When I took part in the basic Rolfing training in Munich, what was hardest of all to understand was the relationship between Rolfing and Tonic Function.
I received an explanation of the Tonic Function hypothesis from Giovanni Felicioni, who had learned it directly from Hubert Godard — a Rolfer who teaches at a university — but it was harder to grasp than I had expected. How was I supposed to use it in a session? In the end, in the training at that time, it remained something I knew only as knowledge.
Because Gael Rosewood is the Rolfer who certified Hubert, on the final day (Day 4, March 27, 2017) she presented, with concrete examples, how Tonic and Phasic Muscle are to be applied in the work. Through Gael’s workshop this time, my understanding advanced to a certain degree.
Rolfing deals with the relationship to gravity.
I wrote about this in detail in “The Muscles That Tire and the Muscles That Don’t — Tonic Function and the Support of Posture“, but Hubert Godard focused on the function of the muscles that work continuously against gravity, calling the continuously working muscles the Tonic Muscle and the transiently working muscles the Phasic Muscle.
Gael explained the former as the Intrinsic Muscle and the latter as the Extrinsic Muscle. Whereas the Phasic Muscle is a muscle that works immediately, the Tonic Muscle works continuously, and it is a muscle whose sensation cannot be grasped without conscious awareness.
According to Gael, it takes about five seconds for the Tonic Muscle to engage, and about five seconds to release as well. Once the Tonic Muscle switches on, it keeps working and knows no fatigue. Yet through the effect of some accident, injury, or trauma, the switch turns off.
She also explained that the Tonic Muscle is a muscle that works before movement — learned in Rolfing terminology as Pre-movement — giving concrete examples.
For example:
- When raising the whole arm, if nothing else happened the balance would break and the body would tip forward, so before the movement the soleus muscle engages.
- Before the hand is used to grasp something (here the hand meaning the palm and the fingers), the serratus anterior engages.
- To maintain the stability of the neck and face, the tongue rests against the palate — the area above the teeth — keeping balance.
I would like to touch on this a little more concretely.
When using a smartphone, many people use it frequently with their fingertips, but few use it with awareness extending to the palm. As a result, the serratus anterior stops working, the balance of the upper body is lost, and tension runs into the shoulders and neck. Working in pairs, I could actually feel that, when touching the forearm — once with the fingers alone and once with the fingers and the palm — the serratus anterior engaged in the latter case.
It is easy to assume that, given the relationship with gravity, resting the tongue against the area below the teeth releases the downward force. But in fact, from Gael’s experience, resting the tongue against the palate keeps the balance better. Indeed, the difference between placing the tongue up and placing it down was striking: in a demonstration, I could see that when the tongue was down, the gaze was almost completely unstable.
The human body tends to be captured by vision. Because of this, the position of the gaze is taken to sit at the very center of the head. In fact, this is not so: the position the tongue reaches when making the sound “ka” is exactly the position of the center of the head.
As one would expect, the examples that only Gael — with her many years of Rolfing experience — could give were easy to follow, and Tonic Function came in as knowledge I could hold.
Tonic Function can in fact be grasped as a sensation in a session. This, too, was done as partner work: while exhaling slowly with the breath (exhaling prompts the release of tension; making a humming sound is also fine), we carried out:
- Drawing the pubic bone and the coccyx toward each other.
- Drawing the two ischial tuberosities toward each other.
- Drawing the left and right anterior superior iliac spines (ASIS) toward each other.
- Drawing the iliac bones of the back toward each other.
- Lifting the coccyx.
Working through all of them, I felt the breath enter the whole body. The sensation is subtle, but I could feel that incorporating it into Sessions 4 through 7 makes a session richer.
We also did work while sitting in a chair — how to connect the feet and the spine while searching for the place where the least force is applied — bringing awareness by tapping lightly down the spine. Over the four days, we were able to cover nearly the whole body.
With that, the final day came to a close, and we took a photo with all the participants and Gael.
It was a more wonderful workshop than I had expected, and there was much to learn. This year the Rolf Movement certification training also begins in Munich, in July 2017. By incorporating not only hands-on manual work but also movement, I hope to widen the range of what a session can offer.
Note, August 2026
This piece opens with an admission of not having understood. What was hardest of all in the basic training was the relationship between Rolfing and Tonic Function, and in the end it remained something known only as knowledge. That is what it says.
Godard’s theory reached me, as it turned out, by four routes.
The first was Giovanni Felicioni in Phase II in 2014. Giovanni had learned directly from Hubert Godard, and the hypothesis was explained. Even so, it ended without any sense of how to use it in a session.
The second was from Godard himself, at the mentoring in Paris in September 2016. The third is Gael, in this piece, in March 2017. And the fourth was Aline Newton, assisting in Part II of the Rolf Movement training in January 2018. Aline had studied in a study group Godard ran for ERA members; I heard this later from her directly.
Of the four, understanding moved on the third and the fourth. And those two went about it in opposite ways.
Gael put out almost no theory. What she put out were examples. Before the arm is raised, the soleus engages. Before something is grasped, the serratus anterior engages. With the tongue against the palate, the neck and face steady. Use a smartphone with the fingertips alone and the serratus anterior stops working, so tension runs into the shoulders and neck. The Tonic Muscle takes five seconds to engage and five to release; once on it knows no fatigue, but an accident, an injury, or trauma turns the switch off. Every one of these was handed over in a form that could be checked in my own body.
Aline did the reverse. She put it in order. The factors bearing on Phasic and Tonic she divided into five: tissue, perception and cognition, thinking and words, meaning and the symbolic, and coordination. Observe a body through those five and it becomes clear where to work. It had the shape of an instrument.
Gael and Aline stand in opposite relations to Godard. Gael certified Godard — she is upstream. Aline learned from him — she is downstream. The one upstream handed over examples alone; the one downstream handed over a system. What could not be received from the first teacher, standing between them, came in from both ends.
One more thing about Aline’s five factors.
In Phase III in February 2015, Godard’s four aspects were taught: Structure, Coordination, Perception, and Meaning. Jörg called Structure the Physical. What Aline set out was five, and what had been added was tissue. The fascial approach used in Rolfing bears on structure and on tonus — that is the added item.
The original four contain no place for the hands-on work itself. Godard is a physiotherapist with a background in dance, and his starting point is not manual technique. With tissue added as a fifth, what a Rolfer actually does with the hands gained a position inside the theory. At the same time, thinking and words had become an item of its own. Take the single phrase “straighten the spine”: whether that means lengthening the spine, putting force into it, or letting it lengthen of its own accord differs from person to person, and what has been stored in the body differs accordingly. This overlaps exactly with the guidance of words described in the note to the previous session.
A theory changes shape as it is passed along. Four became five because the receiving side rebuilt it into something that could connect to its own work.
Two things to set down at the end.
The first is the sound “ka.” The position of the gaze is easily taken to sit at the center of the head; in fact the center is where the tongue reaches in making the sound “ka.” Gael explained it that way. Not as an anatomical account but as a procedure that can be tried out. Neutral, as taught in the Advanced Training of 2025, was handed over in the same manner — not as a concept but as a way of using the body. The form of the handing over is the same.
The second is the five pelvic movements: drawing the pubic bone and the coccyx together, the two ischial tuberosities together, the left and right ASIS together, the iliac bones of the back together, and lifting the coccyx. Bringing these into Sessions 4 through 7 makes a session richer, this piece says. Eleven years later, that is precisely the item now standing on my list of things to add to the note on the Session 7 piece. A record made at the time has turned into an instruction for the work at hand.