ROSEN METHOD CENTER SOUTHWEST…
From the Beginning
by Sandra Wooten

I met Marion Rosen for the first time when I was nineteen years old. Nearly 20 years later I met her again as her patient.   It was a life-changing experience for me.  After that one session I not only felt better, but I asked if she would teach me her work.  Two years later I was invited to join her first class.  During our first meeting as a group, she explained that she didn’t know if the work could be taught, but the time had come to find out. If she was successful, she asked us to agree to take her work into the world.  I took her desire to heart.

I co- taught Rosen Method bodywork for the first time at John F. Kennedy University in 1981. By 1984 I had gained enough experience to begin teaching periodically in Stockholm & Helsinki with Marion Rosen and others. I was deeply touched and inspired by the teaching and I wanted to do more.

From 1986 to 1988 Marion and I taught three Rosen Method Workshops in Santa Fe, New Mexico.  I loved New Mexico; and I wanted to be there more often. I began envisioning a Rosen Method Center there where professional training could be offered as well as classes for those interested in personal growth and continuing education.  As I lived with this vision and hope, I began to sense the dream merging into reality.

In 1989 I began a conversation to realize this dream with Cameron Hough, a Rosen student and Santa Fe resident.  I had heard of Ghost Ranch, the magnificent location that Georgia O’Keeffe painted, so on one of my visits to Santa Fe we decided to see what Ghost Ranch had to offer.

I’ll never forget that drive. We were there in the fall. The New Mexico blue sky and the golden aspen trees on the Sangre de Cristo Mountains created a vision that was a sight to behold.   As we got closer to Ghost Ranch, the red mesas stood out as if they, alone, commanded full attention.  When we turned off the highway onto the Ghost Ranch property, we were in a different world of beauty and quiet and awe-inspiring landscape. I made up my mind. We had found our place. Soon after, we began a journey that we are still on today.

For several years now, upon the invitation of Felipe Ortega, master potter and shaman, we have held Intensives in his tiny village. It has become a tradition. Felipe provides housing in his casitas or with his family. He prepares delicious, healthy meals for us and sometimes leads us in a ceremonial sweat lodge or a drumming circle. 

We meet for class at Aunt Dora’s Sala, the village ‘town’ hall where all gatherings of the community occur. The elders in the community often join us for our 9 a.m. Rosen Movement class.  They love having us there, bringing new life and movement into their lives and we are blessed to be in this welcoming, old-world community.

Since this beginning our Center has developed a mature teaching staff and added new programs.  The first is Rosen Method Movement training classes which people attend just for the fun of it, or to be become a certified Rosen Method Movement teacher. Secondly, InBody Somatic Education tm has become part of our Center as a way to teach, through seminars, those in the helping/healing professions about the body/mind connection. In 2006 our Center became not-for-profit and we are now Two Rivers Center for Healing Arts and Creativity, Rosen Southwest Program. We plan to expand our program with Elder Workshops, Men’s Workshops as well as Creative Arts.

All of us who have experienced Rosen Method have moved forward in our lives in profound ways. I am constantly inspired by our students and am filled with gratitude for the love and dedication they bring to our work.