Massage & Bodywork

JULY | AUGUST 2020

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somatic bodywork for several decades. And that's how we know each other. I came from psychology originally, but then I went into what was called "bodywork" very early on. I was the first German Rolfer in 1978; I stayed with Rolfing mostly for three decades, but also became a Feldenkrais practitioner. And then, after 30 years of enthusiastic hands-on practice, I turned to laboratory science. QUESTIONING FASCIA'S ROLE TL: So my first contact with you was probably the late '80s at the Rolf Institute. And my memory is that you were already questioning our existing ideas as Rolfers, especially about the role of tissue and the role of the nervous system. Is that accurate? RS: Yeah, I think it was in the late '80s. I started writing about it in a provocative style, mostly in the Rolf Institute's internal publications. And my reasoning at that time, because I didn't know how to do experiments, was based on Peter Levine, who many of our colleagues know as the founder of Somatic Experiencing, a body-oriented psychotherapy. Levine used to be a Rolfing colleague of ours. He was invited to one of the Rolf Institute faculty meetings, and there he told us that he did some mathematical calculations—how many kilograms per square centimeter would be necessary for the gel-to-sol thixotropy explanation that we had taken over from Dr. Ida Rolf, the founder of the Rolf Institute. And he came to the conclusion that it is beyond the forces that we have available to us in bodywork—it would be like 80 kilograms per square centimeter, or more. And that led me to ask, "Maybe we are doing something more?" I chased him for several years, telling him, "Please give me the mathematics. If you just tell us that you did the mathematics that is not reliable, we need to get them." But he never managed to get them. They were in a drawer, in a box, et cetera. And then, years later, I did the mathematics myself with colleagues. I was not alone, but I was probably most prominent within the faculty to question the old plasticity model of Rolfing and say, "We need additional models that include the nervous system." TL: Yes, that's my memory too. I remember you raising those questions. I was probably a student at the time that you were becoming a full faculty member there at the Rolfing Institute. RS: I was assisting when I was staying at your house, Til. TL: OK, that's when it was. But I remember [senior Rolfing instructor] Peter Melchior telling me about how there was some pushback—you had these ideas, and some teachers on the Rolf Institute faculty were saying, "I don't know if that's the right thing." RS: Oh, that. They were not open at that time. Yeah. I don't blame them. I can understand it. TL: What do you think the objections were? What do you think their hesitation was? RS: First of all, if you have a model that makes you superior to other competing manual therapies—for example, that Rolfers work stronger and therefore they work deeper, or more profoundly—other therapists might change the body schema The basic question that has been inspiring me until today is: What is the difference between live tissue and not- alive tissue? And that is, of course, also a profound philosophical question. Watch Now "A Conversation with Robert Schleip—Intro" as one of the brain's representation; for example, Feldenkrais. Other therapies are better at relaxing muscle tonus, but Rolfers change collagen tissues. So, I could understand that if you take that unique selling proposition away, that it was not so well and enthusiastically greeted. TL: You were questioning our identity as being unique, but also our basic explanations for what we were doing. RS: Yeah. But now I think they are very thankful to me, and that's what I get. Because another emphasis that Ida Rolf had—more than anybody else, N e w ! A B M P P o c k e t P a t h o l o g y a t w w w. a b m p . c o m / a b m p - p o c k e t - p a t h o l o g y - a p p . 81

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