A description of Rolfing®, by Dr. Ida Paulina Rolf
Structural Integration - SI
Dr. Ida Paulina Rolf - Photo courtesy of Certified Advanced Rolfer® David Kirk-Campbell
“Structural Integration is a technique which is organising and ordering a body and bringing the muscles back to the place where they belong in terms of their theoretical order.
Structural Integration, sometimes called Rolfing® for the fact that it was developed by Ida P. Rolf, namely myself, is a technique to make the person feel more effective, more efficient, better organised and better coordinated because is in the gravitational field, accepting it, working in it and with it instead of fighting it as the average random body has to do.
In Structural Integration we expect to give a cycle of 10 sessions.
There is a reason for this: we are not dealing with local problems, we are not dealing with the kind of thing that you can say: “Well I fixed that, that’s all”. We are dealing with an attempt to make a body a sturdier human being, to make a body more secure, more adequate within the field of gravity.
This requires that muscles are balanced around a vertical line.
When I talk about balancing muscles I am talking about balancing the right side against the left side, about balancing the front of the body against the back of the body and finally about balancing the innermost muscles against the outermost muscles, the inside against the outside. This is the most important of those balances.
In the frame of the 10 sessions, which is basic to this work, there is a complete overview of what is going on in terms of the muscular and fascial pattern inside the body.
What we are interested in doing is setting muscular groupings where they belong in order to work most efficiently within the gravity field, in order to support the body with the least effort.”
Free transcription of this YouTube video