Friday, July 7, 2017. The first day of the Rolf Movement Training hosted by the European Rolfing Association (ERA) arrived. There were sixteen participants in total—a large group made up of one Belgian, one Swede, seven Germans, one Pole, one Russian, one Czech, two Swiss, one Dutch person, and one Japanese person.
Among the participants were Bart Adins of Belgium and Gerald Kaufmann of Germany, who had been with me through Phases I to III of the Rolfing Basic Training (see “Journey to Becoming an Advanced Rolfer — A Summary of the Road to Certification”); Asa Ahman of Sweden and Rafal Wysocki of Poland, who had been with me in Phase I; and Janine Margelisch of Switzerland and Judith Wohlrabe of Germany, who had been with me at the Supervision Workshop. Six familiar faces—which was reassuring.
The Rolf Movement Training runs for thirty days in total. Four ERA-certified Rolf Movement Instructors lead it: Giovanni Felicioni, Pierpaola Volpones, Rita Geirola, and France Hatt-Arnold.
Completing the thirty-day course leads to certification as a Rolf Movement Practitioner.
I was able to learn how Rolf Movement came into being at a workshop with Gael Rosewood, who learned directly from Ida Rolf. For that background, see “Gael Rosewood Workshop (1) — Knowing the History and Basic Principles of Rolf Movement.”
Like the Basic Training, the ERA’s Rolf Movement Training is divided into three stages, Parts I to III.
Part I, “Functional Embodiment of 10 Rolfing Sessions,” is led by Pierpaola Volpones and Rita Geirola and runs in three blocks in 2017: July 7–9 (three days), August 31–September 3 (four days), and October 19–22 (four days).
Here, the Ten Series is understood more fully from the perspective of movement. The aim is to be able to bring movement deliberately into a Rolfing session and to offer something useful to people who teach yoga or Pilates, as well as to dancers.
Part II, “Strategy and Design of a Rolf Movement 3-Series,” is led by Rita Geirola and France Hatt-Arnold and runs from January 24 to February 4, 2018 (with January 27 and 31 off; ten days in all).
Separately from the Rolfing Ten Series, you become able to put together a three-session series of Rolf Movement. It should be a valuable opportunity to learn how to sharpen sensation within the body.
Part III, “Introduction to Leading Rolfing Movement Groups,” is led by France Hatt-Arnold and Rita Geirola and is scheduled across two blocks in 2018: May 3–6 (four days) and July 4–8 (five days). Here, I am told, you learn how to lead a movement class as a group lesson.
Completing this training exempts you from the Movement and Elective categories among the requirements for the Advanced Training.
In Europe, the influence of Hubert Godard—a Rolfer who came from dance and teaches at a university—is strong. On my mentoring session with him, see “Mentoring Session (4) — An Experience in Paris: Valuing the Foundations — Hubert Godard“ I have touched on Godard’s Tonic Function several times in this column (see, for instance, “The Muscles That Tire and the Muscles That Don’t — Tonic Function and the Support of Posture”). This is also a good opportunity to learn what Tonic Function actually is. How far it will go, I look forward to finding out.
Note, August 2026
The record of that first day lists four teachers: Giovanni Felicioni, Pierpaola Volpones, Rita Geirola, and France Hatt-Arnold.
It came to seven. Part I was taught by three of those four, plus Hervé Baunard. Part II was taught by France Hatt-Arnold, Rita Geirola, Aline Newton, and Nicola Carofiglio. Part III was taught by France Hatt-Arnold, Rita Geirola, and Hervé Baunard. Seven, with the repeated names removed.
That number came to matter later.
Rolf Movement Practitioner certification can be obtained in Japan as well. Hiroyoshi Tahata offers it. He was certified as a Rolf Movement Practitioner in 1999 and completed the Rolf Institute’s teacher training program in 2009, becoming an international Rolf Movement instructor. His own teacher was Carol Agneessens. His certification course runs for thirty days and 225 hours; the requirements are no different from the ERA’s.
But Japan has one Rolf Movement instructor.
And Tahata himself recommends studying with three or more Rolf Movement instructors. I heard that directly from him.
In a course where the teacher is the content, this matters. I have written about there being no textbook in the Basic Training; in Rolf Movement, this is even more the case. Working with the same session, Paola prepares handouts and organizes the structure, Rita guides you through it in your body, and Giovanni shows you the details of contact one at a time.
There is also another lineage woven into this course: the Feldenkrais Method.
The idea of Rolf Movement itself grew out of the exchange between Ida Rolf and Moshe Feldenkrais. Ida invited Feldenkrais to Esalen; the two acknowledged each other without conflict and received each other’s work. I heard this from Sharon Wheeler.
And Rita Geirola was certified as a Feldenkrais practitioner in 1992. She has said that this perspective underlies how she teaches. Her background is in physical education and the Mézières Method, and she also teaches Pilates. She has studied with both Hubert Godard and Peter Levine.
I later asked Rita about the difference between Rolf Movement and Feldenkrais. Not much difference, she said. Two bodies of work that stood side by side at Esalen in the 1970s were still standing side by side forty years later.
When I chose Munich, none of this was part of my thinking. I had done the Basic Training with the ERA, and this followed naturally. Seven teachers is what it turned into.
The faces overlap as well. Rita Geirola taught Movement in Phase I and was the teacher who granted my certification in 2019—at the entrance and at the exit. Giovanni Felicioni taught Touch in Phase I and all of Phase II, and was in Part I as well: he teaches both the manual and the movement side. Pierpaola Volpones had taught the Supervision Workshop, which had finished only months before.
Teachers you met in the Basic Training show a different face in another course. The same person says different things when teaching technique and when teaching movement. You only see that if you take both.
One more thing: I want to correct what I wrote at the end of this article about credits.
At the time, I understood that completing this course would earn three Movement credits and three Elective credits. That is not accurate. Nothing is awarded. What happens is that the Movement and Elective categories are exempted from the requirements for the Advanced Training.
It was never a question of numbers. Having those categories drop away means that whatever continuing education you take afterward is free of the requirement.
In fact, of the six workshops I took between 2016 and 2017, only the fifteen Intermediate credits were doing the work of fulfilling a requirement. The rest were not taken to fill a category; they were taken because I needed what was in them.
I did not choose to fit the framework. What I chose happened to fit it. And that order was set at the point when I chose this course.