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 This conversation between two Dr. Ida Rolf Institute® (DIRI) faculty members focus on the path Pierpaola Volpones has traveled to becoming a Rolf Movement® Practitioner, a Rolfer®, a Basic Rolfing Instructor, and recently an Advanced Rolfing Instructor.

ABSTRACT This article describes inflammation, what it is, what it is not, how to recognize when it is a valuable part of healing, and when it may be an impediment to healing. Emphasis is given to finding the source(s) of inflammation as a key to healing.

ABSTRACT This article discusses some basic mechanical properties of fascia, including its elastic properties and their significance to structural integration gleaned from the 2016 Fascia Research Summer School held in Leipzig, Germany.

ABSTRACT Rolfing® faculty member Fernando Bertolucci reflects on his experience at the Fascia Research Summer School (FRSS) held in Leipzig, Germany. Bertolucci specifically focuses on the construction of anatomy images and the difference between fascia-oriented dissection images and organ-oriented dissection images.

ABSTRACT The axial complex is a specific concept in the Rolfing® Structural Integration paradigm. In this article, Jan H. Sultan presents how Rolfers draw from embryology to conceptualize what anatomy and physiology are represented by the axial complex: the neurocranium, the spine, the sacrum, and their associated soft tissues. Fryette’s laws are a useful base when working with axial tissue, as well as Jean-Pierre Barral’s, DO, motility concept and John Upledger’s, DO, third rhythm. Sultan describes how he synthesizes information to execute the specific technology of Rolfing SI.

ABSTRACT In this interview, Lina Amy Hack asks John deMahy about his axial complex model. He teaches this in his structural algorithm continuing education courses for manual therapists, which give clear steps of spine evaluation and interventions.

ABSTRACT Jeffrey Burch presents a step-by-step approach to assess and then do manual interventions with the psoas and the iliacus. His concise and clear discussion, with an efficient technique, may change your elbow-in-the-abdomen method

ABSTRACT Faculty member Per Haaland explores the role of the axial complex in human locomotion. Haaland discusses the importance of persistence hunting in human evolution and how Serge Gracovetsky’s spinal engine theory posits the spine’s centrality to human locomotion. Hubert Godard’s tonic function model further describes the sophisticated interplay between tonic and phasic muscles in human locomotion. A deeper understanding of these theories and models will help our work in structural integration and movement education.

ABSTRACT This article considers the spine metaphorically, embryologically, and as a location for chronic pain. Faculty member Pierpaola Volpones discusses the journey of learning about backs, doing Rolfing SI back work, and teaching others how to help vertebrae find their way home.

ABSTRACT In this article, which is a chapter excerpted from Your Body Mandala (2018), Mary Bond explores the nature of the human spine, the evolutionary journey that led to the various movements capable by the spine, and the variability of shape observed within individual spines. Bond describes the sacrum clock movement exercise and how to visualize accessing the movement of the coccyx.

Kathy McConnell is a Certified Advanced Rolfer and Rolf Movement Practitioner in the San Francisco Bay Area. During her twenty years of practice she has assembled an eclectic palette of formal and self-directed trainings that influence her work, including craniosacral work, medical qigong, and Western esoteric studies. Through her poetry she is experimenting with the language of embodiment that is awakened by Rolfing® Structural Integration and Rolf Movement.

ABSTRACT From the perspective of the embryo, Konrad Obermeier writes about the development of the midline, the tissues that become the axial complex. The notochord develops in a context of growth differentials, Obermeier describes this beginning of the longitudinal line that leads to human verticality.

ABSTRACT For years the primary evidence of the third rhythm of the cranium was observation by palpation. In 2021 Dr. Thomas Rosenkilde Rasmussen and Dr. Karl Christian Meulengracht published their results of direct observation of the third rhythm using robotics and software analysis in their peer-reviewed publication, “Direct measurement of the rhythmic motions of the human head identifies a third rhythm” in the Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies. In this interview, Rasmussen discusses his background as medical researcher and craniosacral practitioner that led to building this measurement machine, doing this experiment, and the various questions his laboratory group are considering for the future.

“The appearance of this quarterly seems a promise that Structural Integration has finally come of age. As such it is indeed a joyous occasion for me personally, calling for celebration and good wishes. I can imagine nothing more festive and appropriate for this milestone than this medium of communication as projected by our editors. It will continue to be a source of inspiration to me that we can talk among ourselves of the things that interest us, and that we can collect and record, as well as exchange, thoughts that relate to us and our field.” – Ida P. Rolf, PhD, from the Bulletin of Structural Integration (1968), Volume 1, Number 1