Structure, Function, Integration Journal – Vol. 49 – Nº 1

ABSTRACT Russell Stolzoff, Advanced Rolfing Instructor, interviews Wayne and Sandy Henningsgaard, two longtime Rolfers who have a depth of experience in working with professional athletes, particularly football players in the National Football League (NFL) and basketball players in the National Basketball Association (NBA). The interview goes into how they work together doing four-handed work, and how they came to working with athletes and the inherent challenges, the demands of working with performance athletes, and the nuances of sports injuries with particular attention to concussion.

Rolfers do manual work on and in the nose in the Seventh Hour of the Ten Series. This article reflects on those protocols as well as the implications of COVID-19 precautions. The author explores the idea of nasal intelligence and the role smell has with body awareness, intuition, and orientation. The nose and breathing are coupled, which is touched on as having complexity that is anatomic and social.

Pierpaola Volpones speaks with Naomi Wynter-Vincent about the eyes of Rolfers, that seeing body patterns happens as a physical event of vision for the practitioner. Volpones has been addressing her eyes with the Bates Method of Vision Education and she discusses the value of allowing herself to have blurry vision with no glasses. Structural states that relate to focal and peripheral vision are described.

In this interview, Ina Bretschneider-Baker discusses her experience with the Grunwald Eyebody Method and the positive impact it had on her eyes and life. Grunwald eye types are considered and how this information aligns with Bretschneider-Baker’s Rolfing® Structural Integration practice.

ABSTRACT This article describes the innervation of the eye and the container of the eye. Assessment methods are described to reduce tensions in nerves to the eye, the lining of the eye socket, and the eyelids.

ABSTRACT Gael Rosewood, Rolfer, Rolf Movement Practitioner, and Continuum Movement teacher interviews Dr. Sam Berne, optometrist and so much more, on the relationship of eyes to structure, perception, and movement and his innovations in holistic eye care.

ABSTRACT Mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) is far from mild. In this article, Lina Amy Hack discusses one of her concussion stories as an example of the classic fall backward. The anatomy of coup and contrecoup brain injury is described and the resulting diffuse axonal injury (DAI) is explained. It is proposed that cranial nerves could be made more prominent in concussion research as it was Hack’s personal experience that her cranial nerves were directly damaged during the described injury.

ABSTRACT Christoph Sommer interviews his faculty colleague Peter Schwind on how our work can influence the brain. Schwind discusses early insights, the manual work of Jean-Pierre Barral, DO, the classic intranasal work of Ida Rolf’s Seventh Hour, the interface of the viscerocranium and neurocranium, the senses as bridges to the brain, and the important concepts of ‘container’ and ‘contents’.

ABSTRACT In this interview with Jan Sultan, he talks about Dr. Rolf’s Seventh Hour philosophy and practical execution of ‘putting the head back on’. Sultan presents his key concepts of the head, the differentiation of the viscerocranium from the neurocranium. Nose work, tongue work, and palate work are discussed.

ABSTRACT People who seek Rolfing® Structural Integration often notice that their head is located in an unexpected position and Rolfers™ have been ‘putting the head back on’ since Dr. Rolf showed us how. In this article, Pierpaola Volpones discusses the complexity of the head as home to so many tissue systems. She shares some insights from her own clinical work and what it means when Rolfers hold client’s heads in our hands.

ABSTRACT This is article is a discussion of embryological development of the face and in particular the space for the eyes. The face starts out pinched between the tissue becoming the brain and the tissue becoming the heart, Konrad Obermeier examines the role of fluid dynamics as part of the forces shaping the face.

ABSTRACT The human body is by majority made of water, specifically interstitial water dissolved in our extracellular matrix. Easy flow of water through the lymph system is associated with healthy tissue and in vivo studies describe this water flow as moving through channels in the ground substance. Dr. Schleip discusses the molecule hyaluronan and the discovery of the ‘fasciacyte’. Tissue water distribution is reviewed in relation to manual pressure, movement, and induced shearing forces.

The human body is by majority made of water, specifically interstitial water dissolved in our extracellular matrix. Easy flow of water through the lymph system is associated with healthy tissue and in vivo studies describe this water flow as moving through channels in the ground substance. Dr. Schleip discusses the molecule hyaluronan and the discovery of the ‘fasciacyte’. Tissue water distribution is reviewed in relation to manual pressure, movement, and induced shearing forces.