ABSTRACT This interview with Rolf Movement® faculty member, Kevin Frank, focuses on gravity orientation and its relevance to structural integration and somatic movement education. Gravity orientation helps us make sense of Dr. Rolf’s insistence that gravity is central to how and why humans can evolve. With French Rolfer Hubert Godard’s introduction of the tonic function perspective in the early 1990s, practitioners of many somatic arts can appreciate the need to understand how movement patterns, of which posture is an example, can shift. Conscious attention to gravity orientation, when practiced skillfully, leads to plasticity in basic motor patterns not meant to be changed casually. The tonic function model links the basis of physical and psychological stability, further bolstering Rolf’s suggestions in regard to this relationship. Authors’ note: This article has an introduction written by Kevin Frank, a lead into our conversation about gravity orientation.

unção tônica é o nome para um modelo de integração estrutural desenvolvido pelo professor de dança, pesquisador e rolfista, Hubert Godard. Função tônica conecta a integração estrutural com a pesquisa científica atual e os estudos históricos sobre o movimento e o desenvolvimento. É uma tentativa de desmistificar a linguagem da gravidade e, tendo feito isso, aprimorar nossa capacidade de fazer mudanças duradouras e significativas na vida das pessoa

Michael Boblett interviews Kevin Frank on the art of reaching back into the human – and pre-human – family tree to reawaken lost patterns of movements. What sets this interview apart is a firm emphasis on the day-to-day needs of clients in a busy Rolfing® Structural Integration (SI) practice. In their dialogue, Kevin and Michael provide a very practical set of suggestions, things that work.

ABSTRACT Dr. Ida P. Rolf’s development of Rolfing® Structural Integration (SI) implied but did not explicitly address the issue of stability and the relationship of psychological and physical stability in the manner that modern science makes possible. The tonic function model permits a re-examination of Rolf’s Ten Series to make stability and security an explicit part of the offer. Peripheral stability summarizes key features of this re-examination and re-formulation.

ABSTRACT For this issue, some of the Dr. Ida Rolf Institute® (DIRI) faculty members share: their approach to working with hands and arms, when they encountered DIRI training regarding hands and arms, and the evolution of how they currently approach teaching hand and arm territory in the classroom.