Sunday, October 22, 2017. The whole of Part 1 came to an end — July 7–9, August 31 – September 3, and October 19–22, eleven days in all.
Alongside Pierpaola Volpones (hereafter Paola), Rita Geirola (hereafter Rita), and the assistant Hervé Baunard, Giovanni Felicioni (hereafter Giovanni) joined as an assistant from October 20.
The tenth day covered how the ten sessions of Rolfing are brought together as a whole, how a client arrives at working on their own, and what movement can do toward integrating the upper and lower body.
Sitting, with awareness on the breath. Supported through the lower limbs — knees, soles of the feet, hip joints — and bringing in movement of the upper body, ribs, scapulae, spine, wrists and shoulders in time with the breath. Working that way, I could watch unnecessary effort leaving one region of the body after another. Here too, what matters is connecting with the other person and going slowly and carefully.
Paola, Rita, and my fellow Rolfers all pointed to the pace I was working at. It turned out I was guiding movement faster than I had realized, and I was brought back to how much slow, careful work matters.
We did two kinds of practice. The movements are fine, and they are performed in regions the body does not usually attend to, so fatigue built up across the whole group. On the spur of the moment came an instruction: everyone outside for thirty minutes, away from your phones, go for a walk. Late October in Munich brings the autumn colors earlier than Tokyo. Alongside the scenery, it was a good change of air.
The eleventh and final day was a fifty-minute Rolfing session in groups of three, rotating the roles of Rolfer, client, and supporter, three rounds in all. The advice was to try things we had never tried, without fear of failing. I worked with sitting and standing, building a session that brought awareness to how the body moves.
This training began by going back over the procedures of the Rolfing ten series. Looking back, four things stand out.
- That breath, movement, and support through the hands all make muscular movement easier to be aware of.
- That slow movement matters, because it distinguishes movement performed by the brain from movement performed by the body.
- That feedback from the teachers, received from time to time, lets you look at your own technique from outside.
- That the basic procedures are worth revisiting from time to time.
The brain, in particular, wants to think quickly. Given that improving everyday habits calls for movement through the body, the realization that a small movement at a slow pace can produce substantial change was, I think, the largest one.
Next is Phase 2, held from January 24 to February 4, 2018. Learning intensively for ten days, with sessions with clients coming in as well, it seems there will be much to learn. Including what was learned this time, I’d like to incorporate it into my own sessions and improve through practice.
Next comes Part 2, January 24 to February 4, 2018. Ten days of concentrated study with client sessions included, so there should be a great deal to take in. I want to bring what I have learned here into my own work and improve through practice.
Note, August 2026
At the close of eleven days, four things are set down.
That breath, movement, and support through the hands make muscular movement easier to notice. That slow movement matters, because it separates what the brain is doing from what the body is doing. That feedback from teachers lets you see your own work from outside. And that the basic procedures are worth revisiting.
Read eleven years later, two of the four are saying the same thing.
Going slowly, and revisiting the basics. Both are about not moving forward quickly.
The course itself was designed not to move quickly. Eleven days split into three blocks, in July, September, and October, with two months and then six weeks in between. The homework in those gaps was to try what we had learned in our own sessions.
The reason appears in the current description of the course: it is divided into three so that the Rolfers taking it can work what they learned into their practice, and return to the classroom carrying the questions and insights that arose there.
Learning and using are made to alternate, deliberately.
And across those eleven days, what came up repeatedly was going slowly. On the fourth day Paola told me that thinking with the brain takes only a moment, but giving new awareness to the body’s habits takes time. On the final day I was told again that I was guiding movement faster than I realized.
The design of the course and the teaching inside the room point the same way: reduce the speed.
What I think now is that this is the character of Rolf Movement itself.
With manual work, there is a point to being accurate and efficient. That is exactly what Peter Schwind handed over in three days: which test clarifies which symptom, which muscle you enter and how. Raise the precision and you get results.
Rolf Movement is otherwise. What is at stake is whether the other person’s brain takes up a new option, and that is not settled by how fast the practitioner works.
This piece says as much. 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.
If you want something memorized, demonstrate it accurately and quickly. If you want to offer an option, the other person needs time to choose.
There is one more thing recorded here.
When fatigue had built up across the group, the instruction came: everyone outside for thirty minutes, away from your phones, go for a walk. Late October in Munich, the autumn colors starting.
No attempt to solve it inside the classroom.
The fatigue came from working in regions the body does not usually attend to. That is a matter of the body, not of concentration. So they sent us out.
Something similar happened nine years later in the Advanced Training. In the work with the soles of the feet that Ray McCall says he covers every time, you suppose there are eyes in the soles, open and close them, and observe your relationship with space while walking. The idea of going outside the room is the same.
A course that works with the body, solving things through the body. It sounds obvious, and I do not think it always is.
Part 1 is finished. Part 2 brings client sessions.