Rolfing
Overview | Benefits | FAQs | Bio & Testimonials
Do you feel stiff or tense?
Have your movements slowly been losing their beauty and smoothness over the years?
Does your body feel out of place with gravity?
Then it's time to get Rolfed.
Rolfing is an educational bodywork method with unequaled and unprecedented ability to dramatically alter a person's posture and structure. People from all walks of life have benefited from Rolfing: professional athletes, dancers, children, and business people.
Rolfing is sought out as a way to ease pain and chronic stress and it improves performance in professional and daily activities.
The Rolfing technique resembles a slow and long deep-tissue massage. However, the goal of Rolfing goes beyond relieving tension isolated body regions. Instead, the entire body is integrated in gravity so that the body as a whole functions more efficiently. This is experienced as freedom of movement, improved posture, increased circulation, and calmness in the body and mind.
Rolfing is a system of soft-tissue manipulation and movement education designed to help realign the human structure in its entirety, making movement more biomechanically efficient.
Over the years, our bodies react to the physical and emotional strains and demands of life by shortening and twisting. Rolfing aligns and balances the body by lengthening and reorganizing the body appropriately. Rolfing is achieved by manipulating and releasing areas of the body where it is either stuck or held out of balance from lifelong patterns of tension and bracing.
The results of Rolfing are dramatic and long-lasting, giving a person a greater sense of lift, movement, and vitality.
See below for more information about the individual sessions in the 10 series.
We owe the method of Structural Integration to Dr. Ida P. Rolf. A biochemist since 1920, she worked for twelve years at the Rockefeller Institute in the Department of Chemotherapy and later in the Department of Organic Chemistry. She studied mathematics and atomic physics in Zurich and homeopathy in Geneva. In the 1930's, unsatisfied with available medical treatments, Dr. Rolf explored ostheopathy, chiropractic medicine and yoga. By the 1940's she had made many breaththroughs and realized that the physical structure could be realigned by working on the connective tissue (myofascia).
During the next thirty years she refined and perfected her technique and then developed her training program. Graduates in Structural Integreation are requrired to have extensive knowledge of anatomy, physiology and body awareness, as well as a keen sensitivity to psychological issues.
Sessions 1-3: Focus on superficial layers
Session One
This session focuses on freeing the lungs to allow fuller breath, and beginning to free the shoulder and pelvic girdles from the ribcage. This is accomplished by working superficial tissue around the ribcage, shoulders, arms, and hips. Neck and back work is included at the end of almost every session to balance and integrate the work into the body. Most people report feeling immediately relaxed after this session and the relaxation lasts for a couple of days.
Session Two
Next we address your foundation. The feet and lower legs are opened and aligned to better support the body in gravity. Often clients feel a greater sense of support and balance from their feet, as well as better contact between their feet and the ground. Foot problems such as high or fallen arches are also addressed in this session.
Session Three
Now we move to your sides and establish a lateral line. The goal here is to ease strain patterns in the front-back dimension. You might think of it as giving the body depth by opening the "seams" along your sides! We’ll manipulate the sides of your torso, neck, and hips to allow these major segments to better support each other—improving the relationship between your upper and lower body. Some clients feel slight dizziness halfway through this session as the deeper structures are approached. Later, there is often a tingly, relaxed “high” and a shifted sense of front-to-back balance.
Sessions 4-7: Focus on deeper layers
Session Four
We move back to the legs in this session, focusing on the inside of the leg from the ankle to the pelvis, at a slightly deeper layer. The relationship of the foot to the pelvis is aligned; torsions at the knee and hip are addressed. Manipulating adductor attachments allows increased range of movement of the pelvis, which starts the pelvis on its way to becoming more horizontal. This session provides the feeling that the legs are supporting the abdominal space and providing lift for the upper body.
You may experience a feeling of instability. “When I put my foot down it no longer goes where it used to” is a familiar response after session four. Furthermore, clients occasionally report emotional extremes following this session—many people don’t realize how much physical and/or emotional tension they hold in the pelvis until this session disturbs that holding pattern. Although these physically and emotionally unsettled states are usually mild when they occur, it’s best to schedule sessions four and five about a week apart. Session five continues the work started in four, and brings the body to greater balance.
Session Five
Work continues up the front of the abdomen, quadriceps, and psoas, lengthening the front of the body and providing lift up the center of the structure. By freeing deeper pelvic and abdominal restrictions, which can inhibit pelvic movement, the pelvis can continue its shift to a more supportive and balanced horizontal position. Clients frequently report a “big box” feeling as the front seems to lengthen—quite the opposite of all the hip flexion we experience working in front of computers, commuting, sitting in meetings, bending over to pick up children, etc.
Session Six
This session lengthens the deep muscles of the back and hips, matching the change achieved in the front in Session five. Starting in the legs, if necessary, we address the calves, hamstrings, back of the pelvis, and up both sides of the spine to the head.
Session Seven
All the work we've done so far has been necessary before we could organize the head and neck. This session focuses on the upper shoulders, head, neck, and sometimes the arms. After this session clients often feel that their head is more "on." By this time in the series, flexibility, athletic performance and body symmetry are usually noticeably improved.
Sessions 8-10: Focus on integration & overall function
Session Eight
The final three sessions are about integrating all we've done. The human pelvis is an amazing structure that links the upper and lower segments of the body, supports the spine in a vertical position, and allows rotation of the spine. To improve these functions, our work has emphasized freeing and horizontalizing the pelvis. Sessions eight and nine revisit the upper and lower segments of the body and work to integrate them with the pelvis and each other to work as a fluid whole. Session eight is often a lower body session, integrating the legs with higher structures, but many clients will benefit more from upper work at this stage.
Session Nine
This is the other half of session eight. If we worked the lower body in the previous session, this one will target upper structures. The ribcage, shoulders, arms, and sometimes the neck and head are the focus, with the goal always being integration.
Session Ten
The final integration: This session is usually customized to each individual’s body and needs. This is our opportunity to complete, for now, all we've been able to free. We will smooth the fascial wrappers over the structural changes that you have gained, and make peace with anything that remains. This session usually involves the whole body at a somewhat more superficial layer.
Movement education is sprinkled througout the ten-series, in order to help you encourage long-term structural change. Although structural shifts attained continue to integrate and affect your body long after the sessions are completed, there are other things you can do to nurture structural balance. With this in mind, we’ll discuss ergonomic considerations, relaxation and body awareness techniques, and stretching/toning exercises, that are directly affecting your alignment.
After the Ten-Series
The ten-series is designed to leave your structure at a balanced place.
*Many clients complete a ten-series, get good results, and never feel the need for another session.
*Others, view Rolfing as an important way of maintaining their bodies and come in for regular "tune ups" (anywhere from bimonthly to quarterly). This is particularly common among athletes, heavy computer users, and adults with scoliosis.
*Some clients find so much more ease and relaxation in their bodies after Rolfing sessions, that they use it instead of massage.
*Other clients take a break for several months after the ten-series and then request a post ten series, generally five sessions in length, which may focus on the client's specific goals.
*Lastly, some clients only call when they fall off their bike, and "something feels amiss."
These are all good ways to use Rolfing after you've completed the initial work. Do what makes sense to you.