Two years since I was certified as a Rolfer in March 2015. Meeting all kinds of clients and offering sessions has taught me about the relation between body and mind.
Rolfing does have an effect on stiff shoulders and low-back pain. But over the course of a series, I began to notice something else. People who had been moving like this:
someone who judges and decides on the basis that others, the world, society do it that way, so I will too — deciding by an external standard
turn into people who move like this:
someone who comes to speak in their own words and to judge and decide for themselves — deciding by an internal standard
I went through this myself. Receiving the ten-session series from the Rolfer Akinori Ito (see “How I Found Rolfing — Searching for a Way to Deepen the Postures“) led me to leave the pharmaceutical company, travel around the world, and decide to work for myself. The effects on the body I could have predicted. What honestly surprised me was that, having offered sessions to others, some of them came to make major decisions about their own lives in the same way.
Looking at what clients have written, there are lines like these:
- “What is wonderful about Rolfing is that it guides you toward standing on your own.” (see “CK, woman in her thirties, company employee“)
- “It makes you notice that body and mind are linked, and a firm foundation forms within you.” (see “Keisuke Sekita, company employee and editor — Ten-Session Testimonial“)
Why does someone become able to decide for themselves?
My thinking is that by organizing the body, Rolfing does this:
it affects the subconscious, thinking gets sorted out, that works on the conscious mind, and a person becomes able to decide by their own standard
As is well known, a human being has both a subconscious and a conscious mind.
The conscious mind is the part that thinks in words, that reasons in sequence — the logical brain. Being able to express things in language, and to consider the future and the past, comes from having that. It matters in its own right.
The subconscious, by contrast, is the sensing part, where you feel yourself through the body. Intuition belongs here, and so does emotion — an emotional brain, an intuitive brain.
Because the subconscious involves bodily sensation, shocking experiences, trauma, parents, schoolteachers, colleagues at work all remain as memory inside the body, at the level of the skin. They remain by way of assumptions the person forms in order to protect themselves.
Remarkably, most of the body is said to be occupied by the subconscious.
Which means that however well you can put something into words, if the subconscious is not ready, it will not come about as the words say.
Rolfing works directly on the subconscious by organizing the body.
Since it works on the subconscious without going through language, what the process actually is remains unclear (one explanation is the rewriting of the body map; see “Psychological and Perceptual Change — The Body Map“). Even so, the brake in the mind comes off, and a person becomes able to decide for themselves.
The reason I became interested in Rolfing, and offer sessions now, is that I want even one more person to know what it is like for the body to organize into a state where they can decide for themselves.
I hope to keep helping people find their own path through these sessions.
Note, September 2026
What I wrote here has not changed.
Knowing something in words does not move you if the body is not ready. So you start from the body. That way of thinking had already taken shape by this point.
What changed is the language.
At the time I explained it with two things: the subconscious and the conscious mind. A logical brain and an emotional, intuitive one.
Now I speak of the Recognition OS. The system underlying thought, emotion, and action — not located in the brain alone, but inscribed in the body, in the nervous system, in patterns of fascia.
And I have come to see it in four layers: the Logic OS, the Sensory OS, the Dialogue OS, the Perspective OS. What Rolfing works on is mainly the Sensory OS.
The division into subconscious and conscious that I made in 2017 developed into this. It is not a different claim. What had been split in two came to be split in four, and each layer now comes with what refines it.
One more thing has changed since then.
This piece carried a figure: 99%. Most of the body is occupied by the subconscious, it said, in some cases 99%. I have removed that figure. I could not confirm where it came from.
The view itself — that most of it is subconscious — I have not changed. But stating a figure requires grounds.
Eleven years in, the surprise I wrote about here continues. Someone comes for stiff shoulders or low-back pain, and by the end of the ten sessions they have decided something else entirely. However many times I see it, the process is more than I can explain.