ABSTRACT Author Briah Anson speaks about her forty-five-year career as a Certified Advanced Rolfer and Rolf Movement Practitioner. Lina Amy Hack interviews Anson about her 2023 second edition of Rolfing®: Stories of Personal Empowerment. Anson is passionate about getting the word out to the general public about the health and vitality that people experience after having Rolf’s work. Her books feature how she has been able to support the growth and recovery of people of all ages, from infancy to older adulthood. Also, her love of animals led her to develop an expertise in working with animals of all kinds, including horses, dogs, birds (wild and domestic), and one cougar named Brent.
“Admonition for 1977”
The following quote appears opposite the table of contents of the first edition of Rolfing®: The Integration of Human Structures (Rolf 1977). It was capitalized in the original; otherwise, nothing has been changed.
“Do not believe in anything merely because it is said, nor in traditions because they have been handed down from antiquity: nor in rumors as such: nor in writings by sages because sages wrote them: nor in fancies that we may suspect to have been inspired in us by a deva: nor in inferences drawn from some haphazard assumption we have had made: nor in what seems to be an analogical necessity: nor in the mere authority of our teachers and masters.
Believe when the writing, doctrine, or saying is corroborated by reason and consciousness.
Gautama Buddha”
The Interview
Lina Amy Hack: Thank you for meeting with me Briah; I’ve asked you to talk with me about your career as a Rolfer and your books, most recently the second edition of Rolfing®: Stories of Personal Empowerment (2023). To start, you wanted the “Admonition for 1977” to preface this article from Dr. Ida Rolf [PhD, (1896-1979)], her first edition book, that you have. Admonition is an old word; I had to look it up for its precise definition. According to Merriam-Webster.com, it means (1) a gentle or friendly reproof, criticism for a fault, and (2) counsel or warning against fault or oversight.
Why is that so meaningful for you, and why start our article with it?
Briah Anson: Hearing you say it like that, the word admonition has a stronger tone than I would intend. I think of it as a guiding principle; which meant so much to me when I first read it, and it still means a lot to me almost fifty years later. How do we know what we know? I got Rolf’s first book (1977) right when it came out, in my hands in 1978 when I was doing my Rolfing® training at the Rolf Institute® [now the Dr. Ida Rolf Institute® (DIRI)]. I have the original book, and the first printing has this “Admonition for 1977.” I want to point out that it wasn’t in the second edition, an omission for some reason, that Rolf had wanted to be included in her first edition. I wanted to share that piece of Rolf here. The words are sitting on top of a picture of the Buddha in that book and she put that in there for a reason.
Everything she put in this book was intentional. Everything Rolf did was intentional. The woman was a scientist and a researcher who studied the power of language and how important it is to examine the words we use to explain things. And I want people to know she chose to have this epigraph-type note in her first edition book for Rolfers to think about for a reason.
As Rolfers, we apply reason and consciousness to observing with our eyes and whole being what is happening for our clients. We ask questions in our minds about the process they are in. What is happening between this session and the next session? How does a series unfold for each individual? And then, you have the stories these people are living, the experience they have invited us into. How has our work impacted them on every level? Ida was very clear to say that there is no difference between good structural and physiological health and good mental/emotional change. They’re one and the same. One reflects the other. This is the dialogue we are having with our clients about their bodies and lives over the years.
LAH: That’s good insight. Is that what drove you to write your books about stories of clients’ experiences of Rolfing Structural Integration?
BA: In a sense, the book and getting the stories from the clients is a way to get at the truth of how this work is impacting their lives. It is difficult to study all that is happening in a Rolfing session. The latest research on fascia is confirming the fact that when I touch my client, that touch truly contacts all of them, and at the same time, that simple touch is touching all of me. This book gets into the power of story and how people’s lives have been changed by the Rolfing process. That has always fascinated me. These stories need to be told. That is where the power of this work really lies: in the voices of our clients.
People should know that the 2023 printing of my book is a second edition of the 1991 version of Rolfing: Stories of Personal Empowerment. What’s great about this new edition is everything about it is fresh. I had to recreate the entire text of the 1991 book to produce this one, everything was retyped. Every original photo from 1991 had to be tracked down and prepared for publication, as well as getting new ones added to the book. The design of the book was made easier to read and laid out with more space and larger print. A new cover was designed as well.
Just like Ida, I structured my book very intentionally. There are quotes by Rolf, which I see as her voice speaking to us through the ages, and then there are stories that reflect the wisdom held within those quotes. Part of my guiding principles for this book include asking the question – What did Ida think about that? In many places, I have written my analysis of the before and after photos, but otherwise, the stories are told by the people who experienced the work. And really, this is about demonstrating Rolf’s principles; the work comes alive through the stories of people who experience Rolfing Structural Integration. That’s what this book is about.
LAH: You became a Rolfer in the late 1970s. Do you think some of Rolf’s original ways are getting lost five decades later?
BA: I know that every generation has to find their own way into healing with Rolfing work. Ida was the only person during her time who was around all systems working with the body (be it chiropractic, osteopathy, cranial osteopathy, and physical therapy). Ida recognized the fascial system as the primary component that we worked with systematically throughout the body. I even remember Emmett Hutchins (1934-2016) talking about how Ida saw the fascial system as being the forgotten organ of the body. It is, in fact, the interconnecting organ of the entire body. What we are doing is preparing the body to receive healing from the gravitational field. Rolfers are educators and gravity is the therapist, this is what Rolf taught us.
Ida understood the relationship between structure and function really well, and that is why Judith Aston [studied with Rolf, founder of Aston Kinetics™] came in right from the beginning. Ida brought her on to develop the movement work along with the structural work of Rolfing Structural Integration.
As Ida would be apt to say, no matter what belly ache people come in with, we take them through the Rolfing series. The ‘Ten Series’ is such an amazing container (structure) for understanding the progression of how we evoke the blueprint that already exists in the body. Ida understood where we are headed in evolution and she revealed that through the Rolfing Ten Series.
It feels like we are midwives, trying to raise the consciousness and the potential of the human being. Rolf wrote in her final years about the importance of addressing the question of what the human potential is and how it relates to organizing the structure of the human body in gravity.
I wonder what original requirements for admissions to DIRI are getting lost over the years. When I applied to the then Rolf Institute, I had to have several hundred hours of massage training. From Minnesota, I went to New York to learn Swedish massage. Then, for a year, I did massage, and I called my massage – structural massage. Ida wanted people to be at least twenty-five years of age and to have done a lot of their own psychological work. Where has that gone? Are Rolfers still engaged in doing self-development work? Rolf recognized how important it is for us to do our own work.
When I started, I was the only Rolfer in Missouri in 1979. I didn’t have other colleagues to talk to. I had a Polaroid camera to take photos after every single one of my sessions, as taught by the early Rolfing teachers at the Rolf Institute. This was more typical in those days as a way to get visual feedback and to train my eyes to see the changes from session to session through the Ten Series. She gave us theoretical principles written in her original book from 1977, Rolfing: The Integration of Human Structures. She also laid out a very clear understanding of anatomy as applied to the structure and the Ten Series.
I have been so inspired by reading books about Ida and her ideas about structure and life. I am hoping other Rolfers will be inspired to read and watch videos about her work. The scope and depth of her knowledge were so expansive as a scientist, she was always investigating what contributed to healing. For instance, she knew the founders of humanistic movements, other scientists, and inventors [like American inventor Raymond Royal Rife (1888-1971)] as well as mystics and highly intuitive readers and healers. She would talk about clients who had worked on their psychological and spiritual blocks; they were much easier to work on as their bodies and minds were so fluid and less dense already because they did not have the other mental/emotional armor or blockages in the way.
LAH: What years did you do your Rolfing training?
BA: I started in 1977 and finished in 1979. I feel that I’ve had two major mentors in my life, and one is Ida Rolf. I only ever saw her once, but all these things that I learned through her teachers, the books, are imbued with her spirit. I have an oil portrait of Dr. Rolf painted by a famous world artist and it feels like she talks to me. My clients also feel quite inspired by this portrait. It’s like, once I read Rolf’s works and writings, it feels like she’s been my mentor my whole life.
Emmett Hutchins, Peter Melchior, and Stacey Mills were my main instructors.1
LAH: What do you want our readership to know about this second edition of Rolfing stories?
BA: The first edition came out thirty-four years ago. This second edition is to introduce practitioners to the book and to have a wider distribution in the world. And I want Rolfers to have this book as a resource. How often do Rolfers get a client wanting to explain the work to a friend? This book has 106 stories of people they might be able to relate to.
In this book, you start to see there are themes that consistently run through the stories of different people who were my clients. It exposes many facets of their physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual transformations as they go through the Rolfing Ten Series.
When I’m working with my clients, I ask them about their dreams. I want to know what they would like their life to look like. Because, when people start having limitations in structure, they start limiting what their life can look like. They may not move too much as a result. So I ask them, if you could have your health and your vitality, what would you like to be doing as you age? Instead of limitation, in their bodies and lives, Rolfing [Structural Integration] offers an opportunity to have a more open body and mind and live with more vitality and well-being. The people’s stories in my book have had this experience.
I wish the good news about Rolfing [Structural Integration] could get out there more widely. This book is a passion project, not a money-making project. I know that it’s the power of story that gets people motivated to try this work, to tell other people about their experiences.
LAH: What inspired you to have the first stories in the book be the clients who are mothers, babies, and children?
BA: I structured the book to follow the human lifespan, starting at the beginning with mothers and children. There’s also a ninety-year-old who tells their story.
My next book, on vital aging with Rolfing Structural Integration, will have the story of a hundred-and-two-year-old client. I will be dedicating the book to her and my mother, both avid golfers. The one-hundred-and-two-year-old client is still at it. I played golf with her last October. After my mother became disabled at age sixty, she consented to having Rolfing sessions with me, and she went on to play competitive golf until the age of ninety-nine.
LAH: That’s the dream when it comes to aging, doing what we want and doing it easily.
My background is in social sciences, where typically, it is the researcher who writes the story about the subject. In your book, it is written in the first-person point of view. How did you do that? What led you to choose to have the client’s story in the first person, in their own voice?
BA: To get at the integrity of the story, it is best told by the person who experienced it, not filtered through my perception of what happened to them. I think that when another person starts to speak for another, a lot of assumptions are made.
Of course, I have my notes from my sessions with my clients, but that wasn’t the story I wanted to tell. I felt it was more important to hear my clients’ lived experiences in their own words. I had the before-and-after photographs of the work we did together. And that’s another thing I want people to know about this book – it is full of documentary proof. Side by side, I have many before and after pictures, and the person themselves talking about their experience. You can see for yourself the changes in their face, the changes in their structure; some people ended up going from looking immature to mature and then to balance. All of that is visible in the book.
LAH: Do you have a standardized way of inviting the client to stand? Do you always say the exact same words?
BA: I do. I got my procedure for taking the photos from Emmett, which was from Ida. I say, “Just stand with your feet just a little bit apart. Stand with what feels like your optimal potential without forcing anything, and take an easy breath.” And I say at the end, “I’m going to ask you to do it the same way after.” So, at the end of the Rolfing Ten Series, they don’t think – I was slumping at the beginning and I want to be different now. That procedure teaches the client a centered way to stand, and when they return to that centered place for their photos, they will come to know that their changes are happening and they are gradual.
I had a woman come in for a session the other day, she’s been working with her doctor for three years, and they noticed she had lost three inches of height. But since working with me, her height is two inches taller. She’s in her sixties, so she’s surprised to have her height increasing. So, I reminded her she had some scoliosis, and she collapsed into her structure. We’ve been putting length in, and gravity awareness has been supporting that. As Rolfers, we always have to be good teachers with our clients. We need to transmit these principles of understanding to our clients. Ida laid that out for us to do so beautifully. I feel fortunate to study with some of the first people she picked to teach this work.
LAH: Who were your instructors?
BA: My auditing phase [equivalent to Phase II at DIRI] was with Jan Sultan [Advanced Rolfing Instructor] and Tom Wing [Certified Advanced Rolfer, Rolf Movement® Practitioner]. My practitioner phase [equivalent to Phase III at DIRI] was with Emmett Hutchins and Peter Melchior. And my Advanced Training was with Peter and Emmett. I also learned a lot from many people after that.
I learned a lot from Stacy Mills, who was trained by Ida and started teaching Rolfing [Structural Integration] in 1980. She introduced the feminine principle into the Rolfing work. After she started teaching, we started seeing a lot more women become Rolfers.
She collaborated with Peter and Emmett at several six-day workshops I attended. I then brought her to Kansas City, Missouri, where I was practicing to conduct several workshops. I also went to Hawaii where she practiced. I worked with her for a week at a time, a couple of times. It was from watching her work and being mentored by her that I became quite comfortable working with young children and babies with various types of structural issues.
Stacy was masterful at working with great intention and waiting for the person’s structure to release. The changes she was able to evoke were great, and she was able to do them with ease and finesse. This is what I call the feminine principle: not entering the tissue aggressively, which had given Rolfing work a bad reputation for being painful.
LAH: That is a compelling piece of the history of this work.
BA: You don’t really have to beat up the body to get significant results. Stacey would bring out a glass of water; it was half full, and she’d put her hand in the water quickly and then repeat by slowly putting her hand in the water. She’d say, “You can enter the tissues fast and make a big mess or enter slowly, and you could go in very deep and not upset anything.” She had these different ways to go about teaching people about how to work deeply or how to work deep with your intention.
And, of course, movement work has been very meaningful for me. I trained with Vivian Jaye and Jane Harrington [Rolf Movement® Instructor, Emeritus]. I got some work from Heather Starsong [Certified Advanced Rolfer, former Rolf Movement instructor] as part of my requirements for becoming a Rolfer. And then also Janie French [Rolf Movement® Instructor (1939-2001)] from Texas, I had profound experiences and a deep understanding resulting from getting movement training with all of these people. I studied with Judith Aston a few years ago. She’s brilliant. I also studied and received my movement certification from Hubert Goddard (French Advanced Rolfer, faculty with the European Rolfing Association) in a course they called Function and the Line (2001). That was in Brazil with mostly Brazilian Rolfers, which was a great cultural experience.
LAH: In your book, you include stories from performing artists and athletes. How did these clients find you?
BA: One person came for a session, and then started telling other dancers about it, and pretty soon, I did Rolfing work with the whole dance company. Pretty soon after that, I became the company Rolfer, and then I was chosen to be on their board. When one comes, that leads to the other. For example, internationally renowned pianist Richard Cass [professor of piano at the Kansas City Conservatory, University of Missouri, (1931-2009)]. His student came to see me, then another, and eventually, he came for some work. And his story is in the book.
And then, of course, he became such a fan of this work, and we developed a working relationship. It was wonderful; I ended up getting many graduate students in piano and voice performance from the University of Missouri-Kansas City. One of them was Patricia Johnson; her story is in the book. She ended up going to the Metropolitan Opera in New York City and performing opera all over the world. She gained another octave in her voice after her Rolfing Ten Series. She was a coloratura soprano; she was amazing and really into healing. She saw music as a way to heal people – think about that – she was talking about this in the late 1980s. I was so fortunate that I was in the community where one and then another of these students would come to my practice.
LAH: Your passion for this work draws people in, and your vibrant personality is fun to be around.
BA: I feel passionate about Dr. Rolf and the work – the potential is great. That’s what called out to me, this idea of – what is the human potential? My whole purpose is, how do I, in the most efficient way possible, help to eliminate suffering in the world and bring joy to one person at a time? I believe that is where the greatest change can happen and it’s certainly consistent with my practice as a Buddhist for the past fifty-one years.
For me, this profession of Rolfing [Structural Integration] is that. In 2024 at the age of seventy-eight, I have no plans of retiring. I’ve cut down a little bit on my work so I can have more time for self-care and golf. I have two other books I hope to eventually publish.
LAH: My passion for being a Rolfer was tested when I did my psychology honors degree. Other measures of our work became more compelling for me. And, hearing you talk about your book, I feel I must admit, I don’t do before-and-after pictures. I can’t say conclusively that I’m creating a standardized way to take those pictures in my office. My professors were skeptical and critical of before-and-after pictures as evidence; they’d point out that clients can become performative to please the practitioner in the after photo.
BA: Let me tell you a story that pops to mind as I listen. One of my clients is a freshman in college, and she just got a full scholarship to play hockey. When she first came to me, her legs were really bowed. We finished her Ten Series last summer. Took photos. Legs were a lot less bowed. Everyone can see that with their own eyes. Then I saw a photo of her recently. She’s wearing shorts, and I could see how much those legs have continued to straighten out – that’s the power of photos. All her friends and family see this and have commented on her legs being straighter!
Photos are great feedback for the clients to have and reflect on. In them, you can see what Ida wrote about, not only is this work permanent, it’s progressive, and it’s the gravity field that organizes you. When people come back after six months since their last session, I’ll take the photos and show them – they look more structurally aligned. That’s evidence. I think it’s powerful.
I’m a visual person and the photos help the clients see themselves accurately. They set their own goals based on what they feel and see; they want to lessen curvatures, and they want to feel and appear straighter. So why not take those pictures and have those conversations? It’s a useful piece of documentary evidence.
Stories (2023). Photo courtesy of Briah Anson.
LAH: It sounds like you have a solid and reliable system for taking photos. You’ve inspired me to think more deeply about that and my practice.
BA: You can focus on self-report things, they’ll say they have a lot less pain in their back. But if you also have the photos over time, the practitioner and the client can both look to see what they see. Maybe their pelvis isn’t as tilted. Maybe they don’t have that big zig-zag profile going on.
We have to help our clients by educating them about their structure, to see their structure, and to feel their function hand in hand. The photos reveal their progress. At the tenth session, that’s not the end of the story. That’s really just the beginning.
LAH: Tell us about your background, what were you doing before being a Rolfer.
BA: My background includes a lot of interest in and study of the human potential movement. This includes practice and training in Gestalt psychotherapy, hypnotherapy, Ericksonian work, Groff Breathwork, and continue to explore innovative approaches to health and healing. Before that, I was an elite athlete and dancer.
Ida would talk about athletes needing this work so their whole body can perform at their highest level. Recently, I was doing the second session with a client of mine; he had this classic presentation where, from the knees down, his structural development is different from the rest of his body. When I looked at this young man who was thirty-six, from the knees down, his lower legs looked like those of a little kid. That second hour was all about unwinding his legs. On one hand, he’s this incredible athlete, and then his lower legs looked like those of a young child.
So I said to him, “Did anything happen around the age of ten?” “Yes,” was his answer. His older brother had committed suicide when he was ten. There it is. Throughout our work, he was able to release some of the holding left over from that time. It gets stuck in the structure. Ida saw that all the time. She would talk about how we get someone to be more mature in their body.
We are helping people to make the connection between their chronic complaints and issues while helping them to access more organization in their structure. They tend to have less pain and access more creativity and energy. They find their way in the world. This is another thing I love about this work. I’ve been able to work with kids that were brought into my office for a problem, working with them, they grow and find their way. That’s real maturity when the body is included in the process.
LAH: How did your path lead you to doing Rolfing work with animals, wild animals even?
BA: I’ve always loved animals. I got that love from my father. You’ll see that in my animal healing book (Anson 2011), I dedicated the book to my father and his dog Mac, who saved his life when he was four years old. One day, my father and his sister strayed from home with Mac, Mac. Drawn to a good-sized canal that was flowing quite fast due to the early spring snowmelt from the mountains, my dad ventured to the edge of the canal, which has a deep drop off. The ground gave in and he slipped into the water. Mac instantly went to the edge and grabbed him by his suspenders and held his head above the water, saving his life while his sister ran to find help. I think that’s where my dad developed his love of dogs. I’ve just always had his love of animals, and then I ended up having dogs, horses, a cat, and a bird.
LAH: You are known for doing Rolfing work with animals and having profound results for the animals.
BA: I grew up in Costa Rica, that’s important to know. When I was eight, we moved out to the country, and I started saving my allowance for a horse. After a year I was able to buy my first horse. It was half mule, half horse, and it had a very hard gait, but it was mine. And that was the thing, I didn’t want to bounce around when riding my horse, so I taught it how to have a nice gait.
Then, good friends of my parents had this big ranch in the western part of Costa Rica, and they had never seen a girl ride like I could. I was eight years old at the time. For Christmas, they sent me a white stallion. We got him off the train, and the horse freaked out, just started rearing straight up. My mom wanted to send it back, and I went, “No way. That is my horse.”
I was happy because I thought my brothers weren’t going to get on this wild horse. Nobody’s going to want to get on it. It’s mine. I called it Trigger because it would rear straight-up. That started the journey of accumulating more horses. We had a big pasture that surrounded our house. We had roads that went into the mountains. People would say about me that I could get on any horse and make it dance. I love that feeling of a nice gait.
As I got older, I found a man from England who had thoroughbred horses, and he taught me how to jump. He also had horses that he entered into races at the racetrack and I was the first woman jockey of that track. Then on my second race, this other horse on a curve, didn’t turn, and he slammed into me. I don’t know how I didn’t get trampled to death, instead I was only badly bruised. But that was the end of my racing career. I’ve just loved all animals, all my life.
LAH: Your recent second-edition book includes pictures and a story about you working with a cougar. How did you end up working with a cougar?
BA: Yes, I included a few stories on animals, a cougar, an eagle, and a great-horned owl. Let me tell you about the owl first. I had a client that was a falconer, so I told him I thought it would be interesting to work with a falcon. He arranged that I work with a golden eagle. Then another day, I had the wonderful experience of being able to work with this owl.
It was intimidating the first time I ever worked with a great-horned owl. I had to trust my Rolfing skills and intuition. I was in the moment with the owl. This owl had been run over by a car, and its beak wasn’t closing properly; it was overlapping rather than closing in an aligned way. It couldn’t eat properly because of this problem. It was apparent to me that the owl had a major temporomandibular joint problem. I did one session on that owl and the work aligned its beak with some head manipulation. The pictures are in the book (Anson 2023). So again, you can hear the story, but when you see the photographs of what an hour of work could do, the owl’s beak was all aligned, and then the function totally changed. The very next day, this owl was able to return to its normal diet of road kill. It’s function had been restored.
After rehabilitating this great horned owl and a golden eagle at the rehabilitation center in Kansas, a cougar was referred to me. The owner thought it might be interesting to see the impact of Rolfing with this cougar who had been raised in captivity. I didn’t know what was going to happen in the Rolfing session. When I went out there for the first time, the owner agreed to have me work with his animal.
I wanted to see a cougar up close. I didn’t know exactly what I was going to do in this pioneering adventure doing Rolfing work with a cougar. I was willing to see. The guy would say, “he doesn’t like to be touched on the rear end.” I said, “I’m not going anywhere near the head,” so I started somewhere with the hind end. He had the cougar, named Brent, on a big rope, and sometimes the cougar would try to lunge at me. I kept doing little bits of work and connecting as best I could; pretty soon, the cougar calmed down, and I was able to do a thorough session. A week later, I came back, and the cougar came right out, laid right down, and started chewing on the rope, and his body language seemed to be saying, “Okay, let’s get to work.”
I did a lot of work through his whole body. When I was working, I was thinking about how I’d always dreamed of being able to lie on a cougar. Wouldn’t that be cool? Something told me that I could do that at that moment. And I did. We’d made this connection.
Then, the third time I went out, that’s when we took the photos that are in the Rolfing Stories book (Anson 2023), and they are also in my Animal Healing book (Anson 2011). I was working on his head. I have some photos of me working inside the cougar’s mouth, and nobody can believe this. People ask if the cougar was sedated; no, he was not, he was in an altered state.
It was fine; I felt connected, and I could feel that I was safe. It was one thing that led to another. This animal had been brought up in captivity, and interestingly, after that third session, that cougar reverted to more of its original spirit.
For the fourth visit, the owner brought Brent out so I could do some more work, but the cougar became aggressive with the owner as he had forgotten to feed it the night before. The next thing I knew, the owner was fighting for his life and eventually was able to regain control. Despite the aggression of the cougar, I was told by the owner he could feel something had dramatically changed in the strength of the cougar as he could no longer control him. In other words, it was clear to me that the three Rolfing sessions I did with Brent had a tremendous impact. I used Rolfing [Structural Integration] to organize that cougar structurally. I remembered what Ida says – strength comes from balance. As a result of the work, the cougar gained strength and then the owner couldn’t handle him. He barely got out of that one.
Because of that experience, it got me thinking about restoring the original nature of animals in captivity. I’ll share this experience with you. I had a man come for some Rolfing [work], and it turned out that he was in charge of the bird exhibit at the Kansas City Zoo. I had told him about my interest in working with animals, and he was having trouble with a condor. The problem was the bird had a problematic bond with the zookeeper. I thought it was going to be cool to see it. It was a huge and rare bird to see in North America, usually only seen in South America. I ended up doing some significant work with that condor and it helped that condor re-own himself. The bird was no longer a problem for the fellow.
In situations like that, I thought to myself, let’s do it and see what happens. He had me work on another bird, a huge parrot that was quite a talker. Apparently, the bird liked to be touched. I started with this bird from behind it, I asked the guy to hold the parrot’s head to make sure he wasn’t going to bite me. I got to doing all this work, and all of a sudden, the bird unsolicited says, “Hmmmm. Feels good.” I just cracked up. I did some more work, and the bird says, “Ooh,” and he goes, “feels good.” It cracked me up. Then after a bit, I thought I had done enough, so I stopped. The bird says, “Feels good, don’t stop.” That bird would come to mind often, for years, and crack me up.
I feel like I’ve learned so much about Rolfing human beings by working with the animals. Honestly, every species carries different energies into the world. I feel that by doing this work with different species, it has made me a more intelligent human, Rolfer, and I’m more sensitive. I’m working from that level of true sensation. They’ve been my great teachers. I’m doing what I can to help them, and at the same time, they’re training me. I’ve learned a lot.
LAH: When did you begin to do Rolfing work professionally with horses?
BA: Early on in my Rolfing career, I worked with a man who was competing regionally and nationally in the hunter-jumper field. He was also a horse trainer and teacher. I put the story about his horse Petey in my book because this was the first horse I worked with. Nobody knew I was doing this work with horses in 1979.
The horse was lame and nobody could fix it. He asked me one day after one of his sessions if I could work on his horse. As you know, I grew up with horses, and I thought since I worked on my two dogs I could figure something out. I planned out this five-session series for Petey. I spent two to three hours on each session. The before-and-after photos reveal a horse so changed that it is hardly recognizable as the same horse.
We’re back to the value of those photos. Imagine I was just telling you this story, if you didn’t see the pictures, you wouldn’t really know what I am talking about. Petey was an expensive horse, but in the first picture of the horse, it looks like an old nag. In the after picture, he looked vibrant, never getting injured again with his jumping activities. Just get the horse organized, that’s what I learned from Petey. The photos don’t lie. That’s how I got into it, and I just love it.
LAH: That’s an innovative way to think about what we do.
BA: Honestly, if I could have one of my dreams, every baby born would get one or two Rolfing sessions. That would just set them on a different course. You could get at addressing that birth trauma early in life. Working with the parents would be important as well. If you’ve worked with a mother, they can have a lot more length and space in them to carry the baby, and lessen how compressed they tend to be.
There is this Ida quote that I love, let me read it to you: “Some individuals may perceive they’re losing the fight with gravity as a sharp pain in their back. Others as the unflattering contour of their body. Others as a constant fatigue, yet others as an unrelenting threatening environment. Those over forty may call it old age. Yet all these signals may be pointing to a single problem, so prominent in their own structure, as well as others, that it has been ignored. They are off balance. They are at war with gravity” (Rolf Institute 1987, 1). That quote summarizes it for me, it says a lot.
LAH: That’s a great way to end our chat. Thanks for letting us get to know you a little better and for putting this book out into the world.
BA: You are welcome, I hope our community enjoys the book and finds it valuable for their clients and the public at large.
Endnotes
1. Emmett Hutchins (1934-2016) and Peter Melchior (1931-2005) are well-known structural integration instructors; they were both certified as Rolfing Instructors by Dr. Ida Rolf on January 31st, 1976. They taught with the then Rolf Institute (now the Dr. Ida Rolf Institute) until 1989, when they left and started their own structural integration school together called the Guild for Structural Integration. Stacey Mills (1915-1998) became a Certified Rolfer in 1973 with Rolf and Hutchins, and was an instructor with the Rolf Institute in the 1980s. She left in 1991 to join the Guild.
Briah Anson is a Certified Advanced Rolfer® and a Rolf Movement® Practitioner with forty-five years of experience. Anson has a Bachelor of Arts from Oakland University and a Master of Arts in Counseling and College Student Personnel with honors from Penn State University. Anson is the author of two books – Rolfing®: Stories of Personal Empowerment (1990-1991 first edition, 2005 second printing of first edition, 2023 second edition); Animal Healing: The Power of Rolfing Structural Integration (2011) – and produced a children’s video, Growing Right with Rolfing (1996). She also has videos available on YouTube. She has been interviewed nationally on various radio and TV programs. She is a graduate from the Northwestern Academy of Homeopathy, Minneapolis (2019). She is also a practitioner of Frequencies of Brilliance (a form of energetic bodywork) work since 2000. She has training in craniosacral therapy, visceral manipulation, and scar work. Born and raised in Costa Rice, she is fluent in both English and Spanish, and was a highly trained athlete, ballet dancer, swimmer, tennis player, and golfer. She was also the four-time Junior National Golf Champion of Costa Rica. Anson has a private practice in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Lina Amy Hack, BS, BA, SEP, became a Rolfer® in 2004 and is now a Certified Advanced Rolfer (2016) practicing in Canada. She has an honors biochemistry degree from Simon Fraser University (2000) and a high-honors psychology degree from the University of Saskatchewan (2013), as well as a Somatic Experiencing® Practitioner (2015) certification. Hack is the Editor-in-Chief of Structure, Function, Integration.
References
Anson, Briah. 1990-1991. Rolfing: Stories of personal empowerment. (First edition.) Kansas City, MO: Heartland Personal Growth Press.
___. 2005. Rolfing: Stories of personal empowerment. (Second printing of first edition.) Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books.
___. 2011. Animal healing: The power of Rolfing Structural Integration. Minneapolis, MN: Mill City Press.
___. 2023. Rolfing: Stories of personal empowerment, second edition. Minneapolis, MN: Heartland Personal Growth Press.
Rolf, Ida P. 1977. Rolfing: The integration of human
structures. Santa Monica, CA: Dennis-Landman.
Rolf Institute. 1987. Rolfing: Structural balance opens potential. Self-published.
Keywords
Rolf; structural integration; story; health; vitality; case study; before-and-after pictures; children; parents; dance; performance; Dr. Ida Rolf; human potential; animals; dogs; owl; bird; horses; cougar. ■
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