Early in the Rolfing training, I had an experience that set me thinking about the autonomic nervous system. During my very first client session, just before the session ended, I encountered what is called the autonomic nervous system releasing — in English, the words Arousal and Discharge are both used.
It is known to arise readily in the course of bringing the body into order, particularly on entering the deep sessions, Sessions 4 through 7 (on the deep sessions, see “The Deep (Core) Sessions“). Giovanni explained it during the Phase II training, and it could be felt firsthand as well: in sessions between students in Phase II, it appeared as tears, or as emotions that had long been held down coming to the surface.
In the case encountered during this Phase III training, the client had just finished a session on the table — the first session, Session 1 — and on sitting up was unable to keep pace with the large change in the body. Symptoms of the autonomic nervous system appeared: cold sweat, dizziness. I asked the instructor for help, and by responding calmly the client was eventually able to get up, and it resolved. That client has continued to come for sessions since.
The autonomic nervous system releasing shows itself in a range of symptoms. The breath grows shallow; composure is lost; movement is visible only in the chest, with none in the belly; the upright posture of the spine gives way; tears come; the skin turns pale.
During the Phase III training, five people lay on the tables while the remaining five moved clockwise from table to table, placing their hands on the sacrum and observing what changes were occurring in the upper body. Three people in all placed their hands on the sacrum of each person, and it became possible to feel how differently each person’s way of placing the hands registered.
What was surprising is that three or four of us, myself included — perhaps because the hands had rested there a long time — could not readily sit up, and only after the instructor worked on us were we able to get off the table. That too, I think, was one form of the autonomic nervous system releasing.
Before joining the Rolfing training, I had kept up six years of self-directed practice in Ashtanga yoga Mysore classes. What was interesting was that emotions would surface in some of the students during the practice of the postures.
Especially in backbends, which ask for more opening of the body, I have seen people in tears. This seems to me exactly one form of the autonomic nervous system releasing, brought about by the effect of yoga postures on the autonomic nervous system.
What the training teaches is that if one witnesses the autonomic nervous system releasing, the mechanism of homeostasis — constancy, the arrangement within the body that holds the internal environment steady, a mechanism for bringing balance into order — comes into play, and the body settles. Knowing that, one can respond calmly.
Rolfing has a considerable effect on the autonomic nervous system. That is because everything in the body is subject to the work, of course, and because the abdominal and thoracic cavities, the area of the neck, and the sacrum all bear on the autonomic nervous system.
The autonomic nervous system and Rolfing is a subject I want to return to in this column.
Note, August 2026
When it was one word
The original text says, consistently, that the autonomic nervous system releases, and sets Arousal and Discharge side by side as the English for it. Two words placed as alternate names for the same phenomenon.
I now know they point to different things. Arousal is the sympathetic nervous system rising; Discharge is the accumulated charge draining away. The directions are opposite. The cold sweat and dizziness described here belong to Arousal; the tears are closer to Discharge. The 2015 account holds the two together as one.
The phenomenon comes first and the name comes afterward. That order keeps surfacing on rereading the Phase III pieces, but the shape here is a little more tangled. The names existed. Both of them were already at hand. What was missing was the resolution to tell them apart.
It was on the reading list
There is more to this.
The basic training distributed a reading list, and on it was Peter Levine’s Waking the Tiger. Levine is a Rolfer, and later systematized Somatic Experiencing. An animal meeting a predator will fight or flee, and when neither is available it freezes; because animals have a means of releasing that energy, it does not become trauma. That way of thinking was taken up in the training as well.
Which means the framework for distinguishing Arousal from Discharge was in the reading list of 2014. It had been read, and at the time of writing this piece it was not yet usable.
The distinction became mine six years later. From February to November 2021 I took the twelve days of the SE introductory level, taught online by Ariel Girretto in the middle of the pandemic. What I learned there was an order of attention: not the event that caused it, but the shock energy left in the body. Which bodily symptoms appeared, traced through changes in the autonomic nervous system.
Afterward came sixteen days of DARE (Dynamic Attachment Repatterning experience) with Patricia Meadows, and five days of Eye of the Needle, an SE Master Class with Dave Berger — in both cases in the role of interpreter for the assistants who had come from abroad.
The arrangement allowed one to take part in the classes while interpreting, so I stood on the supporting side and met the material itself repeatedly at the same time. What had been learned at the introductory level settled in over that repetition.
A book upstream, practice downstream, with six years between them.
From homeostasis to trusting
The latter half reads: if one witnesses the autonomic nervous system releasing, the mechanism of homeostasis comes into play and the body settles; knowing that, one can respond calmly.
In the Advanced Training of 2025, the same thing was put differently. Trust that the body can regulate itself.
In the note to “Body Reading and the Quantity of Information,” I wrote that Resource — the premise from CTI coaching that people are naturally creative, resourceful, and whole — connects to that trust. Here, one step further back is visible. In 2015 it was a term from physiology. Homeostasis is an observed mechanism, something held as knowledge. Trusting that the body can regulate itself describes the practitioner’s own stance.
The same thing said, with the position of the account moved from what is observed to what does the supporting.
How long the hands rested
Five people lay on the tables while the other five moved from table to table placing hands on the sacrum, feeling how differently each way of placing the hands registered. And then three or four could not sit up, perhaps because the hands had rested there a long time.
What Jörg said repeatedly was Less is More. Do not give too much. The notes to “Body Reading and the Quantity of Information” and “How the Teaching Proceeds” took this up twice, and both times from the teaching side. What is here is a record of the receiving side confirming it in the body. Resting the hands longer is not better — the day that became clear.
The observation that the way of placing the hands changes what is felt also acquires a name later. Shape the Hand, taught in 2025, rests on the premise that the form of the hand determines what information is received.
Seen before the training
Before studying Rolfing, in Ashtanga yoga Mysore classes, I had seen people in tears during backbends.
Meeting the same phenomenon outside the treatment room is a shape that recurs afterward: jiu-jitsu, SSP, Source Point Therapy, IMAC. All of those, though, were confirmations after completing the training. Only the observation in yoga comes before it.
The phenomenon had arrived first. In order of occurrence, this was the earliest.