Introduction
This year, 2021, I began three years of training in Somatic Experiencing, and yesterday, Monday, March 1, the first four days of the beginning year came to an end.
How do you produce a therapeutic effect for someone carrying psychological trauma, working through bodily sensation rather than listening to their story and their words?
SE was systematized by Peter Levine, who is also a Rolfer. Reaching the mind through bodywork is what drew me to it, and this year I started learning it. (I wrote about that earlier — see What Brought Me to Somatic Experiencing.)
Three Years of Curriculum
SE training runs three years — beginning, intermediate, advanced — twelve days each year, thirty-six days for the whole course.
The first year builds a basic understanding of the mechanisms of trauma and the basic skills for working with a client. The second sorts trauma into categories, studies each kind and its origins, and covers how to respond to particular cases. The third takes in wider applications, including eye movement and bodywork on the table, along with how to approach complex syndromes arising from compound trauma, and how current psychophysiological research is brought into practice.
The training is available both in Japan and abroad. It was running in England and in Spain while I was in the Rolfing training. I would have liked to take it in England. With the pandemic keeping me from travelling, I enrolled instead in the course at the Makuhari venue, close enough to reach from Tokyo.
Notice of trainings in Japan comes round on the Rolfers’ mailing list, which is how I heard of it.
The course is intended for people who hold a professional qualification in a psychological or physical field, with at least two years of clinical experience.
I submitted my application close to the deadline, and it took less time to prepare than I expected. It went to the organizing office, and on November 1, 2020, I was accepted. As if to confirm that SE was born in America, a long A4 consent form arrived; nothing in it troubled me, so I signed.
Having a Textbook
Then, in February 2021, the course material arrived.
What struck me first was how thorough the textbook is.
The Rolfing training has no textbook at all. Each instructor hands out material they have made themselves, and the class proceeds through slides and sticky notes. Each instructor has their strengths and their weaknesses, so what you receive is shaped by that person’s background.
What I found remarkable was how unlike school it was. Instructor and student were equals. Same eye level, and you could ask as many times as it took to understand. The instructor comes down to where the student is and does not set up a teacher-pupil relation. I learned a great deal from that.
(On the Rolfing training in detail, see Becoming a Certified Rolfer in Europe — The Certification Training of the European Rolfing Association.)
SE is the opposite. The textbook is written out to the last phrase, set down so that anyone can follow it. What is similar to Rolfing is that instructor and student are equals, at the same eye level, with an atmosphere in which anything can be asked.
That genuinely surprised me.
A Setting Without Hierarchy
I went through Japanese high school and university, and have worked at Japanese and foreign companies. Most Japanese organizations and educational institutions tend to build hierarchies. In education, the teacher is above and the student below, and asking questions feels awkward. That is why I had taken my bodywork trainings abroad wherever I could.
This time the pandemic left me no choice but to study in Japan. But the organizer held to the idea that teacher and student do not stand above and below one another, that they are going the same way together. It felt exactly like taking a training abroad. That astonished me.
The other difference is in the backgrounds of the participants.
Rolfing draws physical therapists, athletic trainers, massage therapists, yoga and Pilates teachers — people who work with bodies. SE draws people working in psychology: clinical psychologists, psychiatrists.
This year I wanted to learn something new with people from a different background. On that count, the training has met my expectations.
There are similarities too. Both Rolfing and SE set up a psychologically safe space where failure is permitted, which makes it possible to try what one has not tried before.
The First Half Begins
The first half of the beginning year started last Friday, February 26.
The main teacher is Ariel Girretto, who is based in the United States. The organizer is Chigusa Hanaoka of the International Mental Fitness Institute. Because of the pandemic, the four days were held over Zoom.
Hanaoka facilitated close to ninety people, assistants included, and her capacity to hold that left me in awe. The training felt safe throughout. From time to time we used Zoom’s breakout function to go into small rooms and practise what we had learned, and it worked without friction.
Rolfing training days wander — the talk goes in all directions, and you receive sessions on top of it, so you finish the day exhausted. SE is the same in its way: a full day, nine in the morning to half past five, spent on psychological trauma. But a single idea is approached from many angles, and understanding deepens.
Above all: so there is a way of looking at the autonomic nervous system like this. I had heard it explained scientifically many times and knew it as information. Explaining it from bodily symptoms was new, and it hit me hard.
What Lael Keen Said
In 2017 I had the chance to hear about SE from Lael Keen, who lives in Brazil and is both an SE instructor and a Rolfing instructor, during a Rolfing workshop.
It was a workshop in Tokyo, and at the time Lael said that of ten clients she saw for Rolfing, she would use SE techniques with five of them. (See Trauma Workshop – Lael Keen.)
I have a feeling that bringing what I learn in this training into my Rolfing sessions will make a difference to how well the body settles. I am looking forward to it.
Conclusion
Two days of the first half remain, resuming at the end of this month. What will the learning be, and how far can I take it? I want to enjoy it and go at my own pace.
Note, September 2026
What struck me in this article was that SE has a textbook. It is written out to the last phrase, and Rolfing has nothing of the kind. Each instructor hands out material of their own making, and the course moves through whatever that person is strongest in.
Rereading it now, I want to add that there were written materials on the Rolfing side as well.
During Phase III in 2015, a set of notes by Pedro Prado called “Psychobiological Goals” was handed out, describing what may arise in each of the ten sessions on the side of the psyche and the relationship.
What interests me is that these notes are not about the sequence of the work. They are about the practitioner’s preparation.
The entry for session two begins before the session: reflect on the relationship established in the first hour. What resources does this client have. What is their basic learning style. What worked in communication, spoken and unspoken. Then, at the initial interview, which layer of themselves was the client speaking from — physical and structural, functional and psychological and emotional, cultural, existential and spiritual — and how do they bridge that to the reality of the body.
Only two instructions are given for the session itself. Stay engaged with the client while working on the feet. And take care not to overload them with information.
The entry for session six says the territory is extensive, so one needs to hold both the global pattern and the small details. It is easy to get lost in specifics and lose the flow, so keeping track of time is essential. The client is prone for most of that hour, so ask for active movement where appropriate.
Until I reread them, I did not remember these notes as notes. But what is written there is close to what I actually do in sessions now. It feels less like having been taught and more like having arrived at the same place over time.
Whether there is a textbook is a difference in how the teaching is designed. SE is built so that the same thing arrives whoever teaches it. Rolfing takes as given that what arrives changes with who teaches.
Neither is better. But on the side I thought had nothing written down, there was something written down. I simply could not see it until I was in a state to receive it.