It occurred to me as I spent some time reflecting on this morning’s session that as much as I appreciated what had been going on around here, there was a point at which a proverbial forest hadn’t been recognized for the proverbial trees. This is what 1 would like to bring to your attention at this time. The forest, the big idea, is the idea of wholeness.

This morning it had not been underscored, and I would like to underscore it now. In fact, what I have in mind is more than the traditional holistic concept of man: it is the idea of wholeness within the environmental context. The outline of the forest that we failed to put in this morning is this: The therapeutic situation is the relation of the man to the earth. The therapist is gravity, and the job of the rolfer is to get the body so set that gravity can work through it. Up to this moment, we have been talking about scientific validation of what we do. We should have been talking about the scientific investigation of what gravity does.

As we talk about this concept in our training classes, it’s easy to get sidetracked. We pat ourselves on the back because we’re getting into the experience of man as a whole. We neglect the fact that the reason we’re good is because we are learning that there is a force bigger than ourselves, outside of ourselves, that does the job. This is the thing, which I think that all of us here who are rolfers know and must exercise and must underscore. I err quite as much as you people.

If I didn’t, it wouldn’t have occurred to me while I got this bright idea what a good girl I am. The key idea is that gravity is the therapist. This is the idea we have got to investigate in our quest to find whatever it is that makes a man. As a field of energy, man must be acted on by gravity. We must somehow find a way of making the words that refer to this relationship meaningful.

It’s not an easy assignment, but in terms of the job I was supposed to do this afternoon to present my ideas of what we need to investigate I think it covers the whole waterfront. I cannot tell you how to do it, but I can tell you something about how to think about it. Not very much. I put it to you that this is your job, and it’s your meditation.The Therapist as Gravity