Why is it called Rolfing®?
Ida P. Rolf Ida Rolf was born in New York in 1896, and grew up in the Bronx. She graduated from Barnard College and went on the receive a Ph.D. in biochemistry in 1920 from the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University. While working at the Rockefeller Institute, she explored alternative approaches to health — homeopathy, osteopathy and, in particular, yoga. She began using what she had learned to help friends and acquaintances, which led to more and more people coming to her for help. As she went on to teach, she formulated the techniques and principles that shape her vision that carries through to today.
Ida Rolf called her work Structural Integration, and she was not interested in curing mere symptoms, she was after bigger game. |
She wanted nothing less than to create new, better human beings. The ills would cure themselves and the symptoms would melt as the individual became better balanced. The essence of this was based on the fact that human bodies exist in gravity, and as such, are subject to the laws of physics and mechanics. If the structure is not aligned and balanced, one experiences effort and resistance in counteracting the force of gravity.
"Some individuals may perceive their losing fight with gravity as a sharp pain in their back, others as the unflattering contour of their body, others as constant fatigue, yet others as an unrelentingly threatening environment. Those over forty may call it old age. And yet all these signals may be pointing to a single problem so prominent in their own structure, as well as others, that it has been ignored: they are off balance, they are at war with gravity. " — Ida Rolf
Rolf's brilliant solution was to manipulate the fascia in order to restore the body's alignment, creating a sensation of lightness and allowing gravity to "flow through."
Her process of balancing a human being in gravity has a natural, sequential unfolding that she developed into a structured series of 10 sessions which we refer to as the 10-Series. In this way, she was able to train a generation of practitioners in her method. Since her death in 1979, the Rolf Institute of Structural Integration in Boulder, CO continues to train Certified Rolfers™ and Rolf Movement™ Practitioners, support research, and further expand her vision.
"Some individuals may perceive their losing fight with gravity as a sharp pain in their back, others as the unflattering contour of their body, others as constant fatigue, yet others as an unrelentingly threatening environment. Those over forty may call it old age. And yet all these signals may be pointing to a single problem so prominent in their own structure, as well as others, that it has been ignored: they are off balance, they are at war with gravity. " — Ida Rolf
Rolf's brilliant solution was to manipulate the fascia in order to restore the body's alignment, creating a sensation of lightness and allowing gravity to "flow through."
Her process of balancing a human being in gravity has a natural, sequential unfolding that she developed into a structured series of 10 sessions which we refer to as the 10-Series. In this way, she was able to train a generation of practitioners in her method. Since her death in 1979, the Rolf Institute of Structural Integration in Boulder, CO continues to train Certified Rolfers™ and Rolf Movement™ Practitioners, support research, and further expand her vision.
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