The Domino Effect of Adaptive Forces
Similar to the underlying mechanics of psychology, where an unresolved issue sits at the center of a complex surrounded by a web of compensation, somatic misalignment is also surrounded by adaptive forces attempting to correct unresolved physical imbalance. Sometimes this domino-like effect doesn’t stay neatly within one anatomical system. Visceral theory simply contends the musculoskeletal […]
Hypoascorbemia – Our Most Widespread Disease
Most readers will not recall ever hearing about the inherited illness, Hypoascorbemia; but don’t feel too badly about that because most doctors have never heard of it either, even though I described it in 1966 papers published by the Gregor Mendel Institute for Medical Genetics. Hypoascorbemia is a genetic liver enzyme disease caused by humans […]
Ida P. Rolf… A Portrait in Words
Gravity’s high priestess, Ida Rolf, discovered that she could transform the universal field of the earth from foe to friend. She ignored the popular assumption that the passage from birth to death is a steady deterioration of the body due to the downward pull of gravity. She discovered that a body whose large segments are […]
Coxarthrosis Research Discussed
I read with interest your summary and analysis of the German booklet, “Standing Upright,” but I confess to being disturbed and puzzled by a number of questions about its content. I have decided to respond in Rolf Lines, since this avenue is likely to have the most benefit. To begin, I am not familiar with […]
Exercise for Sway-Backs
I recently developed a movement exercise that dramatically helps reduce anterior lumbar sway in people whom I call the “fourth body type”. These are people who are overweight, have large over-developed gastrocnemius muscles, large, over- developed quadriceps, deep anterior sway of the lumbar spine, and round faces. (They differ from Jan Sultan’s “diplomat type” who […]
Shifts in Pelvic Inclination Angle and Parasympathetic Tone Produced by Rolfing Soft Tissue Manipulation
Advocates of manual therapy have largely based their methods on the traditional osteopathic premise that an integrated or balanced musculoskeletal structure will be reflected in optimal physiological function(1,2). According to A. T. Still: ?There is no real difference between structure and function: they are two sides of the same coin if structure does not tell […]
Sheldon´s Constitutional Psychology
With the publication of The Varieties of Human Physique in 1940, William H. Sheldon presented a system for classifying man according to body build. Sheldon claimed not only that an individual’s body structure was unchanging through his life but that a predictable temperamental makeup was associated with a particular body type. The idea of classifying […]
Stress and Function
Rolfers see stress in the body as a reflection of the internal organization of the connective tissue system, and in movement a s balance versus disorganized function. It is the theme in Rolling to reduce stress of entropy the stress of disorder by reorganizing connective tissue around fascial movement planes so as to stablish an […]
Rolfing: a Holistic Vision of Structural Integration
Presented at the First International Holistic Conference in Brasilia, Brasil, in March, 1987. A very important word in my life, since it set me on the search for self-healing, is hypochondria. At age eighteen, the medical doctors I had been appealing to for help told me to go away, that my problems were all in […]
Understanding Rolfing
Like all material structures, the human body is subject to the basic laws of physics. The purpose of Rolling is to better balance the body around a vertical line in the field of gravity so that gravity begins to support the body, rather than tear it down. The “organ” of response of gravitational law is […]