A month and a half has passed since I took part in the Rolf Movement training hosted by the ERA (European Rolfing Association) in Munich, Germany, over the four days from Thursday, October 10 to Sunday, October 13, 2019 (see Taking Part in the Workshop Held in Munich, October 10–13, 2019 (First Half)).
Over the five days from Wednesday, November 27 to Sunday, December 1, 2019, the final block of the Rolf Movement training will be held. This time I plan to take ANA’s direct flight from Haneda to Munich.
The aim of Part 3 is “Introduction to Leading Rolf Movement Groups” (for details, see What Kind of Curriculum Does It Follow?).
On the second day of Part 3, after an introduction to the basics of Embodiment, we formed groups of three (six groups in all) — one leader, two assistants — and took turns presenting a ten-minute Embodiment. Until the final day, the three of us worked out the content together through discussion (see Presenting the Embodiment: Learning Each Person’s Intention and Points for Improvement).
What we learned centered on the intention behind building a class, and the four days went by quickly (see How Is the Class Proceeding? — The Flow of a Day and The First Half (Four Days) Is Over. What Came into View?).
This time, a fifty-minute Embodiment is required. Because it needs preparing, Rita Geirola (hereafter Rita), the Rolf Movement Instructor, sent an email a month in advance.
The main aim of this part is to hold a Rolf Movement class. The first four days were given over to how to hold a class from the teacher’s side. How do you build an Embodiment? How does what each student has built connect to a general idea, to a frame, to a particular application? What have you embodied so far? And what are you curious about, and in what form will you pursue it from here?
The five days of the second half focus on the teaching itself.
Rita sets out nine points to attend to:
- How do you build the lessons — do you take them as part of a process, or as one large experience?
- When you build a lesson, how do you keep it linked to the basic Rolfing understanding of how bodies organize in gravity?
- The teacher’s presence
- Wording
- Adaptability to the class
- The ability to deal with group dynamics
- The capacity to read the flow of the class, from the structural topics of a single student through to the general energetic level, body reading included
- How to modulate a lesson, or a series of lessons, from beginning through middle to end
- Introduction and closure
With these in mind, within an hour’s allowance, a fifty-minute class is to be presented, followed by ten minutes of feedback.
In building the fifty-minute lesson, there are further things to consider:
- What kind of client is this particular lesson appropriate for?
- In what context can you imagine proposing it?
- Is it meant as a single experience — a presentation of the work, say — or as one moment within a process that continues over time?
- Is it suited to beginners, or to people who already have experience in sensing and organizing the body in movement?
- Is the goal of the lesson something you want to explore, or is it more a response to the needs of the group you are working with?
So today, November 16, 2019, I sent Rita a proposal by email, covering two things above all: the title of the lesson, and the order in which the class would run.
Ten days until departure. How will I build the class, and what will come of it? I am hoping it yields something I can use in the yoga classes I want to hold, so I am looking forward to it.
Note, August 2026
What fills this piece is questions. Nine that Rita sent by email, and five more to hold in mind while building the lesson. Fourteen in all. Every one of them is put as a question. Not one sentence tells you to do anything.
Against an assignment to build a fifty-minute class, that was what I was given. Nothing about what to cover, nothing about how to proceed.
The shape held throughout the Rolf Movement training. Part 2 gave questions and no procedure. The first half of Part 3 set six questions before the presentations and left it there. And in the Advanced Training in 2025 I would receive Jeff Maitland’s three questions. Different names, different years, the same way of handing something over.
What it meant to have no procedure was not clear to me then. Partway through Part 2, I wrote about losing sight of where any of it was heading, and feeling uneasy. Having no procedure did not mean being free. It meant having to decide.
Looking back, I think handing over questions was itself what the training was teaching. What Part 3 asks of you is to hold a Rolf Movement class for a group. What you would give your own students was being shown to you in the manner of the giving. What Rita said again and again was: who are you teaching? Third on the list of nine points is the teacher’s presence, and fourth is the choice of words. It is not technique that is listed, but where you are standing.
There is one more thing recorded here: the length of the preparation.
The assignment came on October 13. The email arrived a month before the training. The proposal went out on November 16. Departure was November 26. A month and a half spent building fifty minutes.
The reason the Rolf Movement training comes in three parts, the ERA explains, is so that Rolfers can take what they meet in the classroom back into their practice and return with the questions it raises. This month and a half is that in miniature. The whole course was designed to slow you down across two years and five months, and the month and a half inside it had the same shape.