I have had bodywork and somatic therapy (shiatsu massage and craniosacral therapy), so I'm talking from a general point of view which I think is relevant to bodywork generally, including rolfing.
What I'd say to any practitioner or client is to be extremely careful if there has been trauma. Gary, I have no idea what experience you have of working with clients with a trauma history, but from your question it sounds like you are in early stages of considering this. Have you done any studying and training around working with clients with PTSD? Is the research and information there, for rolfing? Would you be able to have ongoing mentoring and supervision from someone who is experienced with rolfing and PTSD, or with some sort of comparable bodywork and PTSD?
My experience of bodywork is that we hold a lot of trauma energy frozen in our cells. Releasing physical tension and misalignment will also release emotional tension and frozen trauma. I'd had traumatic amnesia, and releasing muscular tension and spinal misalignment was what gave rise to beginning to recover trauma memories. The physical tension had been how my body was keeping back trauma memories and symptoms. PTSD symptoms blew up immediately - flashbacks, nightmares, hallucinations, the works.
My shiatsu therapist had recently trained in craniosacral therapy, which works with trauma, and we switched to that. However, she wasn't aware that she was far too inexperienced to work with the trauma reactions I was having, and what she was doing was actually unsafe for me. It was releasing trauma memory and energy from my cells and central nervous system without sufficient ways to manage or contain that. She had every good intention, but it could have been very damaging and even retraumatising for me.
Fortunately, I'd been careful. I'd already realised I needed to do work on psychic protection and safety, and to contain the work on this. But I might not even have known I needed to, or known how to. It should have been the therapist doing that, not me. She simply didn't have the depth of training, guidance or experience to even know what a risk she was taking.
I stopped seeing her and found a very experienced craniosacral therapist who knew how to work with trauma, and that did help me. Even some way into the work, when I was aware of the trauma and quite a lot of processing had already been done, it was always necessary to be careful when working with that energy. I was also having psychotherapy, which I think is essential for processing the emotions and reactions that come up.
Even in a client who has already had quite a lot of psychotherapy and/or done other work, there's a possibility of new trauma memories being uncovered through the process, or that the ongoing work could threaten their psychological well-being. This continues to be the case throughout the healing process. As long as there is somatic/body work to be done, potentially there is trauma energy that will need to be worked with very carefully. I found we were uncovering layer after layer of it as we progressed.
I know a number of bodywork/somatic approaches include birth trauma as part of the training. Having experienced both, I'd like to stress that working with birth trauma is not the same as working with childhood or adult trauma. I think this is why my shiatsu therapist thought she would be able to do craniosacral therapy with me, but wasn't equipped to.
I'd also stress that the release of energy and emotions connected with trauma is different from, for example, a non-traumatised person releasing feelings of grief or anger. Trauma can include a fear and horror which are impossible to describe, and there is always the fight/flight/freeze energy which is by its nature overwhelming. It's inherently destabilising to experience the emotions of trauma, especially when they have been frozen in the body. A lot of strategies are needed to work with that safely.
I don't know how far you have taken this idea. If you haven't done this yet, it might be an idea to look at the craniosacral therapy/somatic experiencing research and literature (eg Peter Levine) and at research/literature about how trauma affects the body (eg Babette Rothschild) as well as things specific to rolfing.
As a practitioner, you would need to think about your own safety and stability while doing the work, but my concern is particularly from the client's viewpoint.
Perhaps you have already studied and trained in this, and are approaching it very responsibly. I wanted to write this anyway, in case anyone else is thinking about it. For a trauma survivor, bodywork can be extremely helpful if done in a responsible, careful and knowledgeable way. To do it without research, training and understanding of the body and trauma would be nothing more than a gamble. You could release a Pandora's box of trauma energy and cell memory. The stakes are high, and your client could be paying.
