Sunday, March 26, 2017. The third day of the workshop came to a close.
The workshop proceeds, in the main, through two approaches: table work done with a partner on a table, and work on a yoga mat that can be done alone.
The first day was spent on the history and basic principles of Rolf Movement (on the first day, see “Gael Rosewood Workshop (1) — Knowing the History and Basic Principles of Rolf Movement“), and in the latter half the talk moved on to how the Rolfing Ten Series and Rolf Movement connect.
How can Session 1, “deepening the breath,” and Session 2, “settling the foundation,” be carried out alone? Work was introduced that draws on the movements of Rolf Movement. The foot work is practical, in that it can be brought into Session 2 straight away. Above all, Gael’s explanations are so clear that understanding deepens.
This time I would like to write about Session 1, “deepening the breath,” and the vibration of sound — voice and humming.
The explanation began with how Session 1 relates to Rolf Movement, and work on a yoga mat, to be done alone, was introduced. What was of interest was the inclusion of the vibration of sound — the humming tone.
In Phase II of the Rolfing training held in Munich, Patricia Von Weich assisted Giovanni Felicioni. Patricia knew Continuum Movement, founded by Emilie Conrad, well, and had brought work using the humming tone into Rolfing sessions.
Gael met Emilie in 1980 and knows Continuum Movement well herself, and in deepening the breath this time she made use of the humming tone. Two sounds were tried: the O sound (an OH, close to the OH of Om), and the TH sound (made with the tongue between the teeth). Gael spoke of these as humming.
That sound brings about change in the body was something I felt again, along with the importance of sound with the body as its instrument.
According to Gael, the two humming tones give rise to space inside the body. And when client and Rolfer both make the sound, the effect compounds further.
So: how does the humming tone act on the body?
Gael explained its significance as an effect of moving away from the usual rhythm of the breath — Break the Breathing Pattern, in her phrase.
In fact, once judgment enters the breath, awareness shifts toward having to breathe properly, having to breathe correctly.
From there, the breath comes to be controlled by the mind.
In yoga and in Pilates, the rhythm is settled by matching the breath to the postures and bringing that into the movement — but in this case, escape from a state controlled by the mind does not necessarily follow.
That the respiratory system is bound up with the nervous system is well known. According to what Gael taught, anxiety and excitement are, seen from the breath, placed in the same state.
By sending the humming tone from the mouth and carrying the vibration through the whole body, the breath settles by degrees, through an organic means. Sensation is sharpened as well; the vibration finally permeates the whole of the tissue, and places in the body that could not be felt before become available to awareness. As a result, the Resilience of the body increases.
Sound and the body is an approach I would like to explore further.
Next time in this column I would like to write about the approach to the shoulder girdle and the pelvic girdle.
Note, August 2026
The heart of what was taught in this session comes down to a single phrase: Break the Breathing Pattern. Not making the breath correct. Keeping the usual rhythm, once, from holding.
The order of Gael’s explanation is what makes it interesting. Once judgment enters the breath, awareness shifts to having to breathe properly, having to breathe correctly. At that moment the breath is already under the control of the mind. So a sound is brought in from outside, and the usual rhythm is cut.
In the note to the previous session I wrote about what Gael said on the use of words: not what is correct, not how to set something right, but how to prepare new choices. What happens here is that principle applied to the breath. Rather than teaching a correct breath, the usual breath is broken once. Where it gives way, room appears for a different breath to enter.
What catches at me eleven years on is that this piece passes over a challenge aimed at my own practice.
In yoga and in Pilates, it records, the rhythm is settled by matching the breath to the postures, but escape from a state controlled by the mind does not necessarily follow. At that point I had been practicing Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga for more than ten years. Vinyasa is a system that synchronizes breath and movement strictly. This was a remark aimed at the center of my own practice. And yet it is set down as someone else’s business and left behind.
Taking the same remark now, its meaning changes. Synchronization is not the problem. The moment awareness enters of having to synchronize correctly, the practice moves over to the side of thinking. What twenty years make clear is that the hardest thing in yoga practice is neither the shape nor the range of motion, but keeping that shift from happening.
And the answer had been in hand a year and a half before Gael said any of it.
In November 2015 I took a three-day course in prāṇāyāma in Shibuya. It is a technique that raises the concentration of carbon dioxide by holding the breath, raises the pressure within the cavities of the body, and works on the nervous system. Eight preparatory exercises were taught, beginning with abdominal breathing and running through Uddiyana Bandha, Agni Sara, Simhasana, Jihva Bandha, Brahma Mudra, Kapalabhati, and Nadi Shodhana. The premise is the removal of unnecessary tension, and the free command of which parts release and which parts engage. Where tension remains, pressure builds beyond what is intended, and the effect is not merely lost but can turn harmful.
What was said on that course was almost identical to Gael’s point. As knowledge accumulates, the state tips toward thinking — is the count right, is the method correct. So in practice, knowledge is set down once. It sounds contradictory, and yet knowledge that has settled into the body is exactly what comes to help when it is needed.
Gael brings in a sound from outside and cuts the rhythm. Prāṇāyāma sets down knowledge and produces the same state from within. The means run in opposite directions; what is being taken off is the same thing.
That course also held that the practice of traditional Haṭha Yoga is not carried out in expectation of a result, and that a result is not something felt in a single sitting. With regular practice, at the point where the body judges itself ready, whatever that person needs emerges from the inside. That is what makes it gentle.
This structure is the same as the setting I would meet two years later in the Rolf Movement training. In Part II, in putting a three-series together, the procedure was not taught in detail. Nothing had to be done in a particular way. Weight fell instead on holding the space, and the design waited for each person’s own way to come out of it. Put in the terms of the breathing practice: waiting until the body is ready.
Taught as a breathing practice in the autumn of 2015, as breath work in the spring of 2017, and experienced as a way of teaching over two and a half years from the summer of that same year. In all three, the point was the refusal to impose correctness. At the time, all three are recorded as separate things.
There is one more thread here, laid two years earlier.
In Phase II in Munich, Patricia Von Weich, assisting Giovanni Felicioni, brought work using the humming tone into sessions, because she knew Continuum Movement, founded by Emilie Conrad, well. And in 2017 Gael uses the humming tone too. Gael met Emilie Conrad in 1980.
The same source has arrived by two separate routes, through two teachers. In the note to the previous session I wrote that the lineages of Sharon Wheeler and Hubert Godard cross at a single point in Gael. The same shape occurs with the humming tone. Only on receiving it a second time did I notice that both had come from the same place.
A word as well on Gael’s remark that anxiety and excitement are placed in the same state when seen from the breath. Physiologically they are identical as a heightening of sympathetic activity, and this would later be handled within the framework of Polyvagal Theory. In Phase III in 2015 it was learned as theory; in 2017 it was heard on the floor, in the work with the breath. Two years lie between the theory and the floor. That order repeats many times across this period of training.
Finally, the word Resilience. In writing this piece I rendered it as flexibility. Now it reads as the power to recover. Flexibility gets confused with flexibility of range in the context of yoga, but what Gael meant was the power to come back after being broken. Breaking the pattern of the breath and the increase of Resilience are two sides of the same account.