 Structural
Integration is a 10 session systematic process of deep
bodywork that improves the Structural and Functional
abilities of the human body in its relationship to the
gravitational field. Through the systematic approach
of reorganizing and balancing major joints and body segments,
we are able to achieve a rapid improvement in structural
mechanics leading to improved function and a decrease
of chronically held tension patterns.
The art of Structural Integration represents the life
work of Dr.
Ida P. Rolf. After earning her Ph.D in Biological
Chemistry in 1920, Dr. Rolf worked as a research scientist
for the Rockefeller Institute in New York for 13 years.
She spent fifty years studying, searching, developing
and teaching her system of creating a more upright
human structure, a body with greater verticality and
balance which functions more efficiently in gravity,
the field in which we live.
Her primary goal was to enlist the supportive benefits
of gravity. Gravity is never neutral. Dr. Rolf said, "When
gravity isn't tearing something down, it's upholding
it."
She determined that the human structure is a "plastic
medium", and that by applying pressure, energy and
intention, the muscular structure can be altered and
freed from long-held abberation, the result of physical
and/or emotional traumas. By working to free the myofascial
network which encases and relates each muscle and
each group of muscles, the body returns to its natural
organization, and accordingly functions in a more
efficient, graceful and comfortable way. She observed
that when human structure becomes more vertical, more
balanced, more upright, a whole series of other significant
changes occur in the person. Further, she noticed
that a body which becomes more structurally upright,
provides greater emotional, psychological and spiritual
uprightness.
Dr. Rolf always referred to the work as a body education
process. She constantly told her students that they
were teachers, not therapists. She added, "If you
have to use the word therapist, then gravity is the
therapist."
From early on she preferred to call her work Structural
Integration. During the human potential movement
of the 60's, the public coined the words, "Rolfing®" and "Rolfer®" which
are now registered servicemarks of the Rolf Institute
of Structural Integration. |
