July 8, 2017. The Rolf Movement Training reached its second day.
wrote about the Rolf Movement curriculum last time (see “With What Kind of Curriculum Does It Proceed?“).
On the first day, session 1; on the second day, a review of the basic way of thinking of session 2, and what points need to be kept in mind from the perspective of Movement, were taken up.
For example:
- How is it experienced in the body through movement (Embodiment)?
- How to approach it seen from the body’s structure (Structure)?
- How to approach it seen from the body’s function/movement (Function)?
From these perspectives, each session was carried forward in discussion form. The main points were written with a pen on large drawing paper. And, as in the Basic Training, it proceeded including a session of experiencing it firsthand in the body.
Pierpaola Volpones (hereafter Paola) explains the easily-complicated ideas of Rolfing in an easy-to-understand way, which is a great help. In Rolf Movement, movement is thought about from the relationship between the body and gravity. As I have touched on repeatedly in this column, it is based on Hubert Godard’s ideas.
First, Movement has four structural approaches:
- Physical (how is the body changing?)
- Coordination (how does the body move jointly?)
- Perception (how is the world seen?)
- Meaning (how is meaning assigned to the world?)
On the other hand, Rolfing has a distinctive idea about space. It is the view that, by directing awareness to the existence of space (articulation) within the body (in English, to evoke), excess muscular force releases.
And it places importance on “how to balance the four Articulations = space?”
The four are:
- Upper Body / Lower Body
- Front / Back
- Left / Right
- Inside / Outside
A simple diagram is shown below.
In coming to know Rolf Movement, understanding “how should the body be touched?” makes the manual technique more adaptable.
According to Paola, there are three kinds of touch for touching the body:
- Containing touch (imagining and approaching a body part as a container)
- Orienting touch (approaching while aware of the body’s two-directionality (see “Two-Directionality (Palintonicity)”))
- Give support (approaching so as to support the body)
This touch could be grasped in various ways as Sensing (how to perceive using the body?), and through that, I could feel keenly that the body’s internal awareness heightens.
On top of using these tools, “how to put into words what is felt in the body?” was also taken up:
Knowing the difference between using language while instructing (Instruct) and using words so as to guide (Educate).
How to listen “receptively” for the information necessary to the Rolfer (Active Listening)?
Rather than simply no/yes questions, asking about the state of the body while mixing in open questions (Open Question).
And so on — the fact that coaching-like elements are also included is interesting.
Only by using these tools is the body map of the brain rewritten for the first time, and new options for the body’s movement are born. Since session 1 is the breath and session 2 is building the foundation of the feet, the training proceeded centering on the exercise of feeling the approach to each target body part within the body (Embodiment), the way of touching by manual technique, and the way of listening.
What was interesting was that using imagery can produce more diversity in a session.
For example, between the body being suspended from a puppet’s strings, heightening awareness toward the upper body, and the strings being cut so that awareness heightens toward the lower body, the difference in how the adductors and abductors are used can be understood.
Also, even without taking an approach to the fascia, through the body’s slow movement and the laying-on of hands, the awareness that the body’s space is expanding heightens.
At the point of finishing the second day, since various information is coming in, it seems it will take time to digest; but the content seems useful, so I’d like to incorporate it right away after the day after tomorrow, when I return to Tokyo.