Dr. Andrew Weil has posted four great reasons to try Rolfing.

Do you suffer from chronic stress, pain or bad posture? You may want to consider Rolfing. Named after Dr. Ida P. Rolf, Rolfing is often referred to as “structural integration.” It is not simply massage, it is a system of deep manipulation of the connective tissues that aims to restructure the fascia (the sheath of tissue that surrounds a muscle) and relieve physical misalignment.

He goes on to list these benefits: “You may become more in touch with your body, experience less pain and stress, improve your posture, even release repressed emotions and diminish habitual muscle tension. People who have experienced Rolfing often find an improvement in their professional and daily activities.”

A mention on Rolfing from the Coloradoan.

Rolfing’s premise is that trauma to the body and the everyday effects of gravity cause connective tissues to shift out of place, resulting in aches and pains. Practitioners stretch and apply pressure to the connective tissue to restore alignment in the body.

Continue reading Deep-massage technique Rolfing makes a return

From Intent.com:

This is a very different perspective for a very common problem. It also explains why conventional protocols fail to provide pain relief so often.

Researchers from Duke University show that back pain is usually caused by a person’s immunity attacking the disc in the same way that it attacks invading germs, not by a broken disc pressing on a nerve. They found that people with back pain associated with damaged discs have high levels of Interleukin-17, produced by your immune lymphocytes and known to cause asthma, rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune diseases.

Continue reading Why Back Surgery Fails So Often

The NY Times published an article last week that explained a bit about what we are trying to accomplish with Rolfing. It could have been more informative and spoke about the larger field of Structural Integration that Rolfing is a part of. And let’s be honest about the experience – it is not painful at all. If you are applying pressure to the body and actually helping unlock the bodies tension and holding patterns that are truly causing chronic pain – how can this be painful? It can get intense but it certainly is not painful.

I like what Rey said here,

“Health is one area where we can find a sense of control,” said Mr. Allen, who has been practicing for about nine years. “The real trend is that people are starting to look within the boundaries of their own skin for meaning in their lives, and to find a sense of security in the world.”

And this is a perspective shared by a lot of clients:

Russell Poses, a 39-year-old international equities trader on Wall Street, who started getting Rolfing treatments after injuring his back, likened the experience to “paying $150 an hour for an Indian burn.” But the benefits, as far as he’s concerned, are well worth it.  Chiropractors and years of physical therapy couldn’t accomplish what two or three Rolfing sessions did, he said.

Plus, he said he could still feel the results two weeks later. “It’s something that actually lasts,” he said.