Saturday, January 26, 2018. The first three days of training finished.
I wrote about the first day in “The State of the Practitioner’s Own Body Is Reflected in the Session“; this ten-day Rolf Movement training places importance on practice. I will offer a three-session series to two people (a student and an outside client).
The first day, when classes resumed. When splitting into the Rolfer role and the client role, how should each observe and evaluate themselves? The following guide was introduced by Rita Geirola (hereafter Rita). As ever, it was written on large drawing paper and posted during the workshop.
The content:
Rolfer (the Rolfer role):
- What was your felt sense in the approach? (what “felt sense” arose when carrying out the session?)
- What “model” for body reading? (what model was used when doing body observation?)
- What level you focus and what triggered you there? (at what level was observation done, and why?)
- How do you strategize? (how was the strategy formed?)
- What “Technique” you choose? (what manual technique/skill was used?)
- Your felt sense while working (what “felt sense” was used during the session?)
- How did you evaluate the result and the quality of relationship? (how were the result and the relationship evaluated?)
Client (the client role):
- Felt welcomed? (was a sense of being welcomed felt?)
- Felt “readed”? (was a sense of being observed felt?)
- Did the work matched your need? (was the session carried out to match the client’s needs?)
- How do you evaluate the result and the quality of relationship? (how were the result and the relationship evaluated?)
What is interesting in this workshop is that, when designing the three-session series, we did not learn the fine points, step by step, such as “form the strategy like this, and the procedure is this!” in the way of the ten-session Rolfing procedure learned so far.
If anything, the emphasis is placed on building the strategy and technique afresh each time, in line with the guide above, according to intuition and body observation.
As for words, the Assistant Aline Newton (hereafter Aline) introduced the English phrase “Come to Term” (experience causes something to be remembered as words).
When doing body observation of the client, which to select from among the various information?
By the Rolfer placing a hand on a particular place on the client to direct awareness there — called in English a Point of Reference — how does the body change?
When facing the client, what words to use? For example, not only pointing out problems, but what becomes a strength, a resource (Reference)? Which part awareness goes to and does not go to? Putting into words the places likely to become an Opportunity (= a trigger for directing awareness). And so on — the impression is that this is being learned through practice.
As for body observation, I myself had unclear points about the idea of Pre-movement in Rolf Movement (also called Primary Lesion in osteopathy), and I had an opportunity to ask Aline.
According to Aline, observing where force enters in order to stabilize the body before performing an action — there lies the significance of observing the action before an action is performed = Pre-movement.
And, she says, Pre-movement becomes clear through observing the transition from standing to sitting. As an example, in the case of a person who stood up with force in the vicinity of the coccyx and sit bones, it was found that, between directing no awareness at all and releasing the force around the coccyx, the way force is put in when standing up and pushing the other person out with the hand is completely different.
Next time, I’d like to write about the relationship with Tonic Function.