The first week of the Phase III Rolfing training has ended. The first two days went to reviewing what had been learned so far; over the latter two, the two clients I am responsible for visited the office and session 1 was carried out. Friday is a day off, so it came to four days. It had been a while since a Rolfing class and a session, and the time genuinely seemed to pass in enjoyment.
As described in this column, the aim of Phase III is how to put the knowledge gained in Phase I and II into practice (each student takes charge of two clients), and what framework to use in applying that knowledge so that it serves the client (Phase III was also covered in “The Introduction, and Organizing What Is Known“).
That a Rolfing session series consists of ten sessions was covered earlier (see “The Sleeve Sessions“). In Phase II, the ten-series was studied in order, session by session, in theory and in practice. This time, Phase III comes after having been through the whole sequence. The weight falls on how to approach each session as seen from the ten-series as a whole. And what forms the basis of each session is body reading.
As for body reading, Phase II covered the basic methods of observation for each session (for what was covered in Phase II regarding session 1, for instance, see “Session 1: Organizing the Breath“). In Phase III, what is studied with respect to body reading is:
- How to see what is good about a person, their strengths (the English word used was Resource)
- How to distinguish the important information from the rest and narrow it down
Come to think of it, people who have been through hospitals, judo-therapy clinics, osteopathy, and homeopathy have mostly been told by specialists what is wrong with their body — low back pain, kyphosis, a left-right imbalance — and have grown used to being told what is wrong. Pointing out what is wrong to such a person yields no new discovery and does not readily lead to a solution.
Examples of what is good: the feet are firmly on the ground and supporting the body; the chest breathing (or the abdominal breathing) is working well. That is, attention goes to what is actually working, and the thinking runs toward how to improve from there so that the whole moves in a good direction. Myself included, we had our way of speaking — the habit of pointing out faults — corrected.
Having the eye caught by shortcomings leads to labeling a person. Since only one aspect of things becomes visible, the necessary information may be missed. In reality, although clients carry problems, the great majority are healthy and able to move. That is not to be forgotten.
This may sound like a contradiction, but the more the body is observed by relying on the eyes, the more the quantity of information increases and the more the important things can be lost. So beyond the strengths, there is the question of how to set priorities among the procedures learned in each session — which parts to work on and which parts not to. Jörg introduced a framework that can be used in body reading (to be covered separately in this column).
Narrowing the information down makes the work on the body minimal as well. Minimal does not mean without effect. The client is experiencing Rolfing for the first time, and giving the body too much information risks overwhelming them, leaving them unable to tell what changes are taking place inside. Jörg explained this using the phrase Less is More.
In Jörg’s first session with a client, despite carrying out only the most minimal work, there was a marked change in the body. Observing that firsthand made the importance of Less is More clear.
For me, Less is More looks likely to become one of the major subjects to learn in approaching the Phase III training.
Note, August 2026
What the first week of Phase III delivered were two phrases: Resource and Less is More. Both would go on to shape the practice that followed.
When the word Resource came up, it was already familiar. In the Co-Active Training Institute (CTI) coaching studied from April to December 2009, through the advanced course, one of the four cornerstones is stated this way: People are naturally creative, resourceful, and whole. Rather than supplying what is missing, the starting point is what is already there.
In the Rolfing training, that same idea appeared as a method of body observation. Do not point out what is wrong. The feet are on the ground; the breathing is working — attention goes to what is working. People who have been through hospitals and clinics are used to being told by specialists what is wrong. Repeating that yields no new discovery.
The entry says: myself included, we had our way of speaking — the habit of pointing out faults — corrected. To have one’s way of speaking corrected is to have one’s way of seeing corrected. A principle heard in a coaching classroom five years earlier appeared, in front of a table in Munich, as an actual procedure for looking at a person.
In the Advanced Training in 2025, this was placed as the stage following Neutral, in the form of trusting that the other person’s body is self-organizing. Trust becomes the precondition of the technique. The CTI cornerstone and Jörg’s body reading are saying the same thing from different places.
Then the other phrase, Less is More. Narrowing the information down makes the work minimal, but minimal does not mean without effect. Give too much information to someone receiving Rolfing for the first time and they are overwhelmed, unable to tell what is happening in their own body — that was Jörg’s explanation.
The idea would recur. At Peter Schwind’s workshop in Munich in June 2017, he explained his reason for keeping sessions to around forty-five minutes: taking too much time ends up teaching the brain an excessive amount of information. Jörg and Peter are both of the German lineage. Sharon Wheeler, studied with across 2016 and 2017, spent three and a half hours on one person. Within the same Rolfing, two answers face opposite directions.
Eleven years on, the question remains unsettled. On the side of the practice, though, an answer has emerged. In client sessions, Less is More is what I keep in mind. More time goes into deciding what not to do than what to do. That began in this week.