September 28, 2016. The first day of Jonathan Martine‘s workshop (hereafter Jon) was behind us (for that day, see “The Nervous System and Rolfing“).
Today’s work with the nervous system centered on the brachial plexus and the lumbar plexus, approaching the nerves that branch out from them.
What happens when you apply neural manipulation to the subclavius, pectoralis minor, and subscapularis, all under the supply of the brachial plexus? Rotation in the neck opens up. You are barely touching the skin, and yet there is a sense of connection running into the depths. That stayed with me.
From the lumbar plexus, we worked with the superior and middle cluneal nerves and the lateral femoral cutaneous nerve. Combining this with nerve work along the spine and with the long thoracic and lateral intercostal nerves, stability in side-to-side movement increased and the catching sensation went away.
That evening, after the workshop, I had a first Rolfing session booked with a client, so the chance to try the technique came immediately. Minding the location of the cervical and brachial plexuses, I began with the neural approach, then moved into what I would normally do in a first session. Not only did the pain diminish — the fascial work became possible without much force at all.
Jon’s view is that when you learn a new technique, you should simply try it. In the course of trying, it fuses with what you already carry and becomes a new tool. Twelve days is a long workshop, and with sessions scheduled throughout, I intend to experiment.
What Jon emphasized on both the first and second days is that unless a body feels safe, information from the head will lock it down. In bodywork especially, if there is even a trace of pain, the more thoroughly you work, the less effect you get.
What matters is not to concentrate too hard on the client, but to step back a pace and observe what changes. And to listen for information through your hands.
For the person whose body is braced and guarded, hard to approach directly, the neural approach through the skin is precisely the one that works.
The brain is continually building a map of the body. By approaching from the body rather than the brain, in a form that says “this is safe,” you can gradually revise that map.
Pain came up during the morning question period. In most cases, Jon said, pain is less a matter of tissue damage than of the brain saying that it is not safe, do not move.
So if you work through the session confirming, little by little, that this much movement is available, the pain lifts and movement returns. Jon explained this through specific clinical experience.
The neural work is growing more detailed. I have started to wonder how it connects to each of the ten sessions, and I hope to sort that out somewhere along the way.
Note, August 2026
At the time, I only half knew who was teaching those twelve days.
The organizer’s materials state that he was certified as an Advanced Rolfer in 1997 and has been a faculty member of the Rolf Institute since 1993. Among those he studied with are the osteopaths Jean-Pierre Barral and Alain Croibier, along with David Butler, Michael Shacklock, and Diane Jacobs. He had assembled his work with the fascia of the nerves and viscera out of several sources.
What those materials did not say, I learned nine years later. During the Advanced Training in 2025, Ray McCall told me that Jon had been his student.
The order was reversed. I received it from the student in 2016 and from the teacher in 2025. And as noted in the previous installment, attending this workshop was decided by a single remark during a mentoring session in London; there was no sense at the time of entering an American lineage. That November, Sharon Wheeler came to Tokyo, and the following January I traveled to Seattle. This was the first contact with American Rolfing.
Jon does not fit inside one lineage. His teaching is precise about anatomy, and he knows the terminology thoroughly — in that respect close to Konrad Obermeier, who taught anatomy in Munich. At the same time he is Ray McCall’s student, belonging to the lineage of the Advanced Training. And running through it are visceral manipulation from osteopathy and the kind of skin-and-nerve work Diane Jacobs developed.
The thing I singled out in this article — that touching only the outermost layer of the skin reaches deep into the interior — comes from the latter source. And the advice not to concentrate too hard on the person in front of you, but to step back and observe the change, points to the same place as Kind Indifference, which I would receive from Ray nine years later. Separate sources, handed over at once through a single teacher.
One more thing Jon said that day: when you learn a new technique, you should simply try it. In the course of trying, it fuses with what you already carry and becomes a new tool. That runs in a different direction from what I received in Munich. In Phase II, Giovanni would answer a question with another question, seeing through the confusion it produced and waiting anyway. A way of teaching that withholds the answer, and a way that says try it now, live inside the same tradition.
And in fact I did try it, that same evening, in a first session with my own client. Being able to test what you learned on the same day, with your own clients, was not a condition the certification training offered. To study after certification is to have the place where you learn and the place where you work run continuously into each other.