WHAT IS STRUCTURAL INTEGRATION ("SI")?
The Rolf Method of Structural Integration influenced by Hellerwork, is a holistic system combining bodywork and movement education to restore your body to its natural state of alignment and balance - by lengthening, restoring, and reorganizing the fascia, the connective tissue matrix of your body. By taking a holistic approach working throughout your entire body, you can identify and alleviate the root cause of symptomatic issues your body experiences when it makes compensations due to back pain, sciatica, sports injuries, chronic pain, joint pain, headaches, neck pain, shoulder issues, fibromyalgia, hip issues, surgeries, car accidents and other kinds of physical and emotional trauma. Structural Integration can also improve challenges with balance associated with Neuropathy, MS, Parkinson's and other nervous system issues.
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The Structural Integration "Ten Series" is a series of ten sessions designed by Dr. Ida P. Rolf which reorganizes the fascia, or connective tissue that wraps around every cell in your body and holds you upright. Trauma, both physical and emotional, whether major or minor, is stored in the body's fascia which can make up to 20% of your body weight and store about 30% of your body fat.
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Benefits include:
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Release of chronic pain, tension and stress
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Spinal cord decompression
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Increased balance, energy and vitality
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Improved posture and body shape
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Expanded sense of well-being
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Balance of mind, body and spirit
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Improved athletic performance
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Increased flexibility and ease of movement
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Easier and fuller breath capacity
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Injury prevention
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Pre and post operative support
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Enhanced body awareness
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Reduced effort in activity
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Look and feel younger
What is Fascia?
Fascia surrounds and supports all of the muscles, bones and organs in your body in continuous web-like layers. This fascial net, or connective tissue matrix, is the body's internal system of flexible support - giving it strength and shape. The fascial system responds to injury, chronic tension and habitual movement patterns by shortening from both the forces of gravity and the mechanical forces of habitual movement patterns.
When your fascia shortens, thickens and becomes glue-like, it locks in less-than optimal patterns of strain and pulls your body out of alignment. Dr. Rolf's work is based on the insight that your body is more at ease and functions most effectively when its structure is balanced along the vertical line of gravity. In this place, gravity gently lifts and supports your body rather than pulling it down. By systematically restoring the integrity of your fascial system, your body becomes aligned and the entire system can be a smoothly functioning and coordinated whole.
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For every inch of Forward Head Posture, it can increase the weight of the head on the spine by an additional 10 pounds.
"When the body gets working appropriately, the force of gravity can flow through, then spontaneously, the body heals itself." -Dr. Ida P. Rolf
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Dr. Rolf believed form determines function. Structural Integration can create a more adaptable and supportive form that can function more optimally in the field of gravity, an unseen force consistently interacting with the human body. Structural Integration re-educates your body to live and move in harmony with the field of gravity instead of being in conflict with it.
About the Ten Series
Each of the ten sessions throughout the series includes bodywork, movement education and dialogue. Hands-on bodywork creates length to restore and reorganizing the fascia, realigning your body within gravity. Movement education increases body awareness to understand how you’ve used your body that led up to your pain/tension/dis-ease and how to do things differently going forward. Becoming more aware and rethinking how you use your body helps maintain and prolong the results achieved in the series. Dialogue themes are used to increase awareness of how emotional and mental stress is stored in the tissues of your body and how it relates to physical tension.
Dr. Rolf discovered that the body is organized in layers and that in order to create true, lasting change, the Structural Integration Series must create length and space in the outermost layers before working with deeper, more core layers in the body.
The Sleeve Sessions: 1-3
The first three sessions are referred to as the superficial sessions. The “sleeve” of your body is the outer fascial layer. This is the part of your body that does the “doing," the fast movements. You can think of it as the sleeve or thin wet-suit just underneath your skin. The goal for these sessions is to open, lengthen, and organize these extrinsic layers. This will create space for the deeper layers to unwind and release.
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The Core Sessions: 4- 7
These are also referred to as the ‘deep’ sessions. The “core” of your body is the inner fascial layer. This part of your body is your “beingness," the area of slow, postural movements. The goal of these sessions is to open, lengthen, and organize these intrinsic layers.
"It's not about how deep you go, it's about how you go deep."
-Ida P. Rolf, PhD
The Integrative Sessions: 8-10
The first seven sessions are about taking the body apart to get the individual parts working better. The last three cycles of sessions is about putting the individual parts back together into a better functioning whole. This is the place where the sleeve and the core meet and interact. You will begin to experience motion, initiated by your core layer, smoothly and efficiently transmit out through the sleeve layer of your body.