The Culture of the Viscera
Working with the viscera requires that we develop our kinesthetic abilities to sense a more complex arrangement of textures, densities, and movements. Understanding the tissue qualities of visceral anatomy can help us. The fundamental materials and organizing principles of these tissues are the same as those of the myofascial tissues we know as Rolfers. Yet […]
Thoughts on Tensegrity and Hydrostatics in Human Architecture
Abstract The gravity force results in the human structure having weight. The skeleton supports this, but speculation regarding tensegrity as the human structural strategy brings up new questions. This article attempts to develop this conceptualization and offers a framework of thought in order to better understand how humans hold their shape and move about. A working model […]
A Nonlinear Systemic Journey
Writing an article about a non-linear experience fits the definition of an oxymoron! Just as the description of a drunken sailor?s walk must be linear and logical, the event itself is neither. Having said that as an introduction, I now propose to write a story of how in some ways my Rolfing® Structural Integration (SI) […]
RolfMap: A Call to Action
Over thirty years ago, during Neal Powers? first term as president of the Rolf Institute®, the Board of Directors approved and funded my proposal to attend a conference in Oxford, England. The conference theme was anatomical surface topography and contour evaluation, a topic of great interest to the conveners: surgeons and biomedical researchers who worked […]
Fascia as an Auto-Regulatory System
Bruce Schonfeld: What is the current research saying about fascia being an auto-regulatory system in the body? Tom Myers: It may be hard for some to understand how little was published about fascia in the 1970s. There was a hard-to-follow un-illustrated description of fascial planes by Edward Singer. There was a wonderful, prescient article by […]
Some Third Hour Thoughts
During her basic practitioner’s class in Boulder, 1972, Dr. Rolf called the class over to look carefully at her Third hour model’s left side. The longer we looked, the more structural details we saw. Students began noticing that the model’s ribs were not evenly distributed and that some were deeper than others. They commented that […]
Saving Time, Money, and People
[:en]Welcome to the 21st century. In a matter of 50 years, this nation has gone from the industrial age, through the service age and into the information and technology age. Despite dramatic improvements in people’s lives, one thing has not changed: in the world of work, people still get injured just doing their jobs. These […]
What Is Integration?
Imagine the following scenario. A yoga instructor comes into your office saying she received structural integration work and is interested in continuing. Her structure suggests that she has had good work, her body looks fairly open, and her tissue feels responsive. Her main complaint is that, while her previous work proved beneficial, she feels somehow […]
The Melodies of the Tides
The idea for this article slowly emerged during a class in Energetic Osteopathy taught by Tom Shaver, D.O.’ During the class, Shaver used musical terminology (tone and frequency) to describe the osteopathic “tides” and suggested obliquely that they have an inherent melodic quality. These observations precipitated a tsunami of questions, some of which he later […]
The Role of Acupoints in Rolfing
A few years ago, I wrote an article about my discovery that the superficial fascia was organized in “acustripes,” i.e., the area defined on the edges by the acupuncture meridians. In my own practice, I continue to explore ways to release tensions in the connective tissue in the acustripes. I search for even more effective […]