Anne Hoff: So Liz, I want to talk to you about this big idea of how Rolfing® Structural Integration (SI) interfaces with the mind or the being of the person, the consciousness, because I know you have a background in Buddhist studies and practice and also in psychology.

Liz Gaggini: In my twenties I developed an interest in Buddhism and I was fortunate enough to be around when Naropa Institute started. At the time they had a masters degree in Buddhist and Western psychology. It was a two-and-a-half year program, and it included a four-month retreat as part of the program, so it was a fairly intense experience. Every semester we would have two classes in Western psychology, two classes in Buddhist psychology, and some seminar to try to integrate the two.

AH:This was quite new at the time, I?m assuming.

LG:Putting the two together in a clinical program was new. The program was designed to create psychotherapists. It was a really good training, and afterward we left there and had a fairly successful time finding jobs and working as clinicians. The graduates of that program were sort of renowned: you could put us in a room with anybody and we could find a way to work with them, because we had a sort of fundamental way of relating to people rather than any narrow way of working. I went on to work for ten years as a psychotherapist doing a lot of work with individuals, families, and groups.

AH:How did you eventually become a Rolfer?

I got Rolfing [SI] for the first time while I was in graduate school at Naropa. I had stumbled and injured my left ankle and foot, so badly that I was on crutches for six weeks. The doctors were thinking they were going to have to go in and tie some tendons together or whatever to get my foot functional again. Somebody suggested I try Rolfing [SI]. I went to someone who was just finishing his training, Chuck Whetsell, who is still practicing, he works in Birmingham, Alabama. No lie ? I walked out from that one session of foot work without my crutches. He went on to give me ten sessions, and I went on to continue to get work from various Rolfers the entire time I was a psychotherapist.

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Liz Gaggini

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Anne Hoff

When I was getting tired of psychotherapy, one of the things I thought to do was to become a Rolfer. At that point I was tired of sitting in chairs and just talking to people and writing reports. I had a persistent craving to be a more physical person ? so much so that the other thing I thought about doing was landscape architecture. In fact, maybe I did end up doing that!

AH:And did you immediately find intersections between your Rolfing work and what you had learned at Naropa ? in particular, the way of being with people?

LG:Oh, certainly: in the immediacy of the experience of giving and receiving the work there is a chance to glimpse what Buddhism describes as ?suchness?. In the opportunity to pay attention to the experience of both the whole and minute at once, there is an important aspect of mindfulness, <i>vipashyanya</i> (which, I should say here, is different from what is known as vipassana meditation). In the quality of meditation found in synchronizing body and mind. And certainly in the foundation of Buddhist practice, the four noble truths, [and how I apply them to SI]:

1. The truth of suffering ? the body will have pain and difficulty functioning.

2. The cause of suffering ? being out of alignment results in pain and dysfunction.

3. Suffering can end ? the body can be realigned and experience ease and grace.

4. The path to ending suffering is the eightfold path comprised of wise view, wise thought, moral speech, moral action, right livelihood, good effort, good mindfulness, and good contemplation.

Translated to SI these become developing a wise view and good thinking about SI, behaving as a moral professional in our practice, and working with good effort, maintaining mindfulness and contemplating overall what we are doing.

For the most part, Buddhism is so fundamental in its descriptions that it can be applied to any situation. We could develop the four noble truths and eight-fold path of any endeavor and it would be informative.

But back to your original question for this interview, how Rolfing SI interfaces with consciousness ? I mostly think of another aspect of Buddhist teachings that always seems to apply for me. That is the <i>trikaya</i> ? the three bodies or three realms, if you like, of enlightenment.

These are a way of looking at three aspects of existence or being and they are a way of understanding consciousness without getting into a hierarchical or better-lesser way of understanding body and mind. And it allows creativity and synchronicity to be a player as well. I like it because, for me, it refers to what is happening in the session ? in the immediate assumptions, relationship, and activity of a session.

The trikaya are the <i>nirmanakaya,</i> the <i>sambhogakaya,</i> and the <i>dharmakaya.</i> These can also be termed respectively body,speech, and mind; or form, meaning, and space; etc. I think in Rolfing lore what comes closest to this is Jeff Maitland?s (1992) thinking about the three paradigms of Rolfing SI, the physical, the psychological, and the integrative.

AH:Let?s go through them individually.

LG:The first one, which in Buddhist theory would be called <i>nirmanakaya,</i> that?s the aspect of form, and the way things work in the world of form is by cause and effect, it?s very straightforward, very predictable, the way the mechanistic world works. All of our scientific research is about that.

AH:Does ?form? specifically mean physical form?

LG:Yes, it means physical manifestation. So the trees are form world, this house is form world, your and my anatomy is the world of form . . . . If you know the rules of physical structure and cause and effect, things can be predictable, at time mind-numbingly so. And things are solid and reliable, at times frustratingly so. This is the realm of anatomy, biomechanics, chemistry, and physics, even quantum. (Though quantum mechanics begins to expose the other two realms as any good fundamental aspect of reality should.)

In the realm of form, aspects of body alignment are going to be predictable and prescriptively workable. If somebody has his tibia sheared posterior to his femur, there?s going to be irritation on the patella plateau and the anterior meniscus, the popliteus is going to be short and continually active ? protecting the posterior cruciate ligament, the lower hamstrings are going to be tight, certain things are going to happen in his gait ? [he?s] not going to be able to get much extension from the hip or the ankle. It?s a very predictable world and we can devise predictable ways to fix it. This is the realm of the Ten-Series ?Recipe? as it is physically applied, and that is when it gets interesting for broad dialogue about what is Rolfing SI when we see the nirmanakaya in context of the other two kayas.

The physical is not all that?s going on when you do structural integration; there?s more than that happening. As we work with what physical presence means to a person, to ourselves and to our clients, we work with the somato-emotional experience of being. This is <i>sambhogakaya.</i> What experience means to someone. We are working with how it ?feels? to be [the person]. Does she feel confident? Does she feel open? Does she feel comfortable? Can she rest in herself? Is she uncomfortable in herself? Can she psychologically adapt to her experience and her environment? Does she have the psychological resources to regulate her own somato-emotional-social world? Can she, when appropriate, shut up, speak up, energize, calm down, share, hold private, laugh, cry, care? All these kinds of things, the sense of her being, is also quite important to us, and this is the aspect of meaning that we work with in SI right along with the aspect of form.

AH:So would this fit in with the Rolfing taxonomy of the psychobiological?

LG:I?m not real up on the taxonomies so I don?t know for sure, but there?s psychobiological in the form world in just neurochemistry in the sense that if you take a certain posture with your body you are going to manifest the emotions of that posture, the neurotransmitters are going to fire and that emotion is going to occur. That?s still form aspect, that?s still causeand- effect, predictable world. So if someone has a vagus nerve impingement, there can be a clinical depression that goes along with that. That?s still form aspect. This is the world you can treat with drugs, the world we can treat by getting an impingement off that vagus nerve. If someone has really constricted mesenteric fascia and he?s not able to produce enough dopamine, he?s going to experience some depression or bipolar stuff, and if you free up that mesenteric tissue, maybe detox the liver a little bit, that?s still form world. So from that point of view, the psychobiological is still the aspect of form.

The world of ?speech? or ?meaning? which is the sambhogakaya in the philosophy of trikaya, is much more about a holistic sense of meaning in that we hold memories of a past, a way of expressing in the present, and images about the future. This is very much where all qualities of intention operate. Also, this is where transference and countertransference occur.

AH:Are the realms operating independently, or can, for example, meaning affect form?

LG:Sure. Meaning and form can both affect one another, as can the element of mind or space that I have yet to discuss. For example, somebody may, because of various experiences or things he?s been taught, put a lot of value on being very upright in his spine and shoulders. Let?s say there?s a sense that if he relaxes that uprightness that he is going to look meek or weak or slovenly or not in control. So here there are ideas affecting the body, meaning is affecting form. In order to get him to be more functional as a somatic being, we need to get him to have the potential to relax this uprightness. If we work with just the form aspect, we are not likely to get the change we are wanting. We will have to work with the meaning. We?ll do that sometimes by taking pictures and saying ?Here?s how you look with your shoulders up, and here?s how you look when you are relaxed ? does that really look slovenly or not in control?? Or we?ll have him in front of a mirror and show him. Or we can just talk to him about his fear of loss of control or looking sloppy and how that is contributing to his alignment and pain issues. We are giving him a new memory, new concepts, new meanings. When working with someone around meaning, we are always working with how we ?language? and how the client ?languages? This is why the sambhogakaya is known as the aspect of speech. In this aspect we are also working our own and the client?s personal history, self image, social context, beliefs, and concepts.

So these are some examples of that world of meaning that we constantly have to be in tune with while we work. The relationship that we have with that person has to have quite a bit of this aspect in order for there to be a successful Rolfing session and series. [With clients] there has to be a large part of the experience that is us getting to know them, and them becoming able to trust us. Which means that we have to be aware of the meaning aspect in ourselves while we work and of the type of work we are doing. We have to work on ourselves so that we don?t limit or distort what clients can experience of their true selves. The realm of meaning is not predictable like the realm of form. It does not operate by cause and effect. It operates by symbolic understanding. So to work with this aspect of Rolfing SI we have to be sensitive and listen, remember, and converse. If we have too solid of a sense of who we are and who the client is, and too big of an idea about the best way to be and interact and all of that, we are going to miss being able to allow the true meaning of that person and of a session or series to come forward. I think that?s a significant part of being able to be successful with this work: you could call it people skills, but it is this ability to allow the true nature of the client to come forward.

AH:It sounds like what is addressed in the therapeutic relationship part of the Rolfing training, but it?s not a very large part of the training.

LG:No, it?s not. I think we rely a little too heavily on somebody coming into the training who already, for some reason, has emotional maturity and has people skills. We don?t really know how to teach that, we don?t go about teaching [students] that. We may talk about Rolfing SI and transformation and the somatic dialogue that goes on, but in terms of teaching about that, we don?t do a lot. I think the Institute was advised against that at one point because we were not a school of psychotherapy.

AH:I was interviewing Ray McCall recently, and he told a story, which I?ve heard before, that Ida Rolf initially wanted a few different schools to split these things explicitly, with a school that was more medical, one more psychological, and one more energetic. So there may be a way that our founder did not have them fully integrated in herself?

LG:Or maybe she was just tired of the arguing and thought the only way the full significance of structural integration could develop was if they were separate for a while and then later they came back together. One of the things I think our group has never been good at is academic or intellectual dialogue. Too much so, it seems to me, that when people state their ideas, others overreact, get mad, and the fight becomes personal. In academia you are supposed to have different points of view, you are supposed to have conflict; it?s not a bad thing to have different points of view.

AH:In academia people might fight vehemently but they don?t question somebody else?s status in the profession.

LG:Right. So we?ve never handled that very well. I?ve regretted it many times myself because I like to state my opinion strongly and I more than welcome other people stating their opinion, and if I can be convinced and learn something new I?m all for that. But in order for that to happen,somebody has to dialogue. We can?t all just sit on our own opinions and not share them. This is just one reason why [academic] faculties are always required to keep publishing. It keeps dialogue open and that is proven to increase understanding and development. Our work is made more powerful because it includes this aspect of meaning. Therefore it is going to be good for structural integration if people write, talk, think, and discuss about their ideas. This should be encouraged, not discouraged. And I think, in respect to the faculty, it should be required.

AH:And what about the third aspect?

LG:Yes, the <i>dharmakaya.</i> In many ways, it is the hardest to talk about. This is the creative element we allow in our work. And this is where the more transformational aspects of our work are expressed. The element of space always begins when we just open up and don?t know anything. When we don?t know why we are working in some area or some way but we allow it. This aspect is more likely to be a part of a session if we or the client are not overburdened with solid concepts.

Because there is this aspect of space and openness, form and meaning can be more easily transformed. So this is where the transformation aspects of Rolfing SI come in. This is where what seems like the impossible can happen, when somehow some sort of magic can occur. If there is an aspect of openness and not knowing to the process, it becomes possible for someone to just drop a whole bunch of automatic reaction patterns, or to just not care about issues he used to care about, be bothered by stuff he used to be bothered about, and just become a different person. This is certainly part of what we hope will happen and sometimes promise people will happen with structural integration.

Everybody who does structural integration has probably experienced this. You end up doing something or something happens with the session that you never planned to do, thought you would do, or thought would happen, and it turns out to be the important thing that creates significant change. You may never even have expected to get that much change, or to go in that direction of change, but it turns out to be the most important essential thing. It?s that willingness to allow yourself to do something that you hadn?t planned to do ? to not have such a formula going in that you can?t adapt to what?s coming up, whether it?s an idea like ?I just want to put my hands over here,? or you?re listen to something the client said and think ?Wow, that sounds like she wants more ground, I might go work on her feet.? Or she?s walking and you just get an image of her being able to move in an area she?s not moving in, and you decide, ?Whatever I do in this session I?m going to try to get it to end up that she?s moving through that part . . . .? It?s some willingness to not know so that something new can occur. And it is something that often gets created out of the interaction between the two of you. Probably because in those moments of dialogue the situation is more open, more allowing, and therefore more creative.

AH:The intersubjective field.

LG:The intersubjective field where the sum starts to equal more than the parts. Because you have these two beings trying to meet, the space becomes more relevant; that can allow a new way of being to manifest and allow old habits, old somatic expressions, to just fall away. The thing with this aspect is that, if it is truly creative, then the moment will transform us too. Let?s say you?ve had this habitual way of working on hamstrings and all of a sudden that gets cracked because you end up working a new way, and that transforms the way you work forever, something that you learned there: it transforms you as much as it transforms [the client] in that situation. To me, the total experience of integration comes out of those kinds of moments, comes out of that kind of experience. Other than that, it?s just lip service. You?re telling somebody something, he?s trying, you?re trying, but the actual experience of the coming into being of that integration isn?t happening. When somebody can truly say, ?Wow, I feel like a totally new person,? that level of integration comes from being able to let go of your idea of what should happen.

AH:Talk for a moment about why the Buddhists call this space, or mind, because where my mind is going with this is to the phenomenology of space. In these transformative experiences, the client?s experience is generally one of spaciousness. For it to happen, it often requires that the practitioner be open, as you said, and being open requires spaciousness. It requires of the client the openness to let things be different, whether it?s in his self-image or some fixed pattern, and it requires of the practitioner openness in how she works and thinks about things.

LG:There has to be an allegiance to space in order for something new to occur. We could talk for months about the Buddhist notion of emptiness or the Buddhist notion of space or that sort of thing. I?m just going to try to talk about it in a few simple waysand hopefully not get anything too much in error here. In terms of the experience of mind, mostly we experience our minds by the thoughts we are having ? and emotions and sensations from that point of view are houghts. So the mental contents, that?s what we think of as mind. From this point of view, mind is actually the space around those thoughts, and you have more of an allegiance to that space than the actual thought, or to the experience. So you?re laying on the table and [the practitioner?s] got her elbow deep into the line between your vastus lateralis and your vastus medialis, and you and that practitioner can be just right there with that action and its sensations, or you and she can be with your whole bodies and the whole room and the whole of sp ce. Any element of more space mixed in is going to allow for more creativity. This is really more erudite than may be advisable for this discussion, but since you asked, the heart of these creative moments does not break down into experience and experiencer. There can be a transcendental observer. But once any more attention is being placed on ?this? or ?that? than is being placed on the space, the moment of creativity has already occurred.

AH:It?s been lost?

LG:Not lost, in this case, just passed into history. If there is an ongoing dualism, no creativity would even occur, just expressions of our preconceptions and habitual projections. In this case, dualism is dropped, creativity occurs, but we slip into dualism because we are over-watching.

AH:To clarify, being with the whole room, the whole of space, is not a form of disassociation?

LG:You?re still associated, more than you?ve ever been associated in some ways. When, as a practitioner, you?re not so into your concept or your intention or this small thing, but you are aware of [the client?s] whole body while you are working, and your whole body and how it is in space, and have that spaciousness, there?s the potential here for an integrative interaction to occur within his body but also within the relationship between you and the client in terms of what it?s possible for you to understand about him, what is possible for him to allow you to work with in him. Then it will be a transformation in how his body is going to stand up and relate to all of space. So that is the experience that happens when you?ve set up the relationship to be not about you and your ideas, not about the client and his concepts of himself, but about a <i>let?s see what happens here</i> ? when the work is as much a question as it is an idea ? even in our hands, in our quality of touch.

AH:So what does this look like in your practice? You teach a lot of classes on biomechanical and visceral work where there are very specific things that are being palpated, you need to know if the organ is fixated more in expansion or contraction, you need to know the shift and tilt patterns . . . So obviously you are gathering a lot of information, which is informing your mind towards a particular course of action, but yet there?s also this spaciousness you want where you can be informed by the field.

LG:The way that that manifests is number one in the way that you set up the relationship with the client. If from the very beginning you go in with a questioning mind and not with a telling mind, you are already setting up the relationship to always be a dialogue. So it starts out as a process that can include form, meaning, and the unknown potential. Just begin to start making the process an open question instead of an applied formula.

This is one of the reasons I?m such a stickler about not calling our work massage, because people in the culture have an idea of what a massage is and it?s something that gets done to them ? and it?s supposed to be relaxing by the way, it?s not supposed to hurt. So if we call our work massage, 1) it?s supposed to be relaxing and not hurt, and 2) it?s supposed to be done to them. There is already a fixed story about massage. One of the great things about structural integration is that new clients really don?t have any idea what we are going to do with them ? which frees you up to do anything. You can talk to them, you can have them walk around, you can do cranial-type work, you can do visceral-type work, you can do strain and counter-strain; you can pretty much do anything you want within that that helps to achieve structural integration.

Now the more we start to just prescribe and define it as massage or one thing or another, the less freedom we are going to have to do what the situation calls for to be done. It?s like, I didn?t realize I was going to wind up doing thirty minutes of movement work or whatever in this session, but once I got your shoulders balanced it was really obvious that your ideas about your posture or your cranium or whatever was going to pull them right back off again. And how did we know that? Because we know about form, we listen to meaning, and we stay open to the potential around the particular. I don?t know if we can even see the shape of the body or lift or support without an awareness of the space that we are in. The more you look at the thing, the thing, the thing, the less you can really see it. When you stand back and you have the space around that person, then you can start to see.

AH:What?s interesting about that, if you remember back in 2003 when I broke my knee, I said to the surgeon during the recovery, ?There?s a counter-rotation in my knee,? and he said, ?No there isn?t.? And I said to the physical therapist, ?There?s a counter-rotation in my knee, I can feel it, I can see it,? and she said, ?No there isn?t.? And then you came out to Hawaii teaching or visiting or something and I had a session with you, and the first thing you say is ?There?s a counter-rotation in your knee.?

LG:If you are just sort of looking at the alignment of the patella and you are not really seeing the shape of the body in space, you?re not seeing it. So I think that might be the best example of this spaciousness that we?ve come up with in this conversation, is that when you have an allegiance to the space around, you can see/experience how a body affects the space when the person is moving or even just standing there. When the client walks into your office, how is that affecting the space? When you?re just sitting in your office, how is that affecting the space? It tells you so much about the client, about you, and it also allows you to start to create something that?s very unique and customized for the present situation. If we are not aware of the space, then we can get locked in some storyline about [one?s self] and the client. It makes it less likely that what we do will be transformative or even integrative.

AH:What I?m thinking of here is the Little Boy Logo. Massage therapists borrow pieces of technique from structural integration and call it myofascial work. Some even borrow a certain body analysis, like they?ll talk about somebody having a forward-head posture, or one hip rotated forward, but they always seem to miss something. But nobody picks up the gravity piece. I?m wondering if this is what is missing, the space and the shape of the body in space, and how that with gravity speaks to this dharmakaya.

LG:The gravity piece belongs to the form aspect. [See bibliography for Gaggini?s writings on gravity.] And I?m sure there are many massage therapists who are working with this dharmakaya aspect. I do think that the form of massage doesn?t give as many opportunities for investigation as SI does. And that can mean that the gravity piece and lots of other relevant pieces can?t be included in the massage scenario.

My primary reason for even pointing to the trikaya as a way of elucidating Rolfing SI is to point to what distinguishes it from other practices that attempt to help or change the body. I believe that what we have that is so powerful is that we can at every moment include all three of the kayas in our work; so there?s these three pieces, and my sense is that in order to have it really be structural integration, it contains all these three things at once.

AH:Could they be in different proportions?

LG:They could be in different proportions, but, boy, they pretty much need to be there in every session. There has to be an allegiance and a willingness to play in each of those three fields, to fire on each of these cylinders during a session for it to really be an integrative experience. If it?s just form, then it?s like physical therapy ? not being derogatory to physical therapists at all, but it is primarily work with the form aspect. And if it?s just meaning, then it?s psychotherapy, it?s counseling, you?re doing clinical psychology at that point, you?re not doing structural integration. And if it?s just spaciousness, well then you are trying to do spiritual work, nondescript spiritual work. And if I want to have a good day at my office, and don?t want it to be a mind-numbing drudge; if I really want to physically help people and really participate in improving people, then I find it?s good to be firing on all three of these cylinders.

AH:Is there a way you orient clients, other than the openness of the questions you ask?

LG:First off, I am open to hear what they want, think, fear, hope for, etc., and I let that information transform for me the meaning of the work we will do. I try to behave in an inclusive way. In body analysis, I don?t just look at the client, I ask how things are for him, I discuss what I?m seeing, doing, and try to elicit his opinions, feedback, etc. If he tries to get too definite about what is going to happen, I?ll say, ?Everybody?s different, we have to see how your tissue responds.

And that openness can be communicated by the way you touch. If we are sensing as well as doing with our touch, openness is happening more for us than if we are just pushing in and not sensing. I think that gets communicated right to the soma of the client. Also, if we pause to let clients and ourselves experience the physical interaction, this can keep an openness to the space for us and for them. I?m certain there are many other means than just dialogue that we are doing to facilitate spaciousness.

AH:It makes me wonder about another psychological construct ? the superego (inner critic). What realm does that live in? I see that come in and shut clients down. Someone will have a great session and start to open up and feel something, have a sense of more space, then the next time she comes back she?ll be talking about what she?s trying to do to her body, <i>trying</i> to point her feet straight, lift her head up . . . So I see how destructive that critical voice is.

LG:Well, very much it is in the realm of meaning. I think at best it is a healthy ability to have critical reflection and at worst a habitual reaction of criticism / guilt / resentment / rebellion over and over again. From a Buddhist point of view, the difference between the best and worst here is that the first lacks a solid storyline about the self and the second is drowning in that storyline.

There?s a couple of things I?ll say about that superego voice relevant to SI. One is that people have lots of ?shoulds? about posture. I try to let people know right from the beginning that one of the things that Rolfing SI is about is creating the kind of ease so you don?t have to try to have a posture, because any time you try to have a posture you?re going to mess something up, something is going to get worse in you. [I?ll say], ?You don?t have to hold your head up, we want to create the kind of support and lift so that can happen without effort.

The bigger issue of this self-critical thing is that when it is bound up in storyline, it stops curiosity, exploration, and experimentation because it over-judges the results, even the entire process. So that can bog the entire SI process down. When I notice this is a factor, I try to find a way to point out that if the client has an overly judgmental response to realization or to discovery, then he is going to quit realizing and discovering. This is an aspect of spaciousness. If we cling too closely to experience, we miss the space around it. When we get into negative selfcriticism, we are losing our awareness of the whole. We can look at something and say ?it didn?t work? or whatever, that?s one thing, but to say then that ?I?m wrong? or ?I blew it,? pretty soon we?re not going to be realizing anything new. So we have to stop doing that. The only way to grow is to try things, and the only way that things begin is clumsily ? everything begins clumsily. So there?s always mistakes, it?s always awkward; if you don?t allow that then nothing is ever going to begin.

AH:There?s a whole thing in the culturethat?s like the superego around body image, and in the whole Nike message of ?Just do it,? that people really are too hard on their bodies, they separate out from their bodies, and then they judge and push them around, abuse them in some way in service of some super ego ideal.

LG:Well first, that is an over-involvement in the aspect of form. And it turns out it is a pretty successful way to work with form: just do it. But if there is also a meaning element of negativity and failure involved, then that is going to have negative consequences for the form, like injuries, over-stress, etc. So if we truly ?just do it?, then there should be an allegiance to form that drops the critical voice and pays attention to cause and effect, to what works and what doesn?t work, etc. Then we are not as likely to harm ourselves.

AH:So if someone comes in and he?s purely focused on the physical and not open on these other levels, will he want to come back to see you?

LG:I have clients [like that], and they believe me if something positive happens on a psychological level or some sort of creative level of spaciousness and it helps that physical thing ? they notice it and say, ?Can we do more of that?? Because [the] pain is so strong or the physical focus is so strong, if you can get change there, that is how they will know it: ?My pain is much less? or ?My walk is much more even.? It?s just like if someone comes in and his focus is primarily with the meaning element, you have to make certain that what you do affects transformation in that element: ?I am feeling so much better about life? or ?People are being a lot nicer to me for some reason.? Or if the person?s focus is on his creativity and openness, then you want to make certain the work affects transformation in that element: ?I feel so much more freedom in everything I do? or ?All my thinking and my work has been on fire.?

With this idea of the three aspects of our work, I want to be clear, I don?t believe one is any better than any of the others. They are all necessary. Also, I believe that the presence of these three aspects is greatly determined by my manifestation of them, not the client?s manifestation. Certainly it is my manifestation that I?m most in control of. So I don?t blame the client or try to force him into one or the other. I don?t think I have ever even talked about these three aspects to a client. The work is physical and I try to understand the physical body the best that I can. That is the aspect of form. The work affects the entire somatic experience, so I endeavor to be sensitive to what matters to myself and to my clients and to grow honest and welcoming relationships with them. That is the aspect of meaning. The work is fundamentally transformative, so I endeavor to let go of my preconceptions and be open in the moment as I am working. That is the aspect of space. I believe this is what most successful SI practitioners are doing, and I believe this is what makes our work so helpful.

AH:Thank you, Liz, for your time and thoughts.

<i>Liz Gaggini, MA is a Certified Advanced Rolfer with a practice in New York. She writes about and teaches classes for SI practitioners on the biomechanics of adaptive alignment and biodynamic visceral work. She can be found on the web at connectivetissue.com. Her written work can be found at connectivetissue. com/library and at the Ida P. Rolf Library of Structural Integration (pedroprado.com.br).

Anne F. Hoff is a Certified Advanced Rolfer with a practice in Seattle, Washington. She is also a teacher of the Diamond Approach® to Inner Realization and the Editor-in-Chief of this journal.</i>

Bibliography

Gaggini, L. 1998 Jan. ?Gravity, Motility and Rolfing Theory and Practice.? Rolf Lines 26(1):20-23. Available at http://tinyurl.
com/gravity-gaggini.

Gaggini, L. 1997. ?Letters to the Editor? (letter from A. Zorn and C. Veeck concerning Gaggini?s article ?Structure in Free Float? and reply from Gaggini). <i>Rolf Lines.</i> 25(3):6- 9. Available at http://tinyurl.com/gravitykinesthetics.

Gaggini, L. 1997 Feb. ?Structure in Free Float: Mobility, Gravitation and 4-Dimensional Reality.? Rolf Lines 25(1):26-30. Available at http://tinyurl.com/structure-in-free-float.

Maitland, J. 1992 (Apr). ?Rolfing: A Third Paradigm Approach to Body-Structure.? Rolf Lines 20(2)46-49. Available at http://tinyurl.com/third-paradigm.