In Memoriam: Dr. Jeffrey Maitland

Editor’s Note: To honor the legacy of Dr. Maitland, we have:

(1) A reprint of “The Tao of Rolfing” by Jeffrey Maitland, PhD, originally appearing in this publication, on page 1 of the 1990 May/June (volume 18, issue 2) when we were called Rolf Lines. (2) A collection of remembrances by colleagues: Jan H. Sultan, Michael Salveson, Peter Schwind, PhD, Pedro Prado, PhD, Tara Detwiler, and Russell Stolzoff. We extend our deepest condolences to LeeAnn Maitland, Jeff’s wife, his children, and all his extended family and friends.

The Tao of Rolfing^®

A free but respectful rendering of Chuang Tzu’s “Cutting Up An Ox” based on principles of Rolfing [Structural Integration].

By Jeffrey Maitland, PhD, Advanced Rolfing Instructor

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John’s Rolfer^® was demonstrating

His art on a volunteer from the audience.

Out went a hand,

Down went a shoulder,

He planted a foot,

He pressed with his fingers,

The volunteer’s body shuddered, softened, lengthened

And suddenly was integrated and at ease.

With a whisper,

The Rolfer’s fingers pulsated with the flesh,

Like a gentle breeze.

Rhythm! Timing!

Like a sacred dance

Like “The Mulberry Grove,”

Like Ancient harmonies!

“Good work!” John exclaimed.

“Your method is faultless!”

“Method?” said the Rolfer

His hands still in contact with the volunteer,

“What I follow is the Tao of Rolfing

Beyond all methods!

“When I first began

to Rolf

I would see before me

The whole body

All in one mass.


“After three years

I no longer saw this mass.

I saw the distinctions.

“But now, I see nothing

With the eye. My whole being

Apprehends.

My senses are idle. The spirit

Free to work without plan

Follows its own instinct

Guided by the natural Rolf lines,

By the secret opening, the hidden space,

My hands find their own way.

I press on no muscles, I scour no bones.

“A good bodyworker needs a vacation

Once a year – he [sic] works with great effort and large calluses.

A poor bodyworker needs a vacation

Every month – he [sic] mashes fascia with sweating, swollen hands.

“I am not a bodyworker

And I have Rolfed [sic] this way for nineteen years.

My hands have touched

Thousands of people.

Yet they are soft and subtle

Like a baby’s

Never do I feel pain or dis-ease.

“There are spaces in the body;

My fingers can be either fat or lean:

When this deftness

Finds that space

There is all the room you need!

It goes like a breeze!

Hence I have Rolfed [sic] this way
nineteen years

Free of calluses and all effort.

“True, there is sometimes

Tough tissue. I feel it coming,

I slow down, I watch closely,

Hold back, barely move my hands,

And whoosh! Something opens
and makes way

Gently flowing like a river.

“Then I withdraw my hands,

I stand still

And let the joy of the work

Sink in. I wash my hands

And my work is done.”

John said,

“This is it. My Rolfer has shown me

How I ought to live

My own life!”

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By Jan H. Sultan, Advanced Rolfing Instructor

I first met Jeff when he came into my Santa Fe, New Mexico practice for a ‘Ten Series’ in the mid-1970s. He was a lanky, tall man with a full head of very red hair and a bright mind. He told me he had a PhD in philosophy and a teaching post at Purdue University. He took to Rolfing^® [Structural Integration] like a duck to water. He always asked the right questions and integrated the work easily. Our work took place over two successive years when he would come to New Mexico for sessions at the Jemez Zen Center, which was about an hour and a half drive from Santa Fe. When I asked him what philosophers did, he was taken aback. It was a practical question, not a challenge, but I was curious. He said no one had ever asked him that before. We cracked up about that. I remember that in teaching him how to walk, we changed his gait from that of a thinker, to a do-er. We had fun and developed a good rapport. I even went to the Zen Center to visit him there, and to sit in meditation.

Some years later, Jeff showed up in a Rolfing Basic Training that I was teaching. I found that his hands were as good as his mind. As a more than competent rock and roll guitar player, he could dance. He had good dexterity and a sense of timing. Later, he gave up music to devote his time to being a Zen monk, philosopher, and Rolfer. [He became a Certified Rolfer in 1979.]. Over the years I knew him, he always studied philosophy, integrating Eastern and Western thinking into his understanding.

Fast forward – Jeff became an Advanced Rolfer in 1983 and, in 1988, was invited to join our faculty at the Rolf Institute^®. He joined my classes as a student teacher, and later, he and I taught together several times. He was fun and very clear in the classroom. As I had only a high school education, and he had a PhD, we had a lot of laughs about the mechanics of thinking. He accused me of being a closet philosopher. I asked him to keep it a secret. In retrospect, I can say that he taught me how to think more clearly.

Over the years, Jeff and I co-authored some articles, and he also published his independent thinking in the form of books and articles. His books combined his philosophy with a deepening study of the “nature of human bodily being.” His contributions were fundamental in organizing our thinking about the work. He created a ‘filing cabinet’ that made it possible to objectively study the work of Ida Rolf, PhD (1896-1979) and to organize the range of Rolf’s work into categories of effect, in order to understand it better.

As Jeff was first my client, then my student, my teacher, my colleague, and above all, my friend, I honor him and will hold him in my heart as long as I breathe.

Jan H. Sultan’s initial encounter with Dr. Rolf was in 1967 as her client. In 1969 he trained under her. In 1975, after assisting several classes, Rolf invited him to become an instructor. After further apprenticeship, she invited him to take on the Advanced Training. Over the next ten years, Sultan taught several Advanced Trainings with Peter Melchior, Emmett Hutchins, Michael Salveson, and other faculty members, collaborating on refinements to the Advanced Training. Sultan currently teaches Basic Trainings, continuing education, and Advanced Trainings for the Dr. Ida Rolf Institute and continuing education to the extended SI community. He feels strongly that his responsibility as an instructor goes beyond simply passing on what he was taught, but also includes the development of the ideas and methodology taught by Rolf.

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Jeffrey Maitland, Zen Philosopher of Rolfing® SI

By Michael Salveson, Advanced Rolfing Instructor

It is natural to understand Rolfing^® [Structural Integration (SI)] as a system of myofascial release and organization, as the physical body is so prominent in Dr. Rolf’s thinking. It can look like Rolfing [SI] is only about better posture and alignment in gravity. While Dr. Rolf’s system of manual therapy is based on the body’s ability to respond to mechanical influence, as emphasized by the title of her earliest monographs: “The Body is a Plastic Medium” (1962). Her teaching also leads to the insight that the body is intimately involved in the life of the psyche and in spiritual development. To speak cogently about this has been one of the most challenging aspects of Dr. Rolf’s work.

Jeffrey Maitland was one of our best at articulating this nuanced interaction of body, mind, and spirit. His book Spacious Body (1994) captured, in intimate detail, what it is like to live in a rolfed body¹, not just the physical freedom Rolfing [SI] can produce but the subjective sense of opening and spaciousness in the world. Jeff’s depth of knowledge and experience working with the insights of the phenomenologists’ devotion to direct experience opened an approach to understanding the immediacy of a lived life. This allowed him to articulate and teach in a way that led all of us to a greater certainty of the profundity of our work; the ways in which our work reaches beyond the physical into aspects of our clients’ consciousness.  

Jeff brought not just his training in philosophy to his work and understanding of Rolfing [SI], he also brought the depth of awareness of a long and disciplined practice of Zen Buddhism. I remember when he was ordained a Zen priest and shaved his head; having a bald head myself (and Jan Sultan too), we greeted his newly shaved head with enthusiasm. The shaved head was however an outer sign of Jeff’s progress in the ways of Zen and his time sitting on his cushion. His meditation practice gave him direct experience of the expansive possibilities of consciousness available to us and of the role physical organization and physical openness play in the development of this level of understanding. It is difficult to speak of subtleties in the development of awareness, and often all we can do is point to them and say, “There!” Jeff’s training in Zen Buddhism gave him a distinct capacity to do this, to point out the often ineffable aspects of our experience of being rolfed and in our practice of Rolfing [SI].

Philosophers think about things and Jeff was good at it. He was the first to formulate important conceptual structures that have shaped the way we think and talk about our work. His classification of the styles of laying hands on bodies as relaxing, therapeutic, and integrative (or wholistic) made clear that calling all of these modalities massage was inaccurate and confusing. His article, "Rolfing: A Third Paradigm Approach to Body-Structure" (1992) allowed us to clearly distinguish our work from the traditional category of massage. Together, with myself and Jan Sultan, Jeff was instrumental in formulating the schema of the domains of intervention that are now used extensively in the training of Rolfers. We needed Jeff’s conceptual ability to help us begin thinking about our work in systematic ways.

What is the measure of a man? It is, in my mind, the commitment to his path in life, the fealty to his passions, and the discipline in cultivating them. In all these ways, Jeff measured up.  

Endnote

1. “The rolfed body” was a common term used by the Rolf Institute faculty and graduates historically to describe people who had completed a Rolfing Ten Series and, therefore, had their bodies more organized in the gravitational field.

Michael Salveson was educated in philosophy and religion, trained as a Rolfer by Dr. Rolf in 1969, trained as an Advanced Rolfer in the first Advanced Training Rolf taught, and trained by Rolf to be one of the five instructors of Rolfing SI she trained in her lifetime. Michael was president of the then Rolf Institute (now Dr. Ida Rolf Institute) from 1978 to 1982. He has been a practitioner of Taoist chi gong for over thirty years.

References

Maitland, Jeffrey. 1994. Spacious body: Exploration in somatic ontology. Berkley, California: North Atlantic Books.

___. 1992. Rolfing: A third paradigm approach to body-structure. Rolf Lines Spring:46-69.

Rolf, Ida. 1962. The body is a plastic medium. Self-published.

By Peter Schwind, PhD, Advanced Rolfing^® Instructor

When I received the message that Jeff was no longer with us, I started to look for documents about the work we did together a long time ago. I found a few pictures and many notes. One picture shows both of us resting beside each other on the floor. This happened while coteaching an Advanced Training class in Europe many years ago. It was during a break. Students had left the classroom to have some tea or coffee. While the two of us rested on the floor, we had an intense conversation. At the same time, Jeff did profound work on my left elbow. In this moment, I got a physical understanding what Jeff had formulated in the title of one of his books. I felt my elbow as a spacious part of a Spacious Body (1994).

I realized that this one part of my organism is an expression of the entire physical being of the whole organism. Jeff helped me to begin to understand that bodywork can have – to use a fairly ‘big’ word – an ontological dimension. While our conversation guided us to silence, I realized that I had started a conversation with myself. Conversations with Myself is the title of the great American jazz musician Bill Evans’ album from 1963. The harmonies, melodies, and rhythms of this music became present in my mind and my physical being while Jeff worked on my elbow.

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After that experience, I remembered a statement Jim Asher [Advanced Rolfing Instructor, Emeritus] made about Jeff’s work. Jim said, “Jeff really has the hands to do this job.” This is certainly true. But what made Jeff’s way to do this work so meaningful for myself was his talent to put the practical application into an almost universal philosophical framework. I hope that I will be able to keep in mind what Jeff has taught me about the German poet Goethe. I hope I will never forget his critical comments about the German philosopher Hegel. And I also hope not to forget our dialogue about Heidegger.

And I wish that all of what Jeff has taught finds understanding in a new generation of structural integration colleagues. There is a lot to discover in his writings.

Peter Schwind, PhD is a Certified Advanced Rolfer^® and faculty with the European Rolfing^® Association e.V. He is the author of Fascial and Membrane Technique: A Manual for Comprehensive Treatment of the Connective Tissue System (2006) and The Croissant Inside the Brain (2018). Schwind became a Rolfer in 1980 after participating in basic classes with John Lodge and Jan Sultan. He did his Advanced Training with Emmett Hutchins (1949-2016) and Peter Melchior (1931-2005). Schwind has been building a bridge between osteopaths and the structural integration community for four decades.

Reference

Maitland, Jeffrey. 1994. Spacious body: Exploration in somatic ontology. Berkley, California: North Atlantic Books.

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By Pedro Prado, PhD, Advanced Rolfing Instructor, Rolf Movement^® Instructor

Jeff Maitland assisted Peter Melchior and Emmett Hutchins in my Advanced Rolfing Training in 1984 – forty years ago. Once he joined the Advanced Faculty in 1988, his connections with the other instructors – Jan Sultan and Michael Salveson – turned out to be a fruitful set of relationships for advancement of the work.

This encounter with Jeff during my Advanced Training left a deep impression on me, which continued to deepen throughout my career with the then Rolf Institute^® (now Dr. Ida Rolf Institute^®). We founded and served together in the FDRB (Faculty Development Review Board) for more than twenty-five years and members of the Advanced Faculty for more than twenty years.

Jeff understood and embraced Rolfing [Structural Integration] totally, as a way of living his personal and professional life. As a member of the Rolfing community, he was a loyal team player, a great teacher, and, as many will know, Jeffrey Maitland was a prolific writer of articles (1987a; 1987b; 1989; 1990a; 1990b; 1990c; 1991a; 1991b; 1992; 1993a; 1993b; 1995; 1996a; 1996b; 1997; 1999a; 1999b; 2000a; 2000b; 2000c; 2001b; 2003; 2004a; 2004b; 2005a; 2005b; 2005c; 2007; 2008; 2009a; 2009b; 2011; 2012; 2013; 2014a; 2014b; 2016b; Harvey and Newton 1992; Maitland and Sultan 1992; Salveson et al. 1994; Cottingham and Maitland 2000; Schrei et al. 2008; Hutton, Maitland, and Martine 2010; Maitland and Weidhaas 2017; Hoff and Maitland 2017a; Hoff and Maitland 2017b) and four books (1994; 2001a; 2010; 2016a). Taken together, his pedagogical discipline is a significant contribution to the framing and evolution of Rolfing [Structural Integration (SI)].

With his background as a philosophy professor at Purdue University, he found within the premises of Rolfing [SI] something that represented a way of being, more than just a technique or a simple methodology. His understanding of the Rolfing process was deep, essential, and multidimensional at the same time.

Jeff brought language and organization to the work’s conceptual framework. In an interview with Anne Hoff, he said, “Today, after having been involved with Rolfing SI for many years, I want to see more intellectual rigor and respect for logic because the conceptual understanding of Rolfing SI is every bit as important and powerful as the felt understanding of it” (Hoff and Maitland 2017b, 37-38).

Jeff elaborated on the concept of holism, present at the heart of Dr. Rolf’s work. He dissected it existentially and conceptually. Conceptually, as he defined it – structural integration is a third paradigm, an integrative approach to a holistic system (1993b, 1992). Existentially because, like Rolf, he described the unity of the body and the mind, he focused on the lived experience of both. Maitland highlighted our ultimate nature, the experience of the embodied self. With his words, he wove together the mystery of consciousness and the mystery of the body (2010), and he coined the meaningful term – somatic ontology (1994).

If one would take the time to review Maitland’s writings in Rolf Lines in the late 1980s and early 1990s, one will see the progression of how he conceptually worked towards creating a definition for the work – “Rolfing: A Third Paradigm Approach to Body-Structure” (1992). Working with Advanced Rolfing Instructors, Jan Sultan and Michael Salveson, they articulated its definition. Rolfing SI is the philosophy, science, and art of integrating human structures through manipulation and movement education (Maitland and Sultan 1992). By highlighting these domains, Jeff moved our profession forward. He had us all focusing on what needed to be considered in the development of Rolfing Structural Integration.

Jeff’s definition of the work has helped practitioners understand its domains and directions. He expressed his ideas with his students and in his writings, developing the work as time went on. He offered a practical application of his Rolfing definition, attesting that structural integration is equivalent to a functional economy by way of the Principles of Intervention (1993). And when it came to applying the definition, he organized several perspectives and existing assessment tools into useful categories called the taxonomies. They are a clear way to express the multidimensional nature of the work, congruent with its holistic premise. Born from his original ideas, we now teach the Rolfing taxonomies (geometric, biomechanical, functional, psychobiological, and energetic).

These taxonomies help the practitioner to understand the different domains and directions the work could take, and all of them have the capacity to address the structure. They foster the process of adaptation and organization of the human body in gravity, our ultimate goal. More than that, Maitland differentiated between strategies and tactics, where the former is a general term that plans out reaching a goal, and the latter is the specific sequences of events it will take to proceed towards the goal (Maitland 1993).

Maitland’s thinking about the conceptual organization of Rolfing work had broad effects; it gave birth to non-formulistic Rolfing sessions. He turned our science and art into a respectful and creative practice that has the potential of addressing the specificity, the uniqueness of all humans. This freed Rolfers from a standard protocol. And don’t get me wrong, Jeff loved the original protocol given by Rolf. But he, Sultan, and Salveson dispelled the misconception that Rolfing was only found within the Ten Series. The Ten Series is one way to deliver Rolfing Structural Integration but it is not the entire concept itself.

That’s why it was crucial for Jeff to extract the underlying thinking and definition of the work from Rolf’s Ten Series. He practically defined the Principles of Intervention (Maitland and Sultan 1992; Maitland 1991a), giving strategies and validated assessment tools for Rolfers to do the work. The Principles of Intervention have given us a structured way to think about and operationalize our inquiries about this work. Taken together, the Principles and the non-formulistic methods have served all of us learning the work who came after Maitland; his contribution allowed us space to understand the multidimensional nature of structural integration concretely.

And, all of Maitland’s work had embedded in it a focus on an existential, integrated experience. He suggested we apply the phenomenological approach to take us away from the dualism ever-present in our culture. People automatically think about cause and effect, the mind separate from the body, and the scientific experimental method of observing from the outside of the system. In a phenomenological approach, the description of the experience comes from each individual and their process, and their language that they bring to it. The first-person experience defines the phenomenon itself. That kind of thinking validated that Rolf was focused on what was happening within the client and the subsequent results. Therefore, Maitland gave us a path to follow where we could simultaneously slowly build the scientific evidence of Rolfing Structural Integration and enhance the process for each person with phenomenological-type language.

Rolfing Structural Integration is about the whole person, and, more than that, it is about the experience the person has of being in the world. It is easy to think the craft of delivering a Rolfing session is more of a doing practice. Maitland warned us against becoming a mechanical practice as the full understanding of Rolf’s work would be lost. By writing articles, Jeff made a frame for the ideas, he gave it a conceptual shape and differentiated the perspectives and levels of the work into a singular definition.

Jeff specified that the conceptual/intellectual level was as important as the sensorial aspect of the work. He would spur us to be more rigorous with our thinking. Through our experience, he’d urge us to create and find language to describe it. He often discussed the value of language and symbolism for understanding the practice of Rolfing Structural Integration. He encouraged all practitioners to undertake these assignments, to elevate their own experience, build the science of organizing in the gravitational field, and enhance the art of human beingness. He highlighted the pre-reflective moment of an experience, the period of time right before we have words for the experience, and the reflective experience, where a person does have the language to describe the moment. The passage between the pre-reflective moment and the reflective moment is crucial to the quality of the lived experience.

Jeff lived his talk. He had a profound understanding of the seeds planted by Dr. Rolf, and he fostered their growth and evolution. He watered the plant with disciplined thinking, specificity in language, and the evolution of the subsequence science of the work.

Through his written words, the courses he taught, and the sessions he gave, his legacy lives in our Rolfing practices, informed by his teachings. May it continue to help us serve our communities, offering understanding about our spacious bodies and fostering the evolution of Rolfing Structural Integration!

Thank you, Jeff.

Pedro Prado, PhD, of São Paulo, Brazil, is a member of the Rolfing^® faculty and the Rolf Movement^® faculty of the Dr. Ida Rolf Institute^®. In 1981, he became the first Certified Rolfer from Brazil and brought the work to Latin America. He was a founding member of Brazil’s regional Rolfing association, Associação Brasileira de Rolfing (ABR). As well as being a clinical psychologist, Prado is a Somatic Experiencing^® International Instructor.

References

Cottingham, John T. and Jeffrey Maitland. 2000. Integrating holistic manual and movement therapy with philosophical counseling. Rolf Lines 28(3):10-22.

Harvey, Bill, and Aline Newton. 1992. In profile . . . Jeffrey Maitland. Rolf Lines 20(2):1-9.

Hoff, Anne, and Jeffrey Maitland. 2017a. Letting ‘what is’ show itself: Jeffrey Maitland on mind, zen, and energy work. Structural Integration 45(2):40-43.

___. 2017b. The mystery of consciousness is the mystery of the body. Structural Integration 45(3):36-38.

Hutton, Mark, Jeffrey Maitland, and Jonathan Martine. 2010. The low-level cold laser as an adjunct to Rolfing Structural Integration. Structural Integration 38(1):26-31.

Maitland, Jeffrey. 2016a. Embodied being: The philosophical roots of manual therapy. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books.

___. 2016b. Embodied being: The philosophical roots of manual therapy – book excerpt. Structural Integration 44(1):20-24.

___. 2014a. The being of Rolfing SI. Structural Integration 42(1):33-40.

___. 2014b. Seeing. Structural Integration 42(2):24-32.

___. 2013. Who moves? Structural Integration 41(1):40-44.

___. 2012. Conceptual housekeeping. Structural Integration 40(2):39-43.

___. 2011. Ask the faculty: The advanced faculty on the nature of Rolfing SI. Structural Integration 39(2):2.

___. 2010. Mind body zen: Waking up to your life. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books.

___. 2009a. Getting it. Structural Integration 37(2):34-37.

___. 2009b. Patterns that perpetuate themselves. Structural Integration 37(3):23-30.

___. 2008. The disclosive power of feeling. Structural Integration 36(2):8-13.

___. 2007. Zen and the art of healing. Structural Integration 35(2):21-25.

___. 2005a. Advanced training. Structural Integration 33(2):27-28.

___. 2005b. The use and abuse of biodynamics. Structural Integration 33(4):16-19.

___. 2005c. The allowing-will. Structural Integration 33(4):20-29.

___. 2004a. The too-good-to-be-true machine: Integrating the low level cold laser into Rolfing. Structural Integration 32(1):6-11.

___. 2004b. Laser love in the third paradigm. Structural Integration 32(2):29-34.

___. 2003. Thinking about thinking about the core. Structural Integration 31(2):19-23.

___. 2001a. Spinal manipulation made simple: A manual of soft tissue techniques. Berkely, CA: North Atlantic Books.

___. 2001b. Orthoropism and the unbinding of morphological potential. Rolf Lines 29(1):15-23.

___. 2000a. The backbone of structural integration. Rolf Lines 28(1):18-21.

___. 2000b. Meaning and grounds: A reply to Robert Schleip’s “Walking on solid and less solid ground”. Rolf Lines 28(4):26-28.

___. 2000c. Another spin on rotation: A reply to Steph Paré. Rolf Lines 28(4):38-41.

___. 1999a. Radical somatics and philosophical counseling. Rolf Lines 27(2):29-40.

___. 1999b. Perception and the cognitive theory of life: Or how did matter become conscious of itself? Rolf Lines 17(4):5-13.

___. 1997. Conceptual drift and the erosion of thought. Rolf Lines 25(3):24-32.

___. 1996a. Moving toward our evolutionary potential. Rolf Lines 24(2):5-24.

___. 1996b. Eschew obfuscation. Rolf Lines 24(4):37-38.

___. 1995. What’s in a name? Rolf Lines 23(4):11-24.

___. 1994. Spacious body: Explorations in somatic ontology. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books.

___. 1993a. Rethinking the c-position. Rolf Lines 21(1):60-72.

___. 1993b. Das boot. Rolf Lines 21(2):1-7.

___. 1992. Rolfing: A third paradigm approach to body-structure. Rolf Lines 20(2):46-49

___. 1991a. The palintonic lines of Rolfing. Rolf Lines 19(1):1-2,43-49.

___. 1991b. What is the recipe? Rolf Lines 19(3):1-5.

___. 1990a. Rolfing by the rules. Rolf Lines 18(1):10-12.

___. 1990b. The Tao of Rolfing. Rolf Lines 18(2):1.

___. 1990c. What is metaphysics? Rolf Lines 18(3):6-9.

___. 1989. Rolfing and pregnancy. Rolf Lines 17(2):21.

___. 1987a. Stress-reduction speaks to media. Rolf Lines 15(6):21-22.

___. 1987b. Explorations. Rolf Lines 15(6):24.

Maitland, Jeffrey and Jan Sultan. 1992. Definition and principles of Rolfing. Rolf Lines 20(2):16-20.

Maitland, Jeffrey, and Deborah Weidhaas. 2017a. The felt capacity to do work: Working with energy. Structural Integration 45(2):10-12.

Salveson, Michael, Peter Levine, Jeffrey Maitland, Peter Schwind, and Jan Sultan. 1994. Core structure and function: A symposium. Rolf Lines 22(1):26-37.

Schrei, Bob, Ray McCall, Jeffrey Maitland, and Duffy Allen. 2007. What did Dr. Rolf want? Structural Integration 36(1):35-38.

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By Tara Detwiler, Certified Advanced Rolfer, Rolf Movement Practitioner

A Note of Appreciation for Jeffrey Maitland, PhD, From a Student

W hen I got the news on New Year’s Eve about Jeff’s passing, I was struck by a deep desire to honor him by sharing my experience as his student and acknowledging the meaningful impact he had on me and my Rolfing career.

I met Jeff in the fall of 1998 during the auditing phase of my Basic Rolfing Training. It was the first class Jeff taught and he co-taught with Gale Rosewood. They apparently flipped a coin to see who would take the lead and Jeff won. Having previously been a professor of philosophy at Purdue University, he had a highly developed capacity for discourse. I tried my best to follow his compelling trains of thought.

I was a young, shy, and reserved Canadian. One day I mustered up the courage to ask what I thought was an intelligent question. Jeff told me I was coming from my head. I burst into tears and was quite frustrated. How else was I to learn if I didn’t use my mind? This was the beginning of my embodiment training, and me finding the distinctions between being in my head or my whole self. Jeff was not being unkind; he knew what was needed and met the teaching moment. The depth and breadth of his teaching abilities were evident, and it often took me a long time to integrate. He repeatedly quoted Kant, saying principles without intuition are empty, and intuition without principles are blind.

There was a model in the class who I had an issue with, and although he was not my model and I only spoke to him a few times, Jeff noticed and approached me. He challenged me by reflecting on an aspect of myself where I was absent and called my attention to it. I was not accustomed to this kind of education. I remember Jeff taught us that the root meaning of the word “educate” is educere, or ‘to draw out what is within’. Many of Jeff’s teachings were like this – challenges to bring my full self and to reflect on where I was blocked.

I saw that Jeff cared about his students and he seemed to have a tireless passion for teaching. He brought his philosophical expertise, such as his love for etymology, to deepen Rolfing teachings by expanding our understanding of words and their meanings. His dedicated Zen practice shone through in his intuitive, no-nonsense approach and straightforward manner. Once at a class party, I made fun of Jeff, and without taking it personally, he looked at me and said, “Ouch, that hurts.” I immediately became aware and was stopped in my tracks. His response was clear and without judgment. I often felt like he was setting us up to hit the mark and yet the mark was not something outside of ourselves but an inner alignment. I was inspired by the rigor and discipline that came through in his teaching and writing.

Ten years later, in 1998 I did my Advanced Training with Jeff and Bill Smythe. They focused on the non-formulistic approach, supporting each of us to explore the unique way in which we each perceived while body reading our clients. Once, when I stood in front of my model, I felt nauseous. Later, through dialogue with that client, I learned they had a history of bulimia. I began to trust what I sensed in my own body.

Jeff also taught spinal mechanics and joint articulation techniques to test and treat joints. I saw a parallel between his mastery of clearly articulated thoughts and the manipulation of joints (articular surfaces) that, when moving well, create coherent expressions in a balanced structure. I watched how his hands, words, and presence worked with his model. He demonstrated coherence throughout.

During my Advanced Training, Jeff again noticed my struggle and, in a simple yet profound way, took me aside and told me something I didn’t know I needed to hear until I heard it. What he told me gave me the confidence I needed to value my work. He was a fun teacher, sometimes with bad jokes that would break the ice of a tense or awkward moment. He was professional and clear, kind and not sentimental.

Jeff did a great deal for the Rolfing community. He raised our bar professionally with his standards for writing and research. He encouraged faculty to pursue post-graduate work. Jeff made the non-formulistic approach accessible by naming the principles and taxonomies of our work. He wrote books and articles, he continuously put out material to inspire us all to think for ourselves. He coined the three questions: “What do I do first?”; “What do I do next?”; and “How do I know when I’m done?” I use these every week in my practice and appreciate how they highlight impressions and open my field of inquiry.

Once, Jeff offered me to come to Phoenix, Arizona to assist him in a workshop he was teaching so that I could see how others learn. I was being too hard on myself in my learning approach. He thought this might shift my perspective. Again, it took me years to see what he was saying. All of these lessons went deep and have stayed with me. He invited me to join the Faculty Development Review Board for several years. Initially, I felt intimidated by the committee participants. And Jeff encouraged me by pointing out that I was a good listener and often brought points of view that were missed.

Jeff was generous and prolific in his exploration and energy to articulate what he knew. Once, I asked him what was the most important thing to him in his life. He said something like reaching his potential. He seemed to be reaching and meeting his potential all the time. He mastered the principles and had a great depth of intuition. In fact, as I write this, I feel him with me, telling me to go ahead and keep writing.

The last time I saw Jeff was in the fall of 2016. I was at the end of a short trip in Tucson, Arizona, and I called him up to say I was passing through Phoenix and did he have time for a visit. He was so welcoming, and made time for my partner and I. It was important to me to let him know that he had made a big difference in my life by the way he taught and supported me. Always curious, he asked how my practice was evolving. Jeff was honest about the difficulty of living with Parkinsons. He shared some photography that he had been doing and his new book. In that short visit, I felt very seen and met. I am very grateful to have been a student of Jeff’s. He was supportive of women, having raised three daughters with his lovely LeeAnn Maitland. Occasionally, I asked him for paternal counsel and valued his responses. He was present and forthright, and I always felt he cared deeply.

I remember consulting Jeff about some difficult clients where I was using my skills to no avail. He named, humorously, that some client tissue is like concrete and it’s limiting to what we can do. That helped me to not waste subtle skills where they were not effective. The Advanced Training freed up the way I practice, empowering me to trust my creative, intuitive approach. Jeff wanted me to succeed in doing my best quality work and that had lasting value. Now, with thirty-five years of Rolfing practice, I look back and feel very fortunate for all that Jeff taught me. His words and way of being have stayed with me all these years in my Rolfing room and beyond. I miss him very much!

Tara Detwiler did her Phase I Rolfing Basic Training with Dr. Jeffrey Maitland and former Rolfing Instructor Gael Rosewood in 1988 and her Phase II with Peter Melchior and Advanced Rolfing Instructor Pedro Prado in 1989. She became a Certified Advanced Rolfer in 1998 by studying with Maitland and former Advanced Rolfing Instructor, Bill Symthe. Detwiler became a Rolf Movement Practitioner in 1995, studying with Rolf Movement Instructors Jane Harrington and Vivian Jaye. She completed her Somatic Experiencing^® Training in 2015. Detwiler lives and works in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

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By Russell Stolzoff, Advanced Rolfing Instructor

Jeff was my first Rolfing Instructor. I was in his first class, which was held at the Golden Buff Motel in 1987. Emmett Hutchins was teaching down at Third and Pearl in what would be his last Rolf Institute^® class. We used to have fun parties at Emmett’s. One day, Jeff took us on a field trip to Emmett’s class where we heard his lecture on the Ten Series and astrology. There were ten women in our class and I was the only male student. So, Jeff and I were the only guys in the class. Jeff couldn’t get over the fact that I was taller than him. He brought it up all the time, especially when we passed or stood close to one another. He always mentioned it with a chuckle. I never understood his amusement.

I remember being intimidated by his superior intellect and his philosophical way of teaching. He never meant to intimidate. But as a young, naïve student, I knew I was in over my head. Nevertheless, I like how he lectured and demonstrated. He was kind, relaxed, and helpful to all the students. He was the first person to introduce me to phenomenology, and how the concepts of reflective and pre-reflective states were germane to a practitioner’s experience. Some of the things he said I always remember and repeat to others, like, “Don’t push the stars, change the sky,” and “Freedom is the creative appropriation of limitation.”

I am grateful to Jeff for his role in rescuing Rolfing [Structural Integration (SI)] from the confines of a formula. When I trained, if you didn’t do Rolf’s Recipe, you weren’t doing Rolfing [SI]. Jeff, along with other Advanced Instructors, was instrumental in helping us see that Rolfing Structural Integration is a holistic discipline comprised of constituent principles and rules that can be creatively appropriated as long as it adheres to its principles. Without Jeff’s philosophical mind and academic know-how, our discipline would be in a very different place today. Without a doubt, today’s curriculum rests on work that Jeff did to define, clarify, and make distinctions within Rolfing [SI] and between Rolfing [SI] and other disciplines.

Jeff was always generous with me. Once, he offered to edit a magazine cover article I was writing and made it clear that I could accept or reject any of his suggestions. Another time, when I began Rolfing professional athletes, Jeff, drawing on his own work with the Phoenix Suns, lent his credibility to my new endeavor. Later, he complimented me on one of my promotional videos he happened to see. I always felt validated and supported by Jeff.

The last time I was with Jeff in person was at a gathering of instructors in Phoenix, Arizona, where we came together to explore the energetic taxonomy. Luckily, I received two energetic sessions from Jeff. One was hands-on, and the other was a hands-off session. I wasn’t then, and still am not sure what happened in those sessions, but I do remember feeling his presence and his positive intention. I feel sad that he will not be with us as we continue to explore the topic that, in the end, seemed to be closest to his heart. But then again, maybe he always will be.

Russell Stolzoff first encountered Rolfing Structural Integration as a classroom client at the Rolf Institute in 1983. The energy and freedom it brought inspired him to train as a Rolfer. He completed his training in 1989 and his advanced certification in 1997. Stolzoff augmented his Rolfing training with studies in trauma via Somatic Experiencing^® and in somatic developmental psychology at the Bodynamic Institute of Denmark. Stolzoff was a teaching assistant for Rolfing training in 2000, became a faculty member in 2002, and became part of the Advanced Training Faculty in 2017. He is actively involved in research, is a past Chair of the faculty’s Executive Education Committee, and is a past member of the Institute’s Board of Directors.

Keywords

Jeffrey Maitland; Tao of Rolfing; nature of human bodily being; Rolfing instruction; phenomenology; philosophy; Zen Buddhism; third paradigm; elbow; somatic ontology; holism; Principles of Intervention; taxonomies; Ten Series; non-formulistic; pre-reflective; intuition; Advanced Training; energetic taxon.