We invite you to take the time to enjoy each of the articles in this issue, from trauma, to diversity, to the Rolfing family. It is quite a journey through these pages.

ABSTRACT Gael Rosewood shares thoughts on integration, drawing from her studies with Ida P. Rolf, PhD, Judith Aston, Emilie Conrad, and others. She considers both structure and function, as well as the psychobiological and spiritual aspects of integration.

The body of any living organism is not a simple unit. Nor is it just an aggregation of separate elements. The body has an intrinsic organic wholeness. In the matrix of the developing embryo, cartilage and bone are laid down together. While this unity has been separated and analyzed into its parts to further an ongoing understanding, still, the integration, the wholeness, resulting from unitary interplay is the basic fact. Rolf 1977, 179.

ABSTRACT Rolfing® Structural Integration attracts a broad range of clients from diverse backgrounds. Part of our job as Rolfers® is to create a positive therapeutic relationship with each client as the container for effective, transformative work. ‘Cultural humility’ is a commitment to be with our clients in a way that welcomes and values their unique identities

ABSTRACT Matthias Avigdor discusses what is known of the life and work of  Felix Kersten, a manual therapist who famously provided treatments to Heinrich Himmler during WWII, each treatment provided in exchange for pardons for prisoners and labor-camp inmates. Although Kersten wrote two books about his ‘physio nervale therapie’, and although from those we know that he treated both viscera and nerves, we are left with no clear understanding of how he achieved his stunning results.

ABSTRACT James Schwartz discusses manual work for the nerves and the use of the cold laser in his Rolfing® Structural Integration (SI) practice, and how both have dramatically increased the effectiveness of his work.

ABSTRACT We present a transcription of what are among the earliest available notes detailing Ida Rolf’s ten-session series, as she taught it in the mid-1950s under the name of Postural Integrity and as preserved by Byron Gentry, DC, an early student. The notes were re-typed for clarity, with introductory comments added and an image from the archival originals. Rolf and Gentry became great friends, and over the years shared a regular and voluminous correspondence. We include a scan of a letter Rolf wrote to Gentry, less for content than as a document of their friendship and mutual regard.