Monday, January 30, 2017. The last day of the stay in Seattle. The workshop that began on January 26, 2017 came to a safe close.
Two earlier entries covered the Cranio Work held in Seattle.
- The first day: “A Technique for Carrying Out Session 7 Efficiently”
- The second day through the last: “How the Class Proceeded“
This time I would like to write about what Sharon said. As described in the Bone Work entries (held in Tokyo in November 2016), Sharon is one of the few Rolfers who learned directly from Ida Rolf from around 1970. There is a great deal to learn simply from listening to her. What she said at the Bone Work was covered in two earlier entries.
- “Through the Third Day: What Sharon Said (1)”
- “The Final Day: What Sharon Said (2)”
What follows is fragmentary, but I would like to set out what Sharon said this time.
- 1）In 1989 the Rolf Institute of Structural Integration (RISI) split into two organizations: RISI, centered on Michael Salveson and Jan Sultan, and the Guild for Structural Integration, centered on Emmett Hutchins. The cause of the split was political. I take it that she spoke about it carrying a wish for the two to be reunited in the future — because there is no difference in curriculum between the Guild and RISI. Out of a need to differentiate itself from the Guild, RISI added several elements to the training, Jeff Maitland’s philosophy among them, and divided what had been a two-stage training into three. That is all it amounts to. In fact, when Ida Rolf first began teaching Rolfing, the curriculum was divided into Auditing (the stage of the observer, of perceiving) and Practitioner (the stage of the practitioner, of hands-on experience, and the Practitioner stage came to be incorporated from Phase I onward.
- 2）Sharon could not accept the various things that occurred around the split between RISI and the Guild — the political maneuvering, mainly the personal relationships — and so she never joined the Faculty. What she found interesting once she began teaching in Europe is that the Guild and the European Rolfing Association (ERA) run training together. The two are treated as entirely equal, and this gives the training its depth, she says. Indeed, the 2016 training in the Czech Republic was conducted jointly by a Guild teacher and a RISI teacher. This kind of thing is possible, and if Europeans are to surpass the Americans, she told them, everyone should pool their wisdom.
- 3）When Ida Rolf created the Advanced Training, it began as something closer to remedial instruction, aimed at students whose understanding was weaker. In fact, when Sharon asked Ida in delight whether she could take the Advanced Training, she was told she had no need of it. The Advanced Training also requires eighteen credits. Among them, alongside Cranio/Visceral, Movement, and Manipulation, there is Elective. Why should there be a credit called Elective — “chosen” — when all the others are names of techniques and approaches used in Rolfing? This too had been a question, and the answer is that the credit was created as what is certified when someone other than a Faculty member teaches.
- 4）In carrying out the work, it also matters not to produce change immediately but to move back and forth between areas a little at a time. Through gradual change, the client comes to accept that change more readily.
- 5）Sharon too is sometimes affected by clients; on one occasion her liver ached after being affected by someone who had hepatitis. She asked a psychiatrist what to do about it, and received two pieces of advice. First, do not take everything that is on the plate. Second, think of Empathy and Sympathy separately. The former means receiving what is needed from the other person whatever their state; the latter means offering the kind of help that lets someone in difficulty get to their feet and stand on their own. Sharon did not know which of the two was the better one, but taking both ways of thinking on board meant she was no longer affected.
- 6）If a “Small Baby” cannot be sensed within a client, it is better to refer them to another Rolfer. When the head is approached in Cranio Work, what that person has experienced in the past surfaces. Going in deeply requires a safe container, and at the same time the material often reaches back to childhood. If affection or romantic feeling toward that person is present at such a moment, it not only obstructs the process but may cause harm. That is very much to be avoided. On this point, she said, male Rolfers should be especially careful.
- 7）When a person takes a strong impact, a trace of it — a Scar — remains in the bone and the tissue. That trace can be felt during a session, and by entering it directly and drawing out what episode produced it, taking hold of it and releasing it, matters move toward resolution. Bone Work, Cranio Work, and Rolfing itself are useful for this.
Note, August 2026
The account Sharon gave of the 1989 split would come back nine years later in a different form. The two accounts say opposite things about the same event.
Sharon’s account was this. The cause of the split was political; there is no difference in curriculum between the Guild and RISI. Out of a need to differentiate itself, RISI added content including Jeff Maitland’s philosophy and divided a two-stage structure into three. That is all. Sharon herself could not accept the personal dynamics around the split and never joined the Faculty.
The account heard in the Advanced Training in 2025 is different. Both the ten-series and the advanced five-series had fixed sequences (Formulaic), but the Guild chose the path of faithfully preserving them, while RISI, centered on Maitland and Jan Sultan, shifted toward a form not bound by sequence (Non-Formulaic). The split is explained as a divergence in method.
The same event is told on one side as political circumstance and after-the-fact differentiation, and on the other as an intellectual divergence in practice. I have no material for judging which is correct. What mattered was having heard both.
What RISI added turned out, on actually receiving it, to be a considerable body of material. The three questions (Where do you start? / What do you do next? / When are you done?), the five principles (WHOLISM / SUPPORT / ADAPTABILITY / PALINTONICITY / CLOSURE), the five classifications of Taxonomy, Somatic Sensorium, the three paradigms of treatment, Orthotropism. The framework Maitland was central in establishing is there as a system.
What was learned most across the twenty-four days in 2025 was Being as a bodyworker. The path for cultivating it is likewise organized — the three components of Neutral, the distinction between Intention and Intentionality, Kind Indifference, Right Action.
Sharon has no need for this system. She uses almost no anatomy and transmits what she received from Ida as story. What has no scientific explanation, she teaches because it is useful. For someone who learned directly from around 1970, a framework assembled afterward is exactly that — something that came later.
The account of how the Advanced Training itself came about is emblematic. When Ida created it, it was apparently close to remedial instruction for students whose understanding was weaker. When Sharon asked in delight whether she could take it, she was told she had no need of it.
Today’s Advanced Training requires eighteen credits and three to five years of session experience, and is positioned as a stage Certified Rolfers aim to reach. Remedial instruction became the summit, one could say.
But having no system and having no principles are not the same thing. The latter half of what Sharon said in this entry was a collection of restraints that came out of experience rather than out of a system.
Not producing change immediately during the work, but moving back and forth between areas. Changing things gradually makes the change easier for the client to accept. This overlaps with the territory covered by the principle of CLOSURE in 2025 — giving a process an appropriate end.
When her own liver ached from being affected by a client, the two pieces of advice she received from a psychiatrist. Do not take everything that is on the plate. And think of Empathy and Sympathy separately.
This addresses the same problem Ray called Kind Indifference. Not becoming excessively caught up in the client’s experience, and at the same time watching over it with deep interest. The words of the osteopath Jim Jealous — the process is none of your business, observe but do not become part of the story — point to the same place.
And then the point that if a “Small Baby” cannot be sensed within a client, it is better to refer them to another Rolfer. Approaching the head brings past experience to the surface, often reaching back to childhood. Holding affection or romantic feeling toward that person will not only obstruct the process but may cause harm. Male Rolfers should be especially careful, she added.
This is a kind of principle that is difficult to write into a system. It does not fit inside the question of which Taxonomy to select. And yet the theme of a practitioner entering another person’s territory while holding their own — spoken of by Keith Graham in 2014 through the analogy of the earth, and confirmed eleven years later on the mats of a jiu-jitsu academy — is here in its most concrete and most urgent form.
Ethics holds without a system. And with a system, this kind of judgment still does not come from the system.
The trip to Seattle was worth it less for the technique than for this. Five days of Bone Work in Tokyo in November 2016, four days of Cranio Work in Seattle in January 2017. What those nine days provided was a record of what Rolfing was before it was systematized.
Had I taken only the training in 2025, Maitland’s framework would have looked like Rolfing itself. In fact it is one path that RISI chose after 1989, and within the same Rolfing there are people still walking the path that was not chosen.
The European lineage (Godard, Tonic Function), the Advanced Training (Maitland, Ray, Tahata), and Sharon. All three begin from Ida. All three stand in different places. There is no need to select one of them as the real one; that there are three is itself, I think, an indication of what this work is.
What Sharon said last was that in Europe the Guild and ERA run training together, treated as entirely equal, and that this gives the training its depth. In the Czech Republic in 2016, a Guild teacher and a RISI teacher taught side by side. Two organizations that split can stand next to each other once the continent changes. Someone who has watched that happen was speaking with a wish for reunion.