Ethics comes from the heart. Procedures come from the lawyers. The work of the Rolf Institute’s° Ethics and Business Practices Committee is to apply both properly when dealing with a complaint against a Rolfer. The basis for legal action against the Institute in an ethics case would generally be our failure to follow our own published procedures, just as an appeal of a court decision is generally based on allegation of legal procedural errors.

Ida Rolf saw within our bodies what I like to call that “blueprint of perfection” from which we all stray but toward which we can be moved by a Rolfer’s hands. Ethics is in there somewhere, and that is why the polygraph, or “lie detector”, works. When you do bad or tell a lie, your body reacts physiologically and the machine detects it. You can experience this phenomenon without the machine. Remember what happens when you speak carelessly or unkindly to a friend, and as a result you feel bad in your heart or gut. This wordless voice of conscience, this “tummy voice”, is within everyone’s physical body, no exceptions. That is why the polygraph works about as well with all groups of people, including hardened criminals and sociopaths.

Ethics problems arise when someone is out of touch with that bodily sense, either momentarily or chronically. From 1991 through 1993 I was able to demonstrate this with a group of convicted sex offenders, none of whom had ever experienced their “tummy voice”. They all felt like “no-bodies”. Having learned as a Rolfer how to use my hand,, to go deep into a client’s body, to the place,, where the vertical line needed to be restored, I now used words to guide my clients into their bodies, to consciously sense that with which they had lost touch. At were healed, all profoundly transformed into decent men, capable of real friendship and repulsed by their former abuse. Recalling this as I write stirs deep feeling with me; it was one of the most satisfying things I have ever done.

Knowledge of good and evil has been in our tummies from the beginning, in a wordless form. When mankind lost touch with this, they were given commandments in words. About 1985, when I worked with these words to develop a draft code of ethics for the Feldenkrais Guild, the wordless power that I felt within my body was extraordinary.

It is our impression that “Rolfed” persons, especially Rolfers, are generally more ethical, because we are more inwardly organized, more connected to that vertical line, more “upright”. In my opinion, the volumes of words written about “boundary problems” miss the point, because those problems do not occur when people are well connected to their own bodies. Those persons, including Rolfers, who behave less ethically, can be seen to lack some of this connection to their own bodies. The written Code of Ethics is for them.

I recommend two lovely books by authors who understand the ethics of our bodies. The Biology of Transcendence; A Blueprint of the Human Spirit (2002), by Joseph Chilton Pearce, shows the connection between the increase in violence in our culture and the loss of connection with the heart energy in bodies. Setting Your Heart on Fire: Seven Invitations to Liberate Your Life (2003), by Raphael Cushnir skillfully presents techniques like those I spent my life learning and used with my sex offenders.

I also recommend The Educated Heart: Professional Guidelines for Massage Therapists, Body workers and Movement Teachers (1999), by Nina McIntosh, who has woven together the feelings of the heart with knowledge of the rules into an excellent textbook for class room courses in ethics for body workers/ teachers; it will be the subject of a book review in a subsequent issue of this Journal. (7/31/03)[:de]Ethics comes from the heart. Procedures come from the lawyers. The work of the Rolf Institute’s° Ethics and Business Practices Committee is to apply both properly when dealing with a complaint against a Rolfer. The basis for legal action against the Institute in an ethics case would generally be our failure to follow our own published procedures, just as an appeal of a court decision is generally based on allegation of legal procedural errors.

Ida Rolf saw within our bodies what I like to call that “blueprint of perfection” from which we all stray but toward which we can be moved by a Rolfer’s hands. Ethics is in there somewhere, and that is why the polygraph, or “lie detector”, works. When you do bad or tell a lie, your body reacts physiologically and the machine detects it. You can experience this phenomenon without the machine. Remember what happens when you speak carelessly or unkindly to a friend, and as a result you feel bad in your heart or gut. This wordless voice of conscience, this “tummy voice”, is within everyone’s physical body, no exceptions. That is why the polygraph works about as well with all groups of people, including hardened criminals and sociopaths.

Ethics problems arise when someone is out of touch with that bodily sense, either momentarily or chronically. From 1991 through 1993 I was able to demonstrate this with a group of convicted sex offenders, none of whom had ever experienced their “tummy voice”. They all felt like “no-bodies”. Having learned as a Rolfer how to use my hand,, to go deep into a client’s body, to the place,, where the vertical line needed to be restored, I now used words to guide my clients into their bodies, to consciously sense that with which they had lost touch. At were healed, all profoundly transformed into decent men, capable of real friendship and repulsed by their former abuse. Recalling this as I write stirs deep feeling with me; it was one of the most satisfying things I have ever done.

Knowledge of good and evil has been in our tummies from the beginning, in a wordless form. When mankind lost touch with this, they were given commandments in words. About 1985, when I worked with these words to develop a draft code of ethics for the Feldenkrais Guild, the wordless power that I felt within my body was extraordinary.

It is our impression that “Rolfed” persons, especially Rolfers, are generally more ethical, because we are more inwardly organized, more connected to that vertical line, more “upright”. In my opinion, the volumes of words written about “boundary problems” miss the point, because those problems do not occur when people are well connected to their own bodies. Those persons, including Rolfers, who behave less ethically, can be seen to lack some of this connection to their own bodies. The written Code of Ethics is for them.

I recommend two lovely books by authors who understand the ethics of our bodies. The Biology of Transcendence; A Blueprint of the Human Spirit (2002), by Joseph Chilton Pearce, shows the connection between the increase in violence in our culture and the loss of connection with the heart energy in bodies. Setting Your Heart on Fire: Seven Invitations to Liberate Your Life (2003), by Raphael Cushnir skillfully presents techniques like those I spent my life learning and used with my sex offenders.

I also recommend The Educated Heart: Professional Guidelines for Massage Therapists, Body workers and Movement Teachers (1999), by Nina McIntosh, who has woven together the feelings of the heart with knowledge of the rules into an excellent textbook for class room courses in ethics for body workers/ teachers; it will be the subject of a book review in a subsequent issue of this Journal. (7/31/03)