Feeling For the Rest of the World:

Reflections on How Rolfing® Works

by Nicholas French

“When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.”

--- John Muir

Ever since I was first involved in Rolfing, I’ve been curious about the intensity of various disagreements, some of them quite ferocious, over what Rolfing is and how to do it “right.” It’s not that theoretical disputes are surprising in a collection of bright, creative people, it was the fury in them that puzzled me. In earlier eras I would have looked for daggers to be drawn, or at least bared teeth and claws.

Eventually it occurred to me that I was seeing a variety of religious zeal, the sort of passion that has given birth to movements of exalted devotion and healing, and to bloody battles for power and control. This isn’t surprising either, considering the passion most of us feel for the work we’ve been given. Our history offers various illustrations, positive and negative, of that zeal, including examples of how easily the lower, less conscious aspects of human nature can intrude, even though we might feel rather noble about what we’re doing. Is it possible that with mindfulness and reflection, we could follow a more balanced course?

With that question in mind, I offer the following thesis: The work that Ida Rolf developed and passed on to us contains an implicit charge: take this process, learn to see how and why it works and grow it further. Aware of it or not, each of us is evolving the work -- the process as such demands it. As we internalize the teachings and develop the opus as our own, the continually astounding power of the work and our deepening love (and need?) for it evolves inside us, awakening a sense of the awesome responsibility we bear for getting it right. And as that sense deepens, the need to feel that we are doing our very best can elicit a tendency to persuade ourselves that we are, in fact, doing the work the best of any practitioner. From there, it’s only a short step to, “I’m doing the true work, but you, on the other hand...”

No wonder so many of us have contributed to the Rolf Institute’s reputation, summed up succinctly by Michael Murphy at the last annual meeting as, “Does not play well with others.”

I propose that there are effective antidotes to the more harmful forms of righteous fervor. Especially vital is a lively sense of humor, the kind that recognizes -- and enjoys -- the ludicrous aspects of human life, especially in ourselves. A sense of compassion also helps one to see others more fairly, and perhaps even helps ease the attachment to being right. As others have commented:

“Most people can’t understand how others can blow their noses differently than they do.” -- Ivan Turgenev

“Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else.” -- Margaret Mead

It is also therapeutic to expose one’s cherished private views to a group of colleagues, as peer review tends to have a sobering, even humbling effect.

In that spirit, I’d like to submit a few of the hypotheses that have occurred to me over the years about how Rolfing really works.

1. No matter how intellectually brilliant the practitioner, intuition is indispensable in our work.

Ida P. Rolf, Ph.D. was a formidable woman, a true revolutionary. Brilliantly intellectual, she was also extremely intuitive, a powerful and frequently startling combination (as many of her students will attest). In class one day, someone asked how she invented Rolfing. Dr. Rolf looked genuinely surprised, and replied, “I didn’t ‘invent’ Rolfing. “ She explained her belief that something like Rolfing -- a process to aid human evolution -- had been around in various forms throughout history. She said she’d worked very hard to understand human structure, but emphasized that the process she was teaching us would never have come together without the frequent help given her by a non-visible presence she called “the Good Lord.”

Acknowledging a source -- a divine source -- greater than oneself is an ancient tradition. If you are uncomfortable combining the rational side with an indefinable spiritual something, Swiss psychologist C.G. Jung introduced the concept of the intuitive function:

“I regard intuition as a basic psychological function..that mediates perceptions in an unconscious way...In intuition a content presents itself whole and complete, without our being able to explain or discover how this content came into existence...Its contents have the character of being ‘given,’ in contrast to the ‘derived’ or ‘produced’ character of thinking and feeling contents. Intuitive knowledge possesses an intrinsic certainty and conviction, which enabled Spinoza (and Bergson) to uphold the scientia intuitiva as the highest form of knowledge.”[i][i]

Jung once summed it up as the psychological function that “sees around corners.”

In modern times, the idea that intellect, of itself, cannot qualitatively advance knowledge without the assistance of the intuitive function has been recognized in many fields. For example, when Albert Einstein was asked how he “thought up” the relativity principle, he responded, “I didn’t ‘think it up.’ It came to me as though in a dream.” He also said, “Intuition is a sacred gift, the rational mind its faithful servant. We have, however, created a society which worships the servant and has forgotten the gift.”

Intuition, this “gift of the gods” as it was considered to be in earlier times, strikes like lightning, unpredictably and often with life-altering force. It has been both the focus and the goal of a great many spiritual and teaching traditions, including the “burst of dazzling darkness” of Thomas Merton’s meditations on God, and the satori in the moment a Zen Buddhist ‘s “ordinary mind” opens to wider knowing.

I’d like to make it clear that I do not at all wish to minimize the importance of the rational intellect. Quite the opposite -- I wish there were more evidence that we, as a species, were capable of using it. I have in mind one of Dr. Rolf ‘s observations: “What you refer to as ‘thinking’ would, I believe, be more accurately described as rationalized emoting.” Put that idea together with Jung’s view that it is the unconscious psyche which is truly objective, while the conscious ego, with its limited subjective view, tends to distort reality in its bid for control (survival and loveableness, for instance), and it gives new importance to the unbiased clarity of the intuitive function.

Intuition is not, however, under our conscious control. Those who value it learn to simply adopt an open, and one might say reverent, attitude of attentive watchfulness.

I got a valuable lesson in this novel idea during my practitioner class. Straining to achieve The Perfect Rolfing Move during a model’s 8th hour, I kept putting my hands on the man and then drawing back, trying to think my way to perfection. Eventually, paralyzed by my various strategies, I looked up and saw that the teacher, Peter Melchior, was quietly watching. “Okay, I’m stuck,” I confessed. “Well,” he replied dryly, “you’ve already put your hands in the right place about five times.”

I followed my hands back to the model and did something I hoped would look Rolfish; the changes surprised and delighted me. I like to think I’m still learning to follow. But that’s the tricky part, learning to develop what the Zen folks call “effortless effort” and “controlled spontaneity”.

Of course it happens in all kinds of ways. The first time I recall experiencing such an opening was during a tennis lesson in my teens. The coach, a phenomenal player, kept yelling at me, “Relax - just relax!” How could I relax, chasing his volleys all over the hot clay? Finally, I’d had it. He sent a serve rocketing at me and I literally gave up. Muttering, “Oh, fuck it...” I swung recklessly, not caring what would happen. It was then that I first felt the racket’s “sweet spot” -- the ball skimmed over the net and, for the first time, he couldn’t return my volley. He grinned at me triumphantly. “You finally relaxed!”

Of course, I wanted that moment to bring ever-lasting perfection. I tried to make it happen again by using the same formula. No good, of course. It happens or it doesn’t. I’ve been working ever since to fine tune my balance between desiring and letting go. Which brings me to:

2. Is Rolfing more about “fixing” or “allowing”? Well, yes and no.

Dr. Rolf passed along to us an outline -- the “recipe” -- and we know that it works. But we also know it isn’t really the recipe that makes the magic happen, that’s just a sketch, the bare bones. What fills them out with flesh and blood and breathes life into the work is an alchemical mixture of science and art, effort and watchfulness -- and wonder.

Dr. Rolf emphasized the need to challenge our limits and to look within ourselves (and perhaps was addressing the passion inherent in the work) when she said, “To go on this trip you need to stretch your imagination. This is an important prerequisite. There is no limit to the infinite territory into which this leads. Most important to us as individuals and as Rolfers is the exploration of what changes occur in us as human beings coincident with these modifications in energy fields.”[ii][ii]

Because we were required to devote considerable time to the study of anatomy, it’s normal to assume that subject is of the highest importance to our work. Again, yes and no. Yes, in that it offers a language that’s useful for communication, and, to some degree, for visualizing and strategizing as we work. No, in that followed too literally it can overshadow awareness of other vital aspects of the person with whom we’re interacting. It’s worth remembering that Dr. Rolf directed that certain of her students she knew could already see well not study anatomy.

After all, classical anatomy, for all its specificity, is incomplete. Its very paradigm is so linear that it is intrinsically at odds with a sense of total inclusion, the, “If it’s anywhere in the body, it’s everywhere in the body,” Dr. Rolf urged us to know. As two brilliant Chilean biologists (one of them Rolfer Samy Frenk) have pointed out, when classical anatomy began in mid-16th century, they focused on cataloguing all the parts. In drawings of that era, the anatomist can often be seen sitting as far away from the reeking corpse as possible, pointing at items with a long stick. The dissectionists were usually butchers, hired for their skill in isolating parts of bodies with knives.

Apparently, in their Aristotelian diligence, they cut away and discarded the preponderance of connective tissue, just as they'd done in their butcher shops, in order to get at the "important" items enclosed in the fascia like organs, bones, muscles and nerves. This is about as clever as a marine biologist attempting to understand a pond's ecology by first draining off all the water to make it easier to catalogue the plants, fish, animals and insects. “What might not be so apparent is to realize that delimiting cells reveals, by contradistinction, what is not bounded by cells in the body. This aggregate of non-cellular substance is the so-called connective tissue...[which] is a continuum."[iii][iii]

In losing sight of the medium of relationship in the body, anatomy was compromised. When the emphasis is placed on that-which-is-contained to such a degree that it overshadows that which contains and relates, it must necessarily detract from one’s ability to appreciate the whole, living being.

In Rolfing classes, I often felt that one of my principal challenges was to coax the students to venture out beyond the apparently firm ground of classical anatomy to explore the awesome, ever-changing field of the actual human being. It wasn’t only to encourage a more relativistic, Einsteinian view, but also to urge them to appreciate -- even take delight in -- the complex beings they were touching.

Because it is so linear, anatomy has a natural appeal for the rational intellect, which, especially in our culture, aligns with the yang, or masculine, centrifugal aspect. This viewpoint embraces doing and the use of force, and excels at taking things apart. It should be obvious that this is incomplete without the yin, or feminine, centripetal presence, which embraces allowing and relating, and makes it possible to achieve synthesis at a higher level of function. But is it always so obvious?

I think not. For various reasons, Western culture has historically elevated the masculine principle and depreciated the feminine, and we are all products of our culture. It seems all too predictable that we will tend to believe that it is the act of doing -- pushing, prodding, reaching, etc. -- which produces the results, that we can’t just sit back and trust things to happen. But I can almost hear some of you protesting, “No, that’s too one-sided!”

Sure it is, absurdly so. Only a sensitive balance of doing and allowing can lead to the extraordinary results our work elicits. Then why am I belaboring the obvious? Because, when I consider much of what my colleagues write and say, I usually see that the doing and fixing aspects are emphasized, and the art of allowing is rarely mentioned. That’s not surprising, given our intellectual paradigm and our language. I am simply arguing for the yin principle to be given more emphasis, more conscious attention. I believe its power has not yet been fully appreciated.

Of course we may need to discover new language to explore and describe that power, as it seems to go more naturally with an attitude of wonder, open questioning and uncertainty than with fixed answers. I can’t believe I’m the only Rolfer who’s occasionally wondered if a rewarding change came more from what I did with my mind and hands, or from something the client remembered or imagined, or from the music that was playing, or that both of us noticed the cardinal that suddenly landed at the window ledge and looked in at us, or -- what? Yet day after day I accept money from my clients, clearly accepting the implication that I am doing something therapeutic -- but what, exactly, is it?

How does Rolfing work? I’m told that when Dr. Rolf was asked that, for probably the millionth time, toward the end of her life, she said she didn’t actually know just how it worked. She did know, though, that if we worked with what she gave us, it would reliably produce results -- and then perhaps we could tell her how it worked.

Without claiming to know The Truth (people who are very certain really make me itch), I would like to relate what close to three decades of work have lead me to believe is critically important in Rolfing:

3. The quality of relationship with the client is equal to the quality of touch as a prime determinant of the work’s outcome.

The idea that healing (“to make whole”[iv][iv]) is an internal mystery to be served, not a solution that can be imposed from without, is very old. In ancient cultures, as well as current shamanic practices, the gods inflict disease (i.e. spiritual discord), and so healing can come only from the gods. Our human ideas and practices can support -- or interfere with -- the restorative process, but the healing dynamic arises from an interaction between the client and the (scientifically irreproducible) numinous.

Some scientists have focused on the how healing phenomena might work. One of the more eloquent is biologist and nature writer Lyall Watson, Ph.D.:

“At this point we can be certain of only one thing. Healers heal. And they seem to do so largely by getting their patients to sit up and take notice. They prod them into the natural business of healing themselves. Our bodies have the capacity for doing this. Under hypnosis, we can make blisters and stigmata appear and disappear on command. The problem is to get those areas of our minds that control these unconscious processes to go along with the scheme whenever we need them. This is the difficult part, and healers have to resort to all kinds of ploys to make the maximum possible impression on their patients.

“Most healers have no conscious awareness of doing this, but their techniques often demonstrate an extraordinary intelligence that is far more revealing about the nature of healing than experiments with magnets or mice could ever be. I feel that any really meaningful explanation of what takes place will have to concern itself more with altered states of consciousness and with the way in which different levels of being, other realities, are connected with one another.”[v][v]

Basically, the assertion is that the quality and extent of positive change in Rolfing occurs in direct proportion to the character of the therapeutic intimacy in a session. That is, if the client senses that the practitioner is fully present, competent and safe, that client will give (at an unconscious, perhaps pre-verbal level) consent proportional to the openness and clarity of the working relationship, and it is that profound inward consent which allows and manifests deep and lasting physical, as well as emotional change.

This notion began to form in the early years of my practice when, like any average neurotic afflicted with perfectionism, I was working to produce consistently flawless results in each session and, naturally, failing. Frequent six-day workshops, anatomy study, review of notes, and conferences with more experienced colleagues failed to remedy the problem. Assurances from veteran colleagues that such variations were normal helped slightly, but it was a puzzle I was determined to solve.

From my very first client onward, I was repeatedly amazed by the effectiveness of the work. But some clients changed more and quicker than others, even though I believed my manipulative input was consistent in proportion to their structural differences. Why? What made the difference?

One early client stands out in this regard. A man in his late thirties, he’d grown up on a ranch in west Texas, where life can be harsh. For example, he answered “No” to the question on the intake form that asked him to list any serious injuries. Based on his structure, and having watched him walk in, I couldn’t believe that. Perhaps I needed to define my terms:

“Have you ever had any broken bones?”

“Oh yeah,” he said, “both my elbows were smashed once, my chest got caved in, and both my knees got busted ridin’ bulls...” There was more trauma, but you get the idea. His body was very rigid and his persona matched it perfectly. I’d rarely encountered a more closed, distant person. I also learned that he could not remember anything before he was about seventeen years old.

As we worked our way through the series, I realized he was the client I’d been warned about in class, when Emmett Hutchins said that any of us who were perfectionists would eventually draw someone who would drive us crazy with frustration. I could swear that Billy Bob[vi][vi] had some very good changes while on the table, but when he stood up, it was as though he had a mystical ability to throw off all the changes and pull himself back into his old, familiar tangle of compensations. And then he wanted me to show him all the dramatic changes in the Polaroids so he’d know he wasn’t wasting his money! Talk about sweating blood...

But something kept him coming back, and we completed the series. Then, during one of the last sessions, he suddenly recalled a memory from his blank period: when he was sixteen, he and his older brother, his greatest hero, had gone to town one Saturday to look for some fun. Late in the day, from across a street, he saw his brother suddenly confronted by a man who “..Shouted that he couldn’t fool around with his woman, and then he cut him in half with a shotgun blast.” I was stunned. But as devastating as that memory must have been, once again he quickly regained his composure, as though nothing disturbing had happened.

When we completed his series, I had to strain to see (perhaps I was imagining things?) any clear change. Certain that I had failed to convey the work to him properly, I spent a lot of time reviewing the sessions and trying to understand what I had missed about his structure and tissue, or how my work strategies had been flawed.

Then, about seven months later, I ran into Billy Bob at a seminar. I didn’t recognize him until he told me who he was. Not only was his bearing completely different, he looked about six inches taller and four inches wider, and his movements were fluid, not stiff and angular. Most startling, he greeted me with open arms and a huge smile; the man positively radiated warmth and openness. What in the world had happened?

I suspect that all of us have faced similar junctures at which theory, practice and empirical results not only do not fit, but in fact, seem to collide powerfully. Probably it’s natural to seek resolution by applying models that are most familiar to us or most comfortable. Apart from some bizarre, delayed physical effect I’d never heard described, what made the most sense to me was a psychological shift. Had Billy Bob, aided by the physical release and integration of Rolfing, found a way at some deep level to allow resolution of the tormenting conflict between painful reality and his youthful denial of it? If so, it suggested that a client’s emotional “permission” -- whether it was conscious or not -- was as powerful a catalyst for change as was the manipulative contribution.

That impression was bolstered over time as I worked with clients who had interrupted the spacing of their sessions, sometimes for quite a long interval. Most were people who had been suffering with severe physical problems, usually with great pain. The usual pattern was that they had been changing very rapidly, their pain was going away and they were very excited -- and then they cancelled the next appointment and disappeared. When they came back to resume the series, I’d ask how things had been going. Their answers always indicated that the time off was related to deep anxiety, the sense that, somehow, things were changing too fast for them.

So they were getting what they’d said they wanted, which they had wanted to happen quickly -- but it was happening too fast and too easily. How was I going to make sense of that?

Dr. Rolf once said, “If you want to do truly effective work, keep asking yourself with each client: ‘How did he or she get this way?’ ” No matter how much we’d like to believe that we are conscious of what we do, that we are in charge of our lives, there is abundant evidence to confirm that most of the time we are, in fact, manipulated by unconscious impulses. There is also a tendency to follow certain known routines in life and to associate some degree of sameness with enhancing survival. This is true even when a pattern can be shown to compromise survival, and/or when it maintains the habit that causes pain. It’s a sad old joke: “Why should I change? I may be miserable day to day, but at least I know how to deal with life this way.”

It’s not hard to understand where this instinct gets its power. When we are new beings, tiny bundles of nerve endings confronted by a bewildering array of sensory phenomena, sooner or later we are startled, frightened. But our word “frightened” doesn’t fully convey the infant’s experience. Panic is more accurate, that gut sense of every nerve screaming, in effect, “I’m gonna die!”

One immediate reaction is to hang on, to clench our muscles. Then, when we survive, the nervous system naturally associates that muscular holding with having survived -- even if it didn’t really help at all, or might have even hindered survival. Nonetheless, a holding pattern has been born, and with each new fright it will reflexively be activated and strengthened. No matter how many additional holding patterns are formed, I believe they are all related to very early feelings of one’s life being -- literally -- in great danger.

It’s a wonderful irony: people come to us to change, even though they’re usually anxious about disrobing and the stories they’ve heard about pain, and then they get to deal with true distress -- the fact of actually changing.

There is, however, another factor that works in our favor. In the face of danger, the normal impulse is to reach out to someone close (typically the mother), a warm body who can be trusted, upon whom one’s very life may depend. This is a very powerful effect, and another reason for emphasis on the quality of the working relationship. In fact, my wife Janie once read me an article about changes in blood chemistry during hands-on therapy which were identical to what is observed in the blood chemistry of nursing infants. (Sorry, I am currently unable to locate that article.) So if the client feels safe enough, that is, “held” in the responsive embrace of the therapeutic intimacy, each confrontation of an old, fearful holding pattern is a fresh opportunity to open to new vitality, rather than a threat against which one must defend.

This is also one good reason why all of us should receive work now and then: the reminder of the power of the vulnerability, discomfort and the challenge to one’s existential status quo. It’s too easy to forget just how sharp a moment of pain or fear can be to the person lying there almost naked. To put ourselves in the client’s position, excited, anxious and exposed helps to elicit compassion (literally “suffering with”), bringing keener sensitivity to how we relate to our clients through the reminder of how it feels to be one.

Seeing the quality of Rolfer/client relationship as key to change also helps us to moderate the natural desire to be Great Healers. There’s nothing terrible about wanting to be a healer, and in fact, that’s almost certainly a part of how we chose this work. There is, however, considerable danger in an uncritical acceptance of that archetype. To do so not only sets up an unrealistic, and therefore treacherous, notion of the practitioner’s power and responsibility, it also opens the way to a nasty psychological inflation. Worst of all, I am convinced it actively interferes with the effectiveness of our work by placing the practitioner’s ego demand for “really good changes” above the client’s need for respect and acceptance. More than one Rolfer has gotten in trouble through his/her stubborn determination that, “I’m going to make that change!” rather than following Dr. Rolf’s urging to, “See what’s ready to change and then help it to move.”

I’m convinced that it works better to shift the focus of healing power to the quality of relationship between practitioner and client, the ever-changing phenomenon that arises within a greater field of ordering energy. Not only is it more effective, serving is one hell of a lot easier on the nerves than trying to run the show. As Dr. Rolf once said, “Healing is the intuitive art of wooing nature.”

John Upledger, D.O., founder of the Upledger Institute, has commented, “The secret something that is shared by all effective healing methods can best be characterized as the process of leading the patient to an honest and truthful self-discovery. This self-discovery is required for the initiation and continuation of self-healing; for it is only through self-healing -- in contrast to ‘curing’ -- that patients can experience both permanent recovery and spiritual growth.”[vii][vii]

Finally, one more idea I’d like to offer. It comes from another of Dr. Rolf’s many koan:

4. “After all is said and done, Rolfing is really for the Rolfer.”

As is traditional with koan, each student must discover its meaning. For me this quote points to the radical nature of the world into which Ida Rolf invited us, and how it can change us if we are open to it. In contrast to our culture, in which most people are furiously trying to fix the bits and pieces they can recognize in life, she planted in us potent seeds from such revolutionary thinkers as Einstein, Poincare´, Korzybski and Wittgenstein. Then she pointed us at the staggeringly complex human being and showed us that we could help people to live better. What an infinite garden in which to play! Is it any wonder we would feel staggered by the challenge to grow it further? It does have its rewards, though.

I assume it’s well known that Dr. Rolf envisioned three different Rolfing schools, each of them exploring a different aspect of the work: scientific/anatomical, emotional/psychological and energetic/metaphysical. That third category has long intrigued me, especially since Rolfing frequently evokes startling healings that challenge any scientific or psychological explanation. Whether one views metaphysics with contempt or with big, misty eyes, it had definite value for Dr. Rolf, as her personal notes indicate. While she emphasized that any interest in metaphysics needed to be firmly grounded in physics, she wondered aloud if metaphysics simply intuited what quantum mechanics would eventually discover is happening at the “sub-atomic” level.

Some metaphysical domains incorporate the “mystery school” approach. In this model, worldly specifics (anatomy, physiology and other didactic material) are important not as meaningful content, but as symbols employed in structuring a ritual. Then, if one follows the ritual form with devotion (i.e. surrendering the personal ego in service to a greater ideal) it heightens the potential for a greater presence to enter and bring wholeness.

In this manner, the work of structural integration provides us a way to practice a finer and clearer balance between the apparent poles of acting and allowing until we know them not as opposite but as complementary. We are responsible for a competent, honest presentation of the medium of Rolfing; our clients are responsible for the results they undergo and how they will use them. We can take pride in our work as midwives and enjoy their results, but we are not responsible for how they live their lives. Our task is to refine the art of conveying the work through discipline and delight.

Dr. Rolf passed on a great gift to us, and we have the opportunity to share it with others as a gift, even though we’re paid for it, not only in currency but also in how it helps us to learn and to open to a wider life. So in effect, the more we devote ourselves to supporting true healing in others, the more likely we can open to our own healing. That’s what I call a real worker’s benefit.

Having said all this, I admit that just how Rolfing accomplishes what it does is still largely a mystery to me. I think Dr. Rolf was offering a way to help us manage our egos when she cautioned, “Remember, you are not therapists, you are catalysts. Gravity is the therapist.” But I believe she was also reminding us not to underestimate the power of that amazing phenomenon of spontaneous positive change that continues long after the clients leave our Rolfing rooms. This is a very warm, comforting thought on those cold, lonely nights.

It’s a great way to make an honest living. And I think we’ll find the path easier to follow the more we learn to play well with others. After all, there’s a lot to learn, and there are innumerable teachers. “We all need to see, as Martin Luther King said, that we are caught in a web of mutuality. What affects one affects all.”[viii][viii]

First published in: Yearbook 2005 of the International Academy of Structural Integration.

For any further distribution, please contact the author.

Back to the article collection