OPENING REMARKS

Greetings to you all – to rolfers, their families and their friends and our guests. I am happy to win the place of choice – early in the program to welcome you all, and to again have the privilege of greeting you, individually and collectively. Year by year I become more painfully aware that there are among you rollers individually whom I do riot know even by sight. More and more younger rollers are getting your Elementary Training in classes taught by the more active, younger teachers. So. in that this Annual Meeting is the only opportunity I have of seeing some of you, I would like if those of you who have not been in my classes to come up to me sometime during the meeting and introduce yourselves and your family and your work.

Naturally, this realization has led me into a long contemplated backward look recognition of how we rollers got to San Francisco in 1976 and an appreciative review and fond memory of the people who gave us a “leg up” when rolling had no bandwagon onto which people could climb when rolfing consisted of the willing hands and elbows of a very few people and its promotion depended on the uncounted, unrewarded, or at least unpaid hours of a handful of devoted souls who put it “on the map.” Only a few of these were rollers the rest simply recognized rolling as something valuable to the human race and were willing to put their entire energies into promoting it. Very near the top of this list is Rosemary Feitis. Recalling our work together I remember the old saw.” We worked hard anti we did all we could do six days of the week, and the rest we did on the seventh! This was particularly true in the writing and endless re writing of that famous “book” now I hope almost in your hands – entitled rolling: I he Integration of Human Structures. Then there was Dick Denmerle, who got himself licensed in six or seven states in order to be able to go into those states to give demonstrations and introduce the concepts of rolling and to create a demand for it. Still later a silver-tongued roller Bill Williams, who in I matter at weeks persuaded the whole State of Florida (and it seemed every citizen of that State) that they must he rolled as of last week! It was an exciting time and out of it grew recognition and demand and later the whole group of rollers who hold forth so ably in Florida today.

Thinking of Florida and California, there conies to mind Julian Silverman and charming Beverly. Julian also was silver-tongued and although never himself a roller, the creator of an interest in some Establishment circles which, in my opinion, has been of prime importance to the development of rolling. Having heard the report of Val Hunt whose work rested squarely on the demand of Silverman and his persuasive words, I think you will agree with me.

And then there was Esalen and its guiding friendly spirit, Dick Price. Many of you “oldsters” realize that without the opportunity of showing our wares to a very widely distributed segment of interested and investigative people, we might very well have disappeared, unhonored and unsung in the welter of techniques, methods, and gimmicks that clog the market today and did then for that matter. Rut Esalen was a totally unique medium. Neither radio television, magazine articles, or newspapers could have done for us what the gossip circuit of Esalen lunchroom and Esalen baths did. 1Nhen the news finally reached me that as a topic of discussion in the Esalen baths, rolling had displaced SEX, then I knew we had it made! I knew that all we had to do now was work and work we did, individually and collectively!

But I could not leave this scene without a smile, nostalgic, tender, appreciative evoked by the overshadowing memory of Fritz Perls. It pleases me to realize the many of you will share that smile and that memory. Fritz Perls, crotchety, temperamental, unpredictable, illogical, was to meat least the investing spirit of Esalen. Most of you, I imagine, have read his account of his experience with rolling and of Rolf in his book In and Out of the Garbage Pail. Fritz knew that not only his physical health pattern, but also his psychological and if you like the word his spiritual awareness had been changed and greatly upgraded by his rolling. And he was generous enough and articulate enough to spread this knowledge about rolling from coast to coast. As rollers we shall not soon outlive our indebtedness to that extraordinary genius Fritz Perls.

These were a few, but as you all realize, only a very few of our friends, we might even call them a few of our Founding Friends riot exactly founding fathers. You all realize that our time this morning precludes the possibility of indulging in a lengthy nostalgia or an appropriate appreciation of our many friends.

But times have been changing since those days, and ideas, while not really changing, have been developing fortunately or we would not deserve to survive in this rapidly changing world!

But this sequence is part of the general history of ideas and their development, their application. A revolutionary idea develops first and an intuitive perception in the mind of its pioneer its innovator. At this point in its life rolling is particularly an art form perceived as a whole, embodying a total idea, a total expression. At the time of Fritz Perls and these other founding friends this fairly expressed the level of rolling. But like so many ideas, the idea of integration has progressed to a level where it is being examined and analyzed and fitted into words suitable for the current idiom. In other words the idea progresses from an art expression into a scientific understanding and thorough analysis. Do I think Scientific Analysis is the answer to all problems? Certainly tint! I think synthesis integration is a far higher form but science is not all that bad. For one thing it permits and encourages replication and before a method can be taught, replication must be possible. You all remember, I ant sure, hearing me bewail the shortcomings of rollers “You can all take a body apart but the number of people who can put it together are mighty few.” Here I am saying the same thing: Analysis is of necessity a cover form, a preliminary’ synthesis of integration. Our culture intellectual as a whole has come a long way towards appreciating this sequence in the last twenty-five years. For the number of people who have learned to think with a greater emphasis on synthesis and the “whole” has increased enormously. Largely, thanks to the widespread emphasis on “systems analysis” during this period. This appreciation of the body, as a set of interrelated sysa; ms rather than an aggregate or a summation of individual pieces, call them myofascial units, if you will, is what is necessary “lo put a body together,” to integrate a body to do the job necessary for rolling sessions #8, #9, and # 10 as well as the more advanced work.

In practical rolfing it is this synthesis of systems, rather than of individual units, which is now coming along so well, especially in the advanced hours. To a certain practical extent this is happening thanks to the rollers’ insight resulting from the more advanced rolling techniques and their experience in the advanced sessions. Bill to a greater degree it is appearing as we begin in understand under the leadership of Lewis Schultz arid documented by Ron Thompson, the interrelationships, the interplay of fascial planes in a normal body also the aberrations to which fascial planes are subject how and why. You see, we are now getting out of the art level of our task and beginning to get greater understanding through the application of scientific methods: analysis and replication. Does this mean that we are abandoning the creative aspect? By no means! We are, or at least should be, adding to our tools to enable us to create a more effective, a more integrated whole. Lewis and Ron will later show you the evidence of their zeal and labor; as a result of which Lewis has developed challenging and intriguing revolutionary theories concerning the development of the life manifestation which we call the human being. I do so hope he will put these ideas into print soon, so that we may all share them and pride in this contribution which I would call outstanding, an expression of rotting 197519.6. I am sure that all people who w ere in the Spring, 1976 Advanced Class in New Jersey will support me in applauding the contribution made toward a greater effectiveness of the rolf method at the hands of rolfers, as a result of their great understanding. But hear in mind our work is synthesis, integration, a contribution toward knowledge and creation of the whole roan aril understanding of how a man who is more clearly whole behaves. It is not merely knowledge of anatomy or anatomical facts riot even fascial anatomy and facts it is the voluntary creation of the man nearer to the goal sketched by Norbert Weiner “a more human use of human beings.” This goal, I feel, is nearer decidely nearer than it was a year ago.

All of you know, however, that my personal goal in the study of rolling is the consideration of the energy body and how it works. What constitutes the energy body and how are these structures affected by rolling or by other techniques?

It is quite true that we as rollers are basically concerned with the application and the improvement of the technique called rolling, but unless we have some basic understanding of what it is we are trying to affect and how these energy units can express themselves in what we are pleased to call the “real world,” we are in dark confusion, thus knowing of the energy body of man becomes a matter of prime importance to rollers. You all remember the thrill that was ours last summer when we had the first preliminary report of the work which Dr. Valerie Hunt has been doing in the Spring of 1975 in her study of the energy centers of the body and the changes in those centers included by rotting. They ear between that report and today – the year 1975-76 – has been spent by Dr. Hunt in consolidating and processing the data which was revealed by her work – studying the direction in which these data indicated we and she should proceed in a further search-looking again at the fashion in which these results were giving us a more material, a more factual picture of the energy structure of It the human body. Dr. Hunt has been good enough to offer us her own personal account of this work and you will hear this later Saturday morning, I think it is. When your Board of Directors met at this time last year they were acknowledging that as of the Annual Meeting 1975 we were suffering from indigestion arid being accutely aware of it. We expressed to each other the need for a year of consolidation. And this, as you see, is what we created for ourselves-a period in which we consolidated our ideas, picked up the loose ends, looked at the significance of the loose ends, tried very hard to improve the communications between the Board and members of the Institute whom the Board represents and serves. You are seeing and hearing the way this attempt of ours has been working out. Here, I am talking about understanding contribution in 1975-76. I personally feel the very great importance to you people of the vastly improved and expanded advanced teaching is the “advanced class,” of which we expect to give another in a month’s time.
If, by the way, you are personally interested in attending this class, talk to one of us about it. There is still a chance you might find space. We are particularly interested in including the older group of rollers in our classes for rolfing has gone far since those early classes. We also see, as an outstanding accomplishment, the establishment of our “Six-day Intensive” They really offer you a means of professional progression in your own hometown – and this means a lower cost: less traveling, less board and lodging, etc. In terms of class opportunities, we are also listening hard to the demand of the people who attended the earlier “advanced” classes – Big Stir, etc. These people are feeling the need for the opportunity to update themselves with the ideas and techniques of these latest classes. We are therefore considering giving an “advanced” class for “advanced rolfers” in the Summer of 1977, a class of four weeks long teaching and demonstrating advanced techniques only. Earlier training in an advanced class will be a pre requisite.

In the ROLF INSTITUTE we feel that our primary job is teaching practitioners, making more skillful and wiser, more knowledgeable teachers and guides of human structure and function, for this is our definition of “rolfers.” We feel that in 1975-76 we have made giant strides in this direction and we’ll really like it if you people feel the same way.

But teaching, in my opinion, is not enough. We your teat hers must know how and through what means this revolutionary technique of rolfing works. A “recipe” is fine – it works as each and everyone of you has reason to know but when you get to be a “chef” instead of a “cook” you create your results not by a recipe but by your recognition of the interplay of food and nutritional values and materials. This is the level where we are now.

To me, personally, there is a constant and continuous need for “input” in order to feed the springs that give us “overflow.” We must know if we are to progress further. We must know more about the structures with which we, as rolfers, are dealing. What is it we are doing to and with those structures.
For it is the change in structure which manifests or does it manifest or is it only an index for structural behavior. I think you would all agree that the change in behavior is the prime importance in what we create physical behavior and psychological behavior. Before we can get a mature system (by that I mean a system which is sufficiently grown up and stable that it is not changing several times a year) before we can reach that happy goal, we need to understand more about the structures which are giving us our results. And this means scientific research and the kind of people who deal with such ideas. Fortunately, we have a goodly number of such qualified people among our rolfers. And they too have been at work during the year 1975-76.

A group, most of whom are here in this room, have spent their nights, their Sundays, their holidays. considering the application of the Ruckminister Fuller ideas to the human body, the application of the tensegrity model to consideration of the flesh and blood structure we have fort thousands of years been calling a ,.man.” You are fortunate in that this “science” group of ours will he holding forth and bringing their ideas to a greater general understanding in one of the lecture series. I highly recommend this program and these devoted rolfers to your appreciation.

And then there are the rolfers who are taking rolling to a very real and very troubled world. They have been at work this year too. The rollers who have consented to spend their time dealing with the physically disadvantaged. Mostoi you know that we have had a project in mind of rolling a group of cerebral palsied individuals, mostly children. We have had the great good fortune of arranging this through the instigation of that outstanding international authority on cerebral palsy. Dr. Margaret Jones of Los Angeles. The hospital there, Rancho de Los Amigos, is willing to make conventional measurements on a number of rolled individuals and I ant sure these data will be appropriately published. Il has been no simple matter to organize this. Dr. Jones and Dr. Perry, her Associate, there are also to he cherished as our friends for the time and effort they have expended. The matter of money for this project has also been a retarding factor. We have thought dial this project needed $25,000, to complete. At this date we are still lacking about $3,000 and our invaluable watchdog of the treasury growls every time we reach out a hand to fondle that money. He says we can’t have it until we get it all. Any of you know of any millionaires – kind-hearted – child-oriented? And while we’re talking about this kind of application rolling, we should mention a very important extension of this project going on in New York under the watchful eye of Jim Asher. An enterprising pediatrician there, Dr. Tiger, has volunteered to document work done by Jim in New York on serious causes of this sort and other pathological conditions and publish them appropriately. This is a team of enthusiasts, Asher and Figer, which will, I feel, go far.

These last mentioned efforts may seem to you an invasion of a medical field, but to me they are a different aspect, to me, what we are seeking in these disorganized, disadvantaged bodies is the outward sign, the physical behavior of disorganized energy-centers. We shall he able to turn our work into an organized cultural pattern effort as we understand the effect of energy bodies on physical bodies (the manifestation of energy groupings on physical behavior) and after that, through that, on psychological behaviors. There are around the country, a number of people talking about the ”physics of consciousness.” The problem is that to date no one but ourselves has had the means of demonstrating the extent of which consciousness depends on the physics of energy centers, their location in space. In my mind there is no question but that the actual location in space and their interrelationships in space importantly determines behavior patterns. To date we have not had the technology to demonstrate this scientifically – but in intuitive our approach proclaims it loud and clear. However, this has not been an accomplishment of 1975-76 -so let us only say here “continued in our next” and look at it again when we talk on Monday of our hopes as well as designs for 1975-76.

CLOSING REMARKS

Sadly enough we are now approaching the close of our 1976 Annual Meeting. To date we have been looking over accomplishments of the year 1975-76 and I said in opening the conference that we, at least, and I specifically am here to brag. I hope by this time you are joining me in bragging about this record of accomplishments which has been the fruit of what Michael Salveson has been pleased to call a “unique year of consolidation.” I wish all consolidation were as fruitful, as productive. As for 1976-77, what do we hope to do in that year? What are the dreams toward which I would like to see us move? Well, as I said earlier, we consider our first mission is turning out rollers who are really qualified to tackle community problems and to move toward their solution. In this area some of you may remember a session now quite a while ago when I discussed an old Yogic idea, essentially an idea that we have been teaching throughout our teaching experience. My talk stressed the relation of behavior to physical structure in the body, a premise to which I think all of you will un qualifidely subscribe. You have reason to do so. for you see this every day of your rolfing lives. The development of the old yoga physical systems was based on the same underlying idea. The old yogis who, (or the most part, were the upper c lass caste wanted to develop a class of superior individuals. They wanted their children to be superior and they also wanted their culture to be superior. In support of this goal, so-called Hatha or Yatustha Yoga was developed.

Rolfing is, after all, the modern successor of the old ideas of Hatha Yoga. We share with them the premise that structure gives rise to behavior and determines its direction. This premise, in fact, is “inherited” from old Yatustha Yoga. Our mechanism differs from that found effective at that time. But it must be remembered that the hot, humid climate of India, as well as the persons of a caste (system) which did all the pore energetic work of the day gave rise to a pattern of body among the upper classes which was soft and somewhat slack in its joints, differing radically from the body pattern developed from the colder climate and more energetic cultures of northern European nations and their descendants, the Americans. These old teachers found it ineffective to compress the joints of the body. While the immediate goal of rolfing is to extend these joints, to give them a much greater freedom of movement thus allowing them to fulfill one of the first laws of rolling: namely that when flexors flex – extensors extend they do not contract (as in vogic exercise). This is what rolling can and does contribute to the body of the rolfee. The contribution to his physiological manifestation can appear to be much more apparently significant. It is interesting to note that some osteopathic researchers believed that the health of the joints reflects the well orill being of the autonomic nervous system rather than the newer central system. The different balance between these two systems will manifest in behavior and offers one clue to the change in behavior patterns elicited by rolfing. For in this extension, pressure and compressions are released, points of irritation which inhibit circulation of various sorts are removed and as a result, the individual can afford to behave in a manner more acceptable to the community of his peers. In other words, asocial behavior is lessened. Does this mean that all community crime is lessened? No, there are, as you know, conditions, aberrations so deeply inbedded in individual structures that a system oft is sort will not reach them. But there is no doubt the improvement of a man’s or woman’s self-image will help his behavior vastly and in so doing lessen the extent of asocial behavior in the community.

For several years now I have been preaching the need of rollers accepting responsibility to do some work “pro bono publico” as our lawyer friends say for the public good. I would like to see this idea attain to some manifestation during the next year. I would like to see rollers devote some time in the week, some energy to raising the standard not merely of public health, but of public psychological health through working with underprivileged and deprived human beings, and through developing techniques for reaching such individuals in detention institutions and underprivileged districts. It seems to me that the American World, has been very good to rollers. It is incredible the fashion in which we have been accepted. And we’re growing up and hopefully are willing to start paying our debts to the communities who have supported us so generously. What I have said up to this point applies not only to correctional efforts and institutions but also to schools and to all those places where young people congregate to confound their confusion. This is one of the projects which is dear to my heart. I would like to see it dear enough to yours to warrant some of you doing something about it. I do strongly recommend it to your good offices as one means of solidifying the position of rollers in the community, of letting the community understand that they have an absolutely priceless asset available.

But this once again stresses our vital requirement, namely a greater skill, a greater understanding on the part of rollers. In other words, it cries aloud to our teaching. Those of you who have been in the advanced classes have experienced the way you can speed up the work essential to the rolf process if you know without doubt exactly where and how to apply your recipe. You know that you can work for an hour trying to free up legs with local attention and nothing seems to happen until you start working on the pelvis or the lower back or some other structure located two or three feet away from the apparent tie-up -and all of a sudden there is no tie-up. It’s gone! With our present greater understanding (thanks to Lewis Schultz & Company) of the fascial connective tissue web which is the structure of a human, we begin to understand why this is so and how this is so, and more importantly how to release it. Many of you have commented from time to time on the apparent economy of effort apparent in my own processing. This is really the secret of it. In order to attain this economy, you must have surety about the direction in which you intend to move the tissues, and it becomes more and more apparent that the direction in which you move the tissue is of prime importance and depends on the relative position of the large fascial planes which interconnect throughout the body. It is not necessary that you know these places from an antatomical sense: their names, the muscles they influence, etc. It is important that your hands learn to differentiate fascial planes and how to move them. That you abandon the limited local contacts of the earlier hours that had to do with individual muscles and learn to think and to feel in these large structures that organize and constitute the mesodermal body. In the earlier hours these fascial planes are not defined, are not free. At that time the techniques you learned in hours 1 to 10 are very much in order. But thinking along fascial planes is the work and, in fact, the accomplishment of the Advanced Classes. If you doubt this statement, talk to the people who have been in these classes and have there learned to see and consequently have learned economy of effort. It is herethat you learn integration, not the work, not the verbalism, but the reality. This is why we keep plugging the Advanced Classes and why we shall continue to do so: for the prime purpose, the overwhelming intent of the ROLF INSTITUTE and of Rolf as representative of that Institute is to turn out really competent rollers who understand how to reposition – restructure perhaps – at any rate make more effective the energy centers of the body, through their relation to each other and to the rnesoderrnal components of the body. For let us realize, in this world of joy or woe, we the rollers are the experts on the myofascial body. Which brings me to another comment. Just as years ago the Growth Center Movement grabbed hold of the label “Human Potential” and assumed it was basically theirs, so today we are hearing in many directions the label ”the physics of consciousness.” It’s a good label. a provocative, stimulating one, but just as the label Human Potential was an accurate description of what was freed by rolling in working with the mesodermal physical material body, so today the label “the physic of consciousness” implies expertise in physics. And physics, you remember deals with the material world, with recognition of the interplay (the interface, ii you like, of material particles and considerations of space) of their relation in space and of their relation to each other in space. For it is this that determines energy. Even the mere word “physics” implies “space.” Re this as it may, the label “physics” in these later years has also been including energy and the study of energy. It’s various, manifestations is consigned in ordinary human categorization to the department of physics. Rut you rollers are the ones in our cultural community who understand how to change, to shift the relations of material living particles in space, thereby giving rise to a different energy level, which is after all just another name for different behavior. The study of energy centers in space? vital units and their positioning in space as vital factors are the essential business of rollers, and it is basically to the recognition and study of these energy centers and their manifestations that rollers can properly address themselves. This is the work and the goal of advanced rolling and considerations developing from it. The earlier parts of this work has been begun, well begun as you know. You have all heard and evaluated the work of Dr. Valerie Hunt whose outstanding work has laid the foundation for this progression. In the coming years I should like to study, to thread out the relations of where these centers are in space. I have profound conviction that they can reinforce one another and give out the energy patterns of white light only as they are located either in a vertical line or in lines which have specific optimal angular relations to each other. Departure from these conditions show up in outer manifestation as ill being, ill health, ill behavior. Conformity on the contrary shows well-being. Dr. Hunt and I are already discussing the possibility of demonstrating this but we need 1976-77 to get this idea nearer to the outer world. I think I have made the case sufficiently clear as to the function of the Advanced Class – I realize that many of you feel that you can’t leave your practice for such a long period – or your family – or what have you. To you people I can only recommend an examination of your priorities. What is most important to you in the long run? Surely you can so adjust your lives that this priority, if it be rolfing and the understanding of it, can be satisfied. For many of you it is a question of finance. I cannot guarantee this, it is a matter of Institute finances at a give date-hut Dick, the Director of these finances, is more than willing to examine your money problem in detail and allow or adjust for it as best we may at the time. For we wane rolfers – the best we can get -and we need them quickly because as I see it we are likely to need many more rollers in the period immediately ahead.

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We hope shortly to develop, under the planning of George Hall, a multi channeled instrument designed to measure energy fields around the body. This project follows the work of Harold Saxon Burr, whose book on the electrical fields surrounding living structures I have put into the hands of many of you. George Hall knew Dr. Burr in person and is rather better acquainted with his published materials than most other workers. I am very hopeful about his device and what it may point out to us. Some of you were present yesterday morning at the last talk of Dr. Hunt. At that time she called attention to the observation that different physical exercises seemed to affect the energy of different “bodies” of a man, that exercises like push-ups, etc. which I would condemn as shortening the myofascial structure of a human seemed to enliven the electro-magnetic structure. We are in a vast unknown territory. There are no maps. We have to create them; and by the grace of the good Lord, we nosy have an adequate number of well-trained, willing workers capable of doing this.

And speaking of mapping the body, there is another instrumental approach which has interested many rollers. This has been devised by and is in the laboratory of Dr. R.E. Herrod, Director of the Bio-Stereo Metric Laboratory in the Texas Institute for Rehabilitation and Research. This unique instrument takes three simultaneous and overlapping pictures of the body, which are then fed to a computer. The latter, in turn, provides contour and cross-section maps, which can be a way of measuring, recording and validating the changes produced by a roller. It is balance you are trying to produce. The symmetry of the map is an index of the balance you have produced. The se are clearer than our ordinary rolf photographs and would be more reliable as research records. The contours are formed by the distribution of flesh and bone. It is, of course, the re distribution of these basic materials that rollers work with. Needless to say, maps such as these would carry conviction to the orthodox doubting Thomases who are our principal problem in the orthodox acceptance of rolling. No more could a man say, “I just don’t see a bit of difference” or “Of course in this photograph he is just standing straighter.”

However, of all the instruments yet devised or explored for the evaluation of the human body and its components a really competent roller is by all odds the most competent, the most accurate, the most useful. And, this is the message of August 1976: that we need above everything else well-trained, competent rollers, who know what they see and know why it looks that way. That is why the prime goal of the Institute is the training of rolfers, training them especially in the recognition of how and where energy is created to enliven a body. Training them especially in the absolute surety that if you accept the idea of energy centers, the idea if you want to call them that, of Chakris, you know that the one absolutely reliable way of enhancing that energy is not by dealing with the Chakra per se, not even by applying psychological or other round-about methods, but by dealing with the myofascial system, the system along with energy seems to flow through which a more cosmic energy, gravity, may be entrapped and may be set to work for the benefit of humans.

And on this point let me say I hope to he bragging to you about this -all of this in the Summer of 1977.Dr. Ida P. Rolf´s 1976 Annual Meeting Message