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.”

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.

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by Edward W. Maupin, Ph. D.

Stated most simply, the goal of Rolfing is to enable one to move and balance from the core of the body, from the center line of gravity. This has both physical and experiential (psychological, spiritual) aspects which we can discuss separately.

It deserves attention that Ida Rolf, the originator of Rolfing, was a scientist, a biochemist, who, though she moved far away from her field, never lost her clear attention to physical reality. Both the force of gravity acting upon every body and the fascial tissues she worked to reorganize are real in the scientific sense. At the same time, she understood that the body is the form of our awareness, the lens through which consciousness experiences life, and this “experiential” aspect was never far from her mind.

The Body as a Physical Object in Gravity

The first principle of Rolfing is that the body must relate continually to the physical force of gravity. The various segments of the body must be more or less aligned one on top of the other, or else the external muscles begin to labor to maintain the upright posture. Pelvis, abdomen, chest and head balance easily when their centers of gravity are in a line, so that the upright balance can come from deep muscles which operate by reflex to relate the body to gravity.

Fascia Shapes the Body

People are ordinarily not aligned in this way, however. The easy relationship to gravity can be disorganized by many factors, including accidents, misguided habits, and deep attitudes of various kinds. Fascia is the all-pervasive webwork of connective tissue which holds the body in its shape. As we struggle to move in a gravity field, the fascial webwork adapts to support our movement, and the shape slowly changes.

Fascia can be Reorganized with Movement

Ida Rolf’s discovery was that fascia can be re-organized with correct movement–movement which is in accord with the geometry of the skeleton–and that this reorganization can be hastened by deep manipulation which holds the fascial tissues in place while the client moves. Her maxim:

“Hold tissues where they are supposed to be and induce movement.”

Through years of experience she developed a series of ten sessions which systematically reorganize the whole body, proceeding from the outside layers to the deeper ones and bringing all the major segments into an integrated system of balance. Rolfers generally work within this ten-session framework, though they may use quite different procedures to accomplish the same goals. The overall goal is to find a sense of balance which comes from the core, unobstructed by unbalancing distortions in the myo-fascial system.

The Experiential Core

But it is an interesting fact that this core balance which we call “The Line” is closely related to the core feeling of one’s own being. When the outer layers of the body release to permit the inner layers to function, a deeper awareness opens up. “The Line” is not a physical entity, but a sense of inner space. It is no accident that those centers of feeling which Indian yoga calls “chakras” lie along the same central line of gravity.

The usual sense we have of ourselves and the world is based on characteristic patterns of tension. When we release these tensions and rely on the expansional balance of the core, The Line, we move the center of our experiencing into the core as well.

Now, in the most radical terms, the effect of the ten sessions could be a major re-experiencing of one’s Being: a dramatic change of consciousness. Thought patterns based upon one’s contracted ego, would release and be replaced by a different viewpoint. Ida Rolf spoke of “turning people out” by which she meant they are brought into the core so that they exist and relate out into the world from there.

The poet, William Blake seems to be talking about the same thing in this famous quotation:

“If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.

For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.” [Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 1793]
Continue reading Rolfing is about Core Experience