Visited · 21-year arc · Zürich
Final edit in progress
Twenty-one years of returning to the same studio, the same hands. What Raphael has done is not teach me Gyrotonic — it has given me a sequence of encounters, each one starting from where the body is now rather than where it was. The Huber plateau, the side-lying quad stretch, the exit cue on cross rotations — none of these were prescribed in a programme. They arrived when the body was ready. The STORM proposition is his most explicit framework — bringing treadmill and movement quality together — but his deeper contribution is the coaching philosophy underneath it: building the readiness so that the body generates its own breakthroughs.
Where to train in Zürich — the city guide →I first met Raphael in 2005, during a Gyrotonic apprenticeship at Muladhara — before he was a Master Trainer. Twenty-one years on I still return to the same studio, the same hands. What he built there isn't a menu of treatments; it's one composed practice — structural bodywork (Rolfing), movement equipment (Gyrotonic, Garuda, Pilates), high-tech cardio and strength, and the LPG Huber rotating-plateau work — held together by a single quality of attention. Every session starts from where the body is today, not where it was last time, and the cue is never generic: it's the one sequencing correction that makes a habitual movement come alive again. The deeper work is the readiness he builds — so the body goes and finds the breakthrough on its own.
The first encounter with Raphael was in 2005, during the Gyrotonic apprenticeship at Muladhara. He was already working with Huber training — a way of building balance by putting the body in an environment where imbalance is created, so proprioception finds the plumb line. I hadn't encountered anything like it. What registered immediately was not the technique but the quality of attention: he was reading the body in front of him, not applying a method to it. Twenty-one years later, that quality has never changed. Every session starts from scratch — where is the body today, not where it was last time. What I didn't expect was how much the space itself did — the scent, the light, the way everything was composed — settling the body before the first hand.
The cross rotation had been in my practice for years — prescribed originally by my London chiropractor, long since routine, almost invisible. Arms perpendicular, legs rotating with force. Then Raphael gave a single cue about the exit: ribs initiate the return before the hips follow. That sequencing changed everything — an elongation arrived, a felt attraction between ribs and hips, the whole cross-connection suddenly awake. One sentence, and a move I'd done hundreds of times was completely different.
For years I did the quad stretch standing, and standing let me cheat: to find range I arched my back, faking an extension the hip didn't have. Raphael moved it to the floor — side-lying, the bottom leg holding the pelvis still. With the pelvis anchored the arch had nowhere to go, and the stretch came smaller and earlier, but real: the hip opening this time, not the spine pretending for it.
The same attention showed up in a smaller cue I still use: to release the adductors, squeeze something between the legs while Raphael applies pressure at the knee — the tension lets go from the inside rather than being stretched away.
The STORM treadmill session in May 2026 didn't happen with Raphael present — it happened because he was coming. Knowing a session was scheduled, I went to run on my own first. Two things arrived: the glutes propelling me forward after stepping off the belt, and a floating sensation mid-run, as if I was pushing the treadmill back rather than running on top of it. He didn't produce those directly. The relationship did — the readiness that makes the body go find it on its own.