The Supervision Workshop, six days in all, ended yesterday (18 December 2016). Along with the thirteen participants I took charge of one client, and practised technique in the intervals between.
For technique, two areas were the focus — the hands and arms, and the legs from the adductors up to the pelvic floor — practised in pairs. Something different from previous trainings was the number of women: three men and ten women this time, far more women than before (for reference, Phase II was eight men, and Phase III nine men and one woman).
Another difference was that two Japanese Rolfers took part. We paired up and had occasion to talk in Japanese; that I would find myself alongside another Japanese person in a German training was more unexpected than I would have thought. Despite it being a first meeting, we became friendly at once and I had a great deal to learn from her, so it was a real gain.
Also, since close to seventy per cent of those I give Rolfing sessions to in Japan are women, working with a woman’s body is familiar, but touching people of other nationalities was a first. Working with women of a larger build than is usual in Japan made for a good experience.
As in the client sessions, the question was how to use my own body so as to work efficiently and without straining myself. I have been getting feedback from Paola and Fuensanta on the fundamentals of exactly that.
For instance, I often touch a body with the thumb or with the whole hand, but at what point should the elbow, the forearm, the back of the hand or the palm be used? They convey the use appropriate to each part of the body clearly and carefully, which allowed me to check over the basics more thoroughly.
Paola’s workshop, like the trainings before it, had no textbook. While Paola explained, Fuensanta took notes on large sheets of paper, and over the course of the workshop the sheets went up on the walls of the room one by one.
What was interesting was Paola explaining the difference between Teach and Educate. Teach means conveying the procedure step by step and having students learn the technique. Educate means having students think out for themselves how to go about it, in order to draw out what is good in them (edu meaning to draw out).
Paola’s teaching felt like the latter. How can the principles be learned? And after that, how can they be applied so that one arrives at technique of one’s own? In that sense.
After everything on the last day was finished, we formed a circle and each of us looked back. For me, along with realising that the basic training was now over, what looks like the task ahead is how to draw out what is good in each individual client, while holding to my own strengths. I am looking forward to giving sessions after returning to Japan.
Note, August 2026
What Paola explained on the last day was the difference between Teach and Educate. Teach is conveying the procedure step by step and having students learn the technique. Educate is having students think out for themselves how to go about it, in order to draw out what is good in them.
And reading the final paragraph of this article, that distinction has moved somewhere else. While registering that the basic training was over, what is written as the task ahead is how to draw out what is good in each individual client, while holding to one’s own strengths.
Something heard about the teaching side was rewritten, within the same day, as a task for the working side. Swap student for client and it goes through unchanged. What was handed over as a matter of education became a stance in practice.
A good deal of what came later settles onto the same spot. Giving time rather than answers. Waiting for something to take shape on the other person’s side. Thinking in terms of what the other person takes rather than what one says. This distinction, set down on the last day of the basic training, turns out to be the place most of what came afterwards returns to.
This article also describes how the workshop ran. There was no textbook; while Paola explained, Fuensanta took notes on large sheets of paper, and the sheets went up on the walls of the room one by one.
Things were written down. They were simply not put into a form anyone could take away. They accumulated on the wall in the order they had been spoken, meaningful in that room and nowhere else, and came down when it ended. Putting things into words and making a textbook are treated, in this training, as two different matters.
Eleven years on, I find myself on the side that keeps things. What went up on those walls and came down again, I have written down, annotated afterwards, and moved into another language. What was on the wall then is gone, and some things can still be kept. What looked like the task on the day the basic training ended is readable now because this article exists.