Introduction
From June 15, I am revising the fees for Rolfing sessions.
Last time I set out the reasons for the revision, centered on what it means to organize the body, and how that turns into organizing one’s own perception.
This time I want to write as concretely as I can, drawing on the words of past clients, about what a single session brings to a client’s body and to the life that follows. How that change comes about. And why it lasts.
What Happens in the Body That Day
After a session, many people say the same thing. “How it feels to stand is different.”
What had been stiff comes undone, the breath deepens, and the texture of the floor arrives clearly through the soles of the feet. Gravity passes through the body without catching. The outline of one’s own body is felt distinctly, from the inside.
Sachiko Aimoto, a freelance announcer, shared her impressions after a session organizing the movement around the pelvis (her testimonial):
“You didn’t touch my back or shoulders, and yet they became easier.”
“My lower back, shoulders, and legs — I feel the connection.”
Places that were not touched directly come undone as one connected whole. The body, it is fair to say, is made that way. This is a little different from simply feeling good. It is the sensation of a body beginning to remember its own way of standing. Still, this is only the entrance.
It Does Not End in One Session
The greatest difference between massage or manual therapy and Rolfing is, I think, here.
Rather than becoming easier and returning to the old state within days, the body is brought into a condition where it can move itself again. I do not pry open hardness with force. I set in order the place where a person’s own body begins to change of its own accord. That, as a practitioner, is what I consider my most important role.
That is why the change is slow to return, and why it holds after a person goes back to daily life. Over the past several years, what deepened most through the Advanced Rolfer Training was exactly this way of relating — setting in order the place where change happens.
A man who had long wanted to change a habit of loading the outer edge of his heels wrote this after finishing the ten sessions (his testimonial):
“It was not something that could be corrected just by wanting to, and yet it changed completely.”
And — “With massage or manual therapy, it loosens for a while and then returns. But with Rolfing, because you come to be aware of how you use your own body, you basically do not go back to the previous state.”
It is fair to say the opposite is happening from returning to the starting point with each visit.
👉 Related: The Path to Advanced Rolfer Certification — A Summary
How, Then, Does That Change Come About
This is what I most want to convey: why it does not return.
First, something to make clear. I am not prying open the hardness of a client’s body with force and changing the body by pushing. My role is the reverse. To wait, until the conditions are there for the client’s body to feel that it may move on its own.
To wait for the change that is necessary for that person to happen.
Deep change, in this way, begins to move on its own not when we push it in, but when that sense of ease reaches the body.
For that, the session goes very slowly.
Ordinarily we move the body from the head. Quickly, efficiently, thinking before moving — and within such days, the sensation of the body itself is gradually pushed behind. To move with the body is something else. Not issuing commands from the head, but moving with the sensations inside the body as the guide. Let go of speed once, and move with care, and the difference becomes clear.
Where one is tense, where movement is hard to come by — these become visible as answers inside the client.
And there is one more thing I hold to: putting that sensation into words. Not by teaching, “feel it like this here.”
“What is happening now?”
“Where could you let go?”
Questions that cannot be answered with yes or no, put slowly. The client searches for their own words in answer. “It is catching here.” “Here it softened, suddenly.” As what is felt becomes words, a body sensation that had been vague takes on an outline, and a new movement settles into the client. A movement memorized quickly with the head slips away soon; a movement that has settled together with one’s own words stays in the body for a long time.
When I was in training in Germany, one of the Rolfing instructors, Pierpaola Volpones, taught the difference between Teach and Educate. To teach is to pass on a procedure step by step so that the student learns a technique. To educate is to have students think for themselves about how to proceed, so as to draw out what is already in them — edu in the sense of “drawing out.”
When a practitioner turns attention toward Educate rather than Teach, the necessary change comes about by itself. And the client, once it becomes visible and settles in, becomes able to choose. An old habit long held tight is let go a little at a time, and a new way of moving is met. The change is not something the practitioner gave from outside; it is born from within the client. That is why the change takes up residence in them.
👉 Related: Supervision WS – Pierpaola Volpones (3) — The Last Day
Rolf Movement – Part 1 (4) — Slow, Careful, Put into Words
What the Ten-Session Path Carries
Rolfing has a classical sequence of ten sessions. This is not the same as repeating a similar treatment ten times. The place and the depth to be worked are decided in advance for each session — a single designed path.
The first few sessions begin at the surface of the body. The breath comes undone, and the lightness of standing changes. The middle goes deeper. The parts that support the body from within wake up, and upper and lower body gradually begin to connect. The final stretch is toward integration of the whole. What had been scattered comes together, and in the center of the client, a single axis quietly grows.
What began as a small intimation turns, with each session, into a definite sense of something held. Many people go through such a path.
That said, there is no need to begin with ten sessions. What matters is whether it can be felt in a trial session. To confirm, not with the head but with the body, what is happening in your body now. Whether to go further can be decided after that.
👉 Related: What Is the Rolfing Ten-Series? — Three Phases and the Flow of Each Session
The Way of Feeling Itself Moves a Little
When the body softens, the texture of the floor, how gravity lands, and the depth of the breath all change. And, strangely, that change reaches, before one notices, into how one feels about oneself and the world.
Toward the same events, a little room opens in the heart. A snap judgment settles. “The head understands, but somehow I cannot move” — the brake the body had been applying just before that comes undone, little by little.
I think of this as a process in which perception comes into order through the body. It is the view that opens out beyond posture changing and symptoms easing.
Some of the Voices
Reiko Hélène Yamada, an office worker who completed the ten-session series, sent me a record of her changes (her testimonial). In it, matters of the body and matters of feeling stood side by side as one continuous thing.
As bodily experience — “My neck bends back easily now.” “The catching in my hip joints is gone.” “I understood where my sacrum is, as a felt sense.”
And in the same period — “The range in which I can understand people other than myself has widened.” “Something like a center settled in me.” “Even in situations where I used to blame myself, I can now think instantly, ‘this was not my place to be.'”
The body coming undone, and the way of feeling opening. That these happen not separately but continuously — this is what I most want to convey.
After Leaving the Treatment Room
Once the session ends and the client is alone — it could be said that this is where it truly begins.
So now I can say much more concretely than before how to be with the body at home, what to continue and what to let go. Together we find movements that suit that client’s body, without strain, and where to place attention.
Ayako Kakizaki, who completed the ten sessions, wrote this (her testimonial): “In ordinary life, and when taking a yoga asana, I have come to keep a fine observation of my body.” “Together with the inner side, I can catch the catching and stagnation inside my body by myself.”
This, I think, is what I want to convey to clients. Even without the practitioner beside them, a client becomes able to put the changes in their own body into words. Being able to carry the change of each session through to the next, by the client’s own hand — that, I think, is what matters.
Conclusion
This time, centered on the voices of clients, I have set out what kind of change comes about from receiving Rolfing, and why that change settles in.
The new fees begin on June 15. For details, please see the notice of fee revision. First, please confirm it once in your own body, in a trial session.