Marten Gabriel’s Lift Tables
Marten Gabriel has been a Rolfer for 28 years; for 25 of those years he ha been building therapy tables. To date he ha, built more than 1,200 tables for Rolfers massage therapists, and other practitioners He has been a steady innovator in the field and his portable lift table is still the only one […]
Notes on Principles of Tool Design for Bodywork Professionals
A survey of contemporary massage tools will reveal many interesting shapes and fascinating objects. Some are good solutions to real problems. Many that look like good tools end up in the toy box or on the sculpture shelf. This has led me to think about design principles appropriate for creating tools that might be truly […]
Strap-Assisted Contact for Self Upkeep and Maintenance
The intent of this short article is to shop how a circular, variable-length straf may be used to support practitioners it working on themselves. Everyone who per forms some routine form of manual worl experiences work-hardening in the myofascial tissues of their hands, arms anc shoulder girdle and practitioners are generally aware that they ‘never’ […]
Contact Stabilization for Bodywork Practitioners
Myofascial manipulation techniques involve the direct, manual application of pressure in dense, slowly changing, work-hardened regions of tissue. The magnitude of compression and torque-related forces that must be generated to change tissue at acceptable rates are significant and have the potential for inducing strain and chronic problems in the structure of the practitioner. This is […]
Therapy Balls and Rolfing – Reprint
In 1997 I presented a program at the Roll Institute’s Annual Meeting demonstrating how I use therapy balls in my work. Al that time I learned that many Rolfers have at least one large therapy ball in their office. However, many people said they didn’t know how to incorporate balls into their sessions. Introducing therapy […]
The Tuning Board
Even though we may know better, we still have a tendency to think of posture as a fixed state. To the extent that it is an artificially frozen moment in time than we incorporate for analysis of alignment and such, it is. Drawings and photographs of bodies in action are extreme examples. But any given […]
Practicum
Tom Findley One of my clients just became pregnant and is reluctant to continue her series because she has heard that massage in early pregnancy can release toxins harmful to the child. Needless to say, there is nothing in the medical literature. Has anyone heard of this? Jeffrey Burch I have been Rolfing pregnant women […]
Structural Integration and Prepared Childbirth (reprint)
I have been asked to share my work in training classes for Prepared Childbirth. I do this with the awareness that some of you may not have a special interest in the expectant mother, but that you do have an interest in posture, muscles, awareness, structure and the like. My work is divided into two […]
Changing the Body and Its Image (reprint)
Proponents of Structural Integration maintain that as a result of the introduction of specific stimuli’ to neuromuscular structures certain changes can be brought about in these structures which move the total organism in the direction of better spatial relationship of bodily parts and better total adjustment to the gravity field. These proponents further hold that […]
Explorations in Body Image (reprint)
I. SEPTEMBER 1968 As a human being newly emerged from ten hours of processing in Structural Integration at the hands of Dr. Ida Rolf and one of her students, I am eager to set down some of the most dramatic first-wave reactions and impressions. My initial reaction was moderate shock: apprehensiveness and confusion leading quickly […]