It is well-known that Ida Rolf said that with Rolfing Structural Integration we go around and around the problem, one layer at a time. In other words, we challenge the body only to the extent it can accept and adapt to the request of touch or verbal instruction. The process of becoming a Rolfer and eventually a teacher of Rolfing Structural Integration has this quality as well. I keep going around and around the same territory that is never really the same. Over time the impact of the work deepens, realizations occur, I learn, and people change in ways that are both predictable and unique. I now know that people will become more balanced, but I never know how it’s going to seem to them, or what the work will entail.

I began teaching because of an eagerness to share what I have learned. After my advanced Rolfing training I began to feel that I had something to offer, and if nothing else, I was excited to share what I had discovered. A few Rolfers in my community would call me for support. I always loved, and still do love, listening and offering whatever I can that could be helpful. Naturally, when I was invited to assist in a Rolfing class, I jumped at the opportunity. At that time I never intended to actually become a part of the faculty. Over the next few years, with each assisting experience, I became more interested in the process of helping students along their path toward becoming Rolfers.

Similar to the practice of Rolfing Structural Integration, I found teaching improved my ability as a Rolfer. Having to find ways of demonstrating, explaining, and containing the students’ process drove me to become better at our work. No longer could I be satisfied with vague results and judge the success of my practice by the clients’ willingness to return. The responsibility to preserve and transmit Rolfing Structural Integration forced me to become more certain about the effect of the work. Developing ways of communicating this to students, in turn, helped me to do the same with clients. Eventually, I made a decision to become a lead teacher and now consider myself just a bit past a beginning-level instructor. With each successive class I look forward to the opportunity to refine my presentation of the material.

Since I change and my work changes in between classes I never really know what I will express when I get back to the classroom again. The combination of fear and excitement is palpable for months leading up to a class and I know it will take me months afterwards to completely digest the experience. I loved my Rolfing training and I think the love of that experience of learning is what keeps bringing me back to the classroom. Teaching the basic skills that will form the foundation for the growth and the development of a Rolfer is what I like most. I like the opportunity to emphasize what I think is important, and it makes me feel like I am passing on the benefit of my experience.

In my practice, over the past few years I have become obsessed with how difficult and exciting it is to realize the concept of holism. In a world that is obsessed with parts and their mechanical relationships, holism demands that our mechanistic ways of learning transform from understanding parts to perceiving, feeling and working with a person’s body as a whole. After about eighteen years of practice I began to have a more direct perception of wholeness in my body and my clients’ bodies. These realizations were in keeping with the way previous awareness had developed: something that seemed vague and unreal begins to come into focus, and with sustained attention becomes more refined, validated, and real. I had always nodded my head knowingly whenever the subject of holism was raised. Then it dawned on me that an intellectual understanding of the concept differs hugely from the experience of holism. Being able to feel wholeness with our hands and our awareness is for me the gold at the end of the Rolfing rainbow: elusive and real at the same time. Resisting the temptation to dismiss the elusive experiences as unreal has been a crucial part of deepening my perceptive ability.

Rather than having to prove whether each dawning subtle awareness is real before we can accept it, it seems useful and valid to initially accept perceptions as “real” and, over time, work toward validating or invalidating them. After all, there is not anyone other than one’s self who can actually validate experience as real – one has to find a way to do it for one’s self. As I practice this rich, subjective, experimental process it leads me toward confidence in my perception, and it seems to lead clients toward having more whole experiences. This is what captivates me and keeps me going: the interplay between my personal development and how I am able to help others.

Through following the process described above, I have developed a stronger ability to feel through the body from wherever I happen to be touching a person. This feels to be a more direct and often spectacular contact with wholeness. Sometimes it seems an entire session could be done from contacting one place in the body and just witnessing the response throughout the body. After all, since the body is an endless web we ought to be able to refine our ability to feel it as one! Inevitably, I become insecure with my theoretical insistence, and trust in my perception waivers. Are my perceptions real or am I making them up? Even if these spectacular patterns of connectedness are real, does that mean the body is changing and becoming more integrated? In response to these questions and insecurities I do my best to keep myself honest and head back to my original assessment. Was a positive change initiated by hanging on to one place and observing the whole body’s response?

Or, do I need to become more narrowly focused? I must be completely honest with myself, just as willing to be wrong as right. Over time this experimental process and the willingness to be wrong have led me to trust my perception more and given me permission to transition between narrow and wide fields of perception and focused and global techniques.

Lately, in classes and in Rolfing-related discussions I end up talking about the role time plays in the development of a Rolfer. Two years ago when I passed my eighteenth year in practice I had the cute idea of writing an article based on becoming an adult Rolfer. It seemed to me that although there had been phases along the way – a gradual progression of realizations, setbacks, and increasing abilities – reaching my eighteenth anniversary was like reaching the threshold of adulthood. I was excited about this milestone and it seemed I was beginning to reap the rewards of diligent time devoted to becoming good at what I do.

Now I can say I am in my early twenties, and in keeping with the age-related analogy, I am probably solidly into a period of self-obsession and idealism. All kidding aside, it does seem nothing replaces time and experience. For me the cycles of practice and teaching synergize each other and help to mark time. Each time I teach I have the opportunity to recognize where I am compared to where I was the last time. After every class I return home and go back to the work of doing sessions in my room alone with my clients and I feel changed from having had to articulate what our work is.

Rolfing Structural Integration is my first chosen work. Before I received Rolfing sessions, I had no career aspirations, no idea of how I was going to spend my working years. Immediately upon experiencing the work at age twenty-two I knew I had to find a way to become a Rolfer. In my application I wrote that I knew Rolfing practice would never become old, that I would never have it licked once and for all, that I would never run out of rope. So far I haven’t.

Russell Stolzoff practices Rolfing Structural Integration in Bellingham, Washington.

It Keeps Unfolding…