Anne Hoff: Let?s talk about Ida Rolf and her lineage, since you go back to early days and have seen a lot happen in our Rolfing Structural Integration (SI) community over the years. It seems like Dr. Rolf embodied both the scientific and the metaphysical, and those are two threads that continue to inform our work and sometimes be the source of conflict.

Nicholas French: In my experience, Dr. Rolf dropped occasional remarks about the metaphysical, but stayed primarily with science, anatomy, and the work. Colleagues have talked about how sometimes in class Dr. Rolf would bring out a pendulum, as though she were going to check someone?s energy or something. Ron Thompson, who took many wonderful photos of Dr. Rolf, noticed that and kept trying to get a picture of her hand with the pendulum, but she seemed to have an uncanny sense about when Ron raised his camera, so the pendulum would disappear. I think she knew that might look ridiculous to some people, and she didn?t want her work misunderstood. But the mixture was there. One day in class somebody asked, ?How did you invent Rolfing SI?,? and she said, ?I didn?t invent it. As much as it?s needed for our evolution, this sort of work must have been around forever. I worked hard to understand it, but it wouldn?t have come together as it is now without the help of the Good Lord.? That really jarred me. I saw her as a scientist, and that was the first time I?d heard her say something so specific about that metaphysical area, and she was emphatic. I think she had an unusually fine balance of the rational and the intuitive, or left/right brain function, whatever one calls it, and that?s what really got my attention. Not many people have that balance. I was also touched when she said, ?Healing is the intuitive art of wooing nature.?

AH: I don?t know if you saw it, but some years ago we published an interview I did with Dr. Rolf?s astrologer, who was a client of mine at one point. One of the things she said was that Dr. Rolf had really strong metaphysical beliefs, and said that Rolfing SI came from ancient Egypt or something, so who knows what she thought.

NF: Ida Rolf was not only a brilliant innovator and a formidable teacher, she was wise about human nature. She reminded us from time to time, ?You are not therapists. You are catalysts. Gravity is the therapist.? And when some of us started throwing around weighty technical terms, she pointed out, ?Remember, what we are doing here is, we are trying to learn to see.? My hunch is that her intention was to remind us to keep our egos in check. While the ego is a very important part of one?s psychological structure, it is also problematic. You probably know that in a number of religious traditions the ego is equated with evil. It is continually in action responding to events in one?s life, and from infancy onward it tends to consider itself the center of the universe. With time, patience, and education ? which frequently involves colliding with other egos and losing the contest ? one tends to achieve a sort of balance: ?I may not be the smartest, fastest, prettiest, strongest, etc., but I?m fairly sure I?m good in these areas . . . ? That?s a normal adjustment. It?s important to remember that for most of us, the temptation to believe in our specialness is ever-present. My guess is that Dr. Rolf knew that when the effectiveness of our work brings gratitude and praise from clients who see us as special, one natural consequence is the temptation to think of ourselves as rather wonderful ? probably true healers. The Healer is a very powerful archetype, and falling into such ego inflation can be extremely dangerous. (In ancient times, it was seen as believing one was god-like, a big mistake that would be corrected painfully by the gods.) It is to flirt with the risk of a deep wound, a loss of perspective ? what Carl Jung compared to seeing oneself as the whole, rather than a part of the whole. So in effect, I heard Dr. Rolf reminding us to be alert to the normal human tendency to puff ourselves up, and to instead seek a balance that helps us stay grounded. I figure she knew that ego pull and its danger, because most of us saw her as very special, brilliant, and psychic. She was determined that we carry on the work, so she probably wanted to teach us about balance and integrity. She was tough, but compassionate. Fortunately, she also had a great, dry sense of humor ? a real sense of humor, the kind that comes from learning not to take oneself too seriously.
When I was on the faculty (an exercise in handling my ego), I wanted to convey the power of our work, which is literally amazing. To be a teacher of Rolfing SI confers a good deal of power. Very seductive to see those eager (mostly) faces looking to one for the keys to this work, for help and validation. Fortunately, there is help available in books on power in the helping profession, like The Educated Heart: Professional Boundaries for Massage Therapists, Bodyworkers, and Movement Teachers, by the late Rolfer Nina McIntosh.

AH: Years ago, at the first IASI conference, Deane Juhan spoke about organizational change, saying that in the SI community we were coming to a third wave. The origin was Ida Rolf, then there were the people she directly taught, they were the ones who got the direct transmission, got the fire straight from her. Then we now we have a whole level of faculty who had no direct contact with Rolf, their contact with that fire is through others. Juhan spoke about the difficulties organizations face the further they get from the founder. I think that?s part of what we are seeing. In Ida Rolf?s lifetime she was there to carry the torch and say this is how it?s done. Once you percolate down layer by layer, some of the fire, the transmission, gets lost, reinterpreted, mixed up with other people?s egos and interests. The challenge is to maintain some sort of purity while also bringing in new pieces and new interpretations.

NF: Good point! Like any Rolfer, I had various ?Aha!? moments in my practice, stumbling onto a tactic that worked surprisingly well. Or I read a book that I thought offered a brilliant paradigm shift in how to understand our work. Of course I would be eager to share the discovery with my students at the Rolf Institute®, but fortunately I always stayed with the Melchior family and over dinner, or as Peter and I were driving in to start our class days, I would tell him about my Great Discovery ? and he would give me a certain look and then help get my feet back on the ground. I definitely wasn?t the first to think like that. He helped me to recognize that ego puffery that is a constant and to keep me true to what Dr. Rolf taught us. Rolfing culture has always involved a mixture of science, metaphysics, and personal vision, and that?s an exciting, but unpredictable mixture.

AH: Since Dr. Rolf, the faculty has brought in things like the Principles of Rolfing SI, that clarify the work, but you need further understanding to use that approach. The Recipe is still the easiest learning tool, and one that can be built on. When you put the two together it makes sense. The gift in the Principles is that if you understand the Series, then you understand that each session is not a fixed protocol but is driven by a goal, by a certain principle you are trying to work with, and that brings the session to life for each client that you work with. So you might do five first sessions in one day, but they?ll all be different because you understand the life within the Recipe. I think that?s what was brought out with the Principles. But if people can?t make the leap to that, or didn?t have the Recipe, then they?re working just from abstraction.

NF: There are certain assumptions we follow about what a balanced structure is, how it best functions and moves. We always have some framework of assumptions, some didactic structure to inform us. But often, as I?ve worked with somebody and was really puzzled by what I was seeing, I would simply put my hands somewhere as though I were about to do something, just to pause and listen or feel or sense or be ready to pay attention if something popped up that would suggest a new approach. It?s quite amazing how often something does pop up and has very good effects. I think that?s an important phenomenon to open to. I?m not suggesting that anyone should slavishly follow any founder. Dr. Rolf didn?t want that. You?ve heard her statement, ?I don?t want people to simply follow the Recipe ? any cook can do that. I want chefs, people who know why the Recipe is as it is.? I could probably make a decent argument that any changes the faculty made in the teaching over the years could have been some kind of conscious or unconscious need to separate from a founder we could no longer talk to, could only imagine. There are times when people have become so dependent on the founder ? or how they understood the founder ? that it interferes with the principles they were given. I think we?ve got to be gutsy enough to try new stuff, but also to remember that we?re human, we make mistakes. The need is to attain enough overall understanding of how the parts fit in the big picture and what we?re missing that we need to listen for. We?re all different. We have one of the strangest, richest communities I?ve ever been part of. We bring up all different kinds of ideas, sometimes get snarky about them, but they are discussed, kicked around, talked about. I?d really be worried if the entire faculty rose up and said, ?There?s nothing more to question, we now know everything we need to know.?

AH: On the Rolf Forum LISTSERV you once said that even when you know you are only going to have one session to work with a client, and that person just wants help with a particular symptom, even then you tend to work in the context of a First Hour. Talk about that a little bit.

NF: What comes to mind is a client who?d had great results from his Rolfing sessions and called me one day and said, ?Listen, one of my best workers has shown up and he can?t work, he?s got really bad low back pain. I?m sending him over whenever you name the time and I?ll pay for it. I know you can fix him up.? So this guy comes in, a manual laborer, strong guy who does plenty of heavy lifting, and he has that lower back issue that our species has had for thousands of years. I look at him, thinking about my choices. I run through a few strategies, and one thing that comes to mind is, ?What if I focus on something that is more like a fix-it point and it doesn?t work?? Finally I decide to start with the best I know, and that is the Ten Series, so I give him a first session; that is, I worked with him within that idea in the way his structure demanded. It was his first session, it wasn?t a ?classic? First Hour (whatever that might be), except that I was guided by the principles as I could apply them to him. His tissue was healthy, he changed well and was very happy, moving very differently when he left. A few weeks later the boss came for a session and I asked, ?How?s that man you sent over?? He said, ?You fixed him, his back pain is gone, no problem.? Well, of course something inside me said, ?Great, but how long will that last?? If it lasts the rest of the guy?s life, wonderful. I wish I had the confidence to say I believe that could happen. I suppose I?ve always done sessions different ways, but always with the view of beginning a process with a unique being, to respectfully begin to untie the knots in that structure with the Ten Series in mind.

AH: So the guy came in and instead of addressing the weak link in the chain directly, trying to fix his back, you worked from the Series. Using a term from the biodynamic field, you elicited the health. You didn?t worry about the weak link, you knew it was there, but you invited his body into greater presence, awareness, and balance ? in the case of a First Hour, more breath. I?m wondering if that?s part of why it worked.

NF: You?re onto something very important. It?s a lovely way to put it.

AH: On the Forum you quoted Ida Rolf saying, ?If you work on people?s symptoms, they will
gradually get worse.? In following the intention of the Series you are working to improve the body?s overall resiliency, adaptability. You are taking a load off, freeing the body, rather than looking at a place that?s already under stress.

NF: It?s a balance of including the known, the stuff we are really sure of, but also the stuff that might be more mysterious and not so clear. There was a kind of prompt, a sort of tickle that said ?What about this?? that could be worth following. I have the sense that I?m often better at intuitive prompts than logical thought.

AH: I always feel she was encapsulating in the Ten Series everything she could give us. It?s a brilliant teaching tool, and if you go into your practice and do the Ten Series over and over again, it teaches you.

NF: Exactly. I think that what often confuses us is getting caught ? especially early in our practices ? between a) the bright possibility of helping someone, and b) the person in front of us who is skeptical and in pain, and wants his or her symptoms removed now. That can be intimidating. Every time I start working with a new person, it?s not as though I know this is going to be a wonderful session and he or she is going to be very happy. And then there?s the pain issue. Watching Ida work, it was obvious there was pain occasionally. She talked about how important it was to learn to deal with pain, ?theirs and yours.? Life isn?t painless. Many kinds of wounds get stuck in people; getting to the level where the wound is stuck tends to bring to awareness, to some degree, the unpleasant experience at its root. I was fascinated by Dr. Rolf?s statement, ?Pain is largely an opinion.? She explained that most pain in our work involves two elements that get tangled together: a physical sensation and the emotional memory of something frightening. She maintained that if one could totally surrender to the sensation in the moment, apart from the memory, the pain would disappear. As usual, I was deeply skeptical. And, as usual, I found out she was right. One day Emmett Hutchins ? who we affectionately called ?the plow? for his depth and determination ? was working on me, and he went to a deep place in my abdomen that elicited the sort of sensation I would expect if forced to fall on my sword. A deep, inescapable, terrifying gut pain, and the first words that ran through my awareness were, ?I?m going to die!? And the next words that ran through awareness were, ?Okay, so I die. I?ve had a great life, it?s a beautiful day, I?m with a friend . . .? ? and the pain vanished. Totally. Emmett was astonished at the change he felt in my abdomen. I guess I really surrendered. Each session it?s a new test, resting into the pain and accepting it, but it still works. I tell clients about it, and they are almost always dubious, but a few have found that place. Remember, Dr. Rolf emphasized that our work is a form of education. I kinda think if I can help clients understand the basic principles of our work it might have deeper effects.

AH: Our work takes a lot of faith of some sort. I guess for me it?s faith in my training but also trust that something else is going to assist me besides my knowledge base, besides my experience. And that if I?m open I?ll be directed in some way to what is needed.

NF: That sounds good to me. It?s a matter of tuning into that thing that exists in us just as it lived in those we?ve admired, like Ida Rolf or anybody else. Why not? You know that wonderful book Remembering Ida Rolf? Over the years I had begun to think I must be making up stuff or imagining things: could she really have been that uncanny? When I read that book, I realized no, there are a lot of similar, even wilder, stories about what she could do. I?m still mulling over something she told us that feels like a Zen koan: ?Ultimately, Rolfing [SI] is for the Rolfer.? My strongest hunch is that she meant it?s about our deeper learning.

AH: Well, thank you. One of the wonderful things about our community is that we have so many different people, with something that unites us all, like fascination with this work. We come from many viewpoints, different eras of time, but we cross-pollinate over time and fields of interest. It is a brilliant community we are all involved in.

NF: Yes. Messy, but brilliant.

AH: Thank you so much.