Ask the Faculty
Hands and Arms in Rolfing® SI

ABSTRACT For this issue, some of the Dr. Ida Rolf Institute® (DIRI) faculty members share: their approach to working with hands and arms, when they encountered DIRI training regarding hands and arms, and the evolution of how they currently approach teaching hand and arm territory in the classroom.

Q: (a) Why do you think arms and hands didn’t seem to have a big place in Dr. Rolf’s original conceptualization of the Rolfing Structural Integration (SI) Ten Series or the work we hear about her doing? (b) When you are teaching the Ten Series, how do you consider arms and hands in your strategic planning? (c) In the Ten Series or otherwise, how do you work with hands and arms as a part of fascial interventions that are intended for global change? (d) How do you invite clients’ attention into their hands and arms? (e) For clients who come to you for hand and arm symptoms, how do you meet their goals? (f) Finally, for the self-care of your own hands and arms, what habits do you have to maintain comfort with your fingers, hands, and arms?

Jörg Ahrend-Löns Basic Rolfing Instructor

I want to start with the initial question of why the upper extremity didn’t seem ‘to have a big place’ in Rolfing SI in the earlier days. My assumptions are: 1) the connection between gravity and normal force (substratum, ground), spine and lower limbs seem to be more obviously a priority; 2) the structure and function of the shoulder girdle might have been perceived as more important in the hierarchy of a properly organized lower pole and spine than vice versa; and 3) fewer clinical symptoms in arms and hands would suggest less necessity to work specifically on the upper limbs. Subsequently we have seen changed activities, particularly in the professional world – the digitalization of work and less variety of movement in the upper limbs.
From my practical point of view, I perceive a change in my work through the years. The functional and structural impact of the upper extremities on the position of head, neck, and thoracic spine is obvious. Sitting positions and the positioning of arms and hands during daily activities to the front are presumably the cause for more flexion in the thoracic spine and hyperextension in the neck.
I observe an increasing number of clients with internal rotation in the shoulder joint, stronger kyphosis in the thoracic spine with less rotational movement and decreased breathing capacity (particularly decreased chest-breathing in all directions). We may perceive increased belly breathing and less contralaterality in walking. Another observation is stronger tensional patterns in the superficial structures around the shoulder girdle and arms with less core stability (particularly trapezius
and pectoralis major and minor), and of course rotator cuff problems and om- arthrosis (shoulder arthrosis).
The practical consequences of this include a stronger necessity these days to work with the upper extremities. It seems that the position and functional organization of the shoulder girdle, elbow, and hands now has more effect on the organization of the spine and lower pole, possibly due to changes in work environments. Of particular concern is that the ability to open hands into extension and pronation is very much related to the ability of the shoulder joint to rotate externally. This opens the upper chest, improves breathing, and helps to release tensional patterns particularly around the shoulder girdle and neck. If support is provided from below, integration can happen from both poles.
As Rolfers we know about the relevance of our hands’ sensory abilities. We learn different qualities of touch in order to differentiate layers of tissue and specific tension patterns. These abilities are essential for our work. The connection of hands, spine, and ground through the girdles – or other horizontal structures – helps us find orientation and direction along the line of gravity. In other words, body use is key. But this is not meant to be a one-way-road: haptic experiences with our hands can have a vital effect on orientation and direction of the entire body.
As an example of a functional connection, reaching and pushing are possible doors into the organization of the shoulder girdle, spine, and lower pole. If we work in so-called closed chains, we connect hands and feet, giving important sensory information to the body supporting our structural work. Another functional example is how considering the hands can be a very supportive element for sitting bench work, which then helps the client who stabilizes through his hands at a desk. Thus, our structural work addressing core stabilization from the upper pole will be a very supportive element.
We can see here the importance of connecting hands and feet – in a wider sense, ground and space – for the integration of structure and function. Add to this sensory elements, and a rich field of experience can be provided. This helps to open the client to what is really important: meaning, and therefore, freedom of choice deduced from experience.

John Schewe
Fascial Anatomy Instructor
While doing my auditing and practitioning classes back in 1987 (auditing with Ron Thompson and practitioning with Louis Shultz), I was struck by the fact that the topic of arms was tacked on to the very last lecture on the last day of class, right after the head and neck. Even then I wondered about this, hands and arms were after everything else, placing the study of the arms and hands almost as a footnote in the anatomy lead-in week. The best explanation I heard was that Dr. Rolf didn’t give a lot of consideration to the arms because they are not weight- bearing. While understanding the rationale behind this, even in my nascent Rolfing SI career, I still considered the arms to be part and parcel of the entire shoulder- girdle complex.
One thought I had concerning Rolf’s reasoning was that she began her investigations into the structure and function of the human body when the only computers in use were in the hands of the researchers developing them. Even into the 1970s and 1980s, it seemed that computers were the bailiwick of office personnel, computer developers, and college researchers. (I still fondly recall that while doing my master’s thesis in geology at Louisiana State University in 1978, there was a computer room in the attic of the geology building with a full-time, paid assistant there to help us use the piano-sized punch-card machine and feed our data into an even larger computer.) There were virtually no computers with everyday people.
That began to change in the 1980s, and certainly in the 1990s, when people started buying personal computers. That is when people started spending long periods of time hunched over their keyboards. Then with the advent of cell phones, people began to spend even more time using their hands and arms to work with these innovative devices. When I began my Rolfing practice in 1988, there were no repetitive motion injuries (RMIs) such as ‘mouse finger’ and ‘texting thumb’; however, it was readily apparent that the more people used their arms and hands, the more ‘wooden-like’ their forearms became. Early on, it became a regular part of my practice to check on my clients’ arms at some point in the First Hour. The vast majority of my clients found that the work I did on their arms, particularly their forearms, was extremely helpful, and many were amazed that there was so much tension and hypertonicity in this part of their body.
In the late 1990s, I became an anatomy instructor for the Institute, and right from the beginning I included the arms in my lecture on the shoulder girdle (sorry, Ron and Louis). I have always explained to students that the arms and shoulder girdle are a unit, and that any tension in the arms and hands has a direct fascial pathway up into the shoulder girdle and, consequently, the neck. While this seems obvious now, it wasn’t so when I went through my original training. Some thirty odd years later I continue to give a fair amount of attention

to the arms and hands throughout the Ten Series and in post-ten work, and I have never once felt that I was wasting my or my clients’ time.

Kevin Frank
Rolf Movement® Instructor

Highlighting the hands and arms, as well as feet and lower legs, presents a compelling opportunity for transforming/modernizing the Ten Series. Rolf’s work implied, but didn’t explicitly address, stability. In today’s world, stability is a lens through which structural integration has the potential to preserve and renew its relevance. To optimize renewed relevance, we benefit through a shift from the traditional ‘tissue-as-the-issue’ model to a ‘tissue- as-conduit-for-information’ model. Our work provides information to the client’s ‘movement brain’ which hungers for the means to replace motor patterns built on effort and strain. Information is a primary role fascia plays – it’s an efficient data link between the world and the movement brain (the part of us that conceives the automatic subroutines that inform movement, including posture). Our work systematically mobilizes fascia, so touch offers differentiation to the body’s sensory and motor maps. Once differentiated, the brain’s maps work better because they are more precise and offer broader sets of options for execution of movement.
The periphery – hands, arms, feet, lower legs, head, and tail – are the most potent portals for information upload. Why? The periphery is where the most abundant sense receptors and mechanoreceptors have their detection apparatus. The interosseus membranes of the arms and lower legs are the longest joints of the body; joint fascia is the most densely mechanoreceptor-populated part of the fascial system. Therefore, attention to the periphery via touch, perceptual activity, and nuanced pre-movement – these forms of attention yield outsized returns, outsized levels of information to revitalize motor patterns. Perceptual information that is particularly essential to this coordinative reboot, is developed through learning to evoke sensory receptivity – enlivening haptic activity via the hands and feet.
What sort of reboot are we talking about? Why is it important to the Ten Series? Coordinative reboot is the heart of the Ten Series; the reboot deletes effort-based strategies that shorten and compress, replaces them with strategies the elicit elongation as a person responds to challenge.
When does it make sense to introduce peripheral stability in the Ten Series? It’s optimum to introduce it from the beginning: as an idea and as a practical reality in the sessions and in self-care, iteratively, relentlessly. Why? Because peripheral stability is logical and true to Rolf’s principles for human potential. It takes many repetitions to acquire new skills. It takes repeated an ongoing explanations and demonstrations to counter the bulwark of unfortunate assumptions and beliefs baked into modern life.
Peripheral stability serves us in many ways: we learn, as practitioners, to work with less effort and our body mechanics improve. We learn ways to revive our own periphery, by practicing natural stability exercises for self-care, based on iterative awakening of the periphery – hands, feet, head, and tail. We develop a stability curriculum to teach clients and students that applies Rolf’s legacy to an issue about which the public is primed to want to learn. We demonstrate the capacity for Rolfing SI to modernize the client’s movement. We improve the plausibility of the work while throwing away none of the treasures.
Think periphery: the hands and arms, the feet and lower legs, and the head and tail. There is, effectively, limitless benefit to explore the potential derived from attending to the periphery in every session of the Ten Series. Practitioners exposed to this technology, who take up the inquiry, report meaningful and satisfying outcomes.

Hiroyoshi Tahata
Rolf Movement Instructor

Working with the hand, forearm, and upper arm has great potential for the integration of structure and function. The barriers to integration can be minute or gross insults. On the minute scale, I sometimes find that scar tissue has formed in the deltoid from immunization injections. On the gross scale, an obvious example is impact from sports, whether inherent to the activity or injury. For example, a volleyball player will experience repeated impact to the distal forearm and fingertips just playing the sport. In kendo, a Japanese martial art using bamboo swords, it is common to receive blows to the forearms and hands from the opponents bamboo sword, and this will have an effect, even if the hands were protected by the traditional splints.
We should not ignore these restrictions, minute or gross, as they affect spatial perception as well as joint mobility. The upper limbs play an important role in sensing space. In my workshops, it is common for participants to note that when they, as the practitioner, consciously sense through an upper limb, their partner in the client role notes that his/ her perception becomes more open and s/he senses more space. The mapping of the hand in the sensory and motor cortex is huge, which means that as we work with hands we may also be stimulating a broad area of the cortex with afferent input. When our work is able to facilitate more ‘rest’ in the hand, it can greatly calm the client, inducing parasympathetic rest.
As described elsewhere (Tahata 2019), vaccinations can cause muscle contractures at the injection site. For these cases, it is efficient to work with the ‘damaged’ area, checking for tissue tone, reduced motility, or a lack of congruence. It should be useful to restore the affinity to space (i.e., restore the kinesphere) around any traumatized area.
Each component of the hand and arm is related and resonant, especially to analogous structures. For example, I have observed in some clients that as the tissue around an injection site in the arm was able to ‘yield’ to space, the client’s hip joint would also become more spacious. Here are some correspondences:
1. Upper limb lower limb through the interosseous membranes.
2. Shoulder girdle pelvic girdle through limbs.
3. G′ with shoulder girdle to upper limb G with pelvic girdle to lower limb
Another client comes to mind, a woman who experienced repeated needle punctures to her arms for chemotherapy, dialysis, and blood samples during and after a long-term chemotherapy program to treat breast cancer. This trauma to the vascular tissue affected her whole system, both the needle trauma and the stress from the infusion of chemotherapy agents. So, when I think about arms, I also think about the cardiovascular system and how it is a network from capillary to heart with seamless continuity, like fascia. This client had vasculitis from the peripheral intravenous infusions. She was told that if she could not bear the successive infusions into the arm due to inflammation, then the drugs would have to be administered through central venous cannulation. For quality of life reasons, she did not want this more invasive method, so she sought work with me to calm the peripheral tissues. My approach was gentle movement intervention with ‘yielding’ touch to the infusion site on her right arm. My intention was to give safe space so the tissue could let its guard down, followed by focusing on connection of the whole cardiovascular network through the arm. Her reflections are as follows:
“When touched on my right arm, the arm and leg on my right side were not quiet at first. As these were getting settled in, I felt my internal organs winding down. Then the right arm was open like a fish opened and dried. I had a feeling of being exposed, a little vulnerable, but I felt gradually calmed down and my back was moving. When I was asked by Hiro to have a sense of the blood vessels, I felt a warm sensation from the base of the collarbone to the middle finger, and felt comfortably the blood vessels through blood circulation rather than through pain.
When first touched around the lower edge of the ribs, I could not feel the ribs expand well. Later, after the touch disengaged, I felt like breathing deeply, and like an amoeba, the feeling that the body was swelling and shrinking.
When my breathing calmed down and my body and thoughts became quiet, my sense of Hiro as a distinct presence shifted [that is, the practitioner’s presence became neutral in the ma of the room], and I felt as if everything in the surrounding space was united. Feeling that my body is warm and united. Something strange, like being wrapped in a cocoon.
Even after returning home, my right arm was soft and warm, and my vascular pain became lighter. I feel like my palpitations have calmed down and my mind and body have returned to calm.
I feel like I am going to be comfortable for a while.”
Since this time, the client has three times had chemotherapy administered through peripheral veins without provoking blood vessel inflammation. Thus gentle interventions like yielding touch may help clients undergo ongoing medical treatment in a way that maintains their quality of life. Most of us have had needles in our arms for medical treatment at one time or another. How the body perceived that past phenomenon and responded to it may indicate that there’s a missing link to attend to for finding congruency by working with the hand and arm.
Tahata, H. 2019 July. “The Superficial Layer as Sensory Envelope.” Structure, Function, Integration: The Journal of the Dr. Ida Rolf Institute® 47(2):37–42.

Valerie Berg
Basic Rolfing Instructor

I watch a person’s hands from the moment I meet them. I have to admit I did not have the fascination I have now before I broke all the fingers in one hand and had my other arm run over by my own car. This is all in my article on hands and arms in this journal (see page 19). The fingers all have fascial sequences that relate and integrate and affect the arm up into the torso (Stecco 2004). The beauty of the fascial wrappings of the fingers reveal the exquisite spirals necessary for our complex arm, elbow, and shoulder mobility.
Ten Series: arms and hands could be worked in all the upper-body sessions. Opening the arm and hands for five minutes before going into the rib cage or the neck changes the work that will come later. As in all our work, there are preparatory pieces that integrate into the next part of the session. Our fingers and hands are the way we manifest ourselves into the world, the material world and the social world. In my workshop, Freedom of the Wings, I have the students only manipulate the hands and nothing above the wrists to experience the changes possible by only working on fingers and hands. All the planes of motion – sagittal, transverse, and frontal – can be held in restriction by restrictions in the hands, fingers, and arms.
I think that many Rolfers feel that spending too much time on such a small area might not warrant the price and time of a Rolfing session for the client. As always, I feel that being a Rolfer takes guts and is a radical act to understand the depth of what we do as an overall effect on the entire structure.
I have spent many years opening up feet as the grounding force. Now I add the hands and fingers as a grounding force. Watch an elder who feels fear or an injured person use their hands to find their way: their stability, their grounding as they walk on uneven surfaces. The ability of our hands and arms to wave, flap, and express is how we stay vertical and manage the horizontal. People with arthritis losing their ability to manipulate objects and to do things creates an immense frailty and vulnerability.
Simple awareness exercises – like noticing the tension in the hands and its relationship all the way to the jaw when driving, holding the phone, and at the computer – are easy to give. Reminding a client of being a baby and letting the hand reach for what it wants rather than tension in the arm, shoulder, and neck. Basic movement education of activating all the arches of the hands, and how it relates to the stabilizing of the shoulder, can be given.
I do many things every day to keep my shoulder girdle and hands mobile and flexible. Just standing with my back to the wall and raising my arms up and back to touch the wall is a shoulder balancing I do often. When I walk through a doorway, I reach up to the threshold to keep the reach and mobility in the humeral joint. I have a hand station in my house with various toys that either strengthen or stretch my fingers. This was all due to breaking my fingers. Prior to that I probably only stretched them against a wall to keep them open. I have a swing set and monkey bars in my backyard, and I brachiate every day. I hang all my body weight on my arms. It has kept the shoulder joint of the arm that was broken very healthy.
Stecco, L. 2004. Fascial Manipulations for Musculoskeletal Pain. Italy: Piccin Nuova Libraria.

Peter Schwind
Advanced Rolfing Instructor

The day that this question about Rolfing SI work with hands and arms came up, I had worked with a woman who had sessions with Dr. Rolf decades ago. This woman had thought about studying with Rolf, she had been around in the so-called old days of Rolfing SI, but she changed her mind and went in other directions. Today she is a world-famous psychotherapist. While I work with her arms and hands, she reports how she observed Rolf supervising a Rolfer doing work on the arms and the hands of a client. I listen with curiosity to this authentic report. She reports to me about the way Rolf supervised, the way she lived her decisiveness in regards of the purity and authenticity of her work.
After we have completed our work, I remember how in my training there was very little attention paid to the upper extremity, during the old days of our discipline. One of the teachers of the first generation had told me – that was almost forty years ago – that Rolf refused to make the work on hands and arm part of the ‘Recipe’ because this part of the human organism is, according to her, too complex for basic work. Well, hand surgery is a special field of surgery and – maybe – it is also a special field of Rolfing SI.
Receiving work on my own hands and arms I remember an Advanced Rolfing class taught by Peter Melchior and Emmett Hutchins during the early eighties. Emmett started working at the fascia infraspinata and followed all the way down through the different layers of the arm to the fascia palmaris. He ended doing tracking work with the single joints of the fingers. I also remember how Jan Sultan touched deeply into the inner junctions of my left elbow
– it happened while we had a few drinks at a bar in Boulder during an Advanced Training in 1991. A single move released much more than my restricted inflamed elbow. And I will never forget how Rolf`s son, Richard Demmerle DC, taught me to open elegantly the deep membranes of my forearms, using the so-called quadruped position and asking for movement of the elbow joint.
Those three subjective experiences encouraged me many years ago to participate more in dissection classes at the medical department of the University of Munich. That helped, and I will always feel grateful to Professor Breul, teaching at the Anatomische Anstalt of the University in Munich, who has such an open mind for fascia. But all that did not help enough. I realized, we have to go deeper into living anatomy to understand the hand better. To go to the hand surgeon’s room and watch this work opened a new perspective for the integration of the human arms and hands. Nevertheless, I think we are still at the beginning with this knowledge. I recently damaged my left hand working on a very heavy person. Help was found through the work of a young colleague. This helped me remember what Jim Asher told me way back, that there are so few people who know how to work with hands efficiently.
There is hope for a sort of new recipe for the hand, if we are ready for dialogue. If we are open to honestly look at our failures. But it may be most helpful to share our practical experiences and conceptual ideas regarding the fascial accomplishments that can be made by working with hands and arms.