We know people’s lives often be-gin to change when they are Rolfed. The bodily transformation is so profound that whole life views are frequently revised and new aware-ness is found. With an experience sob road, we are often left to ponder the deeper question, “What is Rolfing?” We are apt to be religious or philosophical and engage in the speculations of meta-physicians. As humans, we seem irresistibly drawn toward trying to discern “deeper meanings” for what fascinates us in life. Since Rolfing fascinates Rolfers, we are drawn like flies to honey to probe beyond the bodily effects (or even the observable psychological ones) to ask what Rolfing really is.

The main point of my brief exploration will be that all these speculations are fun, beneficial and even evolutionary for the individual person who enjoys entertaining them, but when they in any way become part of teaching about what Rolfing is, then Rolfing is limited.

Consider Rolfing and astrology. There are those who believe various planets or constellations have to do with the Rolf “Line” or body cores. This may in fact be the case in this wacky universe of ours, but is it necessarily so? And if not, don?t we risk turning people off who don’t enjoy astrology by insisting that it is. There are those who believe a true experience of the core has something to do with a kind of Buddhistic experience-of non-ego or Hindu ego-surrender. However, if a person is a Christian and doesn’t share these views, haven’t we limited Rolfing again by such an identification? Perhaps a potential client is a neo-Pagan or a hard-nosed scientist; might not they shun the work because they’ve heard the core or “line” equated with nirvanic bliss? I question why it is necessary or desirable to present Rolfing any of these ways beyond articulating the basic goals we all hold: an experience of line and core in the gravitational field.

To address this issue I believe, echoing a tape I heard of Jan Sultan, that it’s wise to always try to ground our abstractions. If our abstractions can’t be brought down to the nitty-gritty, then let’s just enjoy them ourselves for the pleasure and personal insight they bring; but don’t expect others to have any idea what we’re talking about, if they don’t sham our beliefs. In this light, I suggest there is perhaps one abstraction about Rolfing that really can be grounded: that is, psychologically and spiritually Rolfing is a work that brings out radical individuality.

There is something about not having to fight gravity to stand vertically that makes a person what she or he is. What ever that may be. Somehow, stooped positions or hyper-erect ones are often linked with living someone else’s life, or simply being a moving image of societal demands. When the body is released to find its own core, a corresponding re appropriation of one’s own psychological and spiritual core can often be expected. And this core does indeed ex-press itself as a line stretched between earth and heaven. But hem’s where the problem starts-whose heaven? Does the line stretch to a heaven filled with the Christian God’s endless mercy, or is it the line of Buddhist deliverance from the anxieties of samsara into sunyata where horizontal is vertical; and yet a line is just a line.

At this point, some might be moved to add an elegant ecumenical objection. It runs something like this: aren’t all authentic spiritual experiences really about the same thing? Isn’t the real distinction to be made between spiritual experiences which spring from honest quests for the Divine-Being-God-Universe and those which seek to manipulate for power, e.g. magical crafts of all sorts?

My personal answer to this is no. If someone holds such a view of spiritual oneness, I have no problem with them; but I think, in fact, we will find many clients who have very different views, who will not see their Christian salvation as the same thing as Buddhistic nirvana. Or a neo-Pagan white witch who gets nothing from any of it.

The point is, all that matters is what the line is in the client’s experience. For every one of our clients the experience may be radically different, yet we notice whoever they are, whatever they believe, they become more of what they are by standing up in the gravitational field. Because no matter how you experience life spiritually or psychologically, we are sisters and bothers in gravity. No one escapes, regardless how adept or saintly.

Rolfing as a catalyst for radical individuality is, I think, an abstraction so simple and respectful of unknowns, that it is not even a philosophical position? Yet the inclination to consider such thoughts as philosophical is another almost irresistible notion of the human mind. In-deed, the desire to ground Rolfing itself in philosophy is a particularly attractive endeavor in many ways.

When I say “philosophy”, I mean something quite different from religious philosophies or metaphysical ones. I am referring to the impressive attempt by Westerners to find a rational ground work for all types of knowledge and activities; this desire is especially clear since Kant. Few people are actually learned and talented enough to undertake such activities in a serious way, and I am not one of them. But the Rolf Institute is lucky enough to have a real philosopher in Dr. Jeffrey Maitland. Having read some articles and listened to a taped presentation, I am completely impressed with Dr. Maitland’s knowledge and commitment to make the Rolfing experience clearer in terms been joys. But consistent with the thoughts I’ve offered here, I’d like to question not the desire to talk about Rolfing philosophically, but the contention that we need to do so. More radically, I want to question Dr. Maitland’s contention that “Rolfing is a profound philosophical system 2.”

Before starting, let me be clear that I am neither questioning that Rolfing is profound or that it is serious enough in our culture to deserve enjoyable philosophical discussions. Rather I am puzzled why philosophy must ground it. Saying we need to ground Rolfing in philosophy, or that Rolfing itself is a philosophy, throws us into the old conundrum: Whose philosophy? His or hers? Mine or yours? Dr. Maitland has brilliantly described a somatic ontology which encompasses Rolfing, but there are several other body philosophies which might fit just as well.3

My purpose is not to argue the relative merits of Maitland’s ideas, but only to point out that saying we need philosophy for Rolfing really means we need a particular kind of philosophy (which coincidentally always is the one being offered).Since one individual’s taste in philosophy may not fit another?s, Rolfing should not be wed to a certain kind of thought.

The other problem with the attempt to ground Rolfing in a certain philosophy that many prominent philosophers today are questioning the whole grand scheme in which philosophy is the “queen of the sciences”, which provides necessary foundations for everything. In such a scheme, everything is given its truest explanation by philosophy. Philosophy reigns supreme and assigns things their proper limits. By contrast, some philosophers say that every field has its own expertise and language and this is enough. We do not need a philosophy to tell us what we are doing when we are already doing it.” In this light, philosophy is just one more field with its own jargon, peopled with per-sons who happen to like talking about philosophy.

I believe when we take a radically simpler view of Rolfing as a catalyst for individuality, we have more respect for others, no matter what they believe.

For instance, I get nothing from the occult sciences, myself; but if some one else does, I have no quarrel with them. Their beliefs may be part of how they experience Rolfing. My only concern would be that we hold the same basic values about the Rolfing work and that they not try to meld their personal beliefs with the work itself in presenting it to the public. For ultimately we all experience the world differently, yet have been drawn to do the same work.

“No matter how you experience life spiritually or psychologically, we are sisters and brothers in gravity. No one escapes, regardless how adeptor saintly.”

1 Radical individuality as I am using it is not the same thing as individuality as it is used in New Age parlance. In New Age magazines, the human individual is usually portrayed as a little bubble of potential love, light, and peace floating high above all those nasty little conundrums of human evil, conflict and desire. In-stead, radical individuality often brings out the paradoxes of a person’s nature. Thus, Rolfing might even bring these inner conflicts to a head, so to speak.

2 Jeffrey Maitland, Ph.D., “What is Metaphysics?” Rolf Lines, July/ August 1991, p. 9.

3 As an example, see Samuel Todes’ The Human Body as Material Subject of the World, Harvard Dissertations in Philosophy, Garland Publishing, 1990. This book has remarkable insights to offer on the importance of human verticality in how we experience and know the world. Byway of a close phenomenological analysis, Todes shows that all our thoughts, whether expressed in language or conjured in imagination are all simply aspects of how the body meets its needs. The world appears as the response that meets our needs as vertical bodies. As Todes writes, “…Our original sense of being in the world, our sense of being in a world before time, is our sense of verticality given by standing erect and balanced in the gravitational field of earthly existence.” This kind of philosophy strikes me as a healthy antidote to those who believe humans can evolve beyond their bodies.

4 As an example, see Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Princeton University Press, 1979.