Learning the Magic of the 10-Series Recipe or How to Make Yourself Comfortable in Uncertainty
By Certified Rolfer® Stephanie Aimée Poole - Austria
Things are about to get real!
Entering level 2 of the Rolfing® Structural Integration training was like giving a commitment to myself. Unlike in level 1, it was not anymore about trying this out. This move was the entrance step into getting serious with changing my career path. And I was so ready to take this step, at least that is what I thought at that time.
Before I tell you about my experience of this part of the training, which was for me by far the most transformative one, I want to give you a bit of context to a story that took it’s beginning at the end of level 1 training.
Personal Growth
In the final module of level 1, which was on the topic of Touch with Andrea Clusen, someone asked Andrea what to expect for the level 2 training – like, honestly what to expect. She took a moment to think and then she said: “Honestly, be prepared to shift. Take care of your relationships, whether they are partnerships, friendships, family or business relationships, because they might break or change. Make sure you communicate really well what is going on within you, because it is very likely that you will change during this training. And the thing with the Rolfing process is that as you shift on the inside and in your body structure, your environment will react to this shift. And for most people this will play out in the relationships to exactly this environment. Meaning the people you are surrounded with.”
Listening to her words, I was not feeling very worried. I was in a stable long-term relationship with my fiancé, and I was happy in my very comfortable, working from home, permanent contract job in online marketing. My relationships to friends and family seemed all in all very stable to me. Life was good and becoming a Rolfing practitioner just felt like putting the cherry on top of the cake.
Little did I know that I was up for a ride. TOTALLY unprepared for what was coming and hit very hard and unexpectedly by it. Within the timeframe of the level 2 training, I moved through a breakup, changed my living situation, and had to re-learn living on my own again. Once I thought the ground under my feet could not shake any further, I was fired from my very safe job. Maybe you can imagine how I was shaking, trying to grasp for a fixpoint to hold onto. The truth is that the Rolfing training was this fixpoint. My north star, purpose, and safe haven to come back to every month and process all the turmoil in my body into stability, safety and groundedness. Receiving all this bodywork when moving through a heartbreak was very valuable to me and contributed a great share to being able to keep my heart open after all.
Now I hope you don’t feel sorry for me, because honestly, seeing all of it from today’s perspective, these changes catapulted my growth processes through the sky and I think of them as some of the best things that have happened in my life. But that is another story.
To be fair, my situation was a bit extreme, it was not like this for every student in the training, but in terms of growth I guess I can speak for all of the student group when I say it is pretty profound and intense.
Giving a Rolfing® 10-Series
So let’s talk about the training itself.
Transitioning from level 1 to level 2, all of us felt a bit nervous in the first module. New teachers, new group members, new structure and of course the decision who would give and receive Rolfing sessions from whom.
Let me explain. In level 2 each student gives a Rolfing Ten Series to another student as a practitioner. The same student will then receive the work of the Ten Series from a different student. So all of us experience the role of a Rolfing practitioner giving the work and the role of a client receiving sessions.
Additionally, both of our teachers had a model client with whom they would give a demo of each session for us to observe.
This way of learning was just perfect for me, as moving through all three roles offered different explorations and insights. Of course, we also did many practicums in between learning the techniques for each session. One of my favourite things were the embodiments. As Rita and Nicola, our teachers, come from a movement background, they found many delightful ways for us to experience the goals of each session in a self-exploratory movement intervention. These practices and the pace and setting of the learning also helped to keep us grounded when we felt a bit lost, confused or frustrated at times.
Now you might ask yourself, why so?
The most challenging but also most interesting part of the Rolfing training is that you learn that you know nothing. Literally. And this is really a great advantage in terms of bodywork, because every body, every client, and every story is unique and there is no universal scheme or template that we can follow when we begin to do the work.
When you are new to bodywork, this can be at times quite frightening, challenging, or frustrating. As beginner students our capacity is already reached when dealing with touching people’s bodies, trying to understand how their structure works and remembering anatomical landmarks, so many of us wished to just get a checklist that we could follow when working. This hope quickly diminished.
Enter the recipe – TADAAA!
Dr. Ida Rolf must have been a real genius because she managed to take the complexity and uncertainty of dealing with human structure and wrap it all in a neat didactical concept of ten sessions that simply works – always.
The 10 Series, often referred to as the ‘recipe’, is this magical protocol that you can apply to any body, and it will always have an effect. Surely, we still have to deal with learning more about the body and how it organises itself, but within this level 2 of the training we received just the right tools to actually start giving sessions right away. And the results and experiences we had within the classroom were mind-blowing.
As I did the training in a modular format, I could also already begin giving sessions to my friends at home, so I could use the time in between modules to get familiar with the work and bring my questions to the next module. For me this was just the right pace to digest all the input from the training in smaller bits.
Profound Learnings
Let me close this article circling back to it’s opening. In just nine months, all of us students made an immense shift. From looking at bodies and being completely lost seeing nothing to working a whole 10 Series in a very professional way, paying more attention to how we use our own bodies in gravity and how we touch and relate with our clients.
Most of all, I think we learnt to become very humble in this process of dealing with uncertainty. We made a beginning to make ourselves comfortable in not knowing and getting more accustomed to find resources for stability to help us in this quest. And after all there is the magic of the ‘recipe’ to hold on to. So the only thing I can do, in the name of all Rolfing students there have ever been, is to say – thank you Dr. Rolf, you are a true genius.
Author: Certified Rolfer® Stephanie Aimée Poole - Austria
Editing: Sabine Becker
Photos: Bettina Hüttner
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