Adventures in Assisting – UC 5.16 Week 7
The final week is done of my first Rolfing® training assist. It ended up being a big push to the end getting in as much as I outside of class while mostly wrapping up in the classroom. We wrapped up a day ago and I’m finding myself deeply grateful for the experience having learned a lot and set up a decent base for assisting again (in fact I’ve already got one loose offer to assist another instructor sometime in future). I’m also very grateful to friends, old and new, in the swing scene here who’ve helped me feel at home, and kept my nights busy with delicious food and equally delicious dancing.
Day 43 – September 26
Monday came on fairly bright and early. The legendary Dawn Hampton had passed the night before and I was on and off Facebook through the morning checking out the tributes, stories, and videos of this incredible human.
In class we spent the morning reflecting on our 10 series clients and what sort of results we had gotten with them. Watching the reflective process for the students was great particularly since I see the 10-series as being a strong self-teaching tool for Rolfers early on and throughout our careers. Session 9 with the 13-series clients followed with a little bit of a bittersweet feel moving towards the end of closure.
After class I caught a ride from Neal over to Heather Starsong‘s studio where I got a personal movement session. We worked a lot on spinal mechanics and getting my axial diaphgramatic structures relaxing and working together. It was a beautiful session and is probably going to be processing for a few months to come but I then got to have a 2 mile walk down to Kakes Studios for the Boulder Swing dance as a way to integrate. Had some great dances again with a nice tribute to Dawn then a couple of friends invited me over for Sazeracs and some chat time before taking me home probably later than was best for me to be out.
Day 44 – September 27
Tuesday came on bright and early with a trip down to Snooze for breakfast then more 10-series presentations and my second demo session with my post-10 client. The afternoon rolled into mostly students trading sessions with each other which provided a nice break from holding space for outside clients and generally feels like we got a more relaxed energy and got to see the students interacting a bit more openly as practitioners.
Dancing this night took the form of a drive (or being driven) down to Denver for Joe Smith and the Spicy Pickles at a restaurant called Baur’s. The band was really damn good and it makes me wish we had the sort of infrastructure in Raleigh/Durham to support larger bands having weekly gigs like this. I got to meet and dance with a few new dancers I hadn’t run into yet and we headed home tired but satisfied.
Day 45 – September 28
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.
We spent the morning in class trading tips and tricks that we’d picked up along the way and watching Neal’s final session 10 demo. The student’s 10th sessions in the afternoon were again sort of bittersweet thought mostly sweet as the students closed out with these clients. I’m not sure if it was because they’d done movement as well or because it was closer to close or just luck of the draw but this round of closure felt more open and warm with gifts and cards exchanged and the like.
After class, Neal gave me a ride up to Skeye Brewing on his way home and stopped off to grab a beer with me before heading on. When we arrived, the beginner lesson for the dance that night was still going on and we got to talk a little bit of my philosophy for teaching dance. The crowd for the dance was on the smaller side but also nicely intimate and a lot of good dances (and a few brews) were had. I caught a ride home with one of the local teachers and had a really nice conversation about dance pedagogy before being dropped off at home and promptly crashing.
Day 46 – September 29
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.
Undeterred though we kept rolling on with class which was all about the final post-10 sessions today. My final session with my post-10 client came together really well and kind of made me wish I were closer. She asked if I had a card and I had to confess that I lived half a country away but would do my best to help put her in touch with someone who might be useful to her locally. Following class about half of us went over to Asher Brewing for a couple of beers and some conversation. Several of the students have family or significant others coming into town at this point so we got to talk a bit more about those folks and life beyond the classroom.
And reprising the start of my dancing during this course, some of the local decided to take another trip to Waterloo in Louisville for some Balboa dancing. The picture above is missing a good number of the new and old dance friends I’ve made here but I think it tells the spirit of this group well and I’m deeply grateful for the welcoming arms of the swing scene here.
Day 47 – September 30
Graduation Day!
This was another early morning for myself and Neal as we had individual student evaluation interviews to do. Everyone passed with plenty of room and we got to talk with each student about their strengths, their challenges, and what we might recommend they pursue next in their development. Energies were higher overall than they had been in a while which I think is a testament to how much work goes into training as a Rolfer and how much of a relief it is to cross the finish line. The closing ceremony and graduation went great and then I crashed hard and just went to lie down on the floor a bit.
Following a reception at RISI, the class and families went out to Element Bistro for a drink. Neal and I hung around for an hour or so then headed to J&L Distilling for a final drink and debrief ourselves. When I had first booked my flights, Neal and I had planned this time thinking we’d need lots of time to talk out what had happened in the class but because we’d kept open lines of communication and feedback the whole time there really wasn’t much left unsaid and we spent the time instead talking about my heading to Boston and Neal’s upcoming trip to Peru.
Final night’s dancing in Colorado came courtesy of a gypsy jazz band called La Pompe playing at Brik on York which was a fancy pizza place in downtown Denver. A local dancer gave me a ride down and instead of pizza I ended up ordering a charcuterie plate that took most of the night to finish off. Had some great dances, especially in the second set when patrons started clearing out and we were able to move some tables and dance at the foot of the stage. One thing I’ve been noting a lot lately is how much of a difference it can make to dance with an audience around. At a standard swing dance everyone is kind of just doing their own thing, but at a restaurant or bar, dancing kind of makes us part of the entertainment and it’s been interesting to note how much that adds to the experience for me and kind of eggs on experimentation and play.
I got back home around midnight and tried to get to sleep fairly quickly for my flight the next morning.
Day 48 – October 1
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.
So instead I just hopped the bus to DEN, barely made weight on my bags stuffed with goodies from Colorado breweries and distilleries, and settled in to wing my way to Boston for Tinkerbal and seeing some dance and Rolfing friends I haven’t seen in quite some time. Today’s photo is from a little space in DEN above the trains in Terminal C that I’d just never noticed before, keeping a bit with this whole trip’s theme of noticing details and continuing to learn.
I landed in Boston around 9pm, caught an Uber to the dance that night and surprised the hell out of a few old and dear dance friends by being there. It was a lovely reception back and I wish I had gotten photos of the silly lobster dance contest, but I decided to just enjoy it rather than being a shutterbug. Staying the night with an old dance student of mine who lives near the venues and I slept in on Sunday longer than I have in a while.
Conclusion
It was a really wild ride getting to this point, having just completed my Advanced Training and getting asked to assist, working out how to make it fit with my current homeless state, and getting better insight both into how much I do actually know and how much there still is to learn in this work. I’m grateful to Neal for taking a chance with me and to all the students for their patience with both of our learning curves and for their presence and energy in class. And probably most importantly, a huge congratulations to AJ, Chris, Drew, Haley, Katie, Kyle, Monica, and Tiffani on making it all the way to being Certified Rolfers!!!
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 