Wednesday, January 24, 2017. Entering Munich via Haneda, Fukuoka, Haneda, and Paris, I was able to take part in the Rolf Movement Training with a delay of an hour and a half).
Since July 7, 2017, I have taken part in the Rolf Movement Training hosted by the European Rolfing Association (ERA). There are three stages, from Part 1 to Part 3, and in total I will take part in the workshop in Munich six times. I wrote about that in “With What Kind of Curriculum Does It Proceed?“
In Munich this time, I reached the first day of Phase 2 of the Rolf Movement Training. As a teacher from Part 1, Rita Geirola (hereafter Rita), an Italian active as a Rolf Movement Instructor and also as a Feldenkrais Practitioner, took the stage again as Instructor.
As Assistants, three people took part: France Hatt-Arnold of Switzerland, Aline Newton of the United States, and Nicola Carofiglio of Italy. It became a membership of an entirely different composition from last time.
Above all, it was a surprise to be able to meet again, at the ERA, Aline Newton (hereafter Aline), who, by some good fortune, visited Tokyo for sightseeing last year. Since Aline has the experience of having been taught directly by Hubert Godard many times, she seems likely to be helpful in learning Hubert’s ideas, including Tonic Function.
The ERA curriculum provides opportunities to learn from a variety of teachers. By the regulations of the Rolf Institute of Structural Integration (RISI), it is set to learn from four Rolf Movement Instructors, but I think it is wonderful that I have already been able to learn from seven different teachers.
In parallel, Phase 1 of Rolfing’s Basic Training was also held at the same time in another room. Since Pierpaola Volpones is taking part as an assistant, we met again. It also turned out that there are acquaintances among the Phase 1 members. It seems I’ll be able to enter the class in a convivial, harmonious way.
There were 15 participants in total. It became a richly international membership: one Belgian, one Swede, five Germans, one Pole, one Russian, one Czech, one Swiss, two British, one Dutch person, and one Japanese.
Phase 2 is ten days in total (January 24 – February 4, 2018, with January 27 and January 31 off). The plan is to give Rolf Movement sessions to two people in total: three times for one client (January 26, 30, and February 3), and three times for one student (January 25, 29, and February 2).
It becomes a perfect opportunity to polish the skill of building a three-session series of Rolf Movement.
After entering the ERA at 10:30 a.m., with a break in between, from 11 a.m. a session was done with Rolfers paired in twos. Centering on the technique learned in Phase 1, without approaching the fascia, a 40-minute session using only movement — AMP (Active Movement Participation) and gamma touch, and so on — was carried out (on AMP, see “What Comes into View Through Movement?: Words and Direction“).
Partner selection was done in an interesting way: those in the Rolfer role and those in the client role split into two sides, and those in the client role chose the Rolfer. From this, sessions by combinations of different Rolfers were carried out.
During the session, there was a cue from the Instructor and the Assistants — “Step away from the client, and take a brief moment to organize your own body” — and in that case, I took time to step away from the session for a moment and look at the state of my own body. In the sessions I usually do, I often finished things off quickly without taking such time. So I could feel the importance of making an effort to grasp the state of my own body.
According to Rita, in carrying out a session as a Rolfer, she explained that the following is important in doing Rolf Movement: “The state of your own body, its use, your habits and quirks, appear in the session just as they are. So, how do you grasp that for yourself?”
As a concrete example, in the body-observation work done at the end of the first day, first the state of the practitioner’s own body is known. After organizing the body axis and creating space within, the approach taken was to receive information while feeling the body information from the client through the body. Far more information can be obtained than by seeing with the eyes, but it is easy to fall into the subjective. In fact, when, in a group of five, four observed the body of one person, each felt a different place.
According to Rita, that is fine as it is, and she conveyed that if, in the end, the discrepancy can be filled between the client and the Rolfer through communication, the session goes well.
The Embodiment done first thing in the afternoon was also interesting: work for slowly feeling the two directionalities with respect to gravity, and, in a group of five with four surrounding one person, also feeling gravity while entrusting the body to the four.
Nine days remain. After returning home, I’d like to incorporate standalone Rolf Movement sessions too, so I want to learn firmly.