Continuing Education After Rolfing Certification — The 18-Credit Framework and a Map of the Teachers

Introduction

Certification is not the end of the training. To go on to the Advanced Training, you need eighteen credits of continuing education. One day equals one credit.

And here a different kind of question arrives. What you study is now yours to decide.

In the basic training, the teachers came with the dates. Who was teaching was announced in advance, so choosing your dates was choosing your teachers. The Advanced Training works the same way: the session and its faculty are set. The only places where you choose for yourself are the mentoring sessions and continuing education.

Workshops are running all over the world. Fascia, cranium, viscera, nervous system, movement, trauma. How do you decide?

This article sets out the ground for that decision from three angles: what a course works with, who teaches it, and where it is held. As an example, I have included the six workshops I took between 2016 and 2017.

For the path to becoming a Rolfer itself, I have written a separate article (What It Takes to Become a Rolfer — An Overview of Qualifications, Organizations, and Training, Explained by a Rolfer). This one picks up where that leaves off.

First, know the framework

The eighteen credits cannot be assembled any way you like. The categories are set.

The current breakdown at the European Rolfing Association (ERA) is ten credits of Intermediate (manual work), five of Movement, and three of Elective.

What separates the categories is not only subject matter. Who teaches is part of the condition. Intermediate must come from Rolfing Faculty, Movement from Rolf Movement Faculty, Elective from any approved instructor.

Which means that two workshops covering the same manual material can fall into different categories depending on the teacher’s standing. That matters when you choose.

The organizing body, on the other hand, is not restricted. Of the six I took, four were organized by the Japan Rolfing Association (JRA), one by the ERA, and one appears to have been organized privately. As long as the teacher meets the requirement, the location and the host are open.

What a course works with — the five taxonomies

Rolfing has a way of dividing which aspect of the body you are working with. These are the Taxonomies. Jeffrey Maitland, Jan Sultan, and Michael Salveson were central to setting them out, and they function as a tool for choosing which vantage to work from, given the state of the person in front of you.

There are five.

  • Structural and segmental (geometric). Working on structure itself — skeleton, fascia. The word comes from geometry, and it points to seeing the body from the side of shape and arrangement.
  • Biomechanical. Concerned with movement and the recovery of function.
  • Functional. Weighted toward patterns of movement. Rolf Movement belongs here.
  • Psychobiological. Entering through the relationship with emotion and the nervous system. Somatic Experiencing borders on this one.
  • Energetic. Working from the side of the field, or of information. SourcePoint Therapy, YIELD, and craniosacral work fall here.

Of these, the structural-segmental and the functional are the classical lineage descending from Ida Rolf: practice along the sequence of the ten series. The remaining three were added later, or brought in from outside.

What matters is that the five do not have five separate aims. Every one of them can act on structure. Every one supports the process by which a body adapts and organizes itself within gravity. There is one destination and five ways in.

So the question is never which is correct. It is what this person needs now, and which entrance is open to you.

When you are choosing continuing education, these five — geometric, biomechanical, functional, psychobiological, energetic — work as a map. What is thin in your practice at the moment? Precision of touch? The capacity to enter from movement? An understanding of the nervous system? You can work backwards from there.

On the Taxonomies themselves, I have written in more detail in the article on the Advanced Training (Journey to Becoming an Advanced Rolfer — A Summary of the Road to Certification).

Who teaches — every teacher has their strengths

The map is useful because every teacher brings a different emphasis to the work. Nobody emphasizes all five dimensions equally.

There are two advanced tracks: the Advanced Training in manual work, and the Rolf Movement training. The faculty differ, so I will list them separately.

On the Advanced Training side.

For structure: Jan Sultan, Tessy Brungardt, Peter Schwind. Sultan and Brungardt taught a training together in 2025. I have not taken it, and I would like to at some point.

For psychobiology: Pedro Prado, Lael Keen. Both are based in Brazil.

For energetic work: Ray McCall, Hiroyoshi Tahata.

On the Rolf Movement side.

This is the functional lineage — teachers in the line of Hubert Godard. The current ERA program is taught by Rita Geirola, France Hatt-Arnold, and Pierpaola Volpones across its three modules.

Choosing who you learn from is also choosing which taxonomy you come into contact with.

One note on the Rolf Movement training: it is an advanced course taken after the basic training, and it is better thought of as a path in its own right than as a way of collecting credits. The ERA’s intensive program runs thirty days — longer than the twenty-four days of the Advanced Training in manual work.

That said, no one teacher sits inside a single taxonomy. Jonathan Martine, whose workshop I took, is an Advanced Rolfer, a Rolf Movement practitioner, a registered movement therapist, and a Pilates instructor. His course on the mobility of the fascia surrounding the nerves touches structure in that it is fascia, psychobiology in that it is the nervous system, and biomechanics in that it is mobility. It belongs everywhere and nowhere in particular.

The map is useful, but actual teachers and courses often span more than one area.

The teachers I actually studied with

Here is who taught me. No taxonomy labels — only the fact of who taught which course.

Basic training (2014–2016). Phase I: Rita Geirola (Movement), Konrad Obermeier (Anatomy), Giovanni Felicioni (Touch), with Fuensanta Muñoz de la Cruz, Caroline May, and Patricia von Weichs assisting. Phase II: Giovanni Felicioni, with Patricia von Weichs assisting. Phase III: Jörg Ahrend-Löns, with Andrea Clusen assisting. Supervision Workshop: Pierpaola Volpones, with Fuensanta Muñoz de la Cruz assisting.

Mentoring (2014–2016). Keith Graham, Alan Richardson, Hubert Godard, Kathrin Grobelnik.

Rolf Movement (2017–2019). Thirty days, seven teachers. Part I: Pierpaola Volpones, Rita Geirola, Giovanni Felicioni, Hervé Baunard. Part II: France Hatt-Arnold, Rita Geirola, Aline Newton, Nicola Carofiglio. Part III: France Hatt-Arnold, Rita Geirola, Hervé Baunard.

Continuing education (2016–2017). Jonathan Martine, Sharon Wheeler, Lael Keen, Gael Rosewood, Peter Schwind.

Advanced Training (2025). Ray McCall, Hiroyoshi Tahata.

More than twenty people, once you remove the repeats. And some of them appear in more than one course.

Rita Geirola taught Movement in Phase I and was in all three Parts of Rolf Movement. She was at the entrance and at the exit.

Giovanni Felicioni taught Touch in Phase I and all of Phase II, and was in Part I of Rolf Movement. He teaches both the manual and the movement side.

Pierpaola Volpones taught the Supervision Workshop and Part I of Rolf Movement. Andrea Clusen assisted in Phase III and now teaches Touch as a main faculty member of the ERA.

You see the same faces at the front of the room more often than you might expect.

Where you study — what each region leans toward

Regions have their strong lineages.

Europe is the functional lineage. Hubert Godard’s Tonic Function runs down the spine of the ERA, and Rolf Movement belongs to that line. Alongside it are Peter Schwind’s structural work and Konrad Obermeier’s viscera and embryology.

Brazil is strong in the psychobiological lineage. Pedro Prado is internationally known for the psychobiological perspective in structural integration. Lael Keen also works with the relationship between the body and trauma.

The United States holds several lineages side by side. Jan Sultan’s structure, Sharon Wheeler’s approach to bone, Ray McCall’s energetic work. And the framework of principles from Jeffrey Maitland. From an understanding in which Rolfing meant following the sequence of the ten series, to a practice built individually out of principles — Maitland, Sultan, and Salveson carried that shift.

For Japan, it is more accurate to look at individual lineages than regional ones. The only Japanese Rolfing instructor is Nobuko Muth, and she lives in Boulder. Teaching inside Japan, the Japanese faculty is effectively limited to Hiroyoshi Tahata in Rolf Movement. Where there are few people, who you learn from is directly what you learn.

How Brazil designed it

Brazil has an arrangement the others do not.

You can take the Rolf Movement certification alongside the Rolfing certification. It is open to certified Rolfers, to IASI-certified structural integration practitioners, and to Rolfing students who have completed Phase II. You can enter before being certified. At the ERA it comes after Level 3 — after certification — which is the difference.

The program is 225 hours across three modules. Each module runs twelve days: two five-day teaching units with two days off between them. Online integration meetings sit between the modules.

The person who built this design was Monica Caspari (1953–2019). With her colleagues at the ABR, she put together a program that treats structure and movement as two aspects of one body of work. Movement work cannot be separated from structural work in practice — she saw that early.

She also studied Godard’s theory of perception deeply and made that vast, complex research intelligible to Rolf Movement students around the world. She taught in Brazil, Germany, Japan, Australia, South Africa, Argentina, and across the United States.

She left something written about cultural difference, too. Everyone is organized in relation to space and gravity, but the way that is experienced is particular to each person and shaped by culture — so respecting cultural difference is essential. Traveling the world, she came to see that Rolfing’s assumptions about the body do not hold everywhere and for everyone.

Lineages overlap inside one person

Region and lineage do not map onto each other cleanly.

Look at the Brazilian faculty and nearly all of them studied with Hubert Godard. The curriculum lists tonic function, haptic perception, phoric orientation. A psychobiological lineage resting on a European functional foundation.

Paula Mattoli of the ABR studied visceral manipulation with Liz Gaggini, craniosacral work at the Milne Institute, and Somatic Experiencing with Peter Levine, and has also studied with Jan Sultan, Jeff Maitland, Lael Keen, and Monica Caspari. American structure and theory, Brazilian psychobiology, and the energetic lineage, all inside one person.

So asking which lineage in which region to choose does not get you far. The tendencies are worth knowing, but what actually gets handed to you in the room is whatever that person carries.

What I chose

Between September 2016 and July 2017 I took six workshops: twenty-six days, twenty-six credits.

Intermediate, fifteen credits. Neural Fascial Mobilization Parts 1 and 2 (Jonathan Martine, twelve days, Tokyo); Conceptual and Technical Aspects of Classical Rolfing (Peter Schwind, three days, Munich).

Elective, seven credits. Bone Work (Sharon Wheeler, three days, Tokyo); Structural Integration for the Cranium (Sharon Wheeler, three days, Seattle); Trauma Workshop (Lael Keen, one day, Tokyo).

Movement, four credits. Dimensions of Integration (Gael Rosewood, four days, Tokyo).

Sharon Wheeler’s two courses and Lael Keen’s one fall under Elective because of the teacher’s standing, not the content. None of the three is on the ERA faculty, so a manual course and a trauma course alike count as elective credits. The category is set by who teaches, not by what is taught.

But those twenty-six credits did not simply satisfy the requirement. I entered the Rolf Movement training in 2017, and the Movement and Elective categories were covered there (more below). Which means the only credits doing requirement work were the fifteen Intermediate. The other seven and four were not taken to fill categories; they were taken because I needed what was in them.

The order was reversed. I did not choose to fit the framework. What I chose happened to fit it.

By taxonomy: structural and segmental (Peter Schwind, Sharon Wheeler), functional (Gael Rosewood), psychobiological (Lael Keen), and one that crosses several (Jonathan Martine). The energetic lineage I did not touch in this period.

I did not notice that until much later. The Advanced Training I took in 2025 was centered on energetic work. The territory I had left aside in continuing education was the one I would receive directly in the advanced course.

Choices come out uneven. And sometimes that unevenness sets the road that follows.

What each workshop gave me, and what I look at when choosing a course, I have set down separately (How to Choose Continuing Education — Four Things I Look At Before Signing Up).

The requirements change

The continuing education requirements have been reorganized over the past decade. Before you choose, it is worth confirming what is being asked now.

The breakdown changed

As of 2018, the breakdown was nine credits of Manipulation, three of Movement, three of Internal Motion, and three of Elective. Eighteen in total.

Now it is ten credits of Intermediate Required, five of Movement, and three of Elective. The same eighteen, with different contents.

The largest change is that the Internal Motion category is gone.

Internal Motion was three credits for the movement of the interior. Visceral manipulation and craniosacral therapy lived there — a territory where you are not catching a shape from the outside, as with skeleton or fascia, but touching the fine motion of organs and cranium. It stood as a required category of its own.

It does not appear in the current breakdown. In terms of the Taxonomies, the energetic lineage has left the required list.

Worth noting: Maitland, who set out the Taxonomies, was exploring precisely this energetic category in his later years. Gatherings of faculty were held on the subject. A territory dropped from the requirements was, in the same period, at the center of the attention of the person who built the system.

Movement went from three credits to five. Manual work went from nine to ten, and the name changed from Manipulation to Intermediate Required — from a condition about approved instructors to one pointing at particular courses.

The total held while the center moved. The weight on structure and function, the classical lineage, was preserved; what lay outside it left the required list.

A line was drawn in 2017

Rolfers certified from 2017 onward fall under the new breakdown. Rolfers certified before 2017 need not meet the Intermediate Required condition and may substitute the former nine credits of Manipulation and three of Internal Motion.

Which side you are on is decided by when you were certified.

Credits expire

Credits earned more than seven years before the training you are planning do not count. That is the current rule.

This bears directly on how you choose. If you take your time between certification and the Advanced Training, credits earned early may lapse.

Taking Rolf Movement as a choice

Each Part of the Rolf Movement training carries ten Movement credits. The ERA states that the Movement and Elective requirements are all satisfied this way.

Three Parts come to thirty credits, well past the eighteen required. After that, you only need the manual credits.

This bears directly on how wide your choices are. Once Movement and Elective drop out, Intermediate is all that remains. With the manual credits in hand, you can take anything, or nothing. That was my situation.

The timing condition shifts as well. The Advanced Training is taken three to seven years after certification, but if you are taking the Rolf Movement certification, that window extends to nine years.

If you want to move slowly, Rolf Movement counts twice. I took it myself between 2017 and 2019 (see On the Path to Becoming a European Rolf Movement Practitioner — The Road to Certification).

Summary

Continuing education is the one stage you choose for yourself.

What it works with, who teaches it, where it is held. Which of the three you weight decides what you take. Filling a thin area, studying with a particular teacher, meeting a regional lineage.

And the sum of what you chose becomes the shape of you as a Rolfer. In the basic training you do not choose your teachers, and for that reason you are taught by several. After certification it is otherwise. Who you learn what from is yours to decide.

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Hidefumi Otsuka

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