Monday, March 27, 2017. Gael Rosewood’s (hereafter Gael) workshop came to a close without incident.
This was the first time I had studied Rolf Movement this intensively, and having been able to learn it from Gael, who has been involved since its founding period, I feel in my own body how much it matters to convey what is essential.
I have written twice already about this workshop.
- First: “Gael Rosewood Workshop (1) — Knowing the History and Basic Principles of Rolf Movement”
- Second: “Gael Rosewood Workshop (2) — Approaching the Breath Through Rolf Movement and Sound“
Something I learned for the first time here: Ida Rolf frequently brought movement of the body into her sessions, and through that movement she took pains, before and after a session, to let the client feel for themselves how the body had changed.
On the second day, building the foundation through the feet in Session 2; on the third, the relation between the shoulder girdle and the pelvic girdle — how each is approached using Rolf Movement was what could be learned.
In bringing awareness to movement through Rolf Movement, the guidance of words matters.
Gael explained using three words:
- Push
- Reach
- Meet
How does a part of the body respond to each of these words? Words change how force enters the body — and the language of the body, I came to see, differs in its responses from person to person.
In my own case, the words “feel the connection with the earth” and “feel the force from the ground to the crown of the head” deepened awareness of the body. Gael also introduced, during a demonstration, the phrase of pushing the diaphragm out toward the ground.
Gael said that with clients who cannot put awareness of the body into words, helping them acquire a new language for the body — guiding them toward it — is also an important part of the role.
As a result, it became quite clear that Rolf Movement serves the Rolfer, using words and hands, as a guide for deepening a client’s awareness of the body.
What is more, with some ingenuity it brings a compounding effect to the fascial approach used in ordinary practice, which is of interest.
The approach to the shoulder girdle and the pelvic girdle, worked on this time with a partner, started from observation of walking. Which part of the body should be looked at? By comparing three participants, the way of observing a body was explained simply. Table work followed, and as the shoulder girdle and the pelvic girdle were being organized, Gael explained in plain words where tension tends to gather.
Taking almost no fascial approach, and working from the standpoint of how to offer the client new choices in the face of restricted movement, the coordination of the upper and lower limbs improved in the end.
In my own case, holding yoga postures brings out a marked difference between left and right, and the tightness of the right hip joint in particular affects the taking of a posture. How the yoga practice will change through this work is something I truly look forward to.
The final day was given to work on Tonic and Phasic Muscle, and I would like to write about it as the last piece in this column.
Note, August 2026
One line in this piece is of a different order from the rest.
Taking almost no fascial approach, and working from the standpoint of how to offer new choices in the face of restricted movement, the coordination of the upper and lower limbs improved in the end.
It is a report that structure changed without the hands being used. Someone who had spent three years in Rolfing training, learned the manual work, and been certified, reached the same result by a method that barely uses that work. The piece, written in March 2017, sets this down not as a surprise but as an item of interest, and moves on.
Two years earlier there is a Phase III piece titled “Beyond Technique.” In February 2015, what Jörg said was that when the information becomes too much during body reading and confusion sets in, the way out is to take a deep breath, settle down, bring the body to the ground, and value what is felt inside one’s own body rather than what is worked out in the head. What is being learned, that piece records, is the inward side rather than technique.
Two answers have been given to the same question. As a direction for going beyond technique, what Jörg indicated was inward: how the practitioner holds his own state. What Gael indicated was outward: what words are handed to the client.
The three words Gael used were Push, Reach, and Meet. Assign a different word to the same movement and the way force enters the body changes. And the manner of response differs from person to person. In my own case, awareness deepened through phrases about feeling the connection with the earth and feeling the force from the ground to the crown of the head. The body has a language, and it is not held in common.
Gael also said that helping a client who cannot put awareness of the body into words to acquire a new language for the body is an important part of the Rolfer’s role.
Read eleven years on, this passage goes past an explanation of Rolfing technique. It describes a skill for changing another person’s bodily state by means of words. That points to almost the same place as the center of the work I now call coaching. In March 2017 it was received as a technique used inside a Rolfing session.
One thing has reversed in these eleven years.
What Gael taught was the skill of handing over the right words. What I most use now is the skill of not placing words at all. In a coaching session the first tool is silence, and the work is to wait until the person finds their own words. Not handing them over, but waiting for them to come out.
These are not opposite operations, though. What Gael emphasized was not what is correct and not setting something right, but preparing new choices. Handing over a word and holding one back are both operations that leave the choice on the other person’s side. Which of the two applies depends on whether that person already has a language of their own.
Finally, the thing recorded at the start of this piece as learned for the first time.
Ida Rolf frequently brought movement of the body into her sessions, and through that movement she took pains, before and after a session, to let the client feel for themselves how the body had changed.
In what Sharon Wheeler said in 2016 and 2017, Ida had no method for teaching how to see a body. Put him into water and let them swim or drown — that, as it has come down, was Ida’s way.
The two do not contradict each other. What can be distinguished is a method for teaching and a method for conveying. Ida did not hold a method for forming Rolfers. She did hold a method for letting a client feel a change. That the first of these gaps led to the decades of systematization that followed is set down in another note. The second was not a gap. This piece is a record of that.