At your first Rolfing session we’ll spend the first ten or fifteen minutes going over your health history and talking about your goals for the work. Once we’ve had some time to chat, I’ll have you change- either into underwear, or work out shorts and a tank top- whatever is more comfortable for you. From there, I’ll observe you walking and standing still. This helps me to see what patterns and compensations are happening in your body so that I can get a sense for what you need in order to achieve greater balance and openness.

Then you’ll hop on the table and we’ll get to work. I mentioned that it’s very slow work, and so the session proceeds that way- with me tracking your response either with my hands and eyes and/or by checking in with you verbally. In general, it’s a little chattier than a massage in that I’ll occasionally be asking you to move or to breathe in a certain way.

We don’t work the whole body in a session, but it’s also not compartmentalized work- i.e. in this session we work on the feet, next time is the knees, next session after that is the hips, etc- rather we’re working related lines of the body as they support you in gravity. One way I frequently describe it is that Rolfing is like the chess of bodywork in that it’s very strategic. If I do some work on your foot, for example, my next step before doing anything else is to track the impact that the foot work had on the rest of your body. By noticing how the opening in your foot impacted your body, I’ll decide what to do next. Besides tracking how you’re responding, I also determine how to proceed in a session based on knowledge of fascial (connective tissue) anatomy.

Still curious?: Give a holler!