Sunday, July 9, 2017. The first three days of the Rolf Movement training came to an end (on the curriculum itself, see “What Kind of Curriculum Does It Follow?“). Having learned the foundations of Rolfing’s ten series, this was a good chance to learn them again from another perspective — movement.
In the first ten days of training, sessions 1–10 are reviewed in order, day by day. How to incorporate the way of thinking of Rolf Movement is learned.
I touched on that thinking in “An Introduction to the Basic Way of Thinking“: the four structural approaches, the four Articulations — the idea of space — and how to communicate.
In the basic training there was an explanation of AMP (Active Movement Participation), a way of working on fascia and tissue by having the client move actively from a given position, both to reach the fascia and to activate awareness within the body. Here, that gets taken further.
For instance: to bring awareness to anterior and posterior tilt of the pelvis, how do you guide a client into tilting it? You convey the movement, and they move actively. The necessary muscles begin to work, and it becomes roughly possible to sense which muscles are involved with the pelvis.
Ultimately, how does the brain come to be aware of the body? New options are laid out within the information the brain holds — its map — and whether they are actually useful is left to the brain to judge. If the brain finds them useful, the map gets rewritten.
The three days covered the sleeve sessions, one through three. What each session addresses is fixed.
How should movement be brought into a Rolfing session? Two things came into view.
The first is putting things into words.
Posture involves the lower back, the hip joint, the shoulder, the neck, the knee — but where are those actually located in the body? If word and body do not line up, the brain may not recognize that region. And there is a further difficulty: through what we absorb from parents, from schooling, from society, we come to believe there is an ideal body shape. A fixed belief. An assigned meaning.
How do you put into words something as hard to articulate as bodily awareness? Being able to do that changes the awareness itself.
Studying alongside people whose first language is not English made me think about how to use English words to heighten awareness. For some people, too many words of guidance and the brain cannot process them; they stop moving altogether. For others, unless the guidance is thorough, they do not move at all. Instructive.
Not only cultural background, then, but how to use words that work. Something to try before the next block of the workshop.
The second is deepening my understanding of how I use my own body.
For movement to be natural, the lower body feels gravity — downward — while the upper body, taking that as its foundation, lengthens through the back and moves freely — upward. Rolfing attends to these two directions.
Sitting in a chair, for instance: the feet on the ground, the sit bones supported by the chair (feet and sit bones downward), and the sense of lengthening the upper body from the sit bones as its base (upper body upward). That makes the movement work.
What is worth noting is that downward is the foundation. In English it is called the Fixed Point, or the Reference Point. Upward expresses direction. In English, Direction, or Orientation.
Sitting, the feet and sit bones become the Fixed Point, and the upper body moves freely — the direction is established.
In a yoga posture, simply attending to where the Fixed Point is and what moves freely makes the posture easier to hold.
The same idea can be brought into the relationship between Rolfer and client during a session.
Feel your own feet — the Fixed Point — and the upper body moves freely. Reaching out to shake hands with that awareness of two directions, and simply shaking hands without feeling your feet at all: what you receive from the other person is entirely different.
Looking carefully at bidirectionality, I have a sense that the quality of a Rolfing session rises with it. I look forward to what comes next.
Note, August 2026
The framework introduced in this part of the training is simple.
Downward is the foundation; upward is direction. Sitting, the feet and sit bones form the downward foundation, and from that base the upper body moves freely. The foundation is called the Fixed Point, or Reference Point; the direction, Direction or Orientation.
It is taught as an instrument for seeing a body. Watching a client move, what is staying still and what is moving? Answer that and where to work is decided.
And then, at the end of this article, something else appears.
Feel your own feet and shake hands, or shake hands without feeling your feet at all, and what you receive from the other person is entirely different.
The instrument of observation has turned into a statement about the practitioner.
At the time I imagine I wrote it as an application of bidirectionality — an idea useful for clients is useful for yourself too, roughly at that level.
Nine years later it came back as the subject itself.
The three requirements of Neutral, received in the 2025 Advanced Training, were Shape the Hand, Finding Back Space, and Hara. Rather than trying to do something with your own hand, you let the client’s body shape it. Sensing the space behind you brings your weight back to the middle. Turning attention to the hara holds you steady and open to the other person at once.
All three are about what the practitioner takes as their own foundation.
The term Fixed Point is not used. But it points to the same place. Whether you are feeling your feet and sit bones changes what reaches you from the other person. Whether you are sensing the space behind you determines whether you tip forward. Only once the foundation is set can the upper body move freely.
What was taught in 2017 as an instrument for observation was taught again in 2025 as the practitioner’s way of being.
The order is reversed as well. In this article, the framework for seeing a client comes first, and I notice that it applies to me too. In the Advanced Training it began from the practitioner’s side: unless you are in Neutral, the other person’s body will not begin to regulate itself.
Neither order is the correct one, I think. But eleven years on, what stands out is that the sentence about the handshake was the important one.
I was handed an instrument, and I turned it on myself. That one line was at the center of the course nine years later.