Class Info

Part 1 / September 24 - October 9, 2020
Part 2 / January 28 - February 12, 2021

Times: TBD

Housing

Contact Mary Contreras for check AirBnB.

Details

The 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 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 Training's ten-series progression, the 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 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

Tessy Brungardt received her BA in Environmental Biology in 1976 from New College in Sarasota, FL. In her studies and career afterwards, she enjoyed exploring the interface of observing the natural world and the the science of how things worked. Once she was introduced to Rolfing® Structural Integration in 1979, she was inspired to take this exploration into the human realm. She became a Certified Rolfer™ in 1985 and a Certified Advanced Rolfer in 1988. Tessy completed her Rolf Movement® Certification in 1994. She also became certified to teach for the Rolf Institute in 1994 and became an Advanced Instructor for the Rolf Institute in 2002.

Valerie Berg trained in 1987 with Peter Melchior and Nicholas French. She is a big proponent of teaching the classical 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 worked in Guatemala for five years in the '90s and was exposed to the trauma of war and violence thus began studying Peter Levine’s trauma work. 

Valerie developed a workshop called Structural Aging which came from feeling the results the first time she was Rolfed at 25 years old. The joy of moving our bodies with freedom and no pain is what gives us the sense of being alive and young, not our age. Over the years she has focused on all the patterns that break us down to make us feel or look old.

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.

She has been practicing full time in Albuquerque, NM for 32 years and now travels to San Diego and has a part time practice there.