Wednesday, October 9, 2019. Out of Haneda Airport, into Munich via Dubai. My first training in Munich in one year and eight months.
What surprised me on the journey was that no stamp went into my passport on the way out (they will stamp it if you ask).
I had renewed my ten-year passport, and by the time I reached Germany there was still nothing in it — the immigration officer could not quite keep from smiling.
Unlike Japan, Munich runs from a low of 6 degrees to a high of 18. The first day was rainy, but from the second day on the sky cleared, and the weather has been very easy to be in. The day after I arrived, on October 10, the training began (I also wrote about this in Taking Part in the Workshop Held in Munich, October 10–13, 2019 (First Half)).
The Rolf Instructors this time are three: Rita Geirola (hereafter Rita), France Hatt-Arnold, and Hervé Baunard. Part 3 of the Rolf Movement Training began with eighteen participants, the largest number yet.
The first day was the homework presentation. Drawing on what we had learned in Part 1 and Part 2, each of us had to put together and present a ten-to-fifteen-minute Embodiment. Since I had presented at the end of Part 2 (see Presenting an Embodiment to the Group), I was exempted, and watching each participant’s Embodiment was interesting — the individuality came through.
Before the presentations began, six points were explained:
- How was the process?
- What was easy, and what was uneasy?
- What triggered your creativity?
- What meaning did you discover?
- How does this meaning relate to general principles?
- What was your strategy to connect the specific to the general?
As in the previous training there was a guide, and alongside it the handout on feedback that Giovanni Felicioni had given out in Phase II was shared again as a printout (see Feedback: How Is It Given and Received in the Training?).
After each presentation, we proceeded in this order:
- With what purpose the presenter had put the content together
- What impression the other students had received
- Feedback and advice from the Rolf Instructors, and the points for improvement they raised
Because time was given to each person’s feedback, we finished about thirty minutes late.
The aim of Part 3 is “Introduction to Leading Rolf Movement Groups” (for details, see What Kind of Curriculum Does It Follow?).
According to Rita, there is a great deal to be learned by each person practicing an Embodiment and presenting it. So on the second day, after a briefing on the basics of Embodiment, we formed groups of three (six groups in all), with one as leader and two as assistants, and took turns presenting a ten-minute Embodiment. Until the final day, the three of us will work out the content together through discussion.
After a thirty-minute preparation period, the first person’s presentation finished on the second day; the second and third will come on the third day and the final day. Mine is third, so I present on the last day.
What makes the Rolfing and Rolf Movement training worth taking is that the Instructors of the European Rolfing Association (ERA) create an atmosphere in which it is safe to try.
In December 2012 I took a class at Under the Light Yoga School (UTL) to earn the RYT200 yoga teaching qualification (the class was called TT3). I taught a fifteen-minute yoga class in front of fifteen people. I got through it, but I remember being very nervous.
The Rolf Movement Embodiment is much the same — presenting in English in front of seventeen people — but what is good is that the participants themselves come to it wanting to enjoy it. The Part 3 training divides into a first half (October 10–13) and a second half (November 27 – December 1). The first half asks for a ten-minute Embodiment; the second half asks you to build and present an hour-long one.
I am thinking of offering a class that brings yoga and Rolfing together, so I want to keep going and see how I change, and how I learn to present.
Note, August 2026
The printout handed out that day looked familiar.
It was the material on feedback that Giovanni Felicioni had given us in Phase II. What I had received in a Munich classroom in the autumn of 2014 was handed out again five years later, in the same city, at the same association.
Between the two occasions, where I stood had changed.
In 2014 the handout was a framework for being assessed. It told me what would be looked at, and in what form the words would come back to me. In 2019 it was a framework for putting my own words to someone else’s presentation. The same sheet of paper had moved from a guide for the person receiving to a guide for the person giving.
Where its content came from, I only learned later. Giovanni’s approach to feedback rests on Marshall Rosenberg’s nonviolent communication, and turns on separating observation from evaluation — stating what you saw and pronouncing on whether it was good are two different tasks.
When I choose continuing education courses now, this is the first thing I look at. Is the feedback grounded in observation, or in the judgment of whoever is giving it? A weakness pointed out will land if it comes from observation; praise will not stay with me if it is only opinion. Trace that criterion back and it arrives at a single sheet of paper from the autumn of 2014.
There is one more thing I did not notice at the time.
Six questions were handed out before the presentations, and a three-step order after them. Questions and a sequence, and nothing else. No instruction on what kind of Embodiment to make. What to present was left to each person.
Part 2 had the same shape. Questions were given; procedure was not. And in the Advanced Training in 2025 I would receive Jeff Maitland’s three questions. In having no procedure in them, the three belong to one line.
What was handed over was always the question.