rolfing training. This was because circumstances had given her a great deal of experience with session 7 — enough to teach it. That continued until Jim Asher began teaching Cranio Sacral in the late 1970s. Later, along with the Bone Work, she began teaching it in recent years in the form of Cranio Work.
According to Ida Rolf, sessions 1 through 6 are carried out in order to make session 7 possible, and what is done in session 7 is integrated through sessions 8 to 10. The Cranio Work discussion proceeds from the standpoint of how Ida Rolf taught that session 7, and how she understood it — which makes it interesting.
After the lunch break came an explanation of the Cranio Work method using a skeletal model, and then the group split into two pairs for practice. I was on the receiving end for three and a half hours, taking in the Cranio Work at length.
Since there were only two pairs, I had the good fortune of receiving Sharon’s touch as well; in the final stage of finishing, the work around the AO joint between the cranium and the spine was of great help in widening the range of motion of the neck.
Tomorrow I will be on the working side, and there are also plans for a client demonstration by Sharon and for client sessions carried out by the participants. What skills can be acquired is something to work toward while enjoying it.
Note, August 2026
This workshop was a course in technique and at the same time a course that traced a record of transmission. Ida Rolf placed session 7 at the center of the ten-series: 1 through 6 accumulate for its sake, and what is done in 7 is integrated through 8 to 10.
Circumstances had given Sharon a great deal of experience with session 7 — enough of it to teach. So the workshop proceeds from the standpoint of how Ida taught session 7 and how Sharon understood it.
In the Bone Work entries I wrote that Ida did not know how to teach a way of seeing the body. Put him into water and let them swim or drown was the only method available. Right beside that gap, one concrete technique — session 7 — was transmitted to a single student through sheer volume of repetition. What could not be taught and what was transmitted occupied the same place.
Something else that stayed in the body from this workshop was the length of time. Three and a half hours on the receiving end. The demonstration session ran close to three hours. The client session two days later also took close to three hours.
Six months after this, at Peter Schwind’s workshop in Munich, I encountered the opposite thinking. Peter originally worked in sessions of about an hour, but changed his view after meeting Ida Rolf’s son. The son offered sessions so efficient that at their shortest they finished in about fifteen minutes.
Taking too much time can end up teaching the brain an excessive amount of information — having realized that, Peter came to keep sessions to around forty-five minutes. From Jan Sultan he had learned time management: finish within fifty to fifty-five minutes (described in detail in “Peter Schwind Workshop (1) — For What Purpose Is Technique Used?“).
Three and a half hours and forty-five minutes. Within the same Rolfing, the difference is that large. It is not a question of which is correct; what differs is the view of what happens in the body. On Sharon’s side, time is needed for the change to occur. On Peter’s side, what is needed is not supplying too much information. Waiting, and not supplying too much. Both are judgments about what the practitioner does not do, and yet the handling of time is inverted between them.
When Neutral became the subject of the Advanced Training in 2025, waiting was treated as what the technique consists of. The question of quantity — how long to wait — was not addressed there. The two answers received east and west in 2017 remain unsettled in me. It differs from session to session: that is the answer for now.