Schedule of Classes

Description:

The first year of life is filled with developmental opportunities for our spine to find vertical orientation in gravity, and become a central facilitator for movement and locomotion. Through movement exploration, motivated by innate needs and interactions with our caregivers and environment, we develop the capacity to embody a fluid adaptable spine. As our perception of the world becomes larger and our intentions and demands increase, spinal adaptability must balance with spinal stability in navigation of a compatible relationship with gravity. It is the continuum between spinal adaptability and stability that determines our ease in spinal function and freedom from dysfunction.

Many people seeking out structural integration sessions are interested in relief from issues based in spinal dysfunction, resulting in pain and loss of mobility. Postural concerns and movement limitations have a direct correlation to the ability of the spine to access appropriate stability and adaptability in order to successfully meet the demands of everyday life. Enhancement of athletic and expressive arts performance is dependent on the integration of therapeutic interventions in the coordination of the spine. Having the knowledge and embodiment to skillfully address spinal patterns in order to restore and establish spinal fluency is essential to address the concerns of our clients and successfully meet the goals of Rolfing® Structural Integration.

Tessy Brungardt and Rebecca Carli have designed a 5-day workshop to cover structural, coordinative, perceptual and expressive dimensions of “our spine in motion.” Resolution of segmental spinal dysfunction through working with spinal mechanics will be taught, along with the restoration of coordinative functional capacity in corresponding spinal movement patterns. Skills in spinal manipulation will be coupled with skills in spinal movement rehabilitation and enrichment. The workshop will provide practitioners with a substantial variety of strategies and skills to address clients’ relevant spinal concerns, with the most important tool being our personal embodiment of a healthy and resilient spine. An customized program for the development of an adaptable-fluid and stable-supportive spine will be covered including design process through implementation

Tessy Brungardt started her professional career as a scientist with a BA in Environmental Biology from New College in Sarasota, FL in 1976. After receiving Rolfing, she was inspired to become a Rolfer, completing her certification in 1985. She became a Basic Rolfing Instructor in 1994 and a certified Movement teacher in 1995. She was certified as an Advanced Rolfing Instructor in 2002 and teaches classes internationally. She maintains a practice in Baltimore MD where she specializes in working with musicians, children, and animals.

Rebecca Carli became interested in somatic movement studies while pursuing B.A. and M.F.A. degrees in dance performance and choreography. She earned certification in Rolfing Movement Integration in 1987 and in 1989, she became a Certified Rolfer and in 1992, a Certified Advanced Rolfer. In 1994, Rebecca graduated from the Pennsylvania Gestalt Center for Psychotherapy and Training and joined the movement faculty of The Rolf Institute. Rebecca’s understanding of gravity and human movement potential has been enriched by her long time studies with Hubert Godard. Godard’s work provides the chief theoretical and practical foundation that inspires her teaching. Rebecca is a past Chairperson of the Rolfing Movement faculty and ISMETA board representative.

Description:

A 6 Day Course to verify Rolf’s insights regarding “normal” body posture and expressive dimensions in gravity. Rolf’s 10 session recipe builds a step by step restoration of competent function, through differentiation of the body’s sensory and motor maps. Fascial work, an essential dimension, often obscures the inherent functional goals that each step highlights. How do we evoke the hall marks for each step of integration in the absence of fascial manipulation? And how do we help our selves (and our clients) bring alive structural integration as integrated movement? In this course we learn to feel and teach the natural truth of the structural integration series as perceptive/coordinative experience Housing: Course is residential at lake shore property in rural NH. Housing available for $45 per person/night. Private accommodations available nearby.

Kevin Frank has practiced Rolfing Structural Integration and Rolf Movement Integration education since 1987. He practices, writes and teaches from a model of structural integration based on the body considered as a movement system, in which lasting improvements in posture and well being are expressions of the "normal" that Dr. Rolf proposed. Kevin emphasizes, as did Dr. Rolf, that structural integration is primarily an educational approach to human health, from which there may be therapeutic consequences. Our role is to educate clients and students in matters of perception, differentiation of the body maps, and coordinative skills. He is the co-author (with Caryn McHose) of How Life Moves, Explorations in Meaning and Body Awareness.

Description:

Interoception is the ability to read and interpret sensations arising from your own body. “The more viscerally aware you are – the more emotionally attuned you are.” (Blakeslee)

In this 5 day training, students will discover the primordial roots of interoception by delving into the science of embryology. Embryology illustrates the integrative flow of development and underscores the somatic truth of connectivity and wholeness.

A kinesthetic experience of the first developmental movement – yield – engages parasympathetic signaling of the autonomic nervous and allows for a deep settling into a state of sensory awareness. Three major neurological centers will be explored through movement, guided meditation and neurological study: the reflective brain, the centering heart and the instinctual belly.

Each of these centers is deeply rooted in a ‘midline’ relationship. By attuning ourselves to the energy and information flow emanating from these centers we can evolve our own perceptual acuity, instinctual knowing and depth of listening through touch. As we cultivate whole body presence in relation to our client and surrounding space, a greater sense of safety is transmitted within the treatment session as well as sustainable results.

In this module, participants will cultivate a whole body-feeling sense of:

• the embryological development of the neural matrix
• the first developmental movement – yield – engaging and setting autonomic tonus
• gamma touch: supporting receptive listening by the practitioner
• engaging the spectrum of tissue qualities: from defended to porous.
• kinesthetic discovery / awareness of coherence between self-other and surrounding field integral to the transformational process

Carol Agneessens, MS. has been practicing the art of Rolfing SI and movement for over 30 years. She serves on the faculty of the Rolf Institute. For the past 10 years, she has been actively engaged in the study of embryology. As a Rolfing Trainer, Rolf Movement Instructor and as a teacher of Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy, her focus includes cultivating an expanded perceptual field, receptive listening, and deepening sensory awareness. She has come to appreciate that these are key factors for sustained transformation within oneself and in working with others. She is the author of "The Fabric of Wholeness" (2001), and is currently working on her second book entitled, "The Embryonic Universe: Traversing the Primal Thread."

Hiroyoshi Tahata, Rolf Movement instructor from Japan, has developed a unique approach to engaging and transforming limiting structural and functional patterns through his work with the movement of yield.

Description:

Each phase will be 6 days.

This is a residential/retreat style training. Claymont is a retreat center and provides everything for us. Classroom is there, they will cook 3 meals per day for us (vegetarian & meat).  Each of us will have a private room. You can share a room, but the cost will be the same since it is a retreat center. Cost of room and board at Claymont will be determined. Claymont really caters to all of our needs. Students in the past have loved Claymont and the trainings there. It is peaceful.

Description:
“We are not made of stuff that abides. We are made of patterns that repeat themselves through time.” – Ida Rolf

This Advanced training will focus on how to take those patterns that repeat themselves through time, disintegrate the dysfunctional aspects of those patterns, and integrate them into functional support for the human organism.

“Almost everybody is average, almost nobody is normal.” –Tessy Brungardt, talking about the application of Ida Rolf’s ideas

This Advanced Rolfing Course is an opportunity to explore what it might mean to be ‘normal’ in the field of gravity. Having been a Rolf Institute Instructor for 20 years and an Advanced Rolfing Instructor for 8 years, Tessy will show attendees of this class the way to create ease and efficiency for your clients according to their needs and preferences.

Strategizing to meet your clients’ needs, this class will focus on client pain relief, client activity integration, and bringing your clients into greater body awareness, and what this awareness means in the context of the paradigms first elaborated by Dr. Rolf.

As a former Chair of the Faculty, and former Chair of the Board of Directors of the Rolf Institute, Tessy brings to the classroom not only the awareness of the integrity of being a practitioner of the art of Rolfing, she brings the awareness of the history of the evolution of the art. Her skills in the articulation of the art of Rolfing SI, and the integration of the practice in daily life, will give the attentive attendee of this class the skills necessary to be both firm and creative in the resolution of their clients’ difficulties.

This class is also deeply focused on the needs of each student getting what they need personally in the context of giving and receiving a 5 series.

The class will consist of lectures, demos, exchange of work with classmates, and giving work to outside clients, all integrated toward meeting the needs of both the practitioners and their clients.

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Tessy Brungardt received her BA in Environmental Biology in 1973, and was certified as a Rolfer in 1985. She combined her love of teaching with her love of Rolfing, becoming a Rolfing Instructor in 1994 and an Advanced Instructor in 2002. She has maintained a practice in Baltimore, MD, since 1986 where she works with a wide variety of clients, specializing in work with musicians and children. She also works with animals, particularly horses, dogs, and cats.

Perhaps most well known for being featured in the Academy Awards nominated documentary “Two Hands” – the story of pianist Leon Fleisher who regained the use of his right hand through Tessy’s Rolfing SI, Tessy has, over the years, taught 14 Basic classes, 8 Advanced Rolfing classes, and almost two dozen CE classes in all aspects of Rolfing in the United States, Brazil, Australia, Japan, Germany, and Switzerland.

Description:
The learning objectives of these first two weeks of training are:
• To arrive at a clear system of analysis before starting treatment by using the traditional visual approach looking at the body – and a step-by-step palpative evaluation of the different layers of fascia and membranes
• To use the findings of our analysis to make a clear choice about the few main restrictions
• To choose from the technical catalogue to be able to release the main restrictions
• To develop communicative skills to work whith the clients capacity of orientation and coordination

The learning objectives of the second part of the training are:
• To see the goals of the basic ten sessions in new light and to practically do “traditional” Rolfing SI with less effort
• To recognize clearly the main restrictions within the individual pattern related to all types of fascia
• To develop a sequence of three sessions that meets the client’s needs
• To master technique in such a way that allows communication with all the different types of connective tissue
• To apply technique in a way that is convincing to the client’s organism, using various modes of touch in a precise and efficient way

Peter Schwind has been working as a Rolfer in Munich since 1980. As an instructor he has taught basic classes since 1985. He assisted and cotaught several advanced classes since 1991 and was certified as an Advanced Instructor in 1999. Peter has shared his view of working with the human organism by writing several books. Recently his book "Fascial and Membrane Technique"(Churchill Livingstone/Elsevier)has been published in English. Peter`s special interest is to build a bridge between that, what he considers to be the "classical" approach of Structural Integration and new developments which came up during the last years.