Briah Anson

Briah Anson graduated from the Rolf Institute® of Structural Integration in 1979, and immediately became the first pioneer in the field to begin working with animals. She is the author of two books, Rolfing®: Stories of Personal Empowerment and Animal Healing: the Power of Rolfing® Structural Integration, and a DVD about structural integration, Growing Right with Rolfing®.

Lines in a body are not mystical structures; they are where forces balance. —Dr. Ida P. Rolf (Feitis, 1978, p.104)

Rolfing® Structural Integration (SI) was popularized in the mid-1960s as a treatment for human ailments, and as a great innovation in the human potential movement. In the last twenty years or so, Rolfing SI has begun to cross over into the animal kingdom, primarily because of pet owners who experienced the work themselves. It has also gained popularity for owners who looked for expanded treatment options when they hit a dead end with traditional veterinary protocols. Any animal suffering from movement limitations that result from injury, disease, surgical trauma, and even old age may benefit from structural integration sessions. Cats that no longer leap to their favorite counter; dogs that compete a bit too enthusiastically in agility competitions or field trials; horses recovering from lameness, colic, surgery, or founder; birds with injured wings.

Structural integration has also been known to aid in the recovery from secondary or tertiary responses to trauma—the muscle spasms, soreness, and compensatory patterns that linger long after the wounds heal. Practitioners and clients even sing the praises of this work for correcting behavior problems associated with certain traumas or even abuse.

Owners and trainers of performance horses and dogs find SI especially useful as both a remedy for the aches and strains that inevitably accompany athletics, and as a tune-up strategy to keep them primed for competition.

Adapting the Human Ten Series to Animal Work

Learning to observe and understand movement is key to a good structural integration series, whether human or animal. Getting a thorough look at an animal’s motion is the first task. With a horse, for instance, it’s necessary to see how compensations in the structure organize themselves through the whole body. Look at the proportions of each of the segments: how the head fits the neck, how the neck hooks onto the shoulders, where the front legs are positioned under the shoulders, if there is a torque anywhere.

Then try to draw straight lines through the horse and see where they bend. Is there a line through the body of the horse, or is it sagging? Can a midline be drawn through the trunk of the horse and up through the neck? From the side, are two sets of vertical lines visible that lead from the ground, through the legs, and into the pelvis or shoulder?

Watch the horse move towards you—can you draw a vertical plane through the center of the head and straight back? Then watch the horse move away from you and see if one side of the pelvis is higher, if it is torqued to one side, how the legs track, and if there is support coming up from the ground.

Observe all four legs in movement and the spacing of the legs as the horse pushes off. Can he come through his legs? Can he push from the hind end? Is there movement through to the head? Is there effort in the gait or is there ease? Is there dynamic motion that looks light or is there density and harshness?

What sound do his hooves make hitting the ground?

The sound of the hooves is another piece of information that helps the practitioner observe gait imbalances. Just noting what you hear gives you another way to track the cadence of this four-legged after you’ve worked for a session or two. This is an invitation for you to use all of your senses as you work with any animal—it’s possible to hear the footfall of other quadrupeds as well as horses (and your bipedal clients as well).

One of the principles of SI is to align the structure in gravity. What does this mean for a quadruped?

A four-legged creature has two sets of vertical lines coming up from the ground. A structure with a healthy relationship with gravity presents with balance in the spacing of its segments. There would be symmetry and evenness of tissue tone from side to side, top to bottom, and front to back. In movement, each segment should be able to extend and lengthen through space. There will be a visible transmission of movement through the segments that looks open and fluid.

After observing everything there is to see about the animal, it’s time for the hands-on work. I begin with opening up the respiration of the body. In a four-legged, it is essential to start by freeing up the shoulder girdle. Then work back through the body to free up the pelvis, and then some organizing work to free up the neck and the head.

Depending on the size and density of the animal, I generally work from surface to deep. I feel the condition of the tissues in their different layers and work wherever I feel non-resilient tissue. I feel for a lack of motion in the fasciae, and for tissues that are not well-hydrated.

Once I can see the relationship between balance, alignment, and movement, I just keep “circling the wagons” until I see all three elements normalize.

As with human SI, all lines of transmission going through the structure need to be addressed in a sequential, organized process. I am creatively applying the Ten Series from a small bird to a large horse by understanding and addressing the goals of each of the sessions, whether I do one or ten.

The number of sessions that I do with each species of animal depends on the size of the animal and the issues it is carrying in its structure. I typically spend about an hour in each session. With all animals I work slowly so that the animal can track the changes through its structure and nervous system. It is always a cooperative venture between the animal client and me. Establishing that cooperative connection is essential, and I work slowly so that layer by layer, the animal can integrate the information and the changes. In working this way I have found that I can efficiently build up tissue and allow the animal time to expand into more of who he is.

 As with human SI, all lines of transmission going through the structure need to be addressed in a sequential, organized process.

Balance is the primary goal of the work, and by this I mean an equal tissue tone from front to back, between the two sides, and between the top and bottom halves of the body. There is another type of balance as well: that’s the balance between the deeper layers of fascia closest to the bone and the superficial fasciae. I resist the urge to work on presenting symptoms (even though the owner is probably fretting about it), because this is not the structural integration premise that makes it different and effective. The organ of structure, fascia, is interconnected from the cranium out through the tail. I’m not done until I see flow, grace, and ease in movement.

One of my guiding principles in understanding this work since day one is that I am working to evoke the true essence of who lives inside. The following section is one example of my experiences with the animal clients that I have had over the years. I have worked with eagles, horses, dogs, cats, a moose, a mountain lion, llamas, guinea pigs, and numerous other species—anything with fascia can be reorganized with structural integration. The results are often unexpected, and often arise months after the last session—as we witness with our human clients! Owners are usually quite surprised at the multi-dimensional changes they have witnessed from even one or two structural integration sessions with their animals.

Rehabilitating Critical Birth Defects in a Foal

In 2000, I met Dr. Julie Wilson, an Associate Professor in the Veterinary Population Medicine Department at the University of Minnesota. Her specialty is large animal internal medicine and she had recently become interested in complementary and alternative treatments for various conditions. I had just met her through a mutual contact at the university when a foal with significant disabilities was donated to the university because the owners did not want the animal. Dr Wilson was interested to see if structural integration could help because she knew that the traditional therapies would not significantly change the condition. This foal had been born with a congenital hypothyroidism and significant delays in the maturation of its body systems due to a lack of iodine in the mare’s diet while she was pregnant. All mammals require iodine to make thyroid hormones which control metabolism, among other things, and are critical for normal maturation.

One of my guiding principles in understanding this work since day one is that I am working to evoke the true essence of who lives inside.

Abnormalities that are characteristic of this syndrome are a lower jaw presenting longer than the upper jaw (what horsemen call “monkey mouth”) and forelimbs that are not able to fully straighten.

These foals have a flexural deformity and as soon as they try to stand, their lateral digital extensor tends to rupture where the tendon joins the muscle body. On top of that, the hidden danger is that the small bones in the horse’s carpals (which would be the equivalent of our wrists) and their hocks (which are like our ankles), are not fully calcified. They are developmentally delayed. So when these foals try to stand up and nurse, which they need to do in   the first four hours of life, they begin to crush those bones. That can lead to permanent leg deformity and render them completely useless. It can also lead to very severe arthritis in those joints.

This foal, Indy, was quite severely affected, one of the worst Dr. Wilson had ever seen. Indy was donated to them right after birth as a teaching tool  to help the students learn to recognize the unique set of clinical signs. He could not straighten his front legs to a functional level, which meant that he could not get up and try to nurse on his own. He had a lot of tension in the muscle groups associated with those forelimbs that Dr. Wilson had not been able to address with the tools they had, and that is what led to my getting involved. Up until then they had been using traditional therapies to try to induce relaxation: oxytetracycline therapy and splinting the lower legs. Dr. Wilson was interested in trying something different in case there was a hope that these animals could be rehabilitated.

I first saw Indy at three days old, still very young, and the good news was that he had not significantly damaged the small bones in his carpals and hocks.

Because of this, he stood a chance of a normal life, but we had to help him stand and keep him comfortable. Another issue for these foals, if they do stand, is that they need to be supported; they cannot be allowed up unless somebody is there with them. The additional problem that frequently develops is pressure sores from lying down all the time. Those muscles that are compressed when the baby is down don’t have normal circulation so it is easy to have secondary issues as well.

Figure 1. Dr. Wilson holding down the front legs while I worked on the shoulder girdle.

I did three sessions on Indy, spaced about a week apart, each session one to two hours long. In between the sessions, his front legs were splinted to protect the carpal bones. Dr. Wilson assisted me at times holding Indy still as those young legs have tremendous power, and it can be dangerous when they start to fly. Initially the foal was sort of surprised that people wanted to touch him all over. Yet once I began to work, he became so relaxed he went to sleep.

Figure 2. Flexor work and integrating the psoas.

In starting my work with Indy I stayed true to the structural principles of opening up the breathing first. I wanted to get the front end of the horse opened so that movement could come through from the hind end, which is the main engine of propulsion for any four-legged. To that end, I opened Indy’s chest first and focused work on freeing up the shoulder area as well as the withers of the horse (Figure 1). I then spent some time giving some length backwards towards the hind end with some lengthening work along the spine and the hind end. I ended with some organizing work along the neck to start freeing the head from the neck. The logic here is to get the overall structure opened up in the first session, then with the following sessions more specific work can be done into the leg structures (Figures 2 and 3). I plan each series with the SI vision and intention of bringing the whole structure into a well-organized and integrated system regardless of the presenting symptoms.

Figure 3. Detailed work on the problematic carpal extensors.

Results

Part of the routine with this type of foal is to do some extension of the affected joints on a regular basis every time the splints are changed. Before the SI sessions, Indy could barely extend his carpal joints past 90 degrees. After the three sessions, his extension was nearly normal. He was walking easily, supporting himself, and had a beautiful conformation (Figure 4). He had regained the ability to get up and down on his own and to stand with quite straight legs, not perfect, but he did go on to become a functional horse in the pasture. The young man that adopted him was able to ride him at a walk.

Figure 4. Indy standing on his own with beautiful conformation.

Dr. Wilson made these observations:

What we saw was that there was more of a gain in extension than we had seen on the days that the baby did not get a session. The other piece that

I thought was really interesting is that the gain tended to be sustainable. Sometimes when you do some form of therapy, you see an immediate change, but then the next time you assess the animal, you’ve lost some ground. This was my first experience with Rolfing as an adjunctive therapy and my clinical impression was that the results were sustainable and progressive over the three visits.

When people choose to treat these foals and are willing to put the time and energy into them,  an adjunctive therapy like Rolfing can make the difference. Since this experience with Indy, I have encouraged others that consult with me regarding these hypothyroid foals to seek out someone willing work with that baby to encourage extension in those joints, as well as the obvious pleasure that the babies derive from that form of therapy.

(personal communication, 2010)

Dr. Wilson made these final comments:

What I would really love to see is more application of Rolfing Structural Integration to other cases.

I think this foal was an extreme example. There are a lot of foals that have flexural deformities. I would be interested in seeing what sort of progression could be achieved. The therapy that is currently used for some of these is the antibiotic, oxytetracycline, and that comes with some risk. Particularly when we have a compromised youngster for whom the antibiotic was contraindicated, it [would] be nice to be able to get some gains on the extension of those limbs during that critical early period without having to resort to splints or oxytetracycline. Maybe in the long run we would have better results. Our students understand massage and how that has some benefits, but I think the distinction between structural integration and just any kind of massage is still something that needs more education. My suspicion is that as more science is applied to this form of therapy in the human field, very similar results will be found when somebody gets around to measuring on the animal side. I hope that happens soon.

(personal communication, 2010)

References

Feitis, R. (Ed.). (1978). Ida Rolf talks about Rolfing and physical reality. Harper & Row.

Birth Defects in a Foal[:]