About the Founder
Marion began her training in bodywork therapies in the 1930's in Munich, Germany working with Lucy Heyer, who had trained with Elsa Gindler. Gindler was the grandmother of many body relaxation and breathing methods. Heyer worked with her husband, Dr. Gustav Heyer, a colleague and former student of Carl Jung. Lucy and Marion did relaxation work on patients who then saw Dr. Heyer for psychotherapy. The Heyers found that the relaxation work softened patients so they could feel their emotions more easily. They had such success that people traveled from all over Germany to work with them.

Because Marion's family was of Jewish origins, it became necessary for Marion to flee Germany at the beginning of W.W.II. Marion says that she forgot for a while about her work with the Heyers, but it seems as if the seeds were sown in Marion's mind for combining verbal and body therapies. She went first to Sweden where she studied physical therapy and arranged passage to the United States. She settled in Berkeley, California; and then she received a second license in physical therapy from the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota.

While doing physical therapy, Marion observed that clients who talked about their lives recovered more quickly and did not come back again with the same problems. She watched for the interconnections between the physical posture and the emotional state of the person, and learned how the body is often "making a statement" about how a person is feeling. She realized that it is important to address both aspects of the individual at the same time.

Marion took her first student in the 1970's Today the training consists of two years of part-time course work (which can be done in the "ongoing" class or the "intensive track" for out of town students) and a one to two year internship. There is also a Rosen Movement program that teaches movements based on physical therapy range of motion principals. They were designed to prevent physical problems.

There are eleven Rosen Method Centers world wide in Australia, Canada, Europe, Russia, and the United States.