Structural Integration and Energy Medicine

A Handbook of Advanced Bodywork

Jean Louise Green

• Publisher: Healing Arts Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781620557990
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Alternative & Complementary Medicine

An illustrated guide to the Structural Integration bodywork process and the relationship between body alignment and energy flow • Details each of the 10 sessions in the Structural Integration bodywork series, explaining what to expect and how to maximize the benefits • Explores the relationship between the energetics of the body and its alignment, including a scientific understanding of how gravity affects body alignment • Explains how to incorporate essential oils and other holistic support tools as well as the psycho-emotional Hellerwork themes When the body's structure is optimally aligned, not only does it eliminate pain, reduce inflammation, and stop the degeneration of joints and discs, it also enhances the flow of energy in the body and awakens us to greater mental clarity. In this illustrated guide to Dr. Ida P. Rolf's Structural Integration process, Jean Louise Green introduces the principles of Structural Integration and details each of the 10 sessions in the Structural Integration bodywork series, explaining what to expect and how to maximize the benefits. She explores the relationship between the energetics of the body and its alignment, including an advanced scientific understanding of how gravity can become a beneficial force when the body is properly aligned. She provides clear, accessible descriptions of core concepts such as the Rolf Line and the torus, including a detailed explanation of how to access the energetics of the Rolf Line. She illustrates the rotation patterns of the body and explains how they contribute to pain and how correcting them may minimize the need for hip and knee replacements. She provides movement exercises and support tools for self-care and maintenance between sessions and explains optimal body mechanics for moving, sitting, and standing as well as how to avoid putting stress and strain back into the body. This book is an excellent resource guide to accompany a person through their Structural Integration series. The author also explores how to incorporate Joseph Heller's psycho-emotional Hellerwork themes in the Structural Integration process and looks at holistic support tools such as electromagnetic resonancing, far-infrared saunas, essential oils, gratitude practices, meditation, and the Five Tibetan yogic exercises. Offering an energy medicine approach to bodywork, this guide provides both practitioners and laypeople with the necessary tools to dramatically increase the efficiency of the body, release chronic pain, improve mental function, and free energy flow.

Structural Integration Defined

Structural Integration is the three-dimensional balancing of the musculoskeletal system, which gives rise to a more harmonious relationship with gravity. In a ten-session series, the major body segments are organized around a central vertical axis so the center of gravity of each segment lines up one above the other. Vertical alignment allows the body’s muscles to be balanced from side to side and from front to back and for inner core muscles to be balanced with outer superficial muscles. With balanced structure, gravity pulls equally from the front, back, and sides, and the body expends less energy maintaining balance.

As the body moves back to the symmetry of its original design, subtle lifeforce energy can move freely again, activating the body’s own healing processes. Dr. Ida P. Rolf, the founder of Structural Integration, stated, “The unimpeded flow of gravity through a human structure supports and maintains that structure. When the body gets working appropriately, the force of gravity can flow through. Then, spontaneously, the body heals itself.”¹

Like a building, human structure is subject to the laws of physics, which state that masses must be balanced in order to be stable. Eight stackable segments of the body (including the head, neck, torso, hips, upper legs, lower legs, ankles, and feet) are held in place by bones, muscles, and fasciae (connective tissues). Like the World Wide Web, myofascial tissue—that is, the fascia of the muscles (myo means “muscle”)—envelops the entire musculoskeletal system. Chronically short muscles pull attached bones out of alignment. When the fascia is balanced and repositioned, bones can spontaneously reorient.

Dr. Rolf compared the body’s musculature to the structure of a tent, with the pole being the spine.² The fabric and lines pulling against the pole from one direction are balanced by the fabric and lines pulling against it in another direction. If the lines are too loose, the tent will sag. If they’re too tight, it will torque. With equal tension, the tent will have optimal height and width, and the pole serves simply as a spacer between forces. The lines (muscles) bear the weight of the fabric, not the pole (spine). In the body, this spatial symmetry occurs through proper organization of the fascia.

Fascial tissue is comprised of collagen proteins. It wraps around every muscle and organ, creating various fascial planes and bags that hold the body together. When a fascial structure is injured, it secretes semifluid materials that dry up and become glue-like, which causes tissues to adhere, impeding true movement. When a practitioner of Structural Integration applies energy to the knotted collagen tissues, using their fingers, knuckles, or forearms, the glue seems to dissolve and the muscles release.

“Bodies carry their history written within them,” said Dr. Rolf. “In accidents, muscles get displaced slightly, so in continuing to move around, the body uses a different muscular pattern. That different muscular pattern places itself on top of what should be the effective muscular pattern of the uninjured body.”³

One of my clients, a sports club trainer, gave a classic description of how injuries affect the body:

People don’t understand that it is muscle patterns that are getting them in trouble. They don’t understand that the injury they incurred as a fifteen-year-old is lingering and has had a snowball effect. First it’s your hip. Then it becomes your foot because your hip is out of alignment; and then the lower back and a shoulder. By the time you know it, there are seven things out of alignment from one issue!

A friend of mine was trying to go the method of lifting weights, jogging, and stretching. Nothing was helping him so I told him, “It’s because you are stretching a body that is not aligned!”

Since I have been getting these sessions, my body is becoming aligned and it’s allowing me to reach my potential. I don’t have any pain! No pain in my hip and I used to have pain to where I couldn’t sleep and I would actually hit my hip because it hurt so bad. And now I can bend forward and place my hands on the ground. And I haven’t stretched for ten weeks! I just feel amazing.

Structural Integration is a path of personal transformation. With upright posture and structural balance, our confidence naturally builds and our mental state becomes more focused. We are also likely to have more awareness of how we express our feelings and emotions.

“This work helps propel other avenues of your life to become aligned,” said a client. “You get mental and emotional benefits as well as physical benefits. It just embodies everything! I remember feeling so calm and in tune with my emotions after some sessions. I was just level-headed and intelligent. It was fun! I could access things because my body wasn’t expending energy on pain or thinking about what was wrong. When that is relieved, the body is like, ‘Yeah! Finally. Now this is who I am!’”

Dr. Ida P. Rolf, Founder of Structural Integration

Dr. Ida P. Rolf was a pioneering, original mind. She had always investigated what was new and was never afraid to take what she learned and use it.

ROSEMARY FEITIS

Ida Rolf was born in 1896 into the family of a prosperous contractor in the Bronx of New York City. Her father was fully supportive of her strong personality and self-confidence, providing for her higher education and empowering her to succeed in a male-dominated society. She graduated from Barnard College during World War I and obtained a job at the Rockefeller Institute, where she worked for twelve years in the chemotherapy and organic chemistry departments.

In 1916 twenty-year-old Ida Rolf had a life-changing event while camping in the Rockies. She was kicked by a horse, and severe fever and impaired breathing set in. The small-town Montana doctor who initially treated her referred her to a local osteopath. After a simple spinal manipulation, her fever reduced immediately and her breathing became normal.

That simple spinal adjustment demonstrated that freeing obstructions between joints could enhance the body’s overall function and well-being. Young Ida Rolf saw that vertical alignment of the head, rib cage, pelvis, and legs affects health, behavior, and consciousness. This incident initiated her study of how structure determines function.⁴

While working at the Rockefeller Institute, Ida Rolf continued her studies and earned a Ph.D. in biochemistry from Columbia University in 1920. This job also allowed her to go to Switzerland, where she studied mathematics and atomic physics in Zurich and homeopathic medicine in Geneva.

During her graduate studies in biochemistry, Dr. Rolf also began to study yoga with a tantric yogi in Nyack, New York. Describing the significance of her studies during this time, which formed the basis of all her future work, Don Hanlon Johnson, Ph.D., says that Dr. Rolf “began to wonder about the connection between the osteopathic notion of vertical skeletal alignment and the ancient notion of the alignment of chakras. She would eventually synthesize certain ideas of Western biology and Eastern spirituality into the notion that access to the furthest reaches of the human potential required removal of the muscular torsions and skeletal imbalances that impede the free flow of various energies such as oxygen, lymph, blood, and neural messages.”⁵

With the death of her father in 1928 and a subsequent inheritance, Dr. Rolf began lifelong travels in which she studied various spiritual and physical disciplines. She also taught yoga and applied exercises and manipulative techniques to people in need who came to her.

In 1942 Dr. Rolf started a two-year period of work with a friend, Grace, who had been crippled since childhood. “That day I started working with Grace,” said Dr. Rolf, “was the day I really got Rolfing going. That was when the first principle of Rolfing was really born—moving the soft tissue toward the place where it really belongs.”⁶

Dr. Rolf developed original ideas regarding manipulation and healing of the human body. She noted that the body is comprised of segmented parts. She also noted that the body can change because of the malleability of its connective tissues. And she realized that the human body has a relationship with the gravitational field.

From 1965 to 1968, Dr. Rolf taught at the Esalen Institute in Northern California. She called her system of work Structural Integration, which she felt described the process of her technique. At Esalen, the nickname “Rolfing” was first coined. In 1967 Dr. Rolf began writing her book, Rolfing: The Integration of Human Structures. It was completed in 1977. In 1971 Dr. Rolf founded the Rolf Institute of Structural Integration in Boulder, Colorado.

Dr. Rolf died in 1979 at the age of eighty-three. In describing her accomplishments, Dr. Rolf said with modesty, “One does not get very far in one lifetime.” We beg to differ!

As another part of her legacy, Dr. Rolf’s work continued to emerge in Boulder, Colorado, with the Guild for Structural Integration, founded in 1989. And in 2002 the International Association of Structural Integrators (IASI) was founded as the professional membership organization for Structural Integration. IASI has recognized many schools of Structural Integration from around the world that are compliant with their current educational standards for Structural Integration. In compliance with IASI standards, a Certification Board for Structural Integration (CBSI) provides a board exam for Structural Integrators.

My Own Journey in Structural Integration

I have been a practitioner of Structural Integration since 1991. I first studied at the Guild for Structural Integration in Boulder, Colorado, with Emmett Hutchins, Stacy Mills, David Davis, and Wilhelm Heppe, and I completed my practitioner training shortly after with Neal Powers in San Francisco, California. Six years later I had the privilege of being mentored by Sharon Miller, one of just thirteen people in the world to be taken through two levels of advanced training with Dr. Rolf. In fact, Dr. Rolf was Sharon’s only teacher. To my good fortune, Sharon lived close to my office in downtown Hilo, Hawaii, so I had the extraordinary opportunity to work with her regularly from 1997 to 1999, until I moved away.

My introduction to Structural Integration came through other body practices and work. Early training as a gymnast led me to become a gymnastics coach. The desire to be a more effective coach led me to a massage program, where the study of anatomy and kinesiology was the focus for the first six months. During that massage training, I realized that I had a gift with my hands. I also experienced the work of Structural Integration for the first time. After my second session, I looked at my practitioner, David Sigala, and exclaimed, “I am going to do this work someday!” Four years later I was grateful to be in my first training class at the Guild for Structural Integration.

During the core-level work at the Guild in Boulder, my pelvis became horizontal again. I remember that day well, as it was a pivotal moment of great joy and new awareness. When I trained as a young gymnast, my coaches and I were not aware of the necessity of pulling the belly button back toward the spine while doing abdominal conditioning. Not doing so can disorganize the core-level psoas muscles, pulling them away from the spine. This drags the lumbar spine forward and creates an excessive “swayback” curve in the lower back, which the medical community calls lordosis. When the lower end of the spine is pulled forward like that, the head and neck usually pull forward as well. This is exactly what had happened to me, and as a result, standing, sitting, and kneeling for periods of time had become uncomfortable. My pelvis was not “at home” in my body.

During that core-level work at the guild, my chronically contracted psoas muscles released. My pelvis dropped, and my lower back lengthened. I felt my body weight drop into my feet for the first time in many years. No longer was it an effort to hold myself up. A sense of ease and relaxation moved through my body. Finally, I was able to let my weight down into the earth so it could support me. What an incredible sense of relief !

After that session I went outside and walked, skipped, and ran with delight. This was what I wanted my body to feel like! The change to a horizontal pelvis was mine to keep and has stayed with me ever since.

After my training, I devoted myself to full-time bodywork. I have spent many hours studying and working with bodies, pondering their anatomy, structure, and function. The ten-session series designed by Dr. Rolf has been the framework of my explorations. My teacher Neal Powers said that it takes about ten years to really know what you are doing. Emmett Hutchins said that being a practitioner of Structural Integration was a spiritual path—a path of purification. I asked him what he meant. He smiled and said, “You’ll find out.”

I have lived, breathed, and dreamed my craft—and consistently rolled up my sleeves in this work for twenty-five years as a full-time professional. I show up daily at my treatment room, hone my skills, and let the beings on my table teach me. Since 1991, when I was thirty-six years old, studying with master teachers and going through my own personal transformations has been my path.

Being a practitioner of Structural Integration has its own challenges and dilemmas, which Dr. Rolf described as getting secure in an art in which there is no security. As she put it, “A Rolfer’s onl...

Table of contents

• Cover Image
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Acknowledgments
• Table of Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Foreword
• Preface
• PART I. An Introduction to Structural Integration
• PART II. The Recipe Sessions
• PART III. Support Tools
• IASI-Recognized Structural Integration Training Programs
• Footnotes
• Endnotes
• Bibliography
• About the Author
• About Inner Traditions • Bear & Company
• Books of Related Interest
• Copyright & Permissions
• Index