Rolfing® Structural Integration
Just like each body is complex and unique, so is each Rolfer’s relationship to their practice.
Rolfing is a form of hands-on bodywork that works from both outside→in and inside→out to support healing and health.
As a Rolfer, my main tool is touch. Hands-on techniques focus on the fascial network, muscles, ligaments, tendons, and bones to facilitate the body’s innate ability to heal itself. Rolfing offers a wide range of manual techniques, so what that touch looks and feels like can vary depending on what works best for you.
Rolfing is an understanding of how the body exists in relationship with gravity.
Gravity is a constant companion. From infancy, we live and move with an inherent awareness of its force. Over time, we may develop patterns of stance or movement that work against it, rather than with it. By identifying and addressing these patterns, Rolfing helps facilitate the body restoring its natural alliance with gravity.
Rolfing is an embodied experience for both the practitioner and the client.
A Rolfing session with me may include simple guided movement, breath, or visualization work. Tuning into the body in these ways allows us to be present with sensation, perception, emotion and support: healing from the inside, out.
Rolfing is a holistic therapy.
Rolfing looks at the body through an integrative lens, understanding each part through its existence within the whole. As a practitioner, I consider the mind and spirit to be parts of that whole as well.
Rolfing is an invitation to return to being more at ease in your body.
Rolfing is holding space for each body, each experience of body, and each relationship to body.
Rolfing is a tool in the radical work of reclaiming trust in our own bodies.
Rolfing is a rediscovery of the body as a source of vitality.
There can be many ways to describe Rolfing. The body is complex and so is bodywork.
History of Rolfing
In 1920, Ida Pauline Rolf received her Ph.D. in biochemistry from the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University. Despite the resistance she faced as a woman in the field of science, she furthered her knowledge of the body through research in organic chemistry at the Rockefeller Institute.
Driven to find solutions to her own health problems as well as those of her two sons, she spent many years studying and experimenting with different systems of healing and manipulation. Throughout most of her life she was intrigued with and explored many forms of alternative healing including homeopathy, osteopathy, chiropractic and yoga. The notion that proper alignment, physiologic function and anatomical structure are related is the basis of many of these healing methods.
Dr. Rolf agreed that the body functions best when the bony segments are in proper alignment. She added her observations that lasting improvement in alignment and an overall sense of well-being required a closer look at the effects of gravity on our bodies. She believed that the imbalances in structure placed demands on the body’s pervasive network of soft tissues: muscles, fascia, tendons and ligaments, thereby creating compensations throughout the body structure.
Dr. Rolf posed this fundamental question: “What conditions must be fulfilled in order for the human body-structure to be organized and integrated in gravity so that the whole person can function in the most optimal and economical way?”
Her life’s work was devoted to this investigation which led to the system of soft tissue manipulation and movement education that we now call Rolfing®. In order to pass along her work to others and to make the education process accessible, she developed an expedient series of ten sessions, which came to be known as the Ten Series.
Dr. Rolf continues to be recognized as a pioneer and leader in soft tissue manipulation and movement education. Since her death in 1979 at the age of 83, the Rolf Institute® of Structural Integration has continued to share her work by certifying Rolfers™ and Rolf Movement® Practitioners, supporting research, and building upon her inspiration. Today, there are more than 1,550 Rolfers™ and Rolf Movement Practitioners worldwide.
All photos and commentary are courtesy of The Rolf Institute® of Structural Integration