Donald MacDonald, an eighty-five-year old retired cardiologist who lives in Eugene, Oregon, studied Rolfing with Dr. Rolf at Esalen. This interview describes his personal relationship with Dr. Rolf when she taught her work at Big Sur.

Karen Lackritz: OK Donald, let’s talk about something I love, Rolfing.

Donald MacDonald: I do too.

KL: How did you get to be a Rolfer?

DM: In 1968 there was a great deal of interest in [an] enlightened group of physicians that somehow became involved in this and recommended to me that I might be interested, so I went to Esalen and entered into a group of people that were having these sessions.

KL: And were you a physician at the time?

DM: Yes, a cardiologist.

KL: What was intriguing about this to you?

DM: A friend of mine knew that I was a person interested in new things. He had been interested in meditation and psychiatry, and I went down and became involved in an encounter group. People were talking about Rolfing, and I thought I would try it, and I signed up for a session to experience something new and something interesting. I was most impressed with how I felt afterwards, and I thought I was not the kind of person to only experience part of this, but I had to do the whole thing. When I went back to Esalen, I met Giovanna DiAngelo, who introduced me to the idea of studying with Dr. Rolf. I went up to Dr. Rolf’s house in Big Sur and asked if I could study with her, and she said yes, and I arranged to take the course. The class was two three-week sessions. The first was in Big Sur, and the second was in San Diego. So I went and participated with what she was doing and I was fascinated with this.

KL: What do you remember about it?

DM: I was not exposed to a lot of historical things right away. Dr. Rolf was not the kind of person who would overwhelm you with her knowledge. She might say, “watch,” and so I began to watch what she was doing. There were about ten people in the class [which] was in her place at Big Sur. So I got to know her and [had] conversations about various things. She was interested in me, I think, because I was a doctor. [Because I was] a doctor [who] admitted that he did not know anything that was going on, she opened up a lot to me. I tried to be very open-minded about all of this. She was not always in every class. She had people come in to give introductory lectures about what was going on, and [she] would come in. She had a number of “pets” in the group that were students. They weren’t necessarily pets in the usual way. She would make jokes, and she had a great sense of humor, which was one thing that really set her apart. She had a beautiful laugh, loud bellowing, that was just wonderful. (He imitates her laugh.)

KL: You know, Donald, this is interesting, because I have heard many stories where people were intimidated by her, and I have not heard many stories where people talked about her sense of humor.

DM: I am not a person who is easily intimidated. But I love the way her personality was. She had such a great sense of humor. People would come in and express opinions about something, and she would just take them apart. It seems that her explanation was threatening to them and I think that is probably why a lot of people were frightened. I was just very much interested in what was going on [because of] my knowledge of anatomy and physiology. During that phase she had a little Volkswagen, I think it was a light tan, and [when] she wanted me to take her for a drive, we would go for a drive, and we would talk about everything.

KL: What do you remember talking about?

DM: Well I remember talking about astrology, she would do my astrology, and she talked about what I was interested in —[which] is how she got started in all of this. So I asked lots of questions. She started her intellectual career at the Rockefeller Foundation institute at Barnard College in New York City, which is the woman’s college of Columbia University. She married this man who was an engineer, and she started talking to him about her ideas of what a person who was handicapped could do. She had two boys and she tried to figure out what she could do for these boys that would improve their chances in life. We all do this with our children, and she wanted to improve these boys’ future. She became interested in osteopathy, and an off shoot of osteopathy. And as she pursued these things, they had something, but they did not have what she was looking for. Out of her knowledge of osteopathy and chiropractic, there were elements that she thought were of some interest. She and her husband use to go on hunting and fishing trips in western Canada, and one year they went to Alberta, and her husband fell and strained his ankle, and they were in the wilderness, and he said, “Well, why don’t you fix it?” Her husband was her first patient, and she improved his ankle so they could make it out of the wilderness, and back to NYC. She started working on people and she discovered one of the basic tenets of Rolfing®, which is when you have a muscle or tendon that is stressed, the stress can be relieved by working across the muscle. She started the technique of going across the tendon [to] relieve the spasm.

KL: She also talked about how the energetic field is influenced in Rolfing?

DM: Well these things came later. You could alter the way the tendon was reacting by putting your knuckles into it, this was a new idea. No one else was doing that.

KL: Did she ever talk to you about how she came up with the “Recipe,” the Ten Series?

DM: I never asked her why she set it up with the ten, but it seemed obvious. The first five or six sessions, and the last sessions being a recapitulation [of the first group]. She emphasized how people moved and how they [stood]. When someone came to have Rolfing done, she took lots of pictures. In her textbook, some of those people were people I was working on.

KL: In the video that Giovanna helped produce, you were there, next to Dr. Rolf, and as she would talk about the person receiving Rolfing, your hands were the ones doing the work.

DM: Yes, I have to say something now. I really loved this woman. I could see what a remarkable soul she had. She had a wonderful way… [Rolfing] was something that was totally genuine, and when someone [asked] something about Rolfing, she had already thought [it] through—the idea that she could reconstruct a body; the idea of gravity; the idea of walking, sitting standing, those things in life that result in deformity. What was she trying to achieve? She was trying to achieve a body that could be lived without stress. I remember her telling me how to stand, how to get up out of a chair, how to walk, what to do with my hands while I was walking, what to do with my feet when I was walking. She would see that and she would sit you down and put her knuckles in the thing and open it up.

You do the same thing.

KL: Apparently, you loved this woman, and many of my teachers say the same thing. What was it that you loved? There is something about this work as I see it that evokes something more. What is this?

DM: Well I never thought about it at the time, but you must notice that tears come to me when I think about this. She was so genuine. People would say, she is this or that. Bullshit. She [was] the most genuine person you [were] going to meet in your life. She started with her children—“What can I do to improve the life of my children?” —and from this came “What can I do to improve the life of everybody?,” to improve the life of an individual person. I think this is what she lived for. She had this enormous intelligence, which would bypass a lot of people. When you meet someone like Ida Rolf, with tremendous intelligence, you are delving into a mind that is really very superior. I realized that was going on, and I was fascinated.

KL: It seems what she did for you—being in the medical field, practicing the medical model—and you going to Esalen gave you a very different perspective of how to care for people.

DM: This is correct. Why did I go into medicine? I went into medicine because I was interested in the intimate exposure to human beings.

KL: My guess is this is what you shared with Dr. Rolf, that intimate exposure to human beings.

DM: I felt compelled by the idea that what a physician does is make life better for people.

[This was also true of] Dr. Rolf’s work [which came out of] her intuition. It [was] not a mechanical thing. It [was] something that arose out of her knowledge of people and her knowledge of the world. Dr. Rolf said you have to be careful, because you are going to open things up. There was a patient who had an industrial accident, and I was astounded by what happened: after six sessions, when he came back, he had quit his job, he had gotten a divorce. I realized that the Rolfing had changed his life. He had become a better person.

KL: Rolfing changes people lives in very significant ways.

DM: Yes, it changed my life. I am a better person. I am a more interesting person when I think about it. Once you have been exposed to this, you have something that you may not be able to accept [i.e., you have something that you carry through your life.

KL: Donald, I experience you as being a person who sees the best in people. My guess is with Dr. Rolf you were able to draw out the best parts of her.

DM: I remember on one Sunday, we went out on a drive around Big Sur, she knew where the roads went. I thought at the time, well here I am out in this remote area, traveling with Dr. Rolf, and what an opportunity this was.

KL: It is a metaphor in a way for Rolfing, out on a journey in the back roads of life, presenting opportunities. My guess is she saw a lot of promise in you, that you would be able to put her work into the medical field.

DM: We communicated very well. She knew a lot about astrology, she knew about Buddhism, medicine, chiropractic work, and osteopathy. That may be one of the reasons why she liked to talk to me, because I have an interest in a lot of these things as well.

KL: Do you have any suggestions for young Rolfing practitioners? For the future of Rolfing?

DM: Dr. Rolf was 100 years ahead of her time. I think it will be a long time before the process of Rolfing is fully understood. What you are doing is Rolfing. It stands on its own. It is its own technique. As time goes on, there will be recognition of this. As time goes on, it’s going to filter into our lives.

KL: At one point you said you were talking to Dr. Rolf, and she had some concern about how this work will be passed on.

DM: She was concerned with how she was going to transmit this to [others], and how they were going to practice it. It was my own concern at the time. People who were taking this course, I could see from what they said, what they were doing with Rolfing, they were identifying with whatever their education was — chiropractic work, psychology. Psychologists wanted to make something out of this in the field of psychology. Rolfing is Rolfing. They wanted to make Rolfing part of their work, and Rolfing stands alone.

KL: Thank you for taking the time to share your memories of Dr. Rolf.Dr. Rolf Remembered[:]