Details

Course Code:	AT2.25
Dates/ Times:	Part 1 / October 20 - November 7, 2025 Part 2 / February 02 - 19, 2026   Times: 9:00am - 5:00pm
Instructors:	Valerie Berg & Bethany Ward
Housing:	Check AirBnB or contact Mary Contreras mcontreras@rolf.org

Non-DIRI Members can view Training Details, including prerequisites, at https://rolf.org/at_non.php.

Advanced Training is a 168-hour course that takes place over several weeks. Designed for the experienced practitioner, the Advanced Training further develops, refines, and enhances a Rolfer's practice through a deeper examination of the diverse aspects of the work. The goal is to pave the way to become a more responsive, skilled, and effective Rolfer™. Course content includes a broad range of topics related to conceptual, perceptual, relational, and manual skill sets.

The course presents a client-centered approach that uses a Rolfing^® Principles-based process to form evaluation, strategy, and intervention based on Rolfing Taxonomies (Structural, Functional, Psychobiological, Energetic, and Geometric). Rather than following the basic Rolfing Ten-Series™ progression, Advanced Training teaches practitioners to evaluate clients individually and develop individualized treatment strategies.

At the heart of the client-centered approach lies an inquiry into each Rolfer's self-awareness and perception of others. The goal is to nurture each practitioner's ability to accurately perceive and respond to clients visually, relationally, and through purposeful, accurate touch. Developing perception is a life-long process that leads to the deliberate and appropriate use of self, precise interventions, and the ability to evaluate and track the effects of the work.

Exploring course material through lectures, practicums and instructor demonstrations, participants learn to design a principle-governed Advanced Series of Rolfing sessions. Each practitioner gives and receives a supervised non-formulaic series with a fellow classmate and provides an additional series with a classroom client. The purpose of demonstrating, exchanging sessions, and working with clients is twofold to learn, strategize and perform a principle-governed series and to address the integration needs of each practitioner.

About the Instructors

Valerie Berg

Valerie Berg trained in 1987 with Peter Melchior and Nicholas French. She is a big proponent of teaching the classical Rolfing Ten-Series™ to beginning students, as this is where a lot of our thinking and development occurs that takes us deeper into the work. The nuances and advanced work come later developing out of knowing the territory of the ten series work. She has been teaching for 20 years and received her bachelor’s degree in Education and Modern dance. She is also a Rolf Movement Practitioner trained by Hubert Godard. Valerie has been practicing full-time in Albuquerque, NM for 32 years.

Bethany Ward

Bethany Ward, MBA is dual faculty in the Rolfing^® and Rolf Movement^® Integration departments. She is past-president of the Ida P. Rolf Research Foundation and was involved in the early stages of the International Fascia Research Congress and Fascia Research Society. Bethany currently serves on the DIRI Faculty Development and Review Board as a member of ISMETA’s Leadership Council.

Combining degrees in psychology and business with over two decades of Rolfing experience, Bethany brings a fresh perspective to somatic education. Adept at making complex ideas understandable, relevant, and accessible to a wide variety of learning styles, Bethany’s articles have been published in the Structural Integration Journal, the International Association of Structural Integration Yearbook, Massage Magazine, Endurance Magazine, among others. Bethany teaches internationally and has a full-time private practice based in Durham, NC.