ScarWork With Tabitha Hall

Hello everyone, my name is Tabitha Hall.

I want to start this off with some information about myself and why I have decided to become a Certified ScarWork Practitioner and what it means to me to be able to provide this work.

The journey that has led me to this part of my life and career has been long and taken some different turns along the way. It started when I was nineteen and looking for work that I would feel fulfilled in doing.

I have always been fascinated in the human body and how it works, so when a family friend shared a story about her personal family getting a lot out of going through the Rolfing process, I was intrigued. She happened to have a book on Rolfing with stories of client’s experiences; I read that book cover to cover and felt interested in a career path right away.

To be accepted into The Rolf Institute, I had a series of sessions that I went through as the client, and even though I was not sure how to articulate it to my Rolfer, I remember how much the work had helped me even at that young age.

As a five-year-old I had started horseback riding lessons and was gifted my first horse at 6.  Anyone who has experience around horses knows that they come with inherent risks. I had some horse accidents, including being smashed, dragged, thrown (by a friend’s untrained three-year-old), and of course I have also had my feet stepped on as well.

So my body had a few scars, and a fair amount of compacting already at 19. I remember getting a lot of relief that I did not even know I needed along with improved movement from that initial 10 series,

In 1997 I went through a combined studies class, where we learned all of the Rolfing Structural work, plus an additional Rolf movement segment to give us an even stronger understanding of how to work with human movement and help people change their movement patterns. And I practiced Rolfing Structural Integration until 2023.

I worked in Charleston, South Carolina, both in private practice and at the medical university in their alternative health department, briefly in Oregon and also in Missouri. I continued to take classes on movement and structure from some of the best teachers who studied with Ida Rolf herself.

In 2022 I received my Yoga Teacher Training Certificate through Kaivalya Yoga Method, and have a strong and continued mentorship with long time yoga teacher, Sister MorningStar, my mother.

I teach Structural yoga and Mindfulness classes designed from my Rolfing knowledge to help individuals really focus on self-assessment techniques and on moving their body into length and balance.

I loved my Rolfing Practice, but decades of work was starting to take a toll on my body. I had been very interested in Scar work when it came across my desk, as I had worked with a client with intense abdominal adhesions early in my practice. I have often looked back wishing I could have helped him more. Perhaps with what I know now, I could have.

Taking the ScarWork class by Sharon Wheeler had been something I’d wanted to do for many years, it was just never put to the front burner seeing as I am busy with my home-life!

I enjoy a life full of interests, family, horses, animal training, our little farm, gardening, long walks in nature, camping, aviation, (my husband and one daughter are pilots) friends, community and recently, bread baking as well! 

I have two daughters and they both share my love of equines, which makes me happy every day since I have loved horses all my life and most children aren’t as interested in the same things as their parents.

We haven’t done as much of this as I would like to have, but one of my favorite things that my girls and I have done is take our horses on trail rides through the local state park with a lunch we can eat in the saddle and just spend the day horsing around.

Back to how I came to doing ScarWork: in 2023, things had finally lined up perfectly for me to take Sharon Wheeler’s class on working with scars and it was amazing! I had the opportunity to learn these incredible techniques and work on many different types of scars, from surgeries, and body burns, to fibrous lumps and a tracheostomy repair.

At the risk of repeating myself, like I said before, I have transitioned away from Rolfing, which had gotten too intense for my shoulders, and into ScarWork, which is benefited by my experience working with fascial tissue all these decades, and has me working with in an even more detailed fascial picture.

It’s so different than other ways of handling scars and that’s part of why I have been so drawn to the practice. Another reason is that Sharon Wheeler trained with Ida Rolf, founder of the Rolf Institute prior to 1973.  

 Scars aren’t always just marks on the surface; they can affect muscle and skin mobility, resulting in pulling, discomfort, ridges and adhesions down into the tissue.

Over the years of my life, I have acquired many scars, some small that I honestly wouldn’t be able to say where I got them from, others that have left a more prominent mark, both on my skin and my mind.

I know that scars can often carry the memory of what caused them, and while my work isn’t designed to erase the marks altogether, it can loosen tension in the skin around them. With this work scars can lighten, soften and shrink, allowing more movement and comfort.

My upmost goal to share in this website is that scars can change.

And my work is designed to ease the rigidity and tension of a scar and aid in smoother movement and elasticity in the skin so that people can begin doing more of what that scar might be holding them back from.

If I can help you, I would be honored.

Thank you for listening to part of my story.

Tabitha