JB: Hal, rolfing is one of the newer body therapies that has blossomed into prominence, and as such it’s shrouded in a lot of mystery. A lot of people have conceptions about rolfing, and I think a nice jumping-off point for this interview would be for you to explain what rolfing is.

HM: To attempt to sum it up succinctly, I’d say that rolfing is a means of balancing the body, integrating the many parts of the body into a totality where everything is working harmoniously with everything else in a functional way.

JB: And how is that process done?

HM: It’s done through deep-tissue manipulation, working primarily with the soft tissues of the body. Rolfing affects every other tissue and organ in the body, and as you change one thing something else changes-responsively and reflexively.

JB: The initial rolfing series consists of ten sessions, right?

HM: Right. Dr. Rolf designed the series through her understanding of bodies, many bodies. It was designed to go through different parts of the body in a series of ten sessions. That would be the initial series: taking you through a functional, physical relationship through a field of gravity. And then there is work that can go beyond that, which deals with some very specific, individual, physical problems that you might have within this relationship.

JB: You mentioned that rolfing is a process of integration, of body manipulation. Let’s say that you integrate various parts of your body, and your posture changes greatly, which certainly is one of the most tangible effects of rolfing. Yet people also talk about great changes having taken place in their lives. I was wondering how that works. Just because a person’s posture and their way of standing in the world have suddenly changed, why would their lives change in such a dramatic fashion?

HM: Well, first of all, you have to buy the premise that everything is related in one way or another: that as your tissues, body, and structure change, as your “posture” changes, that every other part of you is being affected by those changes. Your perception, the way you see things, is going to change also. I don’t know exactly how, but I know that it works. As your body changes and as you start to function more efficiently-as you start to move with greater ease, and as your body is eased from the restrictions that have released-there seems to be a whole different sense of your being, of what and where you are. These are the experiences that are reported, and I have certainly seen them over the years-over and over again. Styles change, jobs change marriages come together or go apart.

JB: For the benefit of everybody reading this article, would you really want to state categorically that all of sudden incredibly dramatic things are going to happen? Do they, with most people?

HM: With most people, some things do happen. Something is different. I wouldn’t want to state this as an expectation, but they can happen. They’re open to happen, depending on where the person is and what they want need. Rolfing is certainly a process that facilitates all kinds of movement. It may be that the people who are attracted to rolfing are ready to make these moves anyway. I don’t know. It seems that many people go on a make some changes in their life, but they don’t have to. I’ve had people come specifically for some kind of physical problem- maybe a sore elbow or a sore shoulder-and we’ll work with that through the series, and that moves on and other things happen in their lives.

JB: I imagine most people are going in with the premise that their physical beingness is going to change or they’re uncomfortable with their physical beingness an that’s why they’re getting rolfed. Do you look upon rolfing as an experience in changing your physical beingness, or do you see it more as a process of changing the totality of your being in the world?

HM: It’s really the latter, Jacob. The physical being is only a symbol; and the changes that may or may not occur physically, where you can see it with your eyes, are only a symbol of what goes on underneath. Sometimes the physical changes are minimal for the average eye to see and sometimes the other changes are much more dramatic-when you see the Light coming from the other person’s eyes or the glow from their face or the way they walk out. There’s a whole different kind of vibrancy than before. And sometimes this isn’t manifested in a physical or postural way. But it’s certainly there.

JB: Okay, then, what’s really going on, if it’s not being manifested in a physical, postural way? It could be, bt let’s just say it isn’t. Ostensibly, we’re talking about physical manipulation of the body to effect a certain change, and yet there’s something much greater going on because of the particular manipulations. What is that greater “something”?

HM: I wish I knew and could answer that very specifically. It gets back to a belief system or a philosophy. If you believe that life is expansion, if you believe that life is the opposite of contraction, then to live fully is to move in an expanded way. Through physical trauma, accidents, in the battle with gravity, in attempting to move around and do work, the body gets “armored up.” When you get frightened as a child, the closing up occurs in the muscles of your body. And as your body learns to live in this contracted way, it affects your whole being. As the body is released and the muscle lengthen, as you achieve more resiliency and responsiveness in your body, then it becomes lighter and you become lighter. So it does come from a belief system. As the body lengthens and opens and gets this resiliency, then all these other things that we mentioned earlier come about. Is that clear?

JB: Yeah, that’s clear to me. One of the things I perceive you saying is that our physical structure is really representative of our emotional structure. Perhaps a person’s physical structure is the most telling point to what’s contained in them emotionally. In other words, if emotional trauma happens, it would be reflected in the body. Do you think that optimum (I’m using the word optimum on purpose)-that optimum integrated growth can be achieved without a person’s having to go through physical releasings of the emotions that are locked within their body?

HM: I feel that people can be stuck in their bodies. As they go through other kinds of growth processes, unless they actually deal with their physical body-what they’re on this planet with-they’ll be stuck there. And that needs to be dealt with in some way. Rolfing is certainly an approach that I believe in as an integrative approach in dealing with the physical body. It can work from both ways: it can open the body; and, working with the physical, can move into clearing some psychological, emotional kinds of behavior patterns. Coming from the other way, a person working towards emotional, psychological and spiritual growth can deal with his body so that he can move further in awareness.

JB: I think this might be an appropriate time to clear up one of the ideas that a lot of people have about rolfing. People have been hesitant about undergoing rolfing because of the pain involved. I know from my own rolfing experiences that there is some discomfort, even though there are new techniques that really make that discomfort minimal. I wonder if you’d be able to talk a little bit more about how that works.

HM: I don’t think that rolfing, as such, is painful. It’s not geared towards pain; and it was never meant, as I understand it, to be a painful experience. Many people experience discomfort from time to time during rolfing; and, depending on where their particular problems are, where the splinting and bound-up muscles are, where there might be some emotional trauma, they might experience some pain. In the early years of rolfing, there was more pain than there is now. The process, the techniques, the philosophical approach to rolfing have evolved over the years; and the input of many of the rolfers in the field has allowed it to evolve into a much less painful thing. But it certainly hasn’t diminished the effectiveness of the process. “Less pain, less effectiveness; more pain, more effectiveness”-this is not so. It depends solely on the individual, once again.

JB: So the degree to which one is willing to allow the process to happen is the degree of pain involved?

HM: Perhaps. Pain is a funny word. It’s really funny to deal with it because it’s so relative; each person experiences it as their subjective level. It’s a hard thing to talk about, because what might be “painful” to one person may not be “painful” to another. To focus the attention on pain seems like it’s the wrong place-that’s not where the focus should be. And there could be some discomfort from time to time, but as I mentioned, it seems less and less. The focus should be on the growth, the changes, and the process itself. If a student comes with the idea that it’s going to be painful, already there’s a contraction, a resistance. If they come with the precept that they’re coming for an experience-whatever that is -and they’re coming to grow and move with that experience, I think they’ll find much, much less, discomfort.

JB: Well, I guess rolfing is like any other therapeutic process – whatever a person is coming to get out of it, that is what they’re going to get out of it. In other words, rolfing isn’t something so much that happens to you; you make it happen to yourself.

HM: Yeah, I think that would be pretty safe to say. You know, every time I attempt to generalize about what’s going to happen to a particular person, I’m always proven wrong by the next person. So it’s very difficult for me to generalize. Each person is unique; each person is an individual. And I don’t mean to sound so cosmic or anything. It’s true. It’s really true that each person will change according to his own ability or willingnss to change at that point. I see myself as a facilitator-one who helps that person change, moves that person towards a more integrated state within his beingness. It’s a unique experience for each individual, and things that change in one person may not change in another person; it could be different for each person that is involved. The whole idea is that each person will learn and have the freedom to live more fully within his own body.

JB: We’ve mentioned quite a few times in this interview the concept of people living more fully within their bodies. I know that a large portion of people’s therapy is essentially mental, or a combination of mental and emotional insightful processes. The emphasis in rolfing is on the body, and the realignment and the release from the body. Can you expound, perhaps, a little bit more on the necessity of thintegration of the body into the growth process?

HM: Well, again, I’m coming from a system of belief. I feel that each emotion, each trauma, each experience in your life is stored, or has a memory somewhere in your body. Your psychology is really in the tissues of your body. And as those tissues and muscles are opened and realigned, many of these memories are realigned also. They are released where they are stored or held. Each person may hold these in a different part of his body. I haven’t found any general patterns where certain kinds of memories are stored. However, during rolfing, people do recall certain incidents that have happened to them early in their lives that they have since forgotten.

JB: You mean when you’re working on a particular part of their body?

HM: Right. Something may come up that stimulates some memory. I’ve even had some people recall some things that may have happened in a previous life, although I’m not the judge of that. I don’t know. I only know what’s happening in front of me, and that’s what they relate. So again, it’s just a belief system that I have that every memory, every experience, is stored in your body somewhere. It’s difficult to work just one end of the spectrum since everything is related. Don’t feel you can work on just “traditional” therapy and ignore the body. Through the body you can get many insights and move toward that increased fullness and expansiveness.

JB: Do you think that was one of the original intentions of Dr. Rolf when she first devised rolfing?

HM: Well, I don’t want to speak for Dr. Rolf, because I don’t know. I do know that in my training and my work with her, that she has expressed over and over again that we work with a three-dimensional body-that’s here, that’s something we can work with-the flesh and the person there. Many other things may happen, but our focus is on the body, the three-dimensional body. I can’t speak about whether that’s what she had in mind. I do know that it works; we know what it happens. But our claim to fame, so to speak, is working with the three-dimensional body for realignment and balancing, so that the person can function with more ease within that body. Anything else that happens is “coincidental.”

JB: How did Dr. Rolf devise the system of manipulations that we now call rolfing?

HM: Well, there are many different versions of how that came about.

JB: What’s the best one?

HM: Dr. Rolf has related to me that very early, one of her young sons was having a physical problem and she couldn’t really get any assistance from the medical model. So she set out to try to do something for her son by herself. In the process of her investigation and from her experience as a biochemist and the other things that she was into at the time, she just started exploring, and came up with the kinds of manipulations that seemed to help. From that, she took those ideas and developed them, and the whole system evolved over a period of years. And she investigated the process.

MN: How does that work, by the way, that there is now a “process”? At least for the initial ten sessions, it is pretty much the same for everyone. If every body is different and is an individual statement unto itself, why do those initial ten sessions follow pretty much the same format for everyone?

HM: Well, they don’t, Jacob. There is a road map or a recipe, so to speak, particulary in the beginning when you’re getting started. However, that is only a guide. Each person can take off of that road map and go off onto their tangents according to that individual. Allowance for the uniqueness of the individual is inherent within the process. It may appear the same, on the outside, but in reality you are working with that individual’s specificity. So it’s not really the same; it’s really unique.

JB: You know, in regard to that, I know that you’ve been rolfed over a hundred times, and I know someone else who has been rolfed over two hundred times. I know people are going in with certain objectives in mind-integration, sense of flow with the gravitational field-but what happens after one hundred sessions? I mean, what’s your intent now?

HM: Well, Jacob, it’s just like anything; growth is never-ending. Awareness is never-ending. I believe that one of our major purposes for being on this planet is to grow, to become more and more aware. And we are open-ended beings. We are biological, open-ended beings. That means that it’s an ongoing process, continually, until we reach whatever it is we’re supposed to reach. The Godhead, or whatever. And so each time I get additional rolfings, my purpose is to grow-to become more aware. Each time, something else changes.

MN: You can see when you get rolfed the one-hundred and tenth time that whatever it is changes in you?

HM: Absolutely. Each time, I am definitely more and more aware. It’s gotten down to being a very subtle kind of awareness. It could be just the way my feet hit the ground differently, or the way I feel. Something definitely happens. There isn’t a session that I go through that I’m not aware of some kind of change that I can feel subjectively, and in many cases, see objectively. Sometimes it’s not so clear to see, but it certainly can be felt.

JB: Since you can perceive some kind of change every time you get rolfed, can you perceive any change in yourself as a rolfer? Okay, by now, have you any idea how many rolfing sessions you’ve done?

HM: Someone just asked me that the other day. I had to say somewhere between eight and ten thousand.

JB: In eight thousand rolfing sessions, which is an enormous number, how have you changed your rolfing?

HM: It’s just a whole other kind of approach, and I feel it’s coming from me. When you go to a practitioner of any kind, you’re coming to him as a person and what he’s bringing to the process. The experiences that you gain, through study and through living, are what you bring to your student. I’ve done a lot of work with Judith Aston of Aston Patterning; and she has helped develop and evolve my belief system about rolfing into a kind of approach that matches the amount of rolfing that I’ve had-the opening I’ve had in rolfing. It’s a softer, more flowing kind of approach. I started eight years ago; and any time you start anything-you’re more intense or maybe not quite sure of what’s happening. Through the experience, you gain more confidence, and you start flowing with it better. With the input I’ve received from Judith Aston, I think that my rolfing has become “much softer, much more in tune” with where the person is at, and where I’m coming from in offering that to the person.

JB: You know, one of the words you’ve often used in the talks we’ve had over the years is “intent.” What is your intent when you’re rolfing someone?

HM: To encompass this in a statement may not do justice to it. However, one of the most important things to me is to help make that person become more easy within his body, so that he can function more easily. Within that, it is implicit and explicit that there is more responsiveness within his body-that he is living more fully within. When you live fully, everything cooperates with everything else. There isn’t anything working in isolation. Your body isn’t working on hold while you’re doing something else. Everything is cooperating; everything is in harmony with everything else. I feel that one of my jobs as a teacher is to help that person get in touch with this harmonious relationship, and to allow the parts to move in harmony, with ease.

MN: But we’re talking about rolfing as one of the main ways of doing that. Would you say that there is a certain average number of sessions that a person goes through before recognizing that point of harmony?

HM: Well, again, I think that would be different for each person. I don’t think I can say that a specific number of sessions would do that. Certainly, they’ll feel changed; they’ll feel the difference even with just one session. They will feel the movement toward that end. And some people, in fact, will report that they have those kinds of feelings after one session. However, as you move along, you fine tune; you work and grow each step. Again, we’re open-minded. At each session you have that uniqueness for that session.

JB: I know that that’s true; and I know within my own experiences of having gotten rolfed with you, I have felt continuous change through the approximately fifteen sessions that we’ve had together. One of the things that I’ve noticed with my own process of rolfing is that I’d become aware of certain changes that would become really permanent, as long as my awareness stayed with that. I’ve also become aware that I’ve gone back to ways of holding myself, posturing myself, and walking in the world; and I know that that’s something that other people have mentioned. The rolfing hasn’t “taken hold.” How do you explain that? Can people work with that in terms of keeping those changes on a more permanent basis?

HM: Well, Jacob, there are a couple of things here. One is that you’re aware of many of the changes, and you’re accepting them totally. In these sessions, as you move to a peak, it’s like taking two steps forward, one step back, three steps forward, one step back. As you grow, as you move, this is what happens-even within each session. You move forward, and then your body finds a new homeostasis, a new balance for itself. And then you take it from that place and move on to the next place.

JB: If the body is finding a new balance for itself, why is it that unless you keep your awareness up at that point of change, it recedes back to the old way?

HM: In my opinion, it never recedes back to the old way. It never recedes completely back. You may think that it does. You are a different person now than when those patterns were ingrained. You’re a different person; you live differently, you function differently. With some awareness, you can keep from slipping back to that old way; and with some movement education, you can retain what you’ve gained more completely. But you don’t really slide back to where you were. You just can’t You’re different now, and the changes don’t allow that. Some of your really heavy patterns of movement may be difficult to move out of or break; so it’s more comfortable to go back closer to those patterns. But your body and its structure change to where they’re not exactly that way. It’s difficult to explain; but from my experience, I just don’t see people going back to those old ways.

JB: So is it true that the changes in the body correspond in a lot of ways to psychological changes? Let’s say that a person has great psychological awareness-in a sense, a state of euphoria. He’s reached this tremendous sense of-

HM: Aha!

JB: Yes, “aha!” He thinks within this “aha!” that tremendous change has taken place permanently. Four weeks later, you’re back in life, and you realize that you still have to deal with that thing. Does that hold true for the body also? Does the body sort of go through an “aha”; then, after about three weeks, it has to come back and deal with that “aha” in a very real and tangible way?

HM: Yes, absolutely. You have to deal with it in a tangible way. And just as when you reach that psychological insight, with that awareness, you can’t go back totally with the body either.

JB: Yeah, that makes sense. I never quite saw it that way with the body.

HM: I’d like to really emphasize the educational role that many rolfers get into. As part of their rolfing process, they help you with possible new ways of moving, to help you get out of those old patterns. More specifically, a teacher of structural patterning or Aston patterning would be appropriate in conjunction with, or certainly as a follow-up, to your rolling process.

JB: Does patterning work as an adjunct to an educational process, in terms of learning how to hold yourself once the changes have occurred?

HM: I don’t like to use the word “holding.” It’s a different way of educating yourself to move in a different way, so you’re more in harmony and responsive with gravity and with your world. So it’s an adjunct, yes.

JB: And you teach that, too?

HM: I teach that. There are people who teach only structural patterning. And, certainly, each rolfer does some teaching within his process; but he doesn’t really have the time in a session to focus completely on that. Therefore, structural patterning teachers can focus more specifically, and for a longer period of time, on that kind of education.

JB: Hal, we’ve talked about the physical aspects of rolfing; and as one of the last questions of this interview, I’d like to ask you about a different aspect of it. I know that most of the people reading this newspaper are people who are, on some level or another, involved in a spiritual quest. That is one of the main parts of your life, also. There are a lot of people on the spiritual path who have pretty much divorced themselves from the process of the body. They seem to use as a rationale for divorcing themselves from their body processees and the body aliveness, the assumption that it’s not part of spirit and the spiritual path. You are directly involved in working with people’s bodies and opening them up; and as I’ve said, being on the spiritual path is a very important part of your life, too. Would you care to comment an the relationship between spirit and body?

HM: Well, as I see it, Jacob, we are spirits and we are spirits within a body on this planet. And as such, we still have to deal with our bodies, to help move into that spiritual place. Many people even report that as they go through the process, their heart really opens; and as the constriction and the binding of their body opens and unwraps, their heart really opens up, and they experience a different kind of lovingness that we associate with spirit. As the layers of hurt, pain, and negative experiences are unwrapped and released, it’s much easier to expose this life that is inherent within us all but with which so many of us are not really in touch. I’m not saying that rolfing does that totally, but it’s certainly a process that helps us reach this particular place of lovingness. Again, what we talked a little about earlier, Jacob, is that when a person is living fully within his body-and all of the parts are responding, are in harmony with each other, and are integrated-this totalness, this fullness, certainly includes the spiritual part of that person, where he is able to perceive the world in harmony and reach this kind of loving place. And that’s not to say, again, that rolfing does all these things. But I feel that this is an end that I’m working toward; and it’s one of my intentions, as I work, to help a person grow and move closer to inner harmony. To have them realize it and become aware of that and have the feeling of that is real nourishment for me. Sometimes I can see it happening; and sometimes the person isn’t totally aware of that at that moment-and it isn’t until later that they come back and say, “Hey, listen, this happened to me,” and I get my just reward.Rolfing Was Never Meant to Be Painful