Vogue Features Rolfing
“Back In Style”
By Heidi Julavits
This past year has been, for me, a period of intense personal searching. I asked myself the hard questions. What Kind of Person Am I? How Do I Want Others to Perceive Me? And Will My Computer Fit Inside? For months, I pitilessly self-scrutinized as I scoured the earth for the perfect handbag.
And then I found it. A faux-reptile, space-age grommetted Marni tote, “a work of art” as the saleswoman said. Righto, but let’s see what it holds, I thought as I emptied the contents of my current Sad Sack (laptop, books, pens, wallet, diapers, wipes, emergency baggie of bread sticks) into the work of art. Everything fit, and the work of art, not only stunning but sturdy, seemed structurally up to the task. Then I tried to pry it over my shoulder for the crucial test drive. I struggled. I contorted. I removed my coat and my sweater. Finally I had to admit to myself: the bag’s straps were too short. Gamely, I held the bag in my hand rather than wedging it into the boney shoulder groove I’d perfected over the years. For an hour I walked around the store, bag in hand, trying to convince myself that this was indeed the perfect bag. But deep inside I knew otherwise. The Marni handbag triggered my toddler-chasing-computer-ogling forward shoulder slump, and the energy required to counteract this slump (in order to keep me upright) meant I’d be exhausted after walking half a block.
I cursed handbags—a sadistic, impractical invention—and then blamed the Marni bag in particular. It was the bag’s fault I couldn’t buy it. I blamed my kid. I blamed gravity.
Then, reverting to quest mindset, I turned my scrutiny inward. Maybe the problem was me. Maybe I simply needed to correct my posture. Except, as I discovered when I tried it, “simply correcting my posture” was precisely as impossible as existing for my entire waking life in Mountain Pose. My mind was unable to counteract my spine’s naturally unnatural curvature toward the earth even when the perfect handbag was at stake. My body, in short, was imprisoned by itself.
Worse still was this realization, assisted by the store’s full-length mirrors: my body language conveyed timidity, insecurity, even a tiny bit of self-shame. The inexorable aging process, laziness, a momentarily shopworn sense of self-worth had initiated my downward slide, but now my bones and muscles clung to this new shape like a grudge.
I decided to take extreme measures. No wimpy massages or sweetly encouraging physical therapy sessions for me. It was time to radically renegotiate my relationship with gravity and put the “ow” back in powerful. It was time to explore a reputedly hardcore yet effective bodywork technique created by a woman who, in her heyday, resembled the love child of Eleanor Roosevelt and Yoda. It was time to regain my inward (and outward) delusion of worldly dominance so I could buy that Marni bag.
It was time to get rolfed.
Rolfing should connote a ‘60s-era hell massage administered by a hairy, Big Sur sadist. It should connote the words “torture” and “primal scream” and inspire visions of your muscles being separated from your bones, among other gruesome posture-improving procedures. Even though rolfing’s brutal reputation turns out to be an old hippy wives tale, it’s unsurprising that Michael Bulger, my chosen rolfer, doesn’t call himself a rolfer. Given rolfing’s inaccurately negative rap, many recent trainees of Ida P. Rolf’s methods (developed in the ‘40s and popularized, or some might say primal scream-ized, at the infamous Esalen Institute in the ‘60s) refer to themselves as she did—as practitioners of structural integration.
Bulger’s office is located near Union Square, in an ornate old office building where, rumor has it, Man Ray once kept his studio. With his boyishly messy surfer hair, Bulger might be a rock star I should recognize. Many of Bulger’s clients work in the fashion world: editors, photographers, models, in short, the people who both initiated and embraced the mind-body paradigm shift that’s occurred over the past decade and helped to mainstream formerly fringe practices like yoga, Pilates and acupuncture.
I’ve been told to wear “nice underwear” since this will be my only attire for the next hour and a half (it’s not because of car accidents your mother warned you to wear nice underwear; it was because you might unexpectedly get rolfed). I strip and stand by the wall while Bulger, in jeans and a t-shirt, sits atop a blue exercise ball. I bust out my best mountain pose, but he’s only momentarily fooled by my fake-powerful stance. One look at my legs when I’m lying on the table yields a troubling observation: my right leg is one inch longer than my left. My pelvis is cocked. My ribcage, too, is laughably uneven, with my left ribs protruding further than my right, a problem I’ve long observed from below when in Bridge Pose.
Yoga, in fact, is a logical entry point to structural integration. Rolf, decades ahead of her time, became a yoga junkie in the ‘30s to help resolve her back problems after the birth of her child. Subsequently, Hatha Yoga strongly influenced her when she was formulating her soon-to-be eponymous structural integration techniques. Put simply, her techniques are founded on the following premise: bones, joints and muscles are interconnected by a web of tissue called fascia. Due to injury and habitual use, the fascia—“intelligent tissue,” Bulger calls it—compensates around these hurt or overused areas, and reconfigures the body in such a way that you become literally trapped in the shape of your own bad patterns. The keyboard slump. The shoulder-as-hook for the life-bearing tote bag. The torqued pelvis protecting the ski-injured knee. Since the fascia is plastic, not elastic, it can be reshaped or, as Bulger phrases it, “reeducated” to respond to gravity in a more balanced way. Or as he puts it to me once: “I’m doing yoga for you.”
This sounds good to me, a lazy, lazy yogi and chronic keyboard slumper whose shoulders feel most gravitationally at peace when jutting slightly forward of my chin. My first session begins mildly enough, and does not, in any commonly understood way, resemble a massage. Massage is to structural integration as getting your hair washed is to getting your wet, knotted hair combed straight. Bulger inserts his thumb, fingers, even his elbow into the indentations between my muscles and joints. He applies pressure and gently manipulates the rubber band-like bits of tissue under my skin.
I’ve signed up for the “Basic Ten Series,” which forms the foundation of Rolf’s structural integration methodology. Manipulating the fascia—separating it from surrounding tissues, eliminating “unnecessary gossamer adhesions” between the fascia and the joints—works like cognitive therapy does on the brain. “Your body remembers that it has a choice,” says Bulger. While the effects can be long-lasting—even permanent—Bulger has a lot of regular clients who, after completing the Ten Series, continue to work with him to help solve their specific issues.
The experience of being rolfed is primarily a painless one, though it feels less soothing and sleepy-making than it does like sub-dermal hygiene. Occasionally it becomes intense. “This is going to hurt,” warns Bulger, before he separates two filaments of connective tissue that have adhered just below my armpit—but in fact it feels wonderful after a few deep breaths, like the good-hurt of the hamstrings during a forward bend.
While Bulger is open to methods that combine bodywork with psychotherapy, he believes that a past motorcycle accident is more to blame for his internally rotated knee than, say, his relationship to his father. Still, Bulger remains highly attentive to possible mind-body connections. A woman, say, with a history of bulimia may have an intense emotional response to having her stomach and her digestive system rolfed.
Given my relatively emotionless digestive system, for me the most notable bi-product of a good rolf is this: I am mentally floating when I leave Bulger’s office, lucid, calmly receptive and cheery. I’m protected inside a clear glass bubble that prevents me from reacting to the Union Square chaos with tensed shoulders or a lowered head. I tell Bulger about my post-treatment high; endorphins, I suspect, or maybe my beginning-to-improve posture is already elevating my sense of powerfulness. Both are probably true. Bulger informs me that there’s a link between acupuncture pressure points and fascia. Basically, the acupuncture medians, those pathways for chi, are embedded between the connective tissue he’s manipulating. Which means my chi is flowing readily, and that’s contributing to my heady glow.
A second benefit is this: I’m getting great conversational mileage out of the announcement, “I’m getting rolfed.” I even meet some closet rolfees this way. “Are you talking about rolfing?” a woman asks me the other day in the park. Robin Aronson, author most recently of a book called “The Skinny: How to Fit Into Your Little Black Dress Forever,” tells me about undergoing an arthroscopic hip operation. Afterwards she had the unnerving (and painful) sensation that her femur, which had been pulled out of her hip socket for the surgery, was in the wrong place. Aronson visited a rolfer who observed that her feet were two very different colors, suggesting a circulation problem. As the rolfer worked on her, she said she felt a pump-pump-pumping sensation in her leg; soon her previously blue-ish foot had “pinked up like a baby’s.”
From a power posture perspective, however, I’m not convinced I’m experiencing any noticeable improvements. Bulger’s work is occasionally so gentle as to seem imperceptible. Yes, there are those ooooweeee moments, such as when he snaps on the surgical gloves and rolfs the inside of my mouth or works those gossamer adhesions between my organs and my intestines. But at times it feels as though his fingers are merely hovering between my muscles. Only when he shifts, again almost imperceptibly, do I realize he’s performing a stealth manipulation.
But after my third session I realize that in fact I have changed physically. One day I look down and am amazed to find my handbag is in my hand. A mistake? Clearly. But since my shoulder is no longer hook-shaped, the bag has slid down my arm and come naturally to rest in my palm. I don’t question it. I keep walking. One block. Two blocks. Three. Suddenly I can walk comfortably, and seemingly forever, carrying a handbag in my hand without having to exert myself to maintain a decently upright posture; my body assumes this balanced shape without my having to force it. I look less like my usual slumped sherpa self and more like a chicly confident Cold War spy carrying a briefcase full of money.
I’m sold. Like yoga, rolfing is one of those practices that your body instantly tells you makes a lot of sense. Meanwhile, I keep catching glimpses of this unrecognizably poised woman in glass storefronts; her back, despite the fact that she’s pushing a stroller or weighted down by her office-in-a-handbag, is laughably, even arduously straight. But that power-exuding woman in the window is me, and it requires no effort at all to be her.
From Michael Bulgers website.
Oprah’s Dr.Oz on Rolfing
What is Rolfing? Is it something that could help ease muscle tension?
If you’re plagued by muscle pain, Dr. Oz recommends a technique called Rolfing, which he describes as “even deeper than a deep-tissue massage.”
This technique, which was developed by Dr. Ida Pauline Rolf, aims to separate bound-up connective tissues (or fascia), which link the muscles. “Rolfing literally releases the joints,” Dr. Oz says. “When you talk to folks about the impact it has on them, a lot of them just stand taller. A lot is just freeing you up to live the way you’re supposed to live.”
Read more offsite… Click Here
Bodywork as Meditation
Bodywork as Meditation
Using Structural Integration as a Pathway
By Raymond J. Bishop, Jr
| Openness to a different type of listening and following are essential for the meditative to emerge. |
Bodywork as a meditative discipline may at first seem rather peculiar. Certainly, many seasoned bodyworkers meditate, rightly believing that regular practice of any of a wealth of meditative modalities will promote an increased sense of mental clarity and calmness and may potentially enhance the experience of everyday life, as well as the quality and depth of their work. However, accepting the idea that the act of doing integrative bodywork can be both the source of meditative insight and an ideal milieu through which we move toward higher levels of consciousness will, for most, require a shift in paradigm of a fairly high order. This perceptual difficulty will be further magnified when applied to those therapists engaged in disciplines that are thought of as intense and whose work is generally described as deep-tissue manipulation — work such as the style of structural integration called Rolfing®. That such a modality offers a gateway to “the meditative” will at first seem contradictory in the extreme, owing to a number of fundamental misapprehensions about the nature and intent of this and related integrative modalities. Furthermore, the idea that those who do bodywork may choose to do so in part as a selfish desire to attain an altered mental state may seem curiously at odds with the altruism that we associate with those drawn to healing touch modalities. Yet, we will argue for the virtues of this type of selfishness (Ayn Rand, notwithstanding).
Read more at Massage & Bodywork Magazine’s website…
(Opens in a new window)
Used with permission. Originally published in the
August/September 2005 issue of Massage & Bodywork Magazine
Rolfing® is about Core Experience
Rolfing® is about Core Experience
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]
Blake was criticizing the viewpoint of scientific materialism which takes the external world seriously as independent and “out there”. It causes us to forget that our experience of the external world is created by the mind, or as Blake would have it, the imagination. Your experience of anything is organized by your habits of perception. It is not in itself. It is not objective in the sense we have been trained to believe it is.
To experience from the core is to take responsibility for the extent to which we create this experience. It is to move away from an externalized “over there” kind of perception into a real continued link with our feelings, perceptions, and responses.
If you think what you’re perceiving is “out there”, you are looking out through your senses as if through chinks in the cavern wall of your dualistic perception.. If you move into a continued contact with your core experience, you are cleansing the doors of perception. Blake is talking about returning to core experience. And most mystics and really good poets have talked about the same shift.
Ida Rolf’s approach to this was to organize the fascia in a physical body in a three-dimensional gravity field. But this is not only working on a material body. This is the body as it is experienced: the phenomenological body. This body is real in an entirely different sense. It exists in the mind. If all of reality is created, in the sense of organized, by your Imagination, the image-ing faculty of your core being, then the body exists in the imagination. In fact, Blake would say the body exists in the imagination rather than the imagination existing in the body.
Releasing Traumatic Emotions and Memories
In the process of moving attention through the outer layers of the body into the core people sometimes re-experience emotions and memories which are stored there. This is a valuable part of the process of becoming more aware, and sometimes people use deep tissue bodywork like Rolfing® as part of a process of psychotherapy. The fact that the person is experiencing these emotions in the context of the body means that they are grounded, less confusing and more safe than might otherwise be the case.
Other people do not experience these dramatic moments of recall. Anyway, what is important is the the increased awareness and presence in the body. Good sessions are almost like meditations which bring deeper levels of one’s physical being into awareness. The awareness remains, and it is this that helps people be more grounded and centered as a result of Rolfing®.
Combining the Physical and Psychological
Arranging the body so that it balances around the actual physical line of gravity is the key to the opening of the core. The work is neither too ethereal and ungrounded in physical reality, nor so purely physiological that it ignores the experience of the person. It is a meditation of a high degree. When one experiences an open balance of some part of the body in Rolfing®, it is often with an interior sense of rightness, of recognition of the body as it was always meant to be. At the same time it has the elegance of a geometry lesson, purified of subjective distortion and confusion. In a sense, Ida Rolf managed what William Blake never did: to combine a scientific understanding with an adequate grasp of soul.
Edward W. Maupin, Ph. D., 1996 www.edmaupin.com
Structural Integration of the Human Body
Structural Integration of the Human Body
A Historical Perspective on the Legacy of Ida Rolf, Ph.D.
[Originally published in Vision Magazine December 2007]
Ida P. Rolf was born in New York in 1896. Ida graduated from Barnard College in 1916 and received her Ph.D. at Columbia University in 1920. Her acceptance into the university was a rare accomplishment for a woman at that time. She worked for her Ph.D. in Biological Chemistry and wrote her thesis on the human body’s connective tissue. She went on to research organic chemistry at the prestigious Rockefeller Institute for the next 12 years.
Dr. Rolf developed her method of working with the body after many years of practicing Tantric Yoga and studying multiple holistic disciplines including Osteopathy, Homeopathy, Chiropractic and the Alexander Technique. She had experience with, and training in, the scientific side of connective tissue and how it responds to chemical and physiological changes. This, in combination with her knowledge of holistic approaches to the body, provided a very unique view of the human structure and it’s healing process. This melding of disciplines was the synthesis for her work although initially she presented it in a very scientific, westernized way. Dr. Rolf felt like a more scientific perspective on Structural Integration would be met with a warmer reception and lent more credibility by the healthcare community as a whole.
Using Yoga’s theory of evolving the human structure for higher states of consciousness through physical change, combined with deep hands on work, she began to develop Structural Integration. Her experience studying the biochemistry of connective tissue told her that putting energy, pressure and/or heat into fascia it will begin to shift and change shape as well as chemical structure. Hands on bodywork provides all three of these stimuli. When shortened fascia creates chronic tension in the body by immobilizing what it envelops; this includes all muscles, bones and organs forming an interconnected matrix throughout the body. Finding length where needed by releasing immobilized fascia and seeking balanced tone in the body is the primary goal of Structural Integration. Dr. Rolf practiced on people who came to her looking for relief from dysfunction and her theory of increased vitality through the proper alignment of the body’s fascia took shape.
What began with a trial and error approach based on established techniques developed into a cohesive theory of how the body’s structure functions in gravity. The concept of “the line”, which is present in all well organized bodies, began to take shape. “The line” in the body can be related to a plumb line hanging from the crown of the head. When a body is organized this line extends from the crown down, in front of the spine and through the center of the pelvic floor. This relationship of “the line” to the rest of one’s structure is paramount in Structural Integration work. When we are in proper relationship with gravity this embodiment of the line is apparent; for without it we find ourselves unbalanced, unstable, and working against the pull of gravity instead of in harmony with it.
In appropriate relationship to gravity this force that we are always pushing against actually encourages us to stand upright, a counterbalance if you will. This concept is known as expansional balance and was brought into the Structural Integration paradigm by one of Dr. Rolfs early students, Ed Maupin, Ph.D. Expansional balance refers to the body’s unique ability to respond dynamically to all forces put upon it. This is the ability to expand the body rather than collapse it in response to external forces (1). When something pushes, I push back. Gravity becomes a tool providing lift to the body, as I sink my weight into the floor I secure a stable foundation to stand upright.
Clients have found that along with physical benefits the awareness that this work provides is a unique vehicle to explore the relationship to their body. At times we can store emotions in the body. When these emotions become stuck in the body’s connective tissue chronic tension develops in that area, this phenomenon is known as body armoring. This armoring is a way to disconnect from a part of the body that may be scary or hold an emotion we are not yet ready to deal with. Sometimes emotions can arise in session and it is for this reason that creating a safe and nurturing rapport with a client is vital. The process of identifying the areas of emotional holding can be a powerful way to move past trauma as well as develop more confidence and integrity within your body.
With these revolutionary ideas of structure and powerful techniques to compliment them Dr. Rolf knew it was time to teach. She began in the 1950’s and wanted to reach out to a group that would embrace her work and, more importantly, the theory that drives it. Osteopaths and Chiropractors were logical professionals to start training, but Dr. Rolf feared her work would be looked upon as just another technique to shoehorn into their well established theories of the body. Hoping her vision of fascia as “the organ of posture” would be wholly embraced, she kept searching.
The Human Potential Movement was alive and well in the 60’s and Esalen Institute in Big Sur, CA was a powerful player in the advancement of alternative therapies. It proved to be an ideal location to spread Structural Integration to a receptive audience that was actively searching for new and innovative approaches to the body. Fritz Perls, who is well known for Gestalt Therapy, received a series of sessions from Ida Rolf, Ph.D while they were both working at Esalen. She relieved him of pain he was having related to a heart condition and awakened memories of an anesthetist injuring him during surgery. He was every so grateful for the relief, sharing and sending clients her way as well as spreading her praises throughout the Esalen community (2). The more she worked on people and became better known, she was met with an increasing demand to teach. Structural Integration is powerful work and people returned as more and more wanted the learn this revolutionary new style of bodywork. It was around this period that her worked gained the nickname “Rolfing®”, as it is known by some to this day.
Eventually schools began to crop up teaching Structural Integration and the work started to proliferate. The Rolf Institute started in 1971 and The Guild for Structural Integration soon followed; they were the first two schools teaching this work and continue to this day. Later, other schools and styles began to emerge such as Hellerwork, KMI, Soma, and IPSB here in San Diego. All have a perspective on the unique vision of Ida Rolf, Ph.D. and although there are differences in style the goal is always the same, to organize the body for a better relationship with gravity.
Archie Underwood, BA, HHP practices Rolf Structural Integration and teaches at IPSB in San Diego, CA. He has been doing bodywork for 9 years and has 2500 hours of training. To book a session or for more information please call 619.861.3232 or visit www.rolfsi.com
1. A Dynamic Relation to Gravity, by: Ed Maupin, Ph.D.
2. Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion, by: Jeffery Kripal ; University of Chicago Press, 2007
“The gospel of Structural Integration: When the body gets working appropriately, the force of gravity can flow through. Then, spontaneously, the body heals itself.” - Ida Rolf, Ph.D.
