I first applied for the training at the Rolf Institute of Structural Integration in 1996, at the age of fifty-two. For twenty-five years prior to that, I had been involved in the Taoist Tai Chi Society, an organization dedicated to practicing and promoting the teachings of the Taoist monk Master Moy Lin Shin, who had come to Toronto in 1970. I started with him in January 1971, which makes me the most senior member of what is now a worldwide charitable organization. For nine years I worked to establish Taoist Tai Chi in several cities around Southern Ontario, then in 1980, at Master Moy’s request, I moved to Halifax, and for fifteen years founded clubs in the four provinces of Atlantic Canada. During this time I supported myself by running a small bookstore, Far East Books, dealing in Eastern and alternative health and spiritual disciplines.

By 1995, Taoist Tai Chi was well-enough established in the Atlantic region that it could keep going without me turning the crank everyday and I started to look around for a source of income. Figuring that I was too old to go back into the job market, I thought that a portable health practice would be the way to go. Rolfing came to mind through two sources. One was that a friend of mine from the early Tai Chi days in Toronto had received Rolfing and the differences in his structure and movement were apparent. The other was that I had carried some Rolfing books in the store, and was intrigued that some of the ideas were close to ones I had been groping towards as I tried to find solutions to teaching problems in Tai Chi.

In preparation for the training in Boulder, I spent two academic terms (Halifax has six universities) taking courses in anatomy and biochemistry, and astounded myself by getting a final grade of 91% on the anatomy, the highest mark I had ever scored in anything academic. Two days after that I was on the plane to Boulder, and five days later I was doing exactly the same material every morning on Pearl Street.

<img src=’https://novo.pedroprado.com.br/imgs/2008/926-1.jpg’>

From a history study trip to Europe in 2006, at the Festival of the Five-Petaled Rose in Krumlov in the Czech Republic. I am costumed as a magistrate from the 15th century.

Not to review the training experiences, which everyone reading this will have in common, but one feature of the work that impressed me was that it does get results right away. This is a strong selling point when I am interviewing first-time clients, or even just answering inquiries. Many of the people who inquire about Rolfing have been through the mill of orthodox and “alternate” practitioners, and, to extend the metaphor, are feeling somewhat ground down. I usually tell them that it going to take the complete Ten Series or more to get them where they want to go, but that they will know, within one or two sessions, that something real and valuable is happening. They like it when I tell them that there is very little to take on faith: they have taken too much on faith already.

After getting my certification in May 1998, I put my sign out in Halifax, expecting to set the local bodywork scene on fire. The only Rolfer east of Montreal! It didn’t happen that way. When came to Halifax in 1980, there was one chiropractor and two massage therapists, then gradually a few more massage therapists, then a plentitude after two massage therapy schools opened between 1996 and 2002 and started churning out graduates. People around here have heard of massage. They haven’t heard of Rolfing.

On top of that, work-based health plans will pay for massage (the biggest of them, Blue Cross, classes Rolfing as massage), but only accept receipts from members of one of the local associations. These associations require training adhering to the Canadian standard of 2,200 hours (recently raised to 2,500). So growth of my business has been slow. People try all of the other services first, and either get what they think they need or give up. Many balk at the first mention of money, having grown up with the idea of free basic health care.

I’m not the only one who has had this problem. There have been other Rolfers and Guild practitioners here. Some are still here but are not practicing. The ones who have stayed around are doing other modalities because their Rolfing income was not adequate. I have been spending a lot on publicity, with inadequate results. I wish there were more Rolfers around here to help get the concept of Rolfing out to the very deeply cautious people in the Maritimes.

Some geography is probably needed here. There are four provinces in what is known as Atlantic Canada. Three of these; Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, constitute what are known as the Maritime Provinces. They were original members at Confederation in 1867. Newfoundland, now officially “Newfoundland and Labrador” was a separate British colony until 1949. At the time of Confederation, Halifax, the capital of Nova Scotia, and Saint John, the largest city in New Brunswick, were the largest and most prosperous cities in what was then called British North America. Ever since then, they have been in decline relative to “the West” (i.e., the rest of Canada). There are about a million people in Nova Scotia and approximately another million in the other three, all spread over one and a half time zones and a north-south extent from below the forty-fifth parallel to above the Arctic circle.

Halifax has about 250,000 people since amalgamation a few years ago. Until then the main centers, Halifax, Dartmouth and Bedford-Sackville, contained about 120,000. The difference is partly accounted for by growth, partly by incorporating previously rural areas into the city. The city has an artistic and academic layer overlaying older fishing, farming, shipping and military strata.

Having more time on my hands than I really wanted, and having gotten the idea that it was possible for me to do well in academic pursuits, I kept on taking courses, at first in directly related material like physiology and biochemistry, and then in psychology and history. In 2005, at the age of sixty, I completed a B.Sc. in Psychology at Dalhousie, the biggest of the universities here, and as I type (April 20) I have just finished my last final for a B.A. in History. I have been accepted for M.A. work in history next year. I regret that I have never been able to get ahead of expenses enough to take the Advanced Rolfing training. It is not the cost of the courses so much as the transportation and accommodation expenses. I have been able to afford university courses by dint of provincial and federal student loans. They will fund you to two bachelor’s degrees, one trade school certificate (guess which one), and one master’s, coming up. I think I am going to die owing a pile of money.

As far as my Rolfing work is concerned, I find it very gratifying that I can help people, some of whom had given up hope. As I mentioned above, I try to work through the Ten Series. Many people come to me with very serious deficits that the strict series does not adequately address. Many have been seriously injured, either in single incidents or cumulatively. I often find that a single session is inadequate to gain the results needed in a particular “hour.” Especially, in the “third hour,” many clients have so much stuff built up along the IT band and abductors that it will not clear out in one go. Then I double the session, that is work up to the iliac crests on both sides in the first session, then repeat that and finish the sidelines in the second. In a few extreme cases, the third hour has needed more.

One client I had was a horse-farmer whose horse kept beating her up. Her right leg was so bad that I took four times on her fourth hour. One time she could hardly walk and I had to carry her up the clinic stairs. After we were done, she thanked me for giving her life back to her. In a way it’s too bad I’m not a horsey type; there would be lots of call for the Rolfing of equines in Nova Scotia.

Another client was recommended to me by her doctor, a personal friend of mine who practices near Saint John. She was out of work because she was incapable of standing for very long. She would drive in once a month or so, when her old car could make it through the winter weather – it takes about five hours to drive in good weather. We did ten sessions, but not a straight series. I doubled #3 and #6, and twice when she was in such great pain that she would not have been able to stand Rolfing, at least the way I do it, we just did some craniosacral. My craniosacral is pretty poor, I just took one class of the Upledger program, but it seemed to help. She stopped coming, and I later heard from the doctor friend that she had gotten back to work. That’s alright with me.

A big issue, that often gets raised, is the question of pain. Even people who are unclear about what Rolfing is have heard that “it hurts.” The line I use is that there are painless Rolfers. I have had clients who had previous work from some of them (no names!) and I couldn’t tell they had received Rolfing. I tell them I can work painlessly, but it will take four times as long to get results, and cost them four times as much. Then I invoke an old Canadian joke and say, “Pain if necessary, but not necessarily pain.” Most understand this and are cool with it.

Although my health is excellent, I’ve had a few challenges over the years that have forced me to work with my own body, sometimes thrown to my own resourcefulness to find solutions. The first issue was my legs, which had done literally millions of repetitions of exercises from Taoist Tai Chi (which as a discipline emphasizes leg-strength) over twenty-five years before I began Rolfing training. I remember clearly the shock when, walking home after receiving my third hour of Rolfing, I realized that my leg strength had doubled. Disassociating the hamstrings from the quads had taken out a major power-wasting conflict between large muscle groups.

This triumph, however, was short-lived. Before the training was over, whether from receiving Rolfing sessions or the in-class work or something else, my legs degraded to a degree that I could hardly do any Tai Chi at all. I could not bear weight on a bent leg. I had difficulty walking down stairs – instead of just stepping down, I had to hop down. Going up stairs was almost as difficult. My emotional reactions changed. I became cautious and picky in my movements. No one – whether at the Institute, or my Rolfer for advanced sessions – was able to help, or even understand the problem. Finally I fumbled my way into a few techniques that allowed me to solve most of the problem. I think now that there were two things happening at the same time: the retinaculae at the knees (particularly the lateral ones) were trapping the vastus tendons, and nerves were trapped along the line of the IT band. (I thank Rolfer Michael Vilain for the clue on this second issue. His forum postings have been illuminating.) These things have mostly resolved now, but they were damnably inconvenient and frustrating for several years.

The second issue is that I developed Dupuytren’s contractures, with nodules in the palms appearing about six years ago. Not liking the option of surgery that could take six weeks to heal, I started working my hands myself, mostly through stretching, done slowly with the idea of stimulating lengthwise growth in the structures involved. I think this has worked out to my advantage. I still have complete extension of my fingers, for one thing. For another, Dupuytren’s is actually a genetic leftover from our anthropoid ancestors. In the great and lesser apes, the Palmaris longus muscles, which originate above the elbow, insert in the palmar fascia and are too short to allow both elbow and wrist to be extended simultaneously, providing a set of swinging hooks.

For Dupuytren’s subjects who, like myself, also have the Palmaris longus, there is the potential for very strong hands, a great advantage to a Rolfer. Many people have remarked not only on the strength but the heat of my hands. When you have surplus strength to work with, you can relax more, and your touch becomes less strenuous and more effective. Taoist Tai Chi also helps a lot with this. The sophisticated body mechanics allow you to develop remarkable amounts of force with little intended effort.

The third body issue was that I developed cataracts a few years ago. Here I opted for surgery, which was smooth and quick, with plastic lenses that go in folded up through a tiny incision that heals fast. I now have 40/20 vision.

These three episodes – particularly the leg and eye issues – have allowed me to experience firsthand the emotional and cognitive changes that arise from very basic physical deficits. This reinforces my otherwise theoretical knowledge that body and mind form a mutually dependent couple. What affects one affects the other. I have to say that the effect of this on my practice has been to increase the level of empathy I can project. It is one thing to be sympathetic, but when clients comes in limping and I say I know how they feel, they can tell that it really is true. This helps build the kind of bonding that make a successful therapeutic relationship. (See, I remember that piece of jargon.)

Taken all in all, it has been a good ten years as a Rolfer. Being used to living frugally, the lack of enormous income does not bother me. Intellectually and occupationally it has all been very gratifying. I am glad and proud to be able to identify myself as a Rolfer.

In this issue we feature two Rolfers in Canada, on opposite sides of the country, each the pioneering Rolfer in his region.