Just coming home from a weekend of discussion with colleagues who teach at eight of the eighteen other SI schools. While progress in developing our profession is slow – and further slowed by recessionary forces – I feel hopeful.
Now I know hope is out of fashion just now, as we watch the Obama momentum seemingly fade, but I do - I feel hopeful on two counts. First, even though the meeting was of course self-selecting for those who want to promote community over isolation, I was impressed with everyone’s willingness to bring even difficult issues out on the table and consider the value of alternate ways of getting results. The sense from each of wanting to improve and clear a higher bar was palpable.
But most of all, I loved the collective ability to maintain a sense of humor in this arena where we all have epic investment, an unavoidable need to compete in the marketplace, and yet this distinct hunger to develop the profession and thrive together. I truly enjoy this fraternity / sorority with poised, observant, and adaptable people, whose passion is leavened with the ability to laugh at their foibles, even as they persist in the quixotic quest to pass on the gift of this extraordinary work. It is a relief to me that I still like hanging out with these my people.
Though the document to come out of this meeting may not shake the walls of Jericho, it was heartening to see the easy and assured agreement on the ‘70%’ of the shared core curriculum across the subject areas and across the various schools, as well as the spirited defense for those other 30% of unique emphasis.
Even setting aside any history receding in the rear view mirror (“Objects are closer than they appear …”), the biggest schools obviously have the most to lose in opening up to a larger umbrella organization. This leads to a reticence and a lingering conflict of interest between loyalty to the structure built up within each school versus the thinner ice of IASI’s as yet fluid organization and association with smaller, less fully-formed schools.
I am firmly convinced that, regardless of the philosophy or politics involved, the best strategic advantage for all – large and small - lies in the original meaning of fascia – ‘fasces’ or bundle. This comes from Aesop’s fable where the father, preparing to leave his farm to his three contentious sons, showed them how individual sticks could be easily broken, but a bundle of sticks tied together is much stronger. This is true for the bundled fascia in our bodies, and it is true of the profession. We either hang together or we will hang separately.
The strategic argument runs this way: There is far more to gain and little to lose from banding together, and little to gain and much to lose via going it alone.
First, what is left to be lost? The ten-series is common knowledge and some version is already taught in a substantial number of massage schools, and the telling phrase “I practice a little rolfing, too…” is too frequently heard. Deep Tissue, Myofascial Release, and other similar ‘structural bodywork’ forms are widely practiced within massage and physical therapy, while the word ‘core’ has been successfully appropriated by Pilates and personal training. And most SI practitioners are compelled to practice under a massage license, even if they regard it as a ‘flag of convenience’.
After all these years, are there really techniques or concepts that need to be kept secret? Write a book, own it, and move on is my advice – time is running out and we need to keep moving as knowledge and professional applications are rapidly progressing all around us. Staying holed up within our own castle moats leaves us standing still while the caravan moves on without us.
As for market advantage, all smaller schools of my acquaintance are perfectly content to concede the service mark and the term ‘Rolfing’, in favor of our preference for ‘Structural Integration’ as an unimpeded general term in which Rolfing, Hellerwork, Soma, KMI, etc. compete as brands in a friendly and respectful (but again spirited) way for students who want to share with us the exhilarating / sobering art / craft / science of Structural integration.
With little professional or academic status to lose, our tiny profession still has much to gain through cooperation. In the legislative and professional arena, even the small amount of cooperation we have been able to engender in the last few years has produced impressive results in regards to licensing or exemption in a few states, with the promise of more to come. While our very small total number precludes effective legislative action on a grand scale, these smaller victories prepare us for bigger opportunities when they arise.
But it is in the area of public education and marketing that we all have the most to gain from banding together. In a competitive market, one can succeed in two ways: by capturing more of a finite student pool from your competitors, or by expanding the market.
Since the primary motivation that brings students into our field is having a significant experience with the work itself that inspires the candidate to come aboard, the vast majority of those will simply seek the school from which their practitioner arose. I hear from a very limited number of potential students who are analyzing the various schools to find a good ‘fit’ among them. Even though this may be the best way of choosing a school, most students end up going with the inspiration of their ‘first contact’ school.
This method of market share distribution guarantees a steady growth for all schools, proportional to the number of graduates they have out there inspiring their clients to become practitioners, perhaps multiplied by a ‘Shazam’ factor of how inspiring the training or the individual practitioner may be. Really bad schools will slowly fade, while really inspiring ones might grow a little faster than the rest. But only a little.
The really big opportunity lies in expanding the available market, in which (how I hate to quote Reagan) a rising tide would lift all boats. Public and even professional awareness about SI is pitifully small and misinformed. The interest in the concepts and practices is actually very high, but the link between that interest – in a holistic approach, in fascia, in our ways of seeing and strategizing, a systemic approach to posture and movement, dealing effectively with chronic, distributed injuries, and effective shape-shifting technique – and our availability has yet to be forged.
While no one school can mount that effort successfully (and the Rolf Institute has been trying to do so for 30 years or more), the bundle can. By creating general and specific allied-professional awareness, we can create a larger student pool, which will come to all the various schools, largely proportionate to their size, though perhaps individual marketing efforts will also make some difference.
The point is that at the moment, the total combined graduates numbers runs only to the low hundreds each year. Public awareness efforts could easily double that number at a minimum. My own informal researches as a public speaker and CPD workshop presenter for several professions outside of SI (physiotherapists, personal trainers, Pilates teachers, yoga teachers, osteopaths, and massage therapists) would lead me to a much more optimistic estimate:
If we stopped turning our professional back on the rest of the world, and added the SI story, skillfully presented, to our already-in-hand advantage of excellent personal relations between our individual practitioners and their communities, we could have a pool of students five times that large - enough to satisfy all the schools’ needs – indeed, enough to put a strain on faculty development 
- and provide the engine for further development into all the areas where SI can be valued – in sports, surgical and injury rehab units, in physical education, psych wards, in complementary and integrative clinics, and in change agencies worldwide, as well as the private practices that largely sustain us now.
This is both the promise and the danger of our current situation: left idle we will surely lose the opportunity to establish our field as a distinct and valuable entity and continue being subsumed and marginalized. Seized, we can emerge from this lean period in a very healthy position to honor the legacy of Ida Rolf and all the work that so many have put into this inquiry.
In short, use this opportunity to declare ourselves to the world and build alliances – we need allies – and we will be repaid many fold.
