The Farther Reaches of Rolfing
We know that Rolfing impacts more than just the physical being. Many of the words we commonly use to describe our work speak to phenomenon that exist at many levels of experience. For example, we can apply ideas such as balance, center, integration, space and lightness to body structure as well as to psychological and […]
Childbirth Reconsidered
In this age of super medical technology the human animal does not often get born or die in the simple, time-honored way. More often than not those important rituals are stripped of their dignity by an impersonal medical professionalism. The private, mystical event is transformed by the presence of strangers and a highly artificial environment […]
A Rolfer Describes His Work
In response to your request for a few words about my work, I will try, in as few words as possible, to give you the picture. A person’s body and set reflects his emotional past as well as physical trauma that may have happened to him. These factors, combined with the other experiences of living […]
Rolf, Alexander and “Body – Ego”
I would like to share some observations, as case historian, on the development of my body as “ego” over the course of the last few years. I hope these may somehow resonate or be a spur to some teacher or to some seeker like myself, even knowing that each must come to these things in […]
The Fence or the Ambulance?
It was a dangerous cliff, as they freely confessed, Though to walk near its crest vas so peasant: But over its terrible edge there had slipped A duke and many a peasant: So the people said something would have to be done, But their projects did not at all tally: Some said, “Put a fence […]
The Second Journey
“We are but fumblers of a quick evolution. The animal we call man has had but the blink of the cosmogonic eye to adjust to the reality the existing in a vertical perpendicular to the earth. It will lake thousands of more generations to master this reality as the cat has mastered the four-legged. […]
Travels with Ida
My body was haunted. I had a pain in my neck. My arm hurt; it felt like a nerve was being pinched. I didn’t know what that meant. I wondered if he did. My left knee felt twisted and I had an ache in my side. My jaw was tight. Sometimes it was hard to […]
Re-Thinking Our Purpose
I’d like to share some thoughts about our work, our training, and our institute that have been brewing around in my mind for some time. Evoking the line is the essence of Rolling. All of the many other benefits of our work can be seen as side-effects which naturally occur as the person’s center line […]
Post-Impressions
CYNTHIA ALLEN WRITES: “Treatment with Dr. Ida Rolf, June 23, 1969” I arrived via several helping hands and strong backs in the living roan where Dr. Rolf teaches. There were about ten students there having a coffee break. They seemed an unusually open, friendly and supportive group. Dr. Rolf looked me over and said that […]
How to Chance Whole Systems
The following principles are without exception lifted from Dr. Ida Rolf’s Practitioners’ Course, although the organization (and, in some cases, the general statement of a principle) is my own. The principles seem to me impressively generals I think that EACH ONE applies to each stroke_ a rolfer makes, to what a roller does in the […]