How I Became a Rolfer®
In 2002 I graduated from NC State University with a degree in Computer Science. By the time I graduated I was fairly sure that tech wasn’t exactly going to be a deep and abiding passion, but I had the story that I was supposed to go to college and supposed to get a job based on that. So, when I started in 1997, it had seemed like tech was going to keep being more and more important in almost every field and I figured it would work itself out in one way or another. Through this time I was working for various facilities departments at UNC-CH mostly doing mapping of their underground utilities.
Also in 2002 I went to my first swing dance. I’d taken a social dance class for PE credits somewhere in the prior year then broken my hand playing basketball in the spring. As I was waiting for it to heal up, a friend of mine who’d been involved in swing dance a few years earlier during the original revival days was talking about getting back into dance. Right after graduation we went out dancing a couple times then I took off to Australia to visit a friend studying abroad and she moved to Denver just as I got back. I happened to go out one more time on my own and ran into another friend at the dance who directed me to some places for further dance instruction. I started taking classes and within 6 months the then fairly shy and introvert me had the rather weird idea that I wanted to learn how to teach swing.
Early Dance Years and (Slight) Intro to Rolfing
Dancing back in the days of having hair
Jump forward a couple of years and I was learning to teach, dancing up a storm, and temporarily unemployed for a year. I also happened to be dating someone who messed up her shoulder in a car accident and after extensive difficulty with it, had finally been directed to a Rolfer which she described as “an hour of intense pain, but it worked” and was the only thing that really got her moving forward out of the injury. At the time I can recall she suggested it as a career path saying “you’re strong, you could hurt people, you should be a Rolfer!” I was a bit intrigued as I looked into it and was not feeling particularly motivated by the search for another tech job. However, I had only recently paid off my college loans and had no desire to go back into debt at the time so I set the idea aside.
By this point I was also traveling enough to discover dance beyond the confines of the Triangle where I started. I was particularly enamored with the teaching of Paul Overton and Sharon Ashe and realizing that there was a lot more possibility to the teaching of dance than any of the local instructors were offering. Even so, I was taking from everyone I could locally including a period of taking three classes from three different instructors in three different locations on one night. At the same time I was also watching what life looked like as a dance instructor and coming to understand that while I loved it, I had no desire to make it my primary source of income.
Paragon Years
I eventually found my way back into my first (and only) private sector tech job at a company called Paragon Application Systems working on ATM testing tools and financial transaction simulation. While it was satisfying to create products that our customers found useful, I didn’t feel any particular passion for the work. This was also the first tech job where I had a few coworkers who were really stoked about programming. They would go home and read about new coding ideas, wanted to implement whatever the latest coding methodology was, etc. Watching them I knew I felt similarly about dance but was clearly never going to feel that passionately about programming. As I considered what another 30 years in programming might look like for me I decided I’d better find a different career if I wanted to have that sort of passion.
Around this time I was partnering with another dancer who was going through massage school. It seems to be common for massage schools to briefly mention the existence of Rolfing and when she mentioned something about wanting to try Rolfing, it re-sparked my inquiry into it. I wasn’t experiencing any particular pains, but my 8-10 hour-a-day computer posture was something I knew was holding me back in competition dancing and dance instructors just telling me to “stand up straight” for years hadn’t done much to alleviate it. So I looked around, found Bethany Ward who was the only local Rolfer with a reasonably informative website at the time plus she offered Saturday appointments, making the half hour drive or so to her office much more accessible for me.
First Session and Series
I’ve talked to Bethany about this recently and she doesn’t remember how our first session went so I’m reporting this from admittedly probably a bit biased recollection. I don’t honestly recall the session as a whole but I remember three salient points.
- My own thought of “What do you mean my ribs are supposed to move? Nobody told me ribs are supposed to do that” (now I recognize that it’s a pretty common idea in physical modalities but at the time it was very clear that this was a whole deeper level of understanding the body than any dance teacher I had yet encountered).
- Heavily-introverted-at-the-time me rambling on for pretty much the entire session. I really remember just feeling totally unable to shut up.
- Walking out with a clear sense of YES, THIS! I WANT IT. and almost immediately asking Bethany when we could find some time to meet and talk about what it looks like to train to do this work.
The rest of the session is sort of lost to my memory but it was great having it established early on that I planned to go to the Rolf Institute. As we went through my series Bethany kept me in the loop in a behind-the-scenes sort of way that gave me insight to build on in training. And as we worked and I talked to friends about my plans to become a Rolfer, people started willingly letting me put hands on them and experiment, trying to replicate some of the stuff I felt Bethany doing on me.
Before & After photos from my first Ten-Series
Support and Hurdles for Getting to Boulder
In my life there had been a few projects that just seemed like foregone conclusions from the time I started them: getting my Eagle Scout, becoming a dance teacher, and then becoming a Rolfer. It was one of those pursuits that, in hindsight, I basically powered through hurdles without thinking about it where I have let challenges stop me in pursuits less important to me.
The first hurdle was getting my work to give me leave to take 2 month sabbaticals to go train. I had a meeting with my boss and simply told him I didn’t think I wanted to be a programmer for the rest of my life and here was this Rolfing thing that I wanted to do, here’s how the training looks, and could we make it work for me to keep my job through the training. Very fortunately for me they liked my work enough that they wanted to keep me around and we made arrangements for me to take two months off at a time then come back to work for 6-8 months in between trainings.
Knowing that work would support it, my next challenge was family support. My mom was supportive but my parents had apparently had a friend years ago who’d become a Rolfer and was fairly un-grounded so my dad seemed convinced I was just going to turn into a crystal-toting hippie. In past I think I’d almost always tended to hide it or fight back when my dad disagreed with something that stoked my fire. This time I simply accepted his concern without much comment and proceeded along with my plans to go. When I came back a month or two later with my registration for Unit 1 in Boulder, he seemed a bit surprised then fell into being more accepting of my plans.
The final big hurdle came during my drive out to Unit 1. I took a solo trip from Raleigh, NC to Boulder, CO and somewhere in the middle of Missouri the fuel pump in my Saturn started to die. The car managed to limp to the next big town where I found a Saturn dealership and lost a day’s worth of driving time and all of my discretionary fund for the trip. The Saturn guys went out of their way (including driving halfway to St. Louis for a part) to get me back on the road. I arrived in Boulder a day late(r than planned) and a number of dollars short with barely enough time to land and get my head on straight for the first day of class.
Boulder, Colorado Unit 1
Unit 1 is the section of the Rolfing training that gets you started and focuses on anatomy and touch skills. I rented a basement room from a Rolfer about 2 miles from the Institute and the class was taught by Michael Polon and Suzanne Picard with Sterling Cassel assisting. A few of the salient points from my Unit 1:
- On the first day that we started getting into anatomy we ended up modeling scapulae (shoulder blades) out of clay. As I worked to get the acromion process right I had the thought “I’m definitely in the right place.” And all throughout my training past and continuing I’ve been impressed with the multi-dimensional approach to teaching at the Rolf Institute.
- I went through a rough breakup at the beginning of the second week with a woman I’d been dating for 2 years at that point. It was a long time coming but at the time it really hurt and after a day of trying to stifle it I ended up breaking down crying in front of the whole class, sharing what had happened. Hugs ensued and the whole class got me a card the next day: one of many lessons to follow in the power of vulnerability.
- About halfway through the training I was trading a session with one of my closer classmates. We were following an area in her lower ribs that felt “dark” to her and after 10-15 minutes of working into it she started sobbing and went through a big emotional release for another 10-20 minutes. In the aftermath of this experience I realized that in a sense I hadn’t actively done anything to make it happen and it had only taken patience and presence to co-create the space with her for her to have that experience.
- Jonesing for barbecue one day and taking Michael’s suggestion that my classmate, Allie, and I head down to Daddy Bruce’s BBQ where we got mammoth ribs slathered in sauce and a generic sandwich cookie for dessert. The place has since closed, but the memory retains a special place in my heart for that moment of comfort.
- Towards the end of class I felt like I was having an easy time with the anatomy and touch skills and was looking to make sure I wasn’t missing anything. I asked Michael what I should be working on personally/spiritually to round out my skills. His response was “figure out what’s holding you back from giving yourself fully to the world” and recommended a book to me: The Way Of The Superior Man that ended up shaping a lot of my exploration into healing my relationship with masculine energy and my own masculinity over the next few years. In some ways I’ve moved deeper than the concepts in the book since then but it was a huge turning point for me at the time.
I finished Unit 1 with a certificate in Skillful Touch, a wording that earned me plenty of juvenile comments (not that I have anything against good innuendo, it was just pretty consistent).
Boulder, Colorado Unit 2
Unit 2 in the Rolfing basic training took me deeper into anatomy and touch skills and is where we first learn and practice the Ten-Series on each other. At this point I’d already been sort of practicing it with a few friends based on what I remembered from my work with Bethany, but this was where I really started to get it. Thomas Walker lead the class with Kima Kramer assisting. A full 2 months in Colorado staying with a local dancer and her husband in Longmont stuck some of these memories in my mind:
- I started to feel a little bit more at home with some of the dancers in Boulder and Denver. I was going out more regularly, starting to try a few things and getting out to dinner and such more often new and existing dance friends. This is where I started feeling like Colorado was (and still is) my second home dance scene.
- Thomas’ influence played a strong part in the development of my Rolfing touch having more listening in it and learning to be effective on the lighter pressure side of the spectrum. It helped further enhance ideas about how Rolfing doesn’t have to hurt and how to be effective in the moments when it doesn’t.
- I found two things that to this day remain some of my favorite breakfasts when I’m in Boulder; Santiago’s breakfast burritos and pretty much anything from Lucile’s Creole Cafe which became a haven when I wanted grits.
- In Unit 2 we learn the Ten-Series by practicing it on each other. I had been warned by Bethany to make sure I had good work lined up after I got back because getting learning sessions several times a week can really mess things up. I felt very lucky to have my closest friend from Unit 1 as my practitioner and a male classmate who I jived with as my practice client. My practitioner however had conflict with her practitioner so on the days she worked on me after receiving her session I had to be pretty on my game about minding my own boundaries and at times taking care of her while I was on the table. Overall though I had great sessions and came out of Unit 2 feeling built up rather than broken down.
- I have a strong recollection of my 7th session with my client. 7th session involves the mouth and nose work which he had an emotional charge around but hadn’t mentioned to me. The session went totally fine but when he got off the table it was fully soaked in sweat. It was a good lesson about how I might miss a client’s reaction or how they might hide something to make a session go the way they thing it is supposed to.
- Work on opening my chest has been a mainstay of my personal Rolfing journey. One day Thomas was doing a demo session with me standing in front of the whole class and working on opening some of my ribs using hands-on pressure and my own movement. At some point he asked me to see if I could let the corners of my mouth float towards the ceiling. As my mouth crested towards a smile I felt a major draw back in and had to say “I’m not ready to go there yet.” This became one of the early realizations that feeling happy was one of the most vulnerable and scary things I could feel. It also started to shape my idea of allowing the work to pace to the client and not always trying to force things open.
I ended Unit 2 feeling good, happy to be flying home rather than driving, and both excited and nervous about my developing plans to take my Unit 3 training in Brazil instead of returning to Boulder.
Barra do Sahy, Brasil Unit 3
When I had been in my Unit 2 trying to decide who to do my Unit 3 training with, an email had gone out notifying us of a Unit 3 training in Brazil. The Brazil course had a combined Rolf Movement Certification with the Unit 3 completion and would be taught by Monica Caspari for Movement and Jan Sultan for the hands-on with Raquel Motta assisting. As far as I could tell from asking around this was like a dream team of instruction so despite not knowing the language or anyone who’d be there, I signed up and booked a room in a beach house to stay at in Barra do Sahy, São Paulo, Brasil. Along with the Movement Certification, Unit 3 involves further deepening our anatomy and therapeutic skills and taking two practice clients through a Ten-Series with instructor supervision. If the view alone isn’t enough to explain why I decided to go, here are a few other highlights of what I got out of that training:
And people ask me why I’d choose to go to Brazil…
- There were several weeks of exploration and embodiment work with the movement training; challenging the ways we moved and exploring ways to move with more ease and less effort. Monica was an incredible teacher and more than anything else what has etched itself on my soul was her statement that “The primary cause of physical dysfunction is social inhibition.” I take this statement with a grain of salt but ever since in my dancing, my teaching, my work, and my self explorations that idea has informed my work, helping me make sense of motions, pains, and challenges that pure biomechanics couldn’t fully explain.
- I got dumped again (by a different woman) somewhere around the second week into training. This was probably the most challenging breakup of my life as I was thousands of miles away from any familiar support network. In hindsight I dodged a bullet with her, but at the time it added a really rough component to contemplate throughout the training.
- The beach house which several of us stayed in had a wood-fired sauna that became a focal point for the nights when we needed to decompress. Multiple nights 5 or 6 of us would pile in, watch the bay through the window in the sauna overlooking it and talk through whatever was going on with us through the training or life in general.
- Jan became my primary influence from basic training for the power and value of the heavier side of the Rolfing touch spectrum. Between Jan’s teaching and Thomas in Unit 2, I feel I got a good sense of the ends of the spectrum and a foundation for finding a lot of shades in the middle. I don’t think Jan typically used or encouraged us to use any more force than necessary to achieve results but he also had no problem digging in. I have an image of him at one time coming up to observe me working on a client, assessed what was going on and the result we were after and simply said “You’re just gonna have to hurt her.” I also watched a few of my classmates who were really reticent to work in uncomfortable levels with their clients and in my perception it seemed like it sometimes prevented them from creating the healing that their clients needed.
- Watching Jan working was amazing and inspiring. It both gave me an idea of what might be possible at at the same time was so distant from what I was able to do at the time that I started to realize there was no way at one year I’d be able to do it like Jan was doing it with his 40+ years. Instead of being disheartening, it actually became an idea that helped me relax, be at peace with where I was as a practitioner and do the best work I was capable of in that moment without so much judging it against the work of those far more experienced than me. This ease seemed to make my work better and my learning faster as I was able to be more present to where I was rather than worrying about where I thought I should be.
- My Ten-Series clients were a 60-something Brazillian aesthetician who I didn’t have much language in common with and an ex-pat American who I was grateful to be able to conduct sessions in English with. We relatively quickly fell into a routine of lectures in the morning followed by a two hour lunch break where I’d typically eat then go swim in the ocean for 45 minutes or so, come back, work with a client, then finish the day with lectures. My clients progressed well and I had the absolute best tan of my life.
- We were in Brazil over Thanksgiving so one of our ex-American clients who owned a restaurant bought a turkey and invited all the class and all of our practice clients to Thanksgiving dinner.
- After the end of her series, my ex-American client invited me over for dinner at her house. It’s the sort of thing that might have been frowned upon in Boulder but in Brazil it was no big deal. It turned into one of the most formative experiences of the trip as my client and I talked about and shared our experiences through the series and in both our lives in general. Of particular influence to me was the fact that she called me out on a few of my less composed moments in class and helped me realize that my clients could see my issues as much as I saw theirs. It’s taken a number of years to really pull it all together, but it has made a huge difference overall in how I work with and relate to my clients now.
I don’t know what to say about Brazil other than I think it has made worlds of difference in who I became as a person and a practitioner and I am forever grateful for having had the opportunity and courage to go there. While I don’t think it’s for everyone, I pretty much recommend every Rolfing student consider it as an option. That said, I was also grateful to return home and be able to not have to worry about sharing a common language when I wanted to go buy a burger or soap or just say more than “Oi. Tudo bem?” to someone on the street.
Lucking Into The Center
The final stage of the “becoming a Rolfer” process for me landed in finding an office and building a practice to the point where saying “I’m a Rolfer” felt natural rather than new and weird. I landed at The Center through a curious series of events. As I was settling into the idea of being an alternative health practitioner, I figured it would be worthwhile to familiarize myself with some of the other practitioners locally. I was curious to try out acupuncture and got a referral to Quinn Takei as a great acupuncturist. I went and did a few sessions with Quinn and was impressed with his office and professionalism. On my last session of the series with him I noticed one of the massage therapists packing up her office to move out. I asked if he would be interested in having a Rolfer in the office and the rest is kind of history.
About a month after I had gotten a lease at The Center I was laid off from my programming job at Paragon. It was a year or two in the banking crisis and they were having to make cutbacks. So instead of the slow easing into Rolfing that I had intended, I got a bit shoved into full time. It took a few years and a few withdrawals from my retirement savings to really get settled in here, but I haven’t looked back. And while I can’t exactly recommend the way I got here, I’m dreadfully grateful to have found work that feeds my soul and lets me do something that I feel is of value to the world.
Monday came on fairly bright and early. The legendary 
Tuesday came on bright and early with a trip down to 
Wednesday night saw me up early for the last session of my 3-series trading with Neal. The session with Heather had given me a few ideas of spots to work on and Neal incorporated that info nicely into a nice wrap-up session for our work together.
By this point in the week it was beginning to feel like a rather intense, though worthwhile, haul through a lack of sleep. It wasn’t really intentional, just between the work with Heather and Neal I think we’d reached a sort of critical mass where some of the body shifts were interrupting my sleep for a bit.
Graduation Day!
The last day in Boulder dawned a bit earlier than I would have liked, but with a 1pm flight to catch, an hour+ bus ride to get there, and the unpredictability of the lines at DEN, I decided it would be best to be up at out early. I had hoped to take my host to Snooze and to get myself a flight of fancy pancakes (still a brilliant idea) but by the time we arrived at 8:30 the wait was nearly an hour and would have been pushing it on my comfort zone with the time.
Monday came bright and early with a promise of the final movement session for the 13 series clients. This puts us firmly into the territory where both clients are past the core sessions and moving into integration and closure. As a big proponent of movement it’s been nice watching the students shift from sort of loose understanding of how to build a movement session to a much more confident assessment and directing of the sessions with their clients. This was also Ray McCall’s last day in class assessing Neal who passed the test just fine.
Today was my final session with my demo client for the 10 series. It finished up in lovely fashion and I’m really happy with the work I did. That said, it’s also a little bittersweet finishing up with someone who’s been really fun to work with and a great reciprocal learning relationship for my first assist. It’s also going to be curious as I will be starting Thursday with a new post-10 client who I’ll see for 3 sessions. Having watched how it can be really challenging to have someone visit a student towards the end of a training I figure it will be curious to be trying to integrate a new relationship on the tail end of a long series of learning already.
Today I met my post-10 series client for the first time. I was still dragging pretty badly from the day before and feeling like I wasn’t going to do very well working with her in the morning. By the time she came in and we got to work though I had found my groove again inside of about 15 minutes. It was particularly nice to feel less constrained to the 10-series and a bit more free to work as needed. I do of course still love the 10-series for what it is, but in the teaching context there’s a certain feeling of pressure to do work in a specific context. Getting back to working with an already Rolfed body was a nice change and I think the session came together really well. For their post-10 series work, most of the students are working on each other which also adds a nice looser vibe to the room at the end of the day.
I woke up this morning to a text from my intended hiking buddy saying she hadn’t been able to get to bed until after 3am and would be in no shape to go hiking that morning. Not to be deterred, I set out for breakfast followed by a short but satisfying hike up and down the Dakota Ridge trail at Sanitas Valley.
Saturday morning I had intended on hiking up Lion’s Lair trail on the west side of Mount Sanitas with some friends, but due to a miscommunication it didn’t work out, so we decided to punt and go Sunday instead. Not to be put off getting some outdoor time in, I took another spin around Sanitas Valley and Dakota Ridge solo then headed over for round 2 lunch at Wayne’s Smoke Shack this time going for chicken, sausage, and peach cobbler. Then I grabbed a couple pounds of brisket to go and headed up to Neal’s for a class party.
At the end of the day, Ray came up to me and asked who I did my movement training with. When I responded that it was predominantly Monica Caspari and Lael Keen and asked why, he said it showed in how I approached students and gave feedback and that I clearly moved from my center and expressed out through my limbs. I took that validation and compliment gladly then went out to Kakes studio for the Monday night classes and dance with 
Tuesday was session 8 with my 10-series client. Ray was not observing this day so I got to head into the integration sessions of the series without the extra observation. After some hemming and hawing and discussing, I ended up going with client’s desire to try radial decompression for the 8/9 part of her series. It felt like a little bit of a risk since traditionally it’s an upper and lower session, but the session ended up being helpful to have demo’d for the students, several of whom had been nudged to do radial decompression sessions in their Unit 2 despite never having seen a RD session.
Session 7 for the Monday/Wednesday clients today. There’s nothing quite like watching a room of Rolfers pulling on gloves and putting fingers in mouths and up noses. It seemed to be a pretty significant session for Neal’s and several other clients and was a particularly interesting day to sit with and hold space for.
Last day of classes for the week and this time I was doing my client’s session 9 with Ray observing in addition to the class. Given that a new person would change the dynamic of the room a bit, I made sure to introduce my client to Ray outside before anything got going; all the same it was interesting watching how the extra observer affected both mine and my client’s nerves a bit. Fortunately, she and I have been building a nice sort of teamwork effort all along the way and we could lean on that a bit to keep her session moving in awesome directions (including a nice ‘wink wink’ type, “you’re doing such a great job today” comment from my client). I asked Ray for feedback afterwards and he said it was a great advanced type session but maybe to find ways to pull it back a bit if I’m going to teach further. I expect if I continue to teach that that sort of balancing act between client needs and abilities and student needs and abilities will be a long-term project.
On the advice of some dancer friends, I got up semi-early on Friday and headed out to hike up to
The first party, and source of today’s photo, was for my nephew who was turning 1. It was a struggle getting over there and settling in at first but once I got to talking with family for a bit it turned out to be a really lovely time. This trip has been fairly short on family time due to the constraints of not having a car at first and lots of energy just going into learning my role in the classroom so it was nice to have most of the nearby family gathered to hang out and catch up for a bit. The birthday boy was clearly enamored with the cake and I ended up staying a lot longer than expected with the evening’s finale being taking both my niece and nephew for a bunny spotting walk around the neighborhood.
Sunday saw another hike, this time up the Flatirons trails, not too far from but significantly easier than the Royal Arch hike I had done on Friday. It was again wonderful just being out in nature, being sociable, and also getting to spend a bit of non-dance time with the dancers I’m getting to know or connect with again and who I’ll have to say goodbye to all too soon.
Today was Labor Day and thankfully and enjoyably a day off. This made for the final day of a nice 4-day weekend and a good chance to unwind and sort of take stock for me. I spent the morning relaxing, checking in with some dance friends, and getting some more ideas of how to get more connected with Boulder again. While it had been great to have 4 days off I also hadn’t planned a lot of activity for it and ended up feeling a bit cut off from people.
Tuesday was session 6 (back line) with my client. As I had walked in to class today the mural above had caught my eye. This mural sits across from the Rolf Institute and while it spans the whole building, the “Your smile matters” part had grabbed my attention this morning. I’m not sure what to share about it other than to say that smiling has been one of those things I felt I had to force for a long time and this year has been a brilliant space of finding ways to have it start coming back naturally. Thanks to the mural for reminding me that it is a powerful and valuable thing to have back too. 🙂
Wednesday seemed to be a day with a feeling of divergence. Students had their session 4 (inner line of the leg) with one of their clients while having just finished session 6 with their other client the previous day. It had also been a week since they had seen this client and most recently had done movement sessions with them. While it doesn’t seem like much, that week break is the longest any of the clients will have gone without getting work during the course of this series. And something about the further shifting placement of sessions between the two clients helps to nudge that feeling of “this is going to be real work soon” since clients in a practice situation are rarely coming in on the same session on the same day (though it is fun when the stars align and all your sessions one day seem to have the same theme).
Thursday morning saw me early into the office for another run around the lake which happened to include running into this delightful sign. Today was session 7 (head, neck, mouth, nose) with my demo client which is probably most often the weirdest session of the series to most people. It ended up being a great session but one where the time got away from me a little bit and I was relieved to find that my client didn’t have to start work until slightly later than usual so we had time to get her out the door without creating a problem.
Friday was a class day today since we had our whole week shifted by a day on account of Labor Day. So it was a day that demanded less work from me since Neal was demoing today, but we had a lively conversation about trauma and how to work with it in the morning.
WEEKEND TIME!!! This morning started with sleeping in followed by barely making it up in time to go meet a new dance friend and her boyfriend for brunch. Bagels from Moe’s Bagels were the order of the day and man they had a lovely home. He’s an architect who has lived in Boulder for 60+ years and designed and built several of the homes on the block, culminating in the current home which was just incredibly beautiful. It was a fun and interesting sort of reminder of what that sort of commitment to one place might allow for as I’m currently wondering how much longer I might remain in the Triangle. Following brunch we took a nice easy hike around the foothills area and then I headed home for the afternoon.
Took my time heading home after a leisurely fancy Mexican lunch at Leña and a trip through what a colleague had described as Denver’s fanciest Goodwill. After getting home I ended up taking an extended nap that lasted from something like 3:30-7:30. I woke up hungry and decided to go for a walk to find dinner. After a few Google Maps searches I finally landed on going to Snarfburger which is an offshoot of Snarf’s, my to-date favorite sandwich shop chain in Boulder. Incidentally it appears that Snarfburger is located in the spot where Daddy Bruce’s Barbecue used to be.
First day getting to drive into class instead of taking the bus. While I had arranged to rent a compact car, the rental agency saw fit to upgrade me after a 5 hour extra wait to get a vehicle at all. So for the upcoming month I had a Jeep Renegade to drive around town. First day or two driving it were a little nervous being that I’m unused to the shape of it; but at the same time it seems like another potential step forward in terms of getting used to standing in the full width of my body (something I’ve been working with for the past few years ever since 
Session 4 demo day for me today. Session 4 remains a curiosity for me in terms of trust. For those of you not familiar, session 4 in the Rolfing 10-series works the muscles of the inner leg and thigh up to the pelvic floor and hips. It’s the first time in the series that you start really digging into territory that many people have never had touched therapeutically and it still amazes me sometimes how clients will trust me to work in odd areas after having only known me for a few hours of direct contact.
Another grey day for my session 5 with my client. Got into some really rich territory and I’m feeling very grateful for having a client who’s down for the whole multi-faceted journey of the 10-series. It’s interesting to find myself leading someone else through some of the changes I went through as a Rolfer® and sort of evoking the idea that to help others as fully as possible you also get to be open to the work changing you as a practitioner as well.
Not a great deal to report for this Friday. I was riding pretty high off of doing two really fun demo sessions and feeling like we had some solid rapport going with the students. I sort of semi-snoozed through part of the day then took myself out to see 
Saturday morning I decided to take a hike up the trails around 
Deer in the yard across the street from where I am staying this morning. Today was a little exploration and a lot of chill time. Took a drive down the foothills to Golden, CO and Denver. Took an afternoon nap and did some reading on student papers that need to be done by Tuesday.
Monday was my first chance to watch Neal do a demo session following my not-so-great first session on Thursday. I’d spent the weekend occasionally mulling over what I could recall from past demo sessions but wasn’t coming up with much that I could say for sure. So today I finally got to get fresh eyes on a demo session with the intent to learn for myself about demoing instead of working and I picked up as much as I could, particularly on how and when the quiet spaces came into play.
Tuesday I finally got to redeem myself. After the 5 days between my first and second demo session, we got to get into session 2. This time I was prepared a little differently and my client and I had already discussed a few ways to alter my approach that seemed like they’d serve everybody. So a few deep breaths and dive in to the session with a focus on recovering and getting momentum going in a good direction. Thankfully, it worked!
Kind of a grey and overcast day today, really the first one since I’ve been here. Nothing particularly substantial to report for this day. I’m starting to feel comfortable in the rhythm of wake up, get to class, do class things, go home, relax and sleep, next day. I booked a car rental today for most of the remaining time I’ll be there, which feels like it should open up some new possibilities. Much as I’m enjoying class, I do find as I settle in a bit I’m starting to want for some time to do things other than just bouncing between the Rolf Institute and home.
Took a house-sitting gig for the weekend looking after a friend’s dogs (and chickens, and butterball cat) while she and her husband are out of town. I’d set my car pick-up to be 10:30 this morning so I could get over and have an early day, but instead they told me when I got there that I couldn’t pick it up until 4. So a few hours of napping and running errands filled my day until I was able to pick up the car and drive out to Lafayette and meet up with the pups. Nothing particularly challenging or intriguing about today, just handling stuff, getting a car (definitely a relief), and then hanging out with these two for the rest of the evening.
Got down to Westminster today to see my sister and my niece and nephew. After being unsurprisingly woken up early by the dogs I got breakfast, took them for a walk around the lake, then headed over to my sister’s. We hung out for a bit, took the kids to the park, flew kites, etc. and this was my first time getting to meet the younger of the two. Spent some time minding the kids (mostly watching 
Got up early on Day 1 of the training to meet Neal at Lucile’s down near Pearl Street Mall. Lucile’s holds a special little spot in my heart for doing grits pretty damn well so far from home. I didn’t actually find it until I was almost done with either my Unit 1 or 2 training, I can’t recall at this point.
On Day 2, the class was complete. One student had been delayed returning from a wedding over the weekend and didn’t make it in until Tuesday. So we had postponed setting up the class altar until that morning. There were a lot of strong ideas and emotions fit onto this small space and Neal and I were both a bit surprised by how intense the setting up was. My contributions were my now requisite class offering of 
Today’s picture was taken out at a coffee shop as I waited for my client to show up for a meeting before class started. Our first session would be the next day but because she wasn’t available in the evening, I had offered to meet her for coffee in the morning to talk about the work ahead and any questions she had. I had thought about asking how she’d feel getting a photo together but honestly was so in flow talking to her that the thought didn’t even occur to me until after I’d headed to class.
Had my first client demo session today. I think so far I’d been feeling like there was a sort of beginner’s luck going with the class. Good instructor who I seem to get along with, a young but mature class all of whom seem really solid in their skills, and my demo client seemed like a great candidate for being a class model. However, that luck took a stumble on my first demo as I talked WAY more than necessary. After finishing my demo and receiving that feedback from basically everyone in class I was… a bit downtrodden, but mostly fine with it. All-in-all a recoverable mistake and it’s been a good misstep to chew on the rest of the week in terms of how I’d communicate this aspect differently to someone else doing a demo for the first time.
Friday morning came earlier than I would have liked with a 10:30 (I know, boo-hoo, so early /sarcasm) appointment for a session with Jim Asher. One of my goals to make the most of this trip is to get some work from some of the master Rolfers in the Boulder area. I’d seen Jim do a demo working with a child at one of the annual meetings but otherwise had no exposure to his work. At this point I’m not going for aches and pains but for optimizing mechanics, continuing to open more freedom in my movement, and just to keep learning about the work experientially. I don’t know how to encapsulate the session well at this point other than to say it continues to amaze me how much power I find in the touch of practitioners who’ve been Rolfing longer than I’ve been alive. It both gives me something to aspire to and gives me something to be awfully patient with as I expect there’s just no substitute for time and practice to achieve those sorts of levels.
Day 6 took me back to the Rolf Institute for lunch with Thomas Walker, my original Unit 2 instructor. Thomas was in town to teach a workshop and sticking around through next week for a faculty meeting. While I’m not in a huge rush to assist again, I did want to get on his radar about being available down the line and we talked some shop around the new course series he’s teaching which I had taken part in last summer.
Noting that I had failed to pack a few obvious staples like a water bottle, umbrella, or any shoes that weren’t sandals, it seemed like Sunday was going to be a good day to take stock and restock. I had come out with some intention of restocking my wardrobe from the vintage stores of Boulder and Denver and it occurred to me I might as well go a step further and get some gear like a new pair of hiking boots since the pair I’d had since Boy Scouts had bit the dust a few years back. So a few errands later, I had some new gear and a pair of hiking boots on order with REI since they didn’t have my size in stock.
Jason Sager 