Tuesday, October 17, 2017. To take up the Rolf Movement training in Munich again, I flew to Frankfurt on Asiana via Seoul.
This time, to see the Advanced Rolfer Takami Kamata again in Frankfurt, I stayed there on October 18, 23, and 24. The night of October 18 and the days from the 19th to the 22nd I spent in Munich.
On the night of the 18th I took the ICE between Frankfurt and Munich, arriving at Munich Central Station late that night.
October 19, clear skies. Perfect weather, a high of around twenty degrees, the autumn colors at their best — and the eighth day of Rolf Movement.
The day opened with us presenting Embodiment programs of our own. The homework had been to build, ourselves, the kind of Embodiment exercise that had opened each of the previous seven days (on Embodiment, see “Bodily Sensation — What Is Embodiment?“).
Each of us made a ten-minute program, and we split into two groups of eight to lead what we had put together. Mine centered on an exercise from session five for raising awareness of the iliopsoas, which links the upper and lower body, and I took it slowly. Working carefully, and helped by the atmosphere of the room, I had the sense that bodies came into order — and the ten minutes were gone before I knew it.
By the time of writing, the ninth day, October 20, has also ended, so let me take up both days here.
The two days were given to reviewing the underlying material for sessions eight and nine, and to introducing and practicing the manual work — how to bring the relevant movement into a session.
At the start, Paola handed out her procedure sheets for sessions eight through ten. Everything set out clearly on a single sheet of A4. Sessions eight and nine are surprisingly easy to lose the thread of, and having the procedures summarized concisely, with the purpose made clear from her perspective, kept me from getting confused during the practice.
The class had sixteen participants; one had fallen ill and could not attend from partway through. Among them was a viola player from the Netherlands.
Before the ninth day began, she played for us. And just before the class ended, she played again — so that we could observe how the sound changed across a day of practice, and what had changed in how she used her body.
Three pieces, about five minutes. Watching her before the class, effort was held in her shoulders and fingers, and she seemed not quite to have the ground under her. After the Rolf Movement work — session nine, the connection from the fingertips through the spine to the region of the rib cage — she played with the ground under her. The quality of the sound included, it became playing that moved you.
When I studied the Alexander Technique some years ago, I learned that simply attending to the relationship between the head and the spine changes the quality of instrumental playing. Here it was again, in Rolfing.
Session eight organizes the coordination between the shoulder girdle and the pelvic girdle. Session nine focuses on organizing from the extremities — the fingers and toes — toward the center. We practiced with the sense of an integration session, of connecting the whole.
Two things came into view.
- How do you feel the connection between upper and lower body, working from the extremities toward the middle?
- Where is effort being held — holding, in English — and how do you release it?
The practice brings in awareness through the breath, widening bodily sensation through the senses of smell and touch, and making contact in order to bring awareness to where effort sits. The movements are simple and very fine. Asking the instructors about what was unclear deepened my grasp of both the technique and the sessions.
Each Rolf Movement movement is simple in itself, but what matters is bodily awareness. The aim is not for the person receiving to memorize a movement, but for them to understand that there are options in how the body moves.
Changing bodily awareness takes time, and has to be done slowly. At speed, you move by thinking with the brain, the body’s habits come out, and no change in awareness is prompted (see “To Encourage Bodily Awareness: Slowly, Carefully, Into Words“).
So rather than accurate movement: which region do you bring awareness to? Where is the fixed point that the movement works from? What part of the body is moving? Phoric Function and the Fixed Point are what matter (see “Where to Look in Movement: Phoric Function and Fixed Point“). Where is the restriction — the holding — between the fixed point and the movement, and how do you support its release? Each of these became clearer.
Two days left. The tenth is given to reviewing session ten, and on the eleventh we do exchange sessions between Rolfers, with a chance to use everything so far. I want to enjoy the last two days as well.
Note, August 2026
There is an unusual record here.
One of the participants, from the Netherlands, was a viola player. She played before the ninth day began, and again just before it ended. With a day of practice in between, the whole room listened for how the sound would change.
Three pieces, five minutes or so. Watching her beforehand, effort was held in her shoulders and fingers, and she did not quite have the ground under her, I wrote. After working with session nine — the connection from the fingertips through the spine to the rib cage — she played with the ground under her. The quality of the sound included, it became playing that moved you.
The effects of Rolfing are usually available only to the person who received the work. It feels easier. The breath goes deeper. The posture has changed. All of it reported from the inside.
That day was different. It came out as sound.
And everyone listening heard the same change. It was not a matter of the player reporting how she felt.
Eleven years on, what I think is that this was one form of verification.
In August 2025, Robert Schleip published an analysis of twenty-three years of data. Across 563 people who completed a ten series, significant changes were confirmed in hip and knee flexion range, in the left-right symmetry of the trunk, and in rib cage expansion. It rests on records kept by the Rolfer Helen James, who measured for twenty-three years without once changing her procedure.
Measure the angle. Count. Run the statistics. That is one road.
Listening to the sound is another. It does not become a number the way range of motion does, but everyone present receives the same change. The state of a body comes out in the form of playing.
I had met the same thing before. Studying the Alexander Technique, I learned that attending to the relationship between the head and the spine changes the quality of playing. I mention it in this piece as well.
For someone who plays an instrument, changes in the body become sound. Which makes them convenient for confirming that something happened, you could say.
I do not think that is all of it, though.
In playing, the standard for whether it is going well sits inside the player. She is judging as she listens to her own sound. And that standard moved across the day. Playing with the ground under her means, among other things, that she felt it there.
A change observable from outside, and the player’s own felt sense, pointed to the same place.
There is one more thing here. At speed, you move by thinking with the brain, and the body’s habits come out. So you go slowly.
Playing is the same. Sound made by thinking and sound made by the body are different, and the people listening can tell.
The reason for going slowly had become audible in the classroom that day.