Imagine if you could observe briefly at a random point in any Rolfing session and make a short thirty-second reel for Instagram. Then you make similar reels for a myofascial release session, one for massage and another for physiotherapy. When you compare the reels they might look very similar: a practitioner touching a client who is supine, prone or side-lying on a treatment table. A person who is not a trained bodywork therapist may consider all the reels to be examples of ‘massage’, because to the layperson anything that manipulates muscles is broadly categorised as massage.
Then imagine that you can observe for longer than thirty seconds, say, for ten minutes. Differences between Rolfing and the other modalities would become apparent. The touch of the massage therapist may include faster strokes, such as the kneading action of petrissage or the tapping and chopping of tapotement, whereas the Rolfing practitioner hooks slowly into the myofascia, then slides, and spends more time in each contact. The physiotherapist may touch the client infrequently and use the time instead to show how to do prescribed exercises for homework.
The work of the myofascial release therapist may seem to be similar to Rolfing; sustained pressure using deep, slow strokes with fingers, knuckles and elbows. But there is a major difference between myofascial release and Rolfing. Myofascial release has appropriated techniques from Rolfing without maintaining the framework and goals of a Rolfing treatment. Rolfing is more than a collection of effective techniques designed to treat local dysfunctions symptomatically. Dr. Ida Rolf, who developed Rolfing Structural Integration, regarded symptom treatment as insufficient and believed it necessary to treat the whole body in order to get to the root cause of the problem:
“There are schools of chiropractic that work only in the neck. What they are implying is that any imbalance in the lower part of the body will manifest as imbalance up above. That far, they’re absolutely right. So they say, let’s get the imbalance out of the neck; that far, they’re right, too. But they’re not getting to the underpinning—for me, balance in the neck is inextricably tied up with balance in the whole body. To get balance in the neck, you must bring harmony to the rest of the body first.” (Note 1)
There are several factors that make Rolfing different from other bodywork modalities: holism and the Rolfing training, the treatment of the myofascial system in totality, the importance of gravity and Rolfing Movement, and the Rolfing principles of holistic intervention.
1. Holism and the Rolfing Training
In addition to the Rolfing Basic and Advanced training and numerous continuing education modules offered by the Rolf Institute, I have attended various professional somatic trainings: Craniosacral Therapy, Visceral Manipulation, Thai Massage, Reiki, Body Control Pilates, John Gibbons Muscular Energy Technique and others. All have their merits, but the Rolfing training was by far the best. In all of the above trainings, including Rolfing, students are taught a foundational curriculum consisting of anatomy, theory and treatment techniques.
Where the Rolfing training differs is that great importance is placed on the Rolfing Series as a holistic process, not just a collection of techniques, and Rolfers are trained to consider their clients from a holistic perspective.The holistic approach to therapy posits that there are four aspects of a person’s being, like four quadrants of a pie: physical, emotional, mental and spiritual. These four quadrants are interrelated such that a therapeutic intervention in one quadrant will affect the other three quadrants.
The Rolfing Series is primarily a physical treatment which affects the other levels of being. This seems to be borne out in practice, based on the many examples of clients who recount psycho-emotional benefits from the Series, such as new clarity about a personal relationship, increased confidence and better ability to deal with stress. More than just a bunch of massage sessions, the Rolfing treatment not only releases knots deep in the body’s myofascia, but also has the potential to affect characterological and emotional holding patterns.
The training itself reflects this holistic perspective, as the material is presented in a multi-layered manner in order to stimulate different learning modes and to fully involve and engage the student as they progress. For example, when the teaching objective is about Session 2 and the feet, the day may start with the students participating together in a brief experiential to explore the sensations in their feet, where they feel the distribution of weight, and how their body responds when it changes.
There is an anatomy class and slideshow about the key osseous and myofascial structures of the feet. Students practice key techniques relevant to Session 2 and then observe the teacher and assistant each giving Session 2 to their models from outside the class. Time is allotted to explain and discuss the teachers’ choices and strategies during their sessions. Students exchange a full Session 2 with each other, debrief each other afterwards and then share their experiences, learning and challenges in open forum with the rest of the group. In this way theory and anatomy are backed up with observation, practical hands-on experience, journalling, one-on-one communication and group discussions. It is an stimulating potent mix of learning methods.
The Rolfing training is highly effective because of the value it places on personal experience, individual learning styles, exploration, communication and group dynamics. Students are not viewed as objects, mere receptacles for accumulating knowledge (as is the case in many schools and universities). Learning takes place in an intersubjective environment where students are encouraged to experiment, share their ideas and engage directly and authentically with their peers.
Rolfing students are trained not only in somatic techniques but guided to be able to appreciate a person as a whole being, to listen deeply, to know how a collapsed posture can relate to a lack of confidence, how inadequate support from the legs or an attitude of false bravado can go along with deep feelings of insecurity. Exploring the rich sensorial content of their own Rolfing Series makes trainee Rolfers more clearsighted and honest about their own physical shortcomings.
The inner state of the practitioner is vitally relevant to the quality of their touch and the training, at its best, manages to potentize a student’s presence as they work. As students feel the power of the Series to turn weakness into strength, vulnerability into resilience, they develop the ability to create the therapeutic field for their clients to experience the same embodied presence and phenomenologically rich process as they enjoyed in their training.
As a teaching assistant I have had the privilege to witness how profound the Rolfing training can be for students and how important the experience is in their personal lives. The combination of intense intellectual learning, somatic exploration and personal growth makes the Rolfing training a memorable experience, and for many students it is a pivotal life event. The rich sense of embodiment I gained from the training counterbalanced years of being “stuck in my head” and significantly improved my quality of life. It was literally life changing. Naturally the benefits which Rolfing students receive from the training inspires us to be passionate about our work and to want pass on some of that good stuff to our clients.
In the words of Nicholas French:
“Rolfing SI has always seemed to attract people who are different from the norm. I think that’s partly because we are amazed at how much the work improved our own lives, but also because something in us wants to help others as we have been helped.” (Note 2)
2. The Treatment of the Myofascial System in Totality
Fascia is the three-dimensional web of connective tissue that surrounds and supports muscles, bones, organs, and other structures within the body. It is a tensegrity structure which provides structural support, transmits forces, and allows for communication between different parts of the body. Ida Rolf called fascia the ‘organ of structure’, recognised its plasticity and found an effective way, originally called the Recipe, to manipulate the myofascial system in order to improve the structural and functional relationship between the body’s various parts. She referred to people who had not received structural integration as ‘random’ bodies because of the relative level of corporeal disorganisation.
“In Rolfing, you start with disorganization, not organization. As you go on, as you work, organization accumulates and disorganization decreases in the same percentage… By the time you get up to the sixth and seventh hours, you have relatively little disorganization, and relatively a lot of organization. The critical mass has moved from disorganization to organization in that body.”(Note 3)”
Rolfing Structural Integration brings more order into the system by working progressively through the body and organising the myofascial layers from superficial to deep, from the support of the legs to the spine and the creation of balance from front to back. The results are apparent not only in improved vertical alignment but in smoother movement, better coordination, and frequently in reduced musculoskeletal pain.
3. The Importance of Gravity and Rolfing Movement
Rolf was the first to see the human body as more than a self-referential system. It was not enough for her to make the body’s various parts interrelate and function optimally. She placed great importance on the fact that the human form functions in relationship to an environment where gravity is a constant force coming to bear on it. Her basic premise was that Rolfing Structural Integration enables the person to be aligned within the gravitational field; a human energy field relating to a much larger energy field:
“…in order for a living body to be at ease in its spatial environment on earth gravity must be able to deal positively with it. We can’t change the gravitational field; we haven’t gotten that big yet. What we can do is to change the way the parts of the body fit together into a whole which can transmit the gravitational field through that body in such a way that it enhances its energy field.” (Note 4)
Since the 1990s the Rolfing Movement curriculum has been informed by the work of Hubert Godard, a Rolfer, ex-dancer and research scientist. Godard’s model of tonic function explains how Rolfing manipulation and movement education help the body’s tonic musculature to hold a person upright in gravity with minimal effort. The tonic system is organised by pre-movements which are not consciously controlled, such as the contraction of the soleus (deep calf muscle) before a person lifts their arm. However, a person’s pre-movements can be influenced by their active perception and orienting of attention to the environment. Rolfing Movement educates people how to affect how their body organises itself in gravity, and the curriculum continues to emphasise how this embeddedness in our environment acts to shape our actions and our structure.
“The body is a relational system… the internal coherence of the system is defined partly by the nature of its relationship to an external system. It’s not just how the body agrees with itself, it’s how it fits into the larger picture, how we orient in the environment. It is this embeddedness in our environment that acts to shape our actions and our structure.” (Note 5)
4. The Rolfing Principles of Holistic Intervention
In the 1990s the principles of holistic intervention were devised by three members of the Advanced faculty at the Rolf Institute: Jeff Maitland, Jan Sultan and Michael Salveson. The principles represent the philosophical underpinning of the Rolfing curriculum and are intended to act as guidelines to help practitioners choose appropriate interventions and treatment plans.
The principles are Holism, Adaptability, Support, Palintonicity and Closure. They are conceptual guidelines about to how to achieve a higher level of order and continuity in the whole person across the the four taxonomies of structural/segmental, geometrical, functional, and energetic.
For example the Palintonic Principle (palintonos was a Greek word used by Heraclitus to mean ‘unity of opposition’ or ‘balanced tension’) states that somatic integration is a function of palintonic harmony, which basically means that the success of any intervention or series of interventions is recognisable by appropriate spatial relationships, for example back/front, side-to-side, top/bottom, inside/outside and horizontals at the hinges.
The principles are unique to Rolfing Structural Integration and set it apart from other somatic therapies, including other forms of Structural Integration derived from Ida Rolf. They provide a neat conceptual framework which can be applied in a practical way by Rolfing practitioners during individual interventions and the Rolfing Series. They are especially useful in helping to plan post-Series tune-ups.
Summary
A glimpse of Rolfing through a thirty-second Instagram reel is insufficient to understand how it is different to other somatic therapies. Other therapies may include one or two of the factors identified above, but none of them include all four.
The emphasis on the student’s personal process and embodiment in the training, the comprehensive treatment of the myofascial system as a unified entity in the Rolfing Series, the way Rolfing practitioners attempt to improve the client’s relationship to the gravitational field, and the conceptual organisation of the five principles of holistic intervention — all these factors make Rolfing a unique therapy in its own right.
Endnotes
- Rolf, Ida. (1990). Rolfing and Physical Reality. Rochester, VT: Healing Arts Press, p. 59.
- French, Nicholas, “Do We Choose a Path, or Does It Choose Us?” Structural Integration: The Journal of the Rolf Institute®, Vol. 46, No. 2, July 2018, p.45.
3. Rolf, Rolfing and Physical Reality, p.164.
4. Ibid., p.35
5. Salveson, Michael, “Seven Important Ideas in the Development of Rolfing.” Structural Integration: The Journal of the Rolf Institute®, September 2009 Vol. 37, No. 3, p.31.