The Rolf Method

The Rolf Method
The Rolf Method of Structural Integration identifies the vertical line as the ideal that the body should approximate. This put simply means that if you were to drop a plumb line through the middle of the top of the head, it would continue through the center of each segment of the body, ending at the ankles. By becoming more upright and balanced in body, the mind, psyche, and spirit follow. One becomes more centered, more accessible to life’s demands for adaptation and evolution.

The Rolf Method was designed as a 10-session sequence aimed at balancing the body from side to side, top to bottom, front to back, and inside to outside. Even one session will achieve measurable results. The ten sessions are recommended to address the entire body to get at the core level torsions that cause strain and imbalance. See Basic Ten Series.

Here I would like to include the ideological description of Structural Integration as taught by Dr. Ida Rolf to her early students. This is quoted from the website of The Guild For Structural Integration, one of the original schools for training practitioners in the art and science of this work. The link to their website is below.

“The Guild is dedicated to the traditional teachings of Dr. Ida P. Rolf. The product of her life’s work and teaching is the “Recipe”: a ten- session sequence of structural, fascial and educational goals which establishes order in human structures. Due to its efficacy in symptom alleviation, both physical and emotional, there is little doubt that the Recipe will survive in various forms as techniques; it is not certain that it can endure as art and craft without the special dedication of those individuals who are inspired by the potency of intention and wisdom of process concealed within. The Recipe is not technique. The Recipe is more than a discrete succession of myo-fascial goals and intentions. The Recipe is, rather, a process, based on a set of relationships, which establishes structural balance and order. These relationships are based upon sound theoretical physics as well as some traditional metaphysical hypotheses. Relationships belong to the realm of art, they are non-linear. Technique is better suited to scientific and linear analysis. The Recipe, as taught in other schools, has been modified or, perhaps, specialized in several ways. Some of these modifications ignore the underlying priorities in Dr. Rolf’s teaching. The Guild is formed to insure that the Recipe does not lose its potency of intention, its expression as art, nor its comprehension as process.”

The Mission of Structural Integration as defined by The Guild for Structural Integration (Rolfguild.org)

1. Structural Integration is a method and a philosophy of personal growth and integrity.
2. The vertical line is our fundamental concept.
3. The physical and psychological embodiment of the vertical line is a way of being in the physical world that forms a basis for personal growth and integrity.

We uphold this philosophy of Rolfing at Santa Monica Healing Arts Center.