Sunday, February 4, 2018. The workshop reached its final day, with the whole schedule due to finish at three in the afternoon.
The final day had all fifteen students present an Embodiment of the kind done in the basic training, ten minutes each (see “Bodily Sensation — What Is Embodiment?“). Four people in a row, then a fifteen-minute break.
My turn came at the start of the third round. In front of the fifteen participants and the three instructors and assistants, I first had them walk. Then they paired up and sat back to back.
They moved under the condition of keeping their backs together. After that, one person closes their eyes and the other, eyes open, leads the movement.
With the instruction to move as creatively as possible, people from a range of cultural backgrounds produced quite different movements, and it was a pleasure to watch. Having taken turns with eyes closed, both then close their eyes and move. By that point laughter was going around the room, and I could feel that people were enjoying it thoroughly.
Finally, still back to back, they stood up and moved into walking, so that they could feel what being back to back had done to the body.
The other participants’ programs were interesting too. One prepared a cluttered floor, and in pairs the person with eyes open guided the one with eyes closed across it. Another was pole work, each person carrying a pole and exchanging it with whoever they met. A great deal of creativity came out.
During the fifteen-minute break, there was also time to look back on the following.
- What was the subject?
- To what kind of public could you bring it?
- How did you use the space?
- What was the pace, the rhythm?
- What was the language used — images, metaphors, description?
- How much were you leading, and how much were you leaving the space to explore?
Rita, as instructor, makes this kind of space for the students every time. What is good about it is that by making time to look back at yourself, she sets aside time to digest what you have learned.
And in Part 3, one theme will be how to convey what we have learned in Rolfing to a group. It feels like being shown a trailer, and I am looking forward to it.
On the last day the luggage is always waiting outside the classroom, and there is something forlorn in that. On the other hand, nearly twelve days in Munich, and part of me wants to be home. This has been a full stretch of time, and once back in Tokyo I would be glad to share what I have learned with anyone interested.
This time, because I was concentrating on the workshop, I had no time to put together blog articles; but there were several things that left an impression, so I’d like to touch on them from next time on.
I was concentrating on the workshop and had no time to put articles together, but several things stayed with me, and I want to take them up from next time.
Note, August 2026
On the final day, fifteen people presented ten-minute Embodiments. During the break, six questions were handed out.
What was the subject. Who would you bring it to. How did you use the space. What was the pace and rhythm. What language, images, metaphors, description did you use. And how much were you leading, how much leaving the space to explore.
The sixth is different in kind from the other five.
The first five ask what you did. Only the sixth asks what you did not hand over.
It is written as a pair: leading, and leaving the space. Did you guide, or did you leave room for exploration?
The core of Rolf Movement sits in that line.
And I wrote at the time that Rita, as instructor, makes this kind of space for the students every time — that by making time to look back at yourself, she sets aside time to digest what you have learned.
The teaching side is doing the same thing to the students.
Handing over questions rather than answers, and leaving time to digest them. Leaving room for the student to find for themselves what they have learned.
What I can see eleven years on is that this was doubled.
The student is asked how much room they left the client to explore. And the person asking is doing exactly that with the student. Content and form match.
Six months earlier, at the Supervision Workshop, Pierpaola Volpones had explained the difference between teaching and educating. To teach is to hand over a procedure step by step so that it can be memorized. To educate is to have the student work out for themselves how to proceed, drawing out what is already in them.
What Rita was doing is the second.
And the drawing out that gives educate its root shows up directly in that sixth question. Did you leave room for the other person to find it themselves?
There is something else in the record of that day: what the participants actually presented.
Moving back to back. One person closing their eyes while the other leads. Walking a cluttered floor with eyes closed, guided by a partner. Carrying a pole and exchanging it with whoever you meet.
Every one of them has the shape of entrusting yourself to someone.
And I wrote that laughter went around the room. That people were enjoying it thoroughly.
At what amounts to the final examination of the course, people were laughing.
Looking back, there is almost no record of tension across this whole course. There is a record of confusion. But that was bewilderment at having no procedure, not nerves about being assessed.
Not being graded, and being left room to explore, protect the same thing.
And only there can a person try something. The advice on the last day of Part 1 — do things you have never done, without fear of failing — holds only because that space is there.
Holding the space is a skill belonging to the teaching side. That day’s classroom was a demonstration of it.