Terms that come up across the ten-session articles, gathered in one place. Come back here whenever a word gets in the way.
How a session works
Body Reading Observing how a client stands, walks, and breathes at the start of a session. Where is there excess tension, and how does the body sit relative to the line of gravity? The body is read. After the hands-on work, the same things are checked again, so that the client can feel the change themselves. Observe, intervene, observe again — this is the frame of every session.
Sleeve and core The layer that wraps the outside of the body, and the layer that lies within it. Sessions 1 through 3 work with the sleeve, sessions 4 through 7 with the core. The core cannot be reached before the sleeve has released. The work proceeds like peeling an onion, one layer at a time.
The integration sessions Sessions 8 through 10. The work shifts from organizing parts to letting the body move as an organic whole.
Closure Giving a process an appropriate ending. It is named as one of the principles of Rolfing. Closure matters because it makes possible whatever comes next. These principles were not set down by Ida Rolf herself; they were formulated by later generations.
Neutral The state in which the practitioner brings no particular intention or answer into the work. The word once referred to a frame of mind. It is now handled as a concrete procedure: where the practitioner places their own body.
The middle voice A third voice, neither active nor passive, inherited from ancient Greek. Breathing deepens under the hands; a muscle begins to move once the conditions are right; the sacrum is released the moment it starts to move. Much of what happens in a session belongs to this voice. The practitioner’s work is not to produce change but to hold the space in which it can occur.
Space Not an absence but something with quality, something the body responds to. Attention placed on an object and attention placed on the space between you and that object produce different bodies. Whether you are aware of the foreground or of the background changes how much effort goes into standing and walking.
Gravity and muscle
Tonic muscle The muscles that support posture under gravity. They do not tire, however long they work. They take about five seconds to come on and about five seconds to release. An accident or a strong impact can leave that switch turned off.
Phasic muscle The muscles that produce movement. They fatigue, and using them leaves soreness. These are what strength training addresses.
Tonic Function The framework for how the body responds to gravity. Posture is treated not as a question of strength but as a question of the relationship with gravity.
Palintonicity Form held by forces pulling in opposite directions. Upward freedom and downward support do not exist without each other. The word goes back to Heraclitus and his bow and lyre; the name itself is very old.
Movement and perception
Pre-movement The supporting activity that has already begun before a movement starts. The soleus engages before the arm lifts; serratus anterior engages before the hand grasps. How to support is settled before what to do.
Eye of the Foot A perceptual exercise in which you assume there is an eye on the sole of each foot, and open and close it. Closing it and standing draws the whole body inward; opening it lets the pelvic floor and diaphragm release. Nothing is done to the foot itself, yet the distribution of tone changes — which shows that how perception is placed governs how the body is used. It is taught in the advanced training.
Triangle of Support Seeing the sensors that support posture as a triangle with three vertices: the eyes, the feet, and the inner ear. Session 2 works with the feet and session 7 with the vestibular sense, touching two vertices of the same triangle.
Finding Back Space Taking in the space behind you. It corresponds to the fact that most of the muscles supporting posture lie along the back. A body that only looks forward is not using the side that supports it.
Interoception The sense of the body’s internal state. Where the five senses take in the outside world, information gathering from the organs, muscles, and bones forms the sense of how you are, right now.
Body schema and body image Two layers of the body map. Body schema supports posture and movement without reaching awareness; body image is the picture you hold of what your body is like. In a session, body schema tends to change first.
Palpatory and haptic The condition in which the hands and feet can take in information from what they touch. Palpatory comes from palpation, the hands-on examination learned in anatomy; haptic comes from the Greek for touch.
Embodiment The integration of bodily sensation, in which knowledge comes to work as a way of using the body.
Structure
Girdle The shoulder girdle and the pelvic girdle. The shoulder girdle runs around the scapulae, the clavicles, and the sternum; the pelvic girdle around the pubis, the sit bones, the ilia, and the pelvic floor. They form the base for the movement of the upper and lower limbs respectively.
Articulation A word that points at once to joints being able to move separately and to space opening up inside the body. Letting go is less a matter of going slack than of space appearing.
Nutation and counter-nutation The sacrum tilting forward relative to the ilia (nutation, a nodding motion) and tilting back (counter-nutation, a rising motion). The term comes from the Latin for nodding. The two alternate with the breath.
The AO joint The atlanto-occipital joint, between the skull and the cervical spine. When it releases, tension throughout the body lets go more readily.
The psoas group The deep muscles formed by psoas major and iliacus. They begin at the front of the lumbar spine, pass through the pelvis, and attach at the lesser trochanter of the femur — among the very few muscles that connect the spine directly to the leg. They sit near the body’s center of mass.
- What Is Rolfing’s Ten-Series? — Three Phases in Which the Body Changes, and the Flow of Each Session
Hidefumi Otsuka, Ph.D. | Certified Advanced Rolfer™ / Rolf Movement® Practitioner Ph.D. from the Graduate School of Medicine, the University of Tokyo. After eleven years in medical marketing at a foreign pharmaceutical company, he has offered Rolfing® sessions in Shibuya, Tokyo since 2015, working under the theme of integrating science and practice.