By Anne Hoff and Yoshita Koda, Certified Advanced Rolfers™

 

ABSTRACT During her lifetime, Ida Rolf taught her work in the United States primarily. In subsequent years, Rolfing® Structural Integration (SI) has spread

to numerous countries, often through the pioneering efforts of a few individuals. Yoshitaka Koda was the first Japanese person to train as a Rolfer, and for many years was the only Japanese Rolfer. Besides introducing the work to many people, he also has been a support to the Continuum Movement®, osteopathic, Feldenkrais Method®, and other somatic communities through his work as an organizer and translator for foreign teachers in Japan, allowing many forms of work to gain in popularity there.

 

Editor’s note: This interview was conducted in the autumn of 2019, with some additions made before going to press.

Anne Hoff: It’s really nice to meet you. I lived in Tokyo for some years in the 1980s and 1990s. When I first heard your name and that you were a Rolfer, you were living in Kyoto. Other than you, it was foreigners doing Rolfing® Structural Integration (SI) in Japan at that point in time.

Yoshitaka Koda: I lived in Boulder for a while, and I came back to Japan in 1989. There was Richard Podolny and some other Rolfers like Christine Faris, Ashuan Seow, Lloyd Kaechele coming back and forth, and Daniel Mills. Those are the ones I knew that were living in Tokyo, but I didn’t know you were also.

AH: I wasn’t a Rolfer at the time. Richard was my first Rolfer, and I thought, “Wow, this is great. Sometime I want to be a Rolfer.” And then I left Tokyo in 1994 to  go study Rolfing SI.

YK: Okay.

AH: I would hear your name, and I know that you were the only Japanese Rolfer for quite a number of years.

YK: Yeah, for a while.

AH: How did you hear about Rolfing SI?

YK: Well, I read an article in a little book that was based on a lot of information about the spiritual world. It had a section about spirituality based on the body, and [mentioned] Rolfing [SI], and Feldenkrais, and Gurdjieff. I heard that Ida Rolf was a

If I hadn’t gotten involved with Rolfing SI, I would be a totally different person. My understanding of the body is that it never stays the same anyway, whether we get Rolfing sessions, or anything else, or nothing. Regardless, we keep changing toward growth and decay to death. We Rolfers in our work can only offer a suggestion of certain directions for our ever-changing  existence.  In my own case, I notice that the direction taken would have been quite different if I have not had Rolfing sessions; I would be in a totally different place now, but I cannot imagine where I would be.

friend of one of his students, J. G. Bennett. For some reason it had these three, maybe that was the only information the authors had. So I read the book, and I got curious about Rolfing [SI].

AH: Was the book in English or Japanese?

YK: Japanese. They included information from here and there, and they picked up, from somewhere, the article about Rolfing [SI].

AH: I wonder if the author had experienced Rolfing sessions.

YK: I think it was just translated, or modified from some article in English.

AH: Where were you living when you read this?

YK: I was living in Osaka. I was born and grew up there. I was a college student when I read that, and I was curious, but I had no idea where I could get Rolfing sessions or anything. Hopefully I could study it, but I had no idea how. My fourth year of college, I had to decide whether to get a job or try to find how to study Rolfing SI. I chose to find out about Rolfing [SI]. But I had no English skills then, so I first went to States to study English, and meanwhile to get Rolfing sessions and to ask how I can study Rolfing SI. That way I would find out whether it’s a thing I could really study or not. And if I couldn’t, I’d give up [the idea].

AH: Where did you go in the U.S.?

YK: Initially, since I didn’t have English skills, I wanted to have some Japanese around. An agency for a language school recommended Seattle, so I went  there first, for eight months of English-language school. I also needed to experience Rolfing sessions so I went to see Jack Donnelly, who was an older man who I guess had studied with Ida Rolf. I got sessions, and asked him how I could study Rolfing SI, and he said he would write a letter to the Institute and see, because you needed to have a written recommendation then. They didn’t have as formal a training as now; you had to meet certain requirements, submit a paper, and do an interview, stuff like that. I didn’t feel I met the requirements so I almost gave up, but then I got a leaflet about the new   foundational    bodywork    program,  it was called the Comprehensive Study Program (CSP). [Editor’s note: This was a precursor to what is now Unit I.] They were just starting it to see if it would be helpful for people who wanted to study Rolfing SI but didn’t meet all the requirements.

But my English still wasn’t good. Japanese people are good at writing or reading English, but not listening or speaking [because our school system in Japan focuses on taking tests]. So I moved to Colorado  and  enrolled  at  a  college in Denver. I was trying to get closer to Boulder. I took  a  premedical  course  for a semester and a half, then entered the second offering of the CSP.

AH: What did your friends and family in Japan think? You were at the age where most Japanese men are becoming office workers, and you took this completely different journey to study something they had never heard of.

YK: Yeah, they don’t know anything about Rolfing SI of course, nobody in Japan knew. My friends didn’t care about it, they just thought, “He’s a weird guy doing something like that.” My parents also didn’t know what I was trying to do, but were very helpful in supporting me [whether it worked out or not]. They saw me getting closer and closer as I went along, so they kept supporting me.

AH: That’s very fortunate that they were willing to support you for something that they had no clue about. Let’s go back to where you first read about Rolfing SI in an essay about the body and spirituality. What was your experience receiving Rolfing sessions, did it fit that?

YK: The truth is that I didn’t feel much other than feeling  temporary  ease  or lightness. I totally agreed with and trusted what I read, but it didn’t happen for me the way     I expected. I see now that  I  shouldn’t  have expected anything – expectations disturb the experience. I was expecting dramatic change, and there was nothing dramatic. And since the way I used my body hadn’t changed much, probably my patterns came back. Since my English communication skills weren’t good enough, I guess my Rolfer couldn’t really tell me how to maintain changes, or how to keep changing, or how to sense. Actually, that’s the most important part, he didn’t really try to make me feel or sense. I didn’t know that I had to pay attention to sense  a change in what was going on. I thought it just happens automatically. Sometimes it does if you are lucky, or generally sensitive, but  it wasn’t possible in my case. But I was  still interested to study Rolfing SI and learn what it is.

AH: When did you experience something that was closer to what you felt was the potential of Rolfing SI?

YK: There was no particular moment,  but I got so many sessions from different Rolfing instructors after moving to Boulder. By and by, getting sessions, paying attention to my body, understanding the principles, I know it’s now different, and that there’s  also been personal growth. If I hadn’t gotten involved with Rolfing SI,

I would be a totally different person. My understanding of the body is that it never stays the same anyway, whether we get Rolfing sessions, or anything else, or nothing. Regardless, we keep changing toward growth and decay  to  death.  If we live to be 100 years old, we have had 36,500 days to live. We don’t get old in one day (although there may be some fluctuation in the rate of aging) but are constantly changing (dying) each day until the end. We Rolfers in our work can only offer a suggestion of certain directions for our ever-changing existence. In my own case, I notice that the direction taken would have been quite different if I have not had Rolfing sessions; I would be in a totally different place now, but I cannot imagine where I would be.

AH: How long did you stay in the U.S. in total? And how did you decide it was time to go back to Japan?

YK: I stayed five and a half years. I’m the first son in my family, and [in Japan that’s] usually the one who takes care of the parents. My only sibling is my sister.  So,  I was supposed to come home anyways at some point. I was almost twenty-nine years old, and felt that if I wanted to have a career in Japan, I had to start early enough, it might be harder later. And also, there were visa issues with staying in the

U.S. So, I decided to go home.

AH: So, how did you start your practice? Japan has a lot of people doing shiatsu and acupuncture, so there’s a history of people being individual practitioners, but how did you step in as a Rolfer?

YK: I didn’t do anything in particular. A practitioner named Mark Caffel connected me to his friend in Japan, a college professor, who wanted someone to do sessions. She was interested in referring people, but also didn’t  know  who  I was or how I worked, so she suggested that I give her and a couple of her friends Rolfing sessions and see how they feel. She ended up organizing clients for me for quite a while. This was in Nagoya. For a long time I was the only Rolfer in Japan outside of Tokyo, and the only Japanese Rolfer, so I would get clients coming from far away. So, in that sense, I had a lucky start.

AH: Yeah, there were some foreign Rolfers in Tokyo, but as I recall none of them spoke much Japanese, so you were the first person who could really communicate to Japanese clients in detail. That’s important, as you said about your own initial Rolfing experience. And you could speak both English and Japanese.

YK: Right. I had a quite a lot of foreign clients also, when I started.

AH: So you started in the Kansai region, going to Nagoya, and then you lived in Osaka or Kyoto?

YK: I lived in Osaka. But I was already going back and forth between  Osaka  and Nagoya and  Tokyo.  The  president of a school in Kobe wanted to have all the students get Rolfing sessions. The school’s name was Biodynamic Institute but it had nothing to do with cranial biodynamics. They also had classes in Tokyo, and I was asked to do sessions for the Tokyo students also. Then my Tokyo practice grew beyond that contract, I was getting outside clients, so I rented an office there. Eventually I met my wife, who lived there, so I moved to Tokyo in 1997.

AH: For how many years were you the only Japanese Rolfer?

YK: Probably about ten years. In 1994,    I organized a craniosacral class for Jim Asher, and three from the participants later became the next Japanese Rolfers

• Kayoko Toyoda, Chiharu Nunome, and Hiroyoshi Now there are close to 200 Japanese Rolfers.

AH: That’s stunning to me, how fast it grew after a certain point.

YK: I think that was because of Hiro [Hiroyoshi Tahata], who is now on the Rolf Movement® faculty. Hiro was really the one who got local training started, organizing them. Earlier, Christine and Ashuan and I had tried to find a way to start it, but it was never possible. Hiro organized the first training in Tokyo. Since then, it’s more and more. They had a second training, and a third training . . .

AH: I know that you organize and translate for a lot of different workshops. Do you teach also? Because you’ve been in practice for a long time now.

YK: I teach Continuum Movement® and sometimes I teach a little bodywork. I used to teach Jim Asher’s style of craniosacral work, as a gateway to classes that Jim would come to teach. But I stopped doing craniosacral work the way I used to, so I don’t do that anymore.

AH: How did you learn Continuum; did you go to the U.S. for that also?

YK: Gael Rosewood brought  Continuum to the Rolfing community, that was pretty much when I was in Rolfing training in Boulder. I asked Gael to come to Japan to teach, but she [wasn’t comfortable teaching

abroad yet] so she recommended Susan Harper, who came. So, I was studying  from time to time and came to the U.S. to take Emilie Conrad’s class, and I organized classes for different teachers. I became a Continuum Movement teacher three or four years ago, after Emily had died.

AH: So, Rolfing SI, biodynamic cranial work, Continuum . . . I know you’ve been studying esoteric healing as well.

YK: Well, I also do the Feldenkrais Method® of somatic education. A lot of this stuff is because I translate for various workshops. I translated for the Feldenkrais training. There was an Israeli man who organized the first Japanese training for the Feldenkrais Method and he was trying different translators including me. I end up translating the whole second program. Then they asked me if I would like to be a practitioner in the third training. So I was translating for that training while at the same time being a student. So organizing workshops  in  Japan,  and  translating for them, leads me to different things where I end up becoming a practitioner. Tom Shaver, D.O. was teaching Esoteric healing classes,  which  I  organized  for  a while, but then we stopped as he got too busy teaching biodynamic stuff. He looked for someone else to come, and recommended me. I organized classes for other teachers, then they asked me if I would like to be a teacher. No one else was on that route, so I decided, yeah, I will. But it’s taking me a little while.

AH: It sounds like you have interests you pursue, but also sort of flow with life. You’re open to see what comes your way.

YK: Yeah, it’s like that.

AH: You’ve been a Rolfer for many years now. Over time people often develop their own style, bringing in things that interest them. Do you have a particular type of client you like to work with? A particular way of working?

YK: Not particularly. [I’ve been doing fewer sessions] these days, because I am doing so many other things, but I would like to come back to private sessions. People know me more as a Rolfer than anything else. If they ask me to do a Rolfing session, then I do that. If they say whatever I do is fine to help them out, then I try to find out what works best for the person.

In terms of Rolfing style, initially I had a very hard core, strong style, because I think that my experience of sessions from Emmett Hutchins was most effective for

my system, and his style was very, very strong. But this style, how can I say it,   it’s the attitude – it’s not the effect of the work per se, but if it’s so painful and you’re willing to receive the pain, without resisting or disassociating (which can happen) . . . you have to be right there with awareness, not resist, but confront

. . . cultivating that attitude as a client  was a great help for me, for later on, for whatever I did, but actually my character tended to be like that already.

But I no longer do a strong Rolfing style because I’m not interested in the pain/ intensity like I used to be. I was getting older, and people in general don’t like pain anyway, so despite my own good experience I cannot push that to others who don’t have as strong a will as I did. I was determined to study Rolfing SI and to get this, but other people are not.

AH: How did you learn to use your hands in a way that was easier for people, that had less pain? Did you make that bridge yourself? Or did you learn from somebody who had developed other techniques?

YK: I haven’t studied from Rolfers in a long time, probably since my last training in 1997 or so. I did the Advanced Training with Jan Sultan, Michael Murphy, Ray McCall, and  Karen  Lacritz.  Since  then, I haven’t taken any workshops with Rolfers, other than workshops I organized for Konrad Obermeier and Jim Asher.

In making the work softer, you make it easier, but it still has the same effect. There are many ways to do it. I get things from osteopathic stuff and Feldenkrais,

etc., ways to use much less pressure or whatever. Biodynamics is totally different. I don’t think it goes along with Rolfing sessions, I can’t mix them. I don’t mean it’s bad to mix them, it’s just that I can’t. Let me clarify it a bit more. As a Rolfer I have certain ideas for what I would like to happen for a client, and intend to help that. I have an intention and suggestion through my hands and words. On the other hand, with biodynamics, I have no intention other than to be there with the client to support whatever is going on in this person’s whole system, and causing as little disturbance as possible by being there. So I try to do nothing but be engaged, which is almost impossible for me.

I don’t define the way I work as a style. Some Rolfers incorporate different techniques into their style of Rolfing work, and then they share their style of Rolfing work in a workshop. I don’t have that kind of defined, definite style. But I’m open in the moment, and however I can figure it out, I do that. And then I don’t try to keep whatever I do as the way to do it. So, each time, whatever comes up, that’s that. And although I said I don’t have a particular style, I  notice  that  I  do  have a tendency to do the work in a certain manner, so maybe you could call it a style.

AH: So, it’s in the moment.

YK: In the moment, because, for me, Rolfing SI is not a technique, but a way of thinking and a way of seeing. So, if I have the way of seeing, and try to perceive,  then how to do it comes of its own accord. But for that to happen, you have to have many different things. You have

For me, Rolfing SI is not a technique, but a way of thinking and a way of seeing. So, if I have the way of

seeing, and try to perceive, then how to do it comes of its own accord. But for that to happen, you have to have many different things. You have the idea of what to do, or how to do, but that doesn’t become a technique. It’s just a toolbox.

the idea of what to do, or how to do, but that doesn’t become a technique. It’s just a toolbox. It’s the tools and not the style of techniques.

So, the idea, the Rolfing way of thinking, needs to be there. I’m often asked, in different classes, do you mix something with Rolfing SI or keep it separate? And if separate, how do you maintain the distinction? All I do is change my frame  of mind. If I’m doing a Rolfing session and using that frame of mind, I may use one thing and it’s Rolfing work; if I’m working from the Feldenkrais framework, something technique-wise might be exactly the same, but if I use it for the Feldenkrais Method, it’s a different thing. So, it’s nothing to do with technique, it’s about the way of thinking and seeing.

I remember when I had my initial admission interview for Rolfing training. These interviews had a notorious reputation for students because the interviewers tried to ask difficult questions in order to see how students responded. I was practicing Aikido and karate then, and one of the interviewers (they were all Rolfers) asked me how I could do Aikido and karate without mixing them up. I said,  “They  are totally different.” The interviewer kept asking, “But how can you be clear without getting mixed up,” or something like that. I was a little hesitant, I didn’t know what to say, but then the idea came and I said, “If you play baseball you swing and hit  the ball. If you play golf you swing and hit the ball also. But you don’t think you are playing golf if you are doing baseball.” I thought I nicely escaped their challenge. This can apply to anything that we think is similar but has a different idea or point of view: we can stay with the commonality

to make them the same, or make clear distinctions in their points of view to see them as different.

AH: That’s a good differentiation. What kinds of clients come through your door these days?

YK: Well, most have some physical disturbances, but at the same time, there is wishing for some psychological change. Most people who are interested in Rolfing sessions, it’s something like that.

AH: Your business name is Chronic Students. Tell us about that.

YK: When Jim Asher was coming to Japan regularly, he called us (including himself) “chronic students.” That’s kind of funny, but at the same time, there’s some truth about it. So, I decided to name my

business Chronic  Students.  Under  that, I organize many different workshops. It used to be that I would find whatever interested me and then try to contact the person to teach. Like I got information about Tom  Shaver DO from Kevin Frank; I heard he was teaching at Kevin’s place and I asked him to introduce us, and that’s how it started.

AH: Your Chronic Students group seems to have a bit of a parallel to the Munich Group, where they organize different classes for people. Who comes to the classes, are they mostly Rolfers?

YK: Some Rolfers, some osteopaths, a lot of laypeople also. It depends on the type of workshop. If it’s manipulation, a lot of manipulation people, and of course chiropractors, Rolfers. In terms of other workshops, like Continuum or meditation, it’s just anybody.

AH: So, you’re good at bringing people together?

YK: Well, I’m not really a good business person.

AH: But it sounds like you find the people whose hearts are in it.

YK: Yeah, that’s true. All these things have some common elements. Some people are taking one thing, and not other things. Other people are taking all these classes, and those people are finding something similar to what I feel, the commonality of these different modalities.

AH: How would you describe the commonality between those things for you?

YK: Gosh. How do I describe the commonality? It’s very difficult to speak to it

. . . You know, it’s spirituality. So everything is nothing, but nothing is everything. And then trying to find out what’s my part within the whole. And recognizing me as a whole, and individuality is a part of it. And trying to lose as much individuality as possible. It’s a different state of mind where my individuality and personality is smaller.

It’s already there, it’s already functioning that way, but I may not recognize it. All these things – biodynamics, esoteric healing, or meditation – are trying to bring us up . . . But up is not a direction necessarily, it’s a bigger arena. It’s like one cell of my body recognizing the whole of  me.  Wherever the cell is, it’s always me, part of me, and this one cell’s identification can be of ‘me’ or of the whole. But this whole me of my individuality is in the same way part of a bigger whole, which I may not identify with

when I’m in my smaller identity. Reality is dependent on where you put your mind.

AH: When you’re with a client, do you sense how the client is also part of the whole?

YK: That’s a difficult thing, because I can be too busy trying to figure out what to do with the client. It’s easier when I do biodynamic work and esoteric healing, because you don’t do anything in particular, or you do not to do. Setting-wise, it’s already there

– to see others as the same as you, and not a singular you but part of a whole. But Rolfing work or Feldenkrais is much more to do with this person in front of you, how this person can live life better, which is more like insisting on this [individual] figure and how to use this. So it’s there with a quite different way of seeing it.

AH: Just the format we have of visual analysis in Rolfing SI, you’re separating into two people. I’m looking at you, and I’m going to work on this shape that you inhabit.

YK: Right.

AH: It sounds like you are expressing something about non-dualism, and an inspiration to work from a place of non- dualism.

YK: Yeah. One of the people I also organize classes for, he’s a Course in Miracles teacher, Gary Renard. He’s talking about that as a non-dualistic teaching.

AH: Earlier you spoke about the nothing, I forget what your other word was . . .

YK: Nothing is everything. Everything is nothing.

AH: That made me think of the famous line from the Heart Sutra, “Form is empty, emptiness is form.”

YK: That’s fair, yeah. Form is empty, that’s how it’s translated in English right? Well, before that, it says, “Form is not different from the emptiness” or “Emptiness is not different from the form.” That’s the non- dualistic idea.

AH: It’s an interesting place to  work  from, when you’re working with a body, because a body seems solid, it seems to be something.

YK: Yeah. So I don’t think I can do Rolfing work from that standpoint. For me, biodynamic work is the closest way to be involved with the body to be like that.

AH: When I requested this interview, you wrote to me, “I’m a boring guy to talk with.” I haven’t found the conversation boring. I’m reminded a bit of what Kurosawa  Akira said when he accepted an honorary

Academy Award – that he was still working to learn and understand the essence of cinema. I hear a similar humility from you, that for all of the years you have put in, you are still inspired to move to some greater understanding that you can sense and are feeling your way toward.

YK: Now, in 2020, it’s been a year since we did this interview, and I  can  see  what I was thinking last year. It  may  have sounded like I could work from a nondualistic frame of mind, but by no means am I able to. I was just trying to explain the commonality for me within  the quite different modalities I organize classes for as Chronic Students. It sounded like I was bluffing – ha ha. Thank you for interviewing me and not getting bored. I guess I didn’t think I’d have much to say unless you asked.

Yoshitaka Koda became a Certified Rolfer in 1987 and a Certified Advanced Rolfer in 1997. He has practiced in  Japan since 1990. He  is  also  certified in Feldenkrais Method, Continuum Movement, and Esoteric Healing (from INEH). Through chronicstudents.com he organizes classes in bodywork, somatic arts, and spiritual methods.

Anne Hoff is a Certified Advanced Rolfer in Seattle, Washington, a teacher of the Diamond Approach® to Inner Realization, and Co-Editor-in-Chief of this Journal.Nothing Is Everything. Everything Is Nothing. (It All Depends on Your Viewpoint)[:]