Rolfing is a unique form of body therapy and movement education that restores your body’s natural alignment and ease. Rolfing addresses the patterns of holding and inefficient movement that develop over time from various causes: postural habits, repetitive movements, athletic activity, traumas like accidents and surgeries, emotional shocks and chronic stress. These habits create patterns in your nervous system and shape your body’s connective tissues. Your body forms patterns of guarding and protection that outlive their original purpose.
Rolfing provides a structural understanding for how a body compensates over time to these holdings strains and a clear method to realign the body in gravity. Rolfing views the body through a dynamic lens of structural and functional assessment. Your body is seen both as an expression of your immediate life and patterns of movement and posture that have accrued over time. By addressing those patterns in a methodical and sensitive way, your body can release what is inefficient and discover what is more healthy and natural.
Benefits of Rolfing
- Relieving chronic pain – e.g. low back, knee or neck pain caused by injury, overuse and stress
- Improving posture, increasing energy and making breathing easier
- Resolving the effects of past traumas
- Recovery from repetitive stress injuries
- Increasing body and self awareness
Rolfers are trained to recognize the complex patterns of strain in the body’s connective tissues which are the result of both recent stresses and injuries as well as habits of compensation that are years and even decades old. Rolfing releases these patterns of holding and strain in such a way as to better align your body in gravity.
The structural framework of Rolfing incorporates various techniques to give you the best and most appropriate treatment.
Through its educating approach and touch, Rolfing teaches you to explore new ways to feel, support and move your body with a growing sense of ease, confidence and trust.
“I continue to be fascinated by how the body adapts to life – to strain, injuries and habits of movement and posture. We are remarkably dynamic, continually integrating new experiences. We adjust to our limitations and continually remain open to healing and discovery. As much as our body can strain, shorten and tighten, it also retains a remarkable capacity to open, expand and lengthen.”
“My goal in doing bodywork is to work with the whole person, to help a person find greater ease of movement, and greater freedom of expression and awareness. People come to see me for a variety of reasons. Commonly, people come because they have some kind of chronic pain. Over the years, I have helped people with many kinds of problems:
“Whether someone is coming to see me for a bad back, or help with their running or to feel less bound, I am always oriented toward what will bring that person into greater ease and balance.”
A typical Rolfing session begins with the Rolfing practitioner evaluating the client’s structure and habits of movement. The work itself is usually done lying down, or sometimes sitting or standing. The session involves techniques that give a client time to adjust to and integrate the work being done.
The touch varies from so light that it can feel like nothing is happening to stronger and more pressure. Oftentimes, the client may be asked to help with small, precise movements.
Most of ten the work simply feels like slow pressure on the body, with people enjoying the experience as their body becomes more open and relaxed.
Clients come in for a first session to see how they respond to the work. Sessions last about an hour. From there, the work is done in a series of sessions, usually a week or two apart, with each session building on the work accomplished in the previous one. The number of sessions varies. Some clients do a short series of three to five sessions. Many clients do the classic Rolfing recipe known as the “Ten Series”. The goal is to gradually improve the alignment and of the entire body in a lasting way.
This work can have far-reaching effects on the whole person, affecting one’s attitudes, emotions, and perception of one’s body and oneself. However, nothing will happen on an “emotional” level unless you are willing to let it happen and want it to happen. Whereas some people come to simply have their back “fixed”, others come to access patterns of holding in themselves that are emotional as well as physical. For these reasons, my work is an excellent complement to psychotherapy and other personal development work.