September 2, 2017. The Rolf Movement training reached its sixth day.
Over these three days, centering on sessions four through six, I have been learning how to bring movement into a session — through Embodiment and through practice with the body in motion.
Following session four on August 31 (see “To Encourage Bodily Awareness: Slowly, Carefully, Into Words“) and session five (see “Where to Look in Movement: Phoric Function and Fixed Point“), session six is also a deep session. The movements grow finer, and more care is required.
A brief word on what sessions four through six cover. Session four works mainly the adductors, from the soles of the feet to the pelvic floor. Session five centers on the relationship between the rib cage and the pelvis, approaching the fascia around the pelvic and shoulder girdles, the region of the viscera within the abdominal and thoracic cavities, and the iliopsoas.
Session six, by contrast, centers on the region around the spine, on the back of the body. It organizes the relationship between the soles of the feet and the legs that support the pelvis, and between the sacrum and the ilium; frees the spine from the ribs; and lets breath reach the spine, sacrum included.
This time, the Embodiment for session six was guided by the assistant, Hervé Baunard. It ran close to forty minutes, and as with session five the positions were varied. From sitting, walking, all fours and more, we worked with movements that direct awareness: how do you free the spine from the viscera of the abdominal cavity and from the rib cage? How do you ease the breath?
How do you direct awareness so that the sacrum can move freely from the pelvis? On all fours, you bring awareness to how the viscera in front of the spine — small intestine, large intestine, liver, heart — are suspended, and the question is how to heighten that awareness through imagery. How do you use the soles of the feet to release effort in the sacrum? It was wide-ranging.
What I came to understand better this time was how words shape awareness of the coccyx and sacrum at the base of the spine.
Not lengthening the spine from the coccyx to the cranium, but the sense of it lengthening.
The difference between putting in effort yourself and holding the sense of lengthening is considerable. I felt the possibilities that come not only from approaching the fascia but from bringing awareness to movement.
And the muscle groups central to session six lie on the back of the body, where the tonic muscles that Tonic Function depends on are concentrated (on tonic muscles, see “The Muscles That Tire and the Muscles That Don’t — Tonic Function and the Support of Posture“).
So the three movements learned in session six taught a way of attending to this: how to keep effort out of the superficial muscles in order to activate the deep ones.
In practice, when approaching the back of the leg — soles, heels, shins, hamstrings — and the spine, you are not applying pressure to the body. To activate what Rolfing calls the gamma motor system, the practitioner too works without effort in the superficial muscles, activating the deep muscles within their own body and moving toward the question of how to make open space. Imagining the body as a container, and moving slowly, both help.
How do you move the spine while releasing effort in the thoracic and abdominal cavities? I struggled through the practice. It is an important way of seeing when giving a Rolfing session, and I want to bring this approach into my work for a while after returning home.
One day of the workshop remains. The final day is session seven, so the focus will be the arms and the neck.
Note, August 2026
What this post captures is a deepening of understanding through a subtle difference in language.
From the coccyx to the cranium, the aim is not to lengthen the spine, but to sense the spine lengthening.
The two may sound like the same action, but the body responds differently. When we try to lengthen the spine, effort tends to enter somewhere. When we simply sense it lengthening, no particular part of the body needs to work or strain.
Six months earlier, in March, I had learned something similar from Gael Rosewood.
She introduced three words: Push, Reach, and Meet. Different words can be used for the same movement, yet each word changes how force travels through the body. The most effective word also varies from person to person. For me, phrases such as “feeling the connection with the earth” or “feeling the force rising from the ground to the crown of the head” worked best.
Gael explained that when someone senses something in the body but cannot put it into words, helping that person develop a new language for bodily experience is also an important part of a Rolfer’s role.
This post offers a concrete example. In Japanese, the difference between nobasu—“to lengthen something”—and nobiru—“to lengthen or extend by itself”—is only a single character. In the body, however, they describe two very different experiences.
The same distinction applies to the practitioner.
I also wrote that when working with the back of the leg and the spine, the practitioner is not simply applying pressure. The practitioner’s own body must remain free of unnecessary effort in the superficial muscles, while receiving support from the deeper muscles.
Handing a client the sense of lengthening, and the practitioner working without effort from the deep muscles, are the same thing. In both, it works better when you are not trying.
Nine years later it came as Shape the Hand. Rather than trying to do something with your hand, you let the client’s body shape it.
Change the word and the use of the body changes. That was never only about the other person.
There is one more thing here, about where the tonic muscles are. The muscle groups central to session six lie on the back of the body, and that is where they concentrate.
The muscles that hold posture are mostly at the back. Their work is keeping the body upright against gravity.
Finding Back Space, received in the 2025 Advanced Training, was about the practitioner sensing the space behind them so that their weight returns to the middle.
The back is hard to attend to. You can see what is in front; you cannot see behind. Which is why sensing it becomes a foundation. Session six was working with the same place.