ABSTRACT Advanced Rolfing Instructor Jan Sultan outlines his definition of gravity, informed by physicist Dr. John Archibald Wheeler and founder of Rolfing Structural Integration Dr. Ida P. Rolf. According to Sultan, Rolf would talk about the ‘Line’ as a logo of relationship as a teaching tool for practitioners to think about mass, density, and gravity. Rolf taught that humans have a tropistic urge, an innate sense to go away from the planet. Yet Sultan urges Rolfers to think beyond Newtonian terms to Wheeler’s spacetime definition of gravity, where spacetime grips mass and mass grips spacetime. This leads Sultan to inquire if the mind has mass.

ABSTRACT Jan H. Sultan offers an overview of nerve work from a structural perspective. He describes how the work of physiotherapist David S. Butler and osteopath Jean-Paul Barral, DO, has led the way to understanding the role neural connective tissue manipulation can play in facilitating recovery from many chronic pain symptoms. Sultan maps out some ideas about nerve structure, cranial nerve paths, and the ligamentous nature of some people’s neural tissue. While Jeffrey Burch is also a structuralist, his discussion focuses on giving insight into his process of treating nerves. As a well-studied manual therapy technician and author, Burch has a few thoughtful examples to consider and where to apply caution.

ABSTRACT Jan H. Sultan reflects on learning Rolfing® Structural Integration from Dr. Rolf at Esalen Institute alongside Emmett Hutchins, Judith Aston, and Peter Melchior. Taking that education to rural Northern New Mexico, Sultan was driven by the demands of the work to study further, to unpack what Rolf had taught. In this article, he shares some of her foundational ideas. Sultan also considers his more than fifty years of teaching structural integration.

ABSTRACT For years, Jan H. Sultan, Advanced Rolfing® instructor of the Dr. Ida Rolf Institute®, has been developing a coherent approach to the mysteries of the sacrum from the structural integration perspective. In this interview, Sultan gives insight into some of the biomechanical and physiological movements of the sacrum and a few suggested applications to resolving common strain patterns in the low back region.

ABSTRACT In a personal letter to his colleagues, Jan H. Sultan writes about his recent experience with COVID-19 and the post-COVID symptoms he’s been experiencing. He offers this personal narrative about what interventions got him through this health challenge.

ABSTRACT The internal-external model, originally published in Notes on Structural Integration, titled “Towards a Structural Logic,” in 1986 by Jan H. Sultan, is a foundational understanding of the nature of the human structure. Sultan has written a second edition of this model, informed by more than fifty years of practice and teaching. He describes the inspiration for and the history of the internal-external model and the value of the structural types – congruent internal, congruent external, and incongruentmixed types. The internal-external model is a structural language that was early to identify lines of force transmission. It is a structural description of the inherited direction of growth and adaptations visible in the fascial network.

ABSTRACT The foundational theory of Rolfing Structural Integration (SI) is the Principles of Intervention. This article contains the complete description of the five Principles of Intervention as taught by Jan H. Sultan.

ABSTRACT The axial complex is a specific concept in the Rolfing® Structural Integration paradigm. In this article, Jan H. Sultan presents how Rolfers draw from embryology to conceptualize what anatomy and physiology are represented by the axial complex: the neurocranium, the spine, the sacrum, and their associated soft tissues. Fryette’s laws are a useful base when working with axial tissue, as well as Jean-Pierre Barral’s, DO, motility concept and John Upledger’s, DO, third rhythm. Sultan describes how he synthesizes information to execute the specific technology of Rolfing SI.

ABSTRACT In this interview with Jan Sultan, he talks about Dr. Rolf’s Seventh Hour philosophy and practical execution of ‘putting the head back on’. Sultan presents his key concepts of the head, the differentiation of the viscerocranium from the neurocranium. Nose work, tongue work, and palate work are discussed.

Advanced Rolfing Instructor Jan Sultan shares with faculty colleague Ellen Freed a deep and broad view of the Ten Series, from his initial training with Ida Rolf through the insights and understanding developed through fifty years of practice and teaching.