Esalen Institute and Eckerd College – a Counterculture Connection

Preface: 

I edited relevant parts of this conversation shortly after Tom West’s death in 2010, in order to preserve a historical record. That was about the same time I edited a similar conversation between Seymour Carter and Ken Dychtwald that happened at Esalen. (Seymour died in the Ukraine in 2012.) Few people know about the connection between Eckerd College and Esalen Institute. Eckerd is a small private college in St. Petersburg, Florida. Professor Tom West was the reason I first went to Esalen in April 1970. Tom started taking groups of students to Esalen about that time. I worked with Dick Price for the first time in late 1970. I attribute my ultimate success at earning a degree from Eckerd to an Advanced Gestalt workshop I attended with Dick at Esalen in 1972. Then Tom Rolfed me at his home in St. Petersburg in the spring of 1973. After that, I moved to San Francisco to study at the Esalen city office. In retrospect, I marvel that both these men were just beginning their practices, Rolfing and Gestalt, even though at the time I considered them both to be masters! Tom West took a group of students to the New York Esalen Convention as volunteer assistants. Wow, what an experience we had! But that story exceeds the limits of this preface… 

John Francis Callahan

Conversation between Professor J. Thomas West and his daughter Julia West

Tom West: The folks at the Rolf Institute asked us to have a conversation about a father and daughter both becoming Rolfers. I want to say at the very beginning how proud I was when my daughter decided to move in this direction. But first of all, let me say a few words about how I got involved in Structural Integration. I have spent fifty years of my life working at Eckerd College, as a clinical psychologist, counselor, and professor. On a sabbatical from the college in 1970, I went out to California to study the counterculture at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur.

Julia West: And you came back with long hair and beads around your neck!

Tom: That’s right! When I came back to Florida I began teaching humanistic psychology – sensory awareness, massage, encounter, Gestalt – as part of the core curriculum at Eckerd. However, I ended up going back to  Esalen many times. Once while I was staying at Esalen, just before I was leaving to head back to Florida, I walked out on the deck between the Lodge and the Pacific Ocean and there was a wonderful older lady, sitting with a rose in her hair. People were walking around her in a respectful way. I asked someone who she was and the person said, “You don’t know? That's Ida Rolf!” I got up enough courage to go up to her and ask if I could have a Rolfing session. She said, “I am so sorry, my dear, I have no openings but I can recommend you to a Rolfer at Nepenthe.” [At that time, the now famous tourist destination near Esalen was part of the counterculture community in Big Sur.] I phoned and found out I could get an appointment immediately because of a cancellation. That turned my life around. I was in awe of Ida, and was thrilled with the Rolfing process. Later that year, I found she was coming to Florida to teach a class, and through the first Rolfer in Florida, Bill Williams, I was accepted as a model and also as an auditor in the class held at Pigeon Key. Soon after, I completed the Rolfing training program at Esalen in 1972. … I remember so well that Ida would never compliment anyone, but if you heard her say, “Well, that’s better,” you felt like you were on top of the mountain. When the seven of us in that class graduated, we were celebrating at the Nepenthe restaurant. We were as cocky as can be! Ida looked at us and said, “You really won’t know what you’re doing for five years, but your clients will get their money’s worth because you will do good work, even though you don’t know what you’re doing.” That really grounded us. It confirmed what the auditors had said about the practitioners in that class. The auditors were asked, since they had been observing the practitioners the whole time, which practitioner they would prefer as their Rolfer. I won over the other practitioners. But when I asked why, the consensus was, “He doesn’t know what he’s doing, but he won’t hurt you.”

Julia: I remember, Dad, that it was around that time you wanted to do Rolfing sessions on all of your kids. I was 11 years old, and I remember you telling me that if it became too uncomfortable, just say, “A, B, C, 1, 2, 3,” which proved to be impossible with an elbow in my ribs! I also remember that at home you would yell out, “Rolfing time!” and my sister, two brothers, and I would all run and hide.

Tom: Well, I was certainly sold on the process and wanted to share it with my family. In those days, the counterculture was at its height, and when I got back to Florida, Bill Williams was still the only Rolfer in Florida. He had a waiting list of around 300 people. He sent out a letter to them stating that Jan Davis and I were now Rolfers and ready to take clients. Within a month, I had about 100 people.

Julia: Now there are a number of good Rolfers in Florida, but at the time when you first began, there was very little competition in bodywork.

Tom: And we also had a different culture back then. We had the counterculture, and people were looking for excitement, freedom, and new adventures. Rolfing was certainly something that most people wanted to try. I remember inviting Bill Williams to come to one of my classes at the college and do a Rolfing demonstration. At the end, over half of the class of sixty signed up for Rolfing.

Julia: I sense that the counterculture, as you knew it, is over. People are much more cautious and maybe even less confident in the world in which they live. At the same time, the field of bodywork has exploded, and there is far more competition than in your days. It’s a different paradigm. 

Tom: You told us how you felt about it when you were 11 years old, but somehow or another it became how you wanted your career to go. How did this come about?

Julia: Well clearly, there has been a large influence coming from you. Your career in psychology and your career in Rolfing, the mind-body connection, just simply made sense to me. I didn’t truly realize the importance of this until I was working on my B.A. in human development, and then it just all started coming together. In retrospect, the sessions I had at an early age had a greater impact on me than I realized at the time. Shortly before I completed my B.A., I decided to go ahead and begin the process towards training in bodywork by attending massage school.

Tom: You chose the best massage school in the area – the Humanities Center, and the owner of it and her children had all received Rolfing sessions. 

Julia: Several years later, I made the decision and made the commitment to go through Rolfing training.

Tom: In my day, to be accepted for training, all I had to do was go up to Ida Rolf, and say, “I want to be a Rolfer.” What was the process like with you?

Julia: The application process is much more formal now. I found the instructors to be highly supportive and encouraging throughout the process, which was very important after uprooting from my home and making a new home in Boulder throughout the training. The camaraderie that develops between students was amazing and made the whole experience even more valuable. One of the most enjoyable things about the training was the location in Boulder, Colorado.

Tom: In your classes, did Ida Rolf get mentioned often?

Julia: Ida’s presence was always felt, although the instructors probably referred more to the second generation of Rolfers, as many did not have the pleasure of meeting her.

Tom: Yes, the essential part of my training was with Ida, her son, Dick, Emmett Hutchins, and Peter Melchior. That would be the first generation. I am sure the training and the philosophy has changed to some degree through the years, but I do feel that the genius of Rolfing was Ida, and that we should never lose her profound insights and understandings. I hope this is passed down from generation to generation.

Julia: Absolutely.

Tom: Do you still feel that it does take some time to actually know what you are doing, like what Ida said about five years? It takes that long to get it out of your head and into your hands?

Julia: I do agree, although I feel like I am in transition and moving more into intuitive work. I am becoming more and more aware that intention is a large part of this work. 

Tom: Intention is a very important concept nowadays. Can you explain a bit how you use it in Rolfing sessions?

Julia: It’s a mind-set, and when you’re working with someone, and you see change that needs to happen, the mind-set focuses through your hands into the tissue. Even before you touch their body your hands have the message to give.

Tom: That reminds me of Ida and how she taught her classes. She once caught me sketching how her hands moved in doing some work, and she looked at me and said, “Don’t copy me. Because this is me and you are you. Let your hands do what is best, not sketching what my hands do.” On several occasions she also said to me, since she knew I was a psychologist, that “there is no such thing as psychology, everything is in the body.” Now when you say intention is important and you want to translate an idea into an experience, how would you do this the way that Ida Rolf would say, “Get into your hands?”

Julia: That question reminds me of the many times we questioned the instructors about the definition of Rolfing, and were told that it’s very difficult to explain – instead, it’s something to experience.

Tom: I, too, believe in intention, and what I sense in how it works is that you, in your mind, first have a goal that you want to reach. You actually have that intention before you put your hands upon a person. Then you let your hands take over to turn the concept into an experience. Would you agree with that? 

Julia: I would absolutely agree with that.

Tom: I also found that Rolfing in the early days was more painful than it is now. And yet I can remember Ida saying over and over again that pain comes from the intention of leaving, of getting out of a situation. So if you have the intention of opening an area up, and you move with that intention, and your client is there with you, the pain factor is minimal. So, my daughter, what I like to share with you from the first generation of Rolfing and the wisdom of Ida Rolf is, that to work with the tissue, to become a friend of the tissue, and have the full support of the client in doing so, leads to very wonderful work.

Julia: Recently, I had the privilege of working with someone who welcomed Rolfing as a means to address severe back pain that he had been experiencing for quite some time. With his attitude toward the process and my intention we were able to get some good work done. I was expecting a better result at the end of the session, and explained to him that it might take a day or two for his body to integrate the work. I was very pleased to hear from him two days later, and he was able to say that he was pain-free at that point. This is music to the ears of a Rolfer.

Tom: That reminds me that when Ida said there is no such thing as psychology (and I consider intentionality very much psychology), I considered her to be one of the best psychologists I had ever met. An example of that is when she was working on one of the practitioners in the class – who was a very kind, gentle, warm man – and as she was working on his hip, he let out a scream and began cursing like a drunken sailor. She immediately stopped what she was doing and said, “Dick, share with us what’s going on.” He said that all of a sudden he flashed back to when his brother had pushed him down the stairs in their home, hurting his hip. The brother said, “if you tell our parents, I’ll kill you.” So he never did. And he covered up the hip pain whenever he walked. When Ida worked in that area, the whole memory came back, and she said to him, after he related this, “What do you think you should do?” And he said, “I’m going to call my parents.” And that same day he telephoned them. He came back into the class almost like a different person. Now that’s the mind-body interface in its dramatic form. Have you had any other experiences that have been very meaningful with your clients?

Julia: I am currently working with a troubled young woman who has scoliosis, with whom I’ve connected on a rather deep level. She is away from home with no family in the area and struggling with maintaining relationships with others. I feel like I’ve developed a relationship with her where she can trust me a great deal and my ability to listen is very helpful. Because of the nature of the relationship we’ve developed, she is greatly benefiting from bodywork. 

PERSPECTIVES

Tom: So you then see that as a Rolfer it is very important to be a good listener?

Julia: I believe that is vital to the work.

Tom: What I see as very important, in your following in my footsteps, is that I am following in Ida Rolf footsteps. I am serving as a channel of her wisdom in keeping that going through me and through you. I like that you went to an excellent massage school and that you thoroughly enjoyed and profited from the Rolfing training, and that you are well on your way to “knowing what you’re doing.” I can attest to that because of work that you have done with me. 

Julia: I truly look forward to being in the same place as you are with Rolfing, in terms of becoming an intuitive healer, and I feel like I am approaching that and beginning to experience that.

Tom: And now that I’m approaching retirement, I know that my practice will be in wonderful hands, connected with a beautiful heart and a deep sense of intentionality to heal.