Kevin McCarthy: I’m curious, having traveled extensively to teach and work in the U.S., Europe, and abroad, what draws you back to Brazil and what do you think the strengths of the Brazilian Rolfing Structural Integration (SI) community are?

Monica Caspari: Rolfing [SI] in Brazil promotes or is very much interested in movement and that’s where my interest goes.

KM: What part do you feel you’ve played in shaping that movement focus?

MC: Actually, Vivian Jaye and Jane Harrington together with Pedro Prado were the ones who started shaping Rolf Movement in Brazil and I was just an assistant to Pedro. So I participated, you know, as just a little somebody who was following. And then later I started studying with Hubert [Godard] and started thinking about other issues of Rolf Movement, and then I made my contribution. But before that, really, the heroes of Rolf Movement in Brazil are Vivian Jaye, Jane Harrington, Pedro Prado, and also Gael Ohlgren [now Rosewood] and Heather Starsong.

KM: So you have, as part of the Rolf Movement faculty, helped to teach and adapt much of the work of Hubert Godard. Most recently you’ve attended an Advanced Movement Study Group in Germany where Hubert has been presenting his latest developments in movement theory. What are these developments?

MC: He’s been talking about haptic touch and phoric activity and how important it is that you don’t go for repetition of movement but that you find your core – it’s all about orientation, perception, and coordination, ultimately.

KM: Do you see this as a step forward in the direction that Rolf Movement has been going or is it something new?

MC: When I first started studying Rolf Movement, it was more about the person, more interoception, proprioception, and not so much the ‘other’ and things. We used to have the ‘circle of being,’ and in the circle of being there were four aspects – the physical, the mental, the spiritual, and the emotional. So it separated mental, spiritual, emotional, but to a certain extent they belong to the same category. But there was not a social aspect. That was missing.

KM: So this relational aspect seems like it’s the big addition?

MC: It’s a big and very important addition.

KM: And how do you think this is going to be changing the way we think about Rolfing SI in the future?

MC: I think it will make us consider the other. You know it’s not enough that your body is aligned; how does this alignment express itself when you’re in relation to the other? When you’re talking to the other, working with the other, dancing, helping, doing dishes – there is the other and you cannot just pretend there is no other. So what does your ‘Line’ look like when it’s talking to the other?

KM: So you are a teacher, you’re providing Rolfing SI, you’re a student with Hubert, and now you’re teaching Hubert’s work and your own interpretation. How do all these things combine into how you see Rolfing SI as an entity, as a discrete entity?

MC: I never thought about that Kevin, and that’s very interesting because the kind of questions that you ask are clearly coming from a different culture than mine . . . . I don’t mean that it’s bad, it’s just, “What? I never thought about this!” It’s more like I do what I do without having this analytical thinking. So that’s very interesting. I don’t know, I’ll have to think about it.

KM: Do you think that cultural difference is one of the issues around acceptance of Rolf Movement?

MC: I do. I really, really do.

KM: Can you say a little bit more about that?

MC: Because by its very nature, Rolf Movement is . . . here [let me explain] like I teach in class: Why do you want to ‘Rolf’ people? For them to look better? And, so what? Or for them to enjoy more life? To take more advantage of their human form and human possibilities? And be more in contact, be more alive? Because bodies [that haven’t had Rolfing work] – the way I see it, the way I feel it – they’re less alive. So we make people more alive, we increase possibilities. I don’t believe we are correcting mistakes. At least I’m not going for correction of mistakes. I’m going for increasing possibilities or creating new possibilities or alleviating suffering. I’m not as concerned if the person is perfectly aligned. So that’s where I come from. And I believe my colleagues, at least most of my colleagues in Brazil, feel the same. They’re going for quality of being in the human body. Making, having, feeling, or savoring the deliciousness of being in a body.

KM: So what does Rolf Movement do to bring that about that structural Rolfing work is unable to offer people?

MC: So you think that there are restrictions that can be in the tissues, and restrictions that are not in the tissue but in the behavior, in the structures of meaning that the person has. And the tissues can be free and yet the person doesn’t move. We know that when you work structurally, you work and you work and you work and then you have the person standing up and walking and still the thing you wanted to see doesn’t happen. Why? Because there’s stuff that is stuck in the way people perceive, the way they use their bodies. So when we learn that, we create enormous opportunity, we increase the power of Rolfing SI; it’s not decreased, quite the contrary. I don’t mean to say that structural Rolfing work is not important or is more or less; no, both approaches, structural and movement, are very important. But I believe people don’t fully grasp the importance of movement or the importance of finding direction in space, orientation – they don’t grasp it yet, for the most part.

KM: Hubert, you’ve mentioned, came into a training you were in recently and said that he had made a mistake. I’m curious, what was this mistake and how does it relate to his concepts of haptic and phoric activity?

MC: Hubert teaches that we come from a structural culture, and because of this we find it easy to focus on the issue of shape. From there it’s not a far stretch to begin asking questions about somatic idealism. But the issue is not how to put tissue back into its place. What matters is not shape, but movement. Hubert insists that we have to go back to movement. What counts is the movement, not the place. And if we are not putting the body back where it should be, then neither should we teach the form of the movement that we should do. If I show you how you should move, you do not experience the setting of the situation that will allow the movement to show up. One should not command activation of the core, in doing so you only introduce a new holding! What the client needs is to develop the internal experience that produces the movement – the haptic activity – which will then evoke core stabilization. In the end, Hubert is saying that all we can do is to evoke the emotion that comes when encountering the world, which will affect all other emotional aspects of the person.

This piece I feel we have to nourish in students. This piece is the existential aspect, which to my perception is different than the psychobiological. For me when you’re talking about psychobiological, you’re talking about something that is kind of scientific, which does not translate for me the experience of what it is to be a human being. You know all your inner suffering? Each one of us knows what it means to be in a human body. We have these different emotions, different feelings, things that we are unable to communicate to the other; and if we are able, then the other is unable to understand, to fully grasp what we mean. And secondly, I know that you have something that is deep, profound, where other humans cannot meet you, am I correct? That’s what makes us very alone, ultimately we are very, very alone. And then I go to a Rolfer for him to correct my posture and make me move better? For what? I want somebody to meet me and be with me, and even if that person cannot understand me at least [he] knows that I have that same lonely, suffering human spot like you, like me. You know what I mean?

KM: I do.

MC: So even if my lumbars are sidebent left or right, most importantly I want somebody there with me. Then the lumbars can be taken care of, you know?

KM: Why do you think Rolfing SI has come to this point?

MC: To what point?

KM: To this point where you’re able to address – or are at least asking – the question of ‘that,’ that existential aloneness. Why and how is that being brought up through this process we understand as Rolfing SI?

MC: I guess because after we get so attracted and mesmerized or enchanted by biomechanics and visceral work and craniosacral and all of that, then the human aspect in us comes up. So eventually you have to deal with that, because if I go to a Rolfer, later – weeks or months later – what I will remember is not if the Rolfer was very clever in undoing the twists in my spine, but if he treated me well and if he received me, if he understood me and did not preach to me, because I don’t want him to preach to me. I want to be accepted the way I am.

KM: I love the sound of that, but I’m curious how you can teach that to new Rolfers?

MC: Difficult. Difficult because we can think about it, we can try to invent exercises about it, I can try to make people get in touch with their felt sense when we’re talking about this, but for me to upgrade a Rolfer is not so much about adding a ton of techniques (even though I’m teaching a ton of techniques), but [about] how to upgrade the humanness in the Rolfer – and I can do that only to the extent to which I try to develop that in myself, because I cannot take someone someplace where I have not been myself.

KM: I feel that down here [in Brazil] with you we’re far away from the rest of the world. There’s a certain current of movement and understanding here that is touching parts of Rolfing theory and practice in the States and I’m sure in Europe too. What is this movement saying and what do you want these people far away to hear?

MC: I would say first of all be open, open space inside yourself – it is what Hubert calls phoric activity. If you’re full of yourself, you don’t have room for the other, there is no way you can receive the other in a way that the other will open himself to cooperate with you. So it’s a matter of opening space inside yourself. And no need to be afraid of anything, just go jump into the experience and enjoy it. After all, being alive is having experiences and you take nothing out of this life other than experiences.

Monica Caspari trained as a Rolfer in 1989, completing the Rolf Movement training in 1992 and advanced Rolfing training in 1993. She joined the Rolf Institute® faculty in 1994. She has taught in Brazil, the United States, Germany, Ireland, Australia, South Africa, and Japan. Monica holds a BA in Nutrition from Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil, a specialist degree from Uniítalo, São Paulo, worked as a doula (midwife) for nineteen years; taught Hatha Yoga, and has studied Therese Bertherat’s Antigymnastics, Gerda Alexander’s Eutony, Kum Nye, Emily Conrad’s Continuum, Godelieve Denis Struyf’s G.D.S. Muscular Chains, Stanley Keleman’s Formative Process, and Peter Levine’s Somatic Experiencing®.

Kevin McCarthy holds a BA in English from Macalester College and worked as an EMT prior to obtaining his Rolfing certification in Boulder in 2007. While pursuing his practice in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Kevin became increasingly interested in the effects of emotion and metaphor as they relate to structural integration. His interest in these aspects of the work led to him pursuing his Rolf Movement training with Monica Caspari in Brazil in 2014, where this interview took place. He maintains a blog on Rolfing SI and all things related at www.informrolfing.com.Self, Other: New Considerations in Rolf Movement® Integration[:]