Adding Movement to Rolfing™: What Does it Actually Do?

Many, many years ago, after my very first Rolf session, I had my doubts. I was young and still learning. I received Rolf Movement® Integration from a gifted teacher and practitioner, Caryn McHose, co-author of The Movement of Life, an incredible honor. 

And yet I walked out of that session asking myself, “What was that?! Did anything even happen!?”  

Today, I can laugh about my reaction, and my first impressions of Rolf Movement. 

Not too long after that first session, I began to study under Caryn. Under her guidance and mentorship, it didn’t take me long to understand the profundity of Hubert Godard’s contributions to Rolf Movement® and the deeply felt benefits of this healing art. 

An illuminating piece of feedback I received recently was the same as my first experience: “What was that? Did I just pay for a bodywork session that didn’t include any bodywork?”  

As the practitioner, I work closely with you and your body; there usually is  touch, but it is not a passive, bodywork modality. In my experience, both personally and with my clients, movement has proven to be as healing as bodywork. The quality of that movement makes all the difference. When a student really engages in the work, I see them working on something important, and I support that with all the healing skills I have. 

Rolf Movement® Integration elicits the senses and illuminates that our senses are what comes before our will to move. Our senses are where choice originates, where we have our power and awareness. We’re perceiving movement and embodiment. We’re shifting perceptions and patterns. We’re offering you, from within your fascia and your movement habits, transformation, pain relief, and trauma healing. That healing shows up through our sensory-motor awareness of resonance and our sense of the world we are in together.

I want people to figure out their experience enough to have it. Rolf Movement is bodywork through experience or learning, and that’s what makes it long lasting.

It can take a little time to break down the amnesia of not feeling, but  eventually, perceptive tools awaken.  

Rolf Movement Integration may not be for everyone. It may take a few sessions to feel and to sense what IS happening. But some clients tell me they are walking profoundly differently in the world after just one session. Others tell me it takes a few. Either way, those who dedicate themselves to exploring this modality will see how it can change the way they move through the world, literally and figuratively.

Rolfing brings balance in every sense of the word. I think it’s revolutionary!