Greetings;

Jan Sultan’s recent letter and the attendant responses are, I hope, a sign that dialogue is awakening. The definitions and assumptions that underlie our practice grow, develop and mature from those essential ideas planted by Dr. Rolf years ago. We each take these ideas and add to them the lessons of our experience, shaped by our interests. The result is growth and evolution of our ideas and techniques, together with a diversity of the opinion regarding our collective priorities. I have long been of the opinion that a diversity of viewpoints is preferable to unanimity. When we are able to see a thing from several different points of view, we are in a relationship with it that is often richer and more creative than if we imagine that a thing has but a single aspect. As Moshe Feldenkrais has said: “You only know a thing if you can do it three different ways”.

With this said, let me cast my lot with those whose curiosity has led them to wander outside the receipe in search of answers to the problems presented in one’s Rolfing practice. Having learned the receipe well, having lived with it intimately, I understand and appreciate it’s profundity. I see how it leads us to an experience of integrity and connectedness in the body and how it is a well formed expression of Dr. Rolf’s insight that integrating structures is something of a different order from treating symptoms. All this is clear and because it is clear, I am impelled to look further; to look from the myo-fascial system to the skeletal system and bony articulations, to pursue an understanding of the nervous system, body energy, emotions and imagination, all outside the receipe.

Jan’s suggestion that we begin to think about how we can use what we have learned thus far to remedy some everyday problems people suffer from is, for me, stating the obvious. I have, for three years now, been exploring the application of Rolfing theory and technique to the amelioration and hopefully the solution of back problems, chronic and acute. I have learned what only experience can teach; that certain ideas and techniques work for some of the people some of the time but that nothing works for all the people all of the time. To the extent that the receipe is a predetermined plan applied systematically, I think its usefulness is limited to a teaching device, a valuable guide and safe harbor for new Rolfers, who should, as soon as possible, learn to see through it to what lies directly in front of them, an individual cum connective tissue, skeleton, nervous system, etc.

Ida was fond of Korzybski’s lesson of not confusing the map for the territory and I think she would be the first to doubt a monotheistic adherence to the receipe. I can remember her telling frustrated students to think, that that was how she gained what she knew and that they could do the same. The point here is not to drag out quotations from Dr. Rolf as sacred objects, for her contribution is complete, it is finished. We are the ones who must go on from here. We who have bur experience to learn from. I was shocked to hear Dick Stenstadvold’s rebuttal to Jan’s letter, comming from one who has no experience in these matters. Let experience and reason speak and not belief (experience being knowledge gained from practice and not length of practice). Our discussion can be enriching and broadening, refining our skills and understanding. By questioning only will we discover boundaries, both what we can do and what we cannot.

I encourage all Rolfers, when they feel prepared, to cautiously look beyond and behind the receipe and when their skill is strong, as I know Jan’s is, to expand and take on new problems. In my experience it is possible to “fix problems” both within and without the receipe. It is also my experience that all this capacity for expansion rests on the firm foundation laid by Dr. Rolf and expressed in the receipe.

My best,

Michael SalvesonThe Map and the Territory