Integrating Fluid Movement into a Structural Integration Series  –  Anita Boser
Anita studied Hellerwork® Structural Integration at the Institute of Structural MedicineTM
with Donna Bajelis as her primary teacher. She graduated 10 years ago and practices in the
Cascade foothills in Issaquah, WA, USA. She is the author of Relieve Stiffness and Feel
Young Again with Undulation. Her website is www.undulationexercise.com and she can be
contacted at [email protected].

Fluid movement is a hallmark of an integrated
body. As practitioners liberate fascial restrictions, we
create balanced motion through the joints. As joint
after joint is released, fluidity naturally emerges.
However, even with free joints some clients need
a little more education to unlearn their habituated
rigid patterns. I was one of those clients. This article
summarizes my trials, errors, explorations, and
successes as I learned to teach the fluid movement of
undulation in conjunction with structural integration.
Stiff Like Me
Undulation, a fluid movement through the spine,
is a lesson commonly taught in the sixth session of the
Hellerwork series. (See Figure 1 for an illustration from
the Hellerwork Client Handbook.) When my practitioner
taught it to me after the back-work in the back-ofthe-core session, I didn’t get it. I was too impatient
to work through the rickety, jerky sensations I felt,
so I neglected this lesson in favor of the more static
sitting and standing exercises, which were easier
and provided the relief I sought. By finding my Line,
I could reduce my neck pain and avert headaches.
Finding my center physically also
gave me a mental refuge, a place of
calm in my hectic world.
A few years later when I decided
to become a practitioner, undulation
became a daily homework assignment
in my training as we studied session
six. It started with undulating through
the spine as far as the movement
would easily go and noticing where
the movement was easy and where it
was stiff. Among the instructions was:
“Allow your back to lead you and
follow it wherever it wants to go.”
On the fifth day of the homework, I
had a profound revelation. I realized
that the purpose wasn’t to move gracefully; the power
of this lesson was to be able to sense places inside the
body and move them so they weren’t stuck anymore.
This was even more empowering for me, since I could
use the movements to give myself release just where I
needed it, even places too deep for my practitioner’s
elbow or outside my practitioner’s awareness. Then
as a practitioner myself, I wished for my clients to
have this empowering tool, so I made undulation my
specialty.
A Developing Specialty
Soon colleagues and clients were referring
people with back pain to me for undulation exercises
in addition to and sometimes instead of structural
integration. I felt a need to honor the prescription and
taught undulation on its own. Rather than follow the
series, we’d do bodywork that helped clients find their
stuck places and learn to move them. I also taught
a weekly undulation class at the local yoga studio.
This attracted a group of therapeutic students who
enjoyed the slow, easy movements. It didn’t take long,
however, to learn that stability was a prerequisite for
Integrating Fluid Movement into a Structural
Integration Series
Anita Boser
Anita studied Hellerwork® Structural Integration at the Institute of Structural MedicineTM
with Donna Bajelis as her primary teacher. She graduated 10 years ago and practices in the
Cascade foothills in Issaquah, WA, USA. She is the author of Relieve Stiffness and Feel
Young Again with Undulation. Her website is www.undulationexercise.com and she can be
contacted at [email protected].
Figure 1: Undulation illustration from the Hellerwork Client
Handbook, reprinted with kind permission of Hellerwork
International, LLC.

In Emilie Conrad’s Continuum work, students
can play with breath and transform different breath
intentions into profound movements. Most of my
clients not only didn’t consider that possible for
themselves, they thought it was plain old strange. I
couldn’t convince clients to attend Emilie’s workshops
and they viewed my enthusiastic Continuum
movements with raised eyebrows and politely
concealed smirks. They were not going to be able to
follow the nuanced path of breath as the only stepping
stone to fluid movement, so I looked for different
alternatives within and without the framework of the
series. the flexibility of undulation. The clients who came to
my office with back pain initially liked undulation
and the focused bodywork, but it didn’t hold, it didn’t
have the “aha” effect of the structured recipe. And
in the weekly undulation class I taught, I found that
students, especially those with sacroiliac joint issues,
could easily become unstable if undulation were not
combined with grounding.
This wasn’t the first time in my career that I
had diverted from using the series. And, as I had
before, I returned to its wisdom. Still, I was anxious
to introduce my specialty to clients before the sixth
session and experimented with how to do it.
Love-Hate Relationship
When I taught undulation in a client’s first session,
the reaction usually fell into one of two categories:
clients loved it or hated it. Most often, clients froze
into an autonomic state of “there’s nothing you can do
to make me do that.” A few clients had the opposite
response; they started oscillating with the slightest
suggestion. But I noticed that usually their movement
unknowingly reinforced the pain pattern they sought
to resolve. For example, one client had chronic pain in
the area of her right lower ribs, and continuously sideshifted right into that spot.
I originally thought the fault was with my
instructions. If I just explained it better, surely clients
would get it. It took me a while to realize that clients
just weren’t ready. Although I didn’t know then
exactly the preparatory skills or knowledge involved,
I knew there were steps that would lead to fluid
movement. One prerequisite was awareness of the
fluid motion of the breath. I know this from my SI
training and as a yoga teacher. So regardless of the
purpose or prescription of a client’s visit, I almost
always start with Session One with some intention
about improving awareness of or access to breath.
In Emilie Conrad’s Continuum work, students
can play with breath and transform different breath
intentions into profound movements. Most of my
clients not only didn’t consider that possible for
themselves, they thought it was plain old strange. I
couldn’t convince clients to attend Emilie’s workshops
and they viewed my enthusiastic Continuum
movements with raised eyebrows and politely
concealed smirks. They were not going to be able to
follow the nuanced path of breath as the only stepping
stone to fluid movement, so I looked for different
alternatives within and without the framework of the
series.
Fluid Movement Prerequisites
The second session, surprisingly, was a good place
to introduce undulation. While most of the session is
spent balancing the arches, creating ankle hinges, and
producing a greater sense of grounding, the back-work
organically developed into a fluid movement test. Of
the handful of back-work techniques I use, the most
common in the second session is a roll down and roll
up. The client sits on a bench, well supported by both
feet and sit bones. As he drops his chin to his chest and
rolls down into a forward bend vertebra by vertebra,
my elbows or knuckles engage the layer of fascia
between the longissimus and spinalis with caudal
and medial pressure. It is a dance. I try to keep step
with my client with my pressure at the vertebra that is
moving. Meanwhile my pressure creates awareness—a
guide to proprioception—of the segmentation that is
available in the spine.
As the client rolls forward, his body weight
drops squarely into his feet—grounding that is so
obvious even the most body-unconscious client (like
I was) gets it. “Press down evenly into your feet and
reverse the order to roll back up.” As he unrolls his spine, I give light pressure at each spinous process for proprioceptive and alignment feedback. One day,
just as my client articulated up to seated alignment,
I lightly pressed alternately on the left and right
sides of his spine to create a passive undulation.
The movement flowed through his spine and he
brightened. He left the session with a profound sense
of grounding and a connection to some level of fluidity
in his spine. I had a new technique that has become a
banner in my tool belt.
I also had insight into the prerequisites for fluid
movement. Connection to the ground was vital. I
didn’t know if it was a sense of security or the motive
power from Earth’s energy, but being grounded had
to precede fluid movement. Alignment was another
requirement. It was only at the end of the roll up when
the spine had connection to its Line that there was
enough organization to undulate around. As a matter
of fact, I’ve come to conclude that large undulating
movements in a disorganized body can create injury.
Self-protection might be one of the reasons that clients
don’t move fluidly. Finally, proprioception and fluid
movement are linked. When we teach one, we teach
the other.
I learned this from Robert Schleip’s article,
“Scoliosis and Proprioception.” In a fascinating
review of the research about the causes of scoliosis,
he draws the conclusion that scoliosis may partly
be due to incorrect proprioception and can be
improved by exercises that “facilitate a refinement in
proprioception” such as “active micromovements”
and “small undulations to even a single rib or vertebra
at a time,” in addition to other interventions. Before
clients could articulate at a vertebral level, they needed
to have awareness of each segment. Before they could
be aware of the segments, they had to rediscover parts
of their bodies that were outside their proprioception.
The roll down and up was an important tool in helping
clients find their spines.
Overcoming Barriers
As a pre- and post-test in the third session, I
commonly have clients stand and side-bend to the
right and left to evaluate the different range of motion
and sensations between the sides. If I want to make the
work easier for me (and why not?), I get them to start
loosening things up with movement. “Now alternate
between right and left. As you gently sway, notice
what places move easily and which are stiff. How can
you bring movement to the stiff places?” With less
than one minute of movement before we start the table
work, the client is inside his body’s sliding fascial
layers, and he has an excellent frame of reference for
the changes he feels at the end of the session. His
experience is always a progression from more jerky
Figure 4: Diagram of fluid movement through an
integrated structure. to more smooth, and his internal experience is more
valuable than any instruction I give him.
As a matter of fact, I began to realize that the
words I used often inhibited fluid movement. Asking
people to move and notice was part of my session six
homework. It was different than using images such
as “willow in the wind” or adjectives that typically
accompany directions for fluid movement such as
wave-like and flowing and especially smooth. That
language creates a picture in the mind that the body
tries to duplicate. But the truth is that undulation
doesn’t feel smooth or wave-like in the beginning. It
feels chunky and jerky as the body works through its
internal restrictions. I even deleted the word “fluid”
from my definition of undulation, changing it to: a
movement through multiple joints (especially vertebral
joints) that includes waves, bends, and curves. I tried
to find more ways to let the client simply experience
movement through one joint to the next.
Nuances
Fluid movement may not be smooth; it may be
rough like a waterfall that over time wears away
jagged edges of rocks and turns them into sleek stones.
While flow from joint to joint may include jerkiness,
it is not forced. Fluid movement is organic and arises
from the inherent capacity of the body, rather than
a mental construct dictated by the brain. It requires
being able to listen to the body, a willingness to trust
the body’s wisdom, and a perception of nuanced
sensations. These are skills most of us learned to forget
long ago.
The inferior and anterior core sessions (fourth
and fifth in the Hellerwork series, respectively) are
ideal for re-establishing this lost internal knowledge.
As we are freeing the pelvis, especially in the fourth
session, I prompt my clients to make their movements
smaller and slower. “Tilt your pelvis. Yes. Now half
that movement. Half again. Half again. Great. Can you
go slower?” Smaller and slower movements access
more core tissues and awareness and, in my opinion,
establish better internal proprioception.
In addition to the work of freeing the pelvis in the
fourth session, attention to the pelvic floor and its role
with the breath is another excellent opportunity to find
an internal wave. I direct my clients to coordinate the
movements of their pelvic and thoracic diaphragms
by starting each exhale with a slight contraction of the
pelvic floor and letting each inhale reach all the way
down into the pelvis to soften and expand the pelvic
floor. We revisit the wave of breath in the ribcage and
expand this flow through the entire torso and perhaps
even down into the legs. The nuance of breath flow
throughout the body is an internal undulation that
surprises and delights many clients. Most wonder if
they are imagining it, and I assure them that subtle
sensations often feel like imaginations.
Firm and Flexible Foundation
Despite my eagerness to teach undulation, I
eventually learned that Joseph Heller had a very
good reason for including it in the sixth session. Fluid
movement in the spine was a result of a grounded,
balanced, and floating sacrum. Remember my clients
who had a love-or-hate reaction to undulation? Those
who abhorred fluid movement typically had locked
sacrums, either due to being generally up-tight or as
guarding to protecting a sacrum with a dysfunctional
rotation. (I had both.) Clients who undulated all
loosey-goosey typically had a hypermobile sacrum,
but were lacking adequate stability through grounding
and balance. When I mistakenly tried to create
mobility on top of a stiff, tilted, or wobbly foundation,
my clients didn’t experience lasting change.
In Seattle, we have the Rainier Tower (see Figures
2 and 3), a building that was designed to create open
space and withstand earthquakes. The narrow base
instigated nicknames of “the pencil building” and
“the wine glass building.” The 29-story building
stands on an 11-story pedestal, which is connected to
an underground counterbalance. This building sways
more in the wind and in earthquakes than others its
size. Its movement gives it strength to withstand these
forces.
I like to think of the Rainier Tower’s pedestal as
a sacrum. In average buildings the pedestal is mired
in steel girders and concrete. In average bodies the
sacrum is mired in restrictive connective tissue. When
the sacrum is given space, when it is cleared from
the concrete, when the left side of the wine stem is
symmetrical with the right side of the wine stem,
then we have a “floating sacrum” and the upper body
can move freely without risking damage. Although
I could set the stage for fluid movement in earlier
sessions, and it was helpful to do so, expecting clients
to undulate before they had the necessary foundation
was not productive.
I took a workshop on the integration sessions
from Liz Stewart last year. As she helped us develop
our seeing skills, she showed us a set of diagrams that
symbolize the goals of each session and has helped her
in her practice. Unfortunately, Liz didn’t remember
the source of the diagrams, but the one for session 10
caught my eye since it used a wavy line. I adapted and
slightly modified this figure to create a model of fluid
movement that I use in my practice. (See Figure 4.) It
reminds me of an undulating Rainier Tower with a
head, a building flexible enough to sway in the breeze
and withstand life’s heaviest challenges. This symbol
of fluid movement is an important goal of the series for me, whether that is contralateral movements whilewalking, subtle movement from tail to head when
sitting down, or a delicious stretch that gives each joint
loving attention.
Emerging Undulations
John Smith, in his article from the 2006 Yearbook,
“The Oscillatory Properties of the Structural Body,”
keenly observes that “. . . undulations of different
kinds tend to emerge spontaneously at different stages
of the Rolfing process” and “It should be emphasized
that this integrating movement work is not to impose
a different kind of gait pattern on the client, but rather
to highlight for the client a pattern that is already
emerging.”
In the core and integration sessions, movement
from the feet, through the pelvis, up the spine, and
involving the head (and in the opposite direction as
well) is emerging. We cannot predict how it will occur
for each client; it is as exciting a discovery for us as it
is for them when it materializes. However, I think it
is important for practitioners to explain, encourage,
and facilitate this movement using whatever tools
are most relevant to “help our clients to listen more
carefully to the inherent rhythmicity of their structure
and to discover the minimum input from the muscular
system necessary to maintain the movement.” (Smith
2006)
And what do we do for the clients for whom fluid
movement doesn’t spontaneously emerge? We need
to get creative, use whatever movement background
we bring to our practices and perhaps learn something
new, undulate into and out of the knowing, try this
and that, and model flexibility to our clients. Whatever
it takes. The series isn’t complete, in my opinion, until
a client has this flow.
Clients often ask me: What makes the change from
structural integration last? How can a limited number
of sessions be enough? I explain that the more a body
is aligned and balanced, the more it will move in ways
that support and reinforce balance. As SI practitioners,
we teach our clients how to walk, sit, stand, and move
in ways that the body is doing the Work on itself.
Undulation, a wave pattern moving through the body,
is the result of alignment and balance. This is the way
that integrated bodies move and it is the wave that
creates the internal releases that endure. For me, the
Line is a place of calm, the wave is the path to let go.