(Client Rolfed by Richard Condon 2001. Photos used with permission.)

What is Rolfing®?

Rolfing is a scientific and intuitive system of balancing the physical structure in gravity; its fundamental and unique idea being that this omnipresent force will be received optimally by a body which is organized around a truly vertical principle of support.  Dr. Ida Rolf is the founder of the system, which she named Structural Integration, but which her students dubbed Rolfing.

The Rolfing series, or ten series, is a wholistic approach to well being, considering the relationship of the part to the whole and the whole to the part. Each session is like a lens, trained on a particular facet of physical structure.  Dr. Rolf created the series to catalyze the process of Structural Integration.

 Sessions last about 75 minutes.  At the start of each, the practitioner views the client’s structure.  Observation and table work are done with clients in underwear or bathing suits.  Generally, photographs are taken before the first and after the tenth session, for comparison’s sake.  Breathing, sitting and walking will be considered in the course of the series, as well as the routine activities specific to each client. Individualized “homework” is suggested.  Sessions are generally spaced between once/week to once/3 weeks.

   “Our business as Rolfers is to understand that we are working in a gravitational field.  Nobody else has done this; nobody else has sat down and said: ‘I have to learn to use gravity as a tool.’ “

--Dr. Ida Rolf

Why Rolfing® works:

Swathing the entire human frame like a second skin, enveloping every muscle, bone, nerve and organ is the ubiquitous and unbroken system of tissue known as fascia (connective tissue).  Fascia separates, supports, compartmentalizes and organizes the content of our bodies from structures gross to minute.  Ideally, the fascia creates and maintains right structural relationships throughout the body.    Physical or emotional trauma, illness, habit or chronic strain can result in the fascial sheets sticking where they should glide, becoming twisted, dry and restrictive where they ought to be spacious, moist and breathable. When the fascia winds tight, the legs, pelvis, back, arms and neck compress and rotate.  Ease of motion suffers, and pain often results.

 Rolfers are trained to see and to palpate patterns of strain in the facial network, and to release these with a variety of strategies including hands-on work, movement cues, breathing exercises and education in body-awareness and use. Gradually, tensions in the facial system are brought into balance: front to back, side-to-side, surface to deep.  Fascial planes become lengthened and distinguished and the body organizes in a more upright, more functional alignment.  As vertical order is approached, the true support of feet, knees, pelvis, etc. becomes realized.  Every structure above is endowed with support from below, and on an instinctive level, the body understands it can relax.

“The body process is not linear, it is circular; always, it is circular.  One thing goes awry, and its effects go on and on and on and on.  A body is a web, connecting everything with everything else.

—Dr. Ida Rolf

Do the changes last?

Form determines function.  As the work of Rolfing restores the body’s form, new movement patterns become possible.  During the sessions, clients remain active, often asked to breathe into an area, or to make certain movements.  This helps to establish new and more functional patterns, down to the level of the nervous system.

Function determines form.  As new movement patterns arise, and bodily awareness expands, detrimental habits are left behind, and new possibilities of expression replace them.

Fascia is an elastic medium, metabolically active.  New collagen protein strands are perpetually being laid down within the tissue’s matrix, even as weak strands are being absorbed.  The overall “wetness” of the tissue is also in a constant state of flux, regulated by a multitude of internal and external environmental factors.  It possesses both a tough, fibrous quality and a protean quality by which it can change and adapt to suit the needs of the body.  The deep, directed, slow touch of Rolfing is a method of accessing the protean nature and expediting change in fascia. Sometimes subtle, sometimes more direct, the dynamic is always one of suggestion between the Rolfer’s hands and the tissues.  The way we live in our bodies is a slower, yet constant determinant.  The changes will last, and often continue, informed by every body’s innate movement towards health. 

By the same token trauma, surgeries or poor daily habits, for instance slouching at a desk for long hours every day, can override the body’s native intelligence and affect a return of facial restrictions which were “Rolfed out.” Identifying the preventable causes of backslide is an important component of the educational nature of Rolfing.

“This is the gospel of Rolfing: when the body gets working appropriately, the force of gravity can flow through.  Then, spontaneously, the body heals itself.”

 --Dr. Ida Rolf

What are the benefits?

Ø       Greater ease of movement

Ø       More room for breath

Ø       More efficient use of muscles and hence…

Ø       More energy

Ø       Increased sensory awareness

Ø       Heightened anatomical understanding

Ø       Relief from chronic pain secondary to joint strain and compression

Ø       New choices of movement and self-expression

 “So many therapists are striking at disease, instead of supporting the pattern of health.  One of the things that you as Rolfers must always emphasize is that you are not practitioners curing disease; you are practitioners invoking health. Invocation is possible by an understanding of what the pattern is, the structural pattern of health.”

—Dr. Ida Rolf

Who gets Rolfed?

A truncated list from my practice would include bricklayers, dancers, surgeons, clothing designers, computer operators, homemakers, writers, retirees, chiropractors and teachers.

One way to consider fascia is as the tissue that mediates the body’s interaction with gravity.  All of us, in all walks of life, through all stages of life, have a range of choices as to how this relationship proceeds. The Rolfing process organizes and maintains the fascia against the disorganizing influence of the strains and demands of life.

Rolfing is not for everyone, but if the ideas laid out above appeal to you, and if one or more of its benefits is something you’re working towards, then Rolfing may well be for you.

Dr. Ida Rolf received her Ph.D. in biochemistry in 1920. This unusual achievement for a woman of that era points to the tenacity with which she went about her inspired life.

                Her scientific aptitude and ability only nourished her inquiry into a range of practices and ideas such as yoga and osteopathy, which, at the time, were in the shadows, quite discounted by the vast majority of her colleagues.  Confronted with health problems in her immediate family and within her social contacts which mainstream medicine could not resolve, Dr. Rolf pioneered her own system of treatment which eventually coalesced into the Rolfing ten series.

Dr. Rolf began teaching her ideas, and eventually opened her own school.  She never thought of her work as completed or static.  After her death in 1979, her students have continued to explore, research and refine the work of Structural Integration.

 "I invent these explanatory rationalizations as I go along.  All I know is that you get results doing it the way I do it.”

—Dr. Ida Rolf

Richard Condon is a Certified Rolfer, Licensed Massage Therapist and father of three.  He started his formal education in bodywork at The Swedish Institute of Massage in 1990.  Since graduation, Richard has maintained a private practice and co-taught pregnancy massage certification courses with his wife Susanrachel Condon CNM, LMT, CCE. In addition, he served on the therapy staff at The Ostrow Institute for Pain Management for seven years and held a faculty position at the Swedish Institute. He is an active member of the Rolf Institute and Associated Bodywork and Massage Professionals. 

“Forget anatomy and take on art and you’ll look at a body as a something around a line, a vertical line.”

—Dr. Ida Rolf