Structural Integration  (Rolfing)  is named after the work of  Ida P. Rolf, Ph.D. who fifty years ago  after calling her created work  Postural Release  and then  Postural Dynamics, she finally settled on  The Rolf Method of Structural Integration.  Dr. Rolf  devoted and concentrated  her efforts to  conceive and create a holistic process of soft tissue manipulation  and  education that organized the  placement,  the positioning of the whole body toward structural relationship of  balance and alignment  to the vertical line of gravity.  Dr. Rolf discovered that she could achieve remarkable changes in body-  structure,  physical shape,  erect posture, stability,  and fluid movement by manipulating, freeing, and  organizing the human body’s myofascial system (the connective tissues) within the vertical energy field  of gravity.

GRAVITY and your Relationship to it.  Gravity not only influences, but controls and dominates every aspect of the human body,  your body, and your ability to move your body and inspire all movement within your body.

Gravity dominates all your systems, and it controls and governs the way  everything circulates and moves through your body.  Therefore, gravity directly and indirectly controls and governs all your  biological and physiological processes:

Shape is the morphogenic structure behind reality itself, and 
it is shape which generates and determines all the laws of physics. 

In addition:  The human body is a quantum particle structure completely at the effect  of gravity.  It is an array of atoms, ions, and molecules in a three-dimensional pattern.  It is a functional field of recurrent, radiant energy.  The movement of electrons within  the human atomic and molecular structure continuously travels at an unbelievable rate.  When you change and re-mold the shape and configuration of a random structure into  a more vertically appropriate pattern within gravity, everything about that structure and  its vitality renews, improves, and revivifies.   

Our human body is a single and complete system.  It is not a group of individual parts. 

From the moment of conception and forever after, men and women have a never-ending  relationship  with gravity.  We are tied  to the earth's gravitational field.  We have,  as a  species,  evolved and grown as creatures of gravity.  Structural Integration integrates the  human structural body into a balance  within this mysterious force.  Without gravity, we  would lose the structural integrity of our physical mass.  Structural Integration transforms  the body mass  into a more  vertically  appropriate structure.  The Rolfing  process  can  relieve the damage caused by long time structural stress  and immediate trauma resulting  from the body's imbalance within the earth's encompassing gravitational field.  "Structure" and "Relationship"  must be viewed within our morphological context  as terms existing in duality, both reflection and complementing one another.

Rolfing will organize the human body’s structural relationship with Gravity so that the body’s  field of energy, mass, and structure is reinforced, uplifted, maintained and even sustained by  the larger field of energy, Gravity. As a result of this highly integrative process, man will totally,  externally and internally, ramify upward. 

Rolfing transforms the body mass into a vertically aligned and balanced fascial system.  Such  physical transformation will relieve structural stress, injury, pain and trauma, improving move-  ment, erect posture, circulation, respiration, immunity, vitality, and overall health throughout  the entire body.  Physical performance will be dramatically enhanced and improved. 

Get real lift back into your life! 

The ideal relationship between the human body and images of balance, 
alignment, weight, mass, structure, and  gravity is the vertical line. 
Verticality - The way of evolution approved by Gravity. 

Changes in evolution happen because of changes within the environment. 
                           Adaptability is the key to survival. 
Structural Integration can organize, modify, change, relate, and integrate
           the  internal and the peripheral environment of the body. 
We refer to this as balancing the  sleeve to the core and the core to the sleeve. 

Here's what happens . . .

Before Trauma After Trauma Prior to a spinal trauma, the 12-lb head is evenly centered over the neck. Post trauma, the head has shifted away from center. To compensate, the neck buckles from its intended position putting undo stress on muscles and ligaments. Before Trauma     After Trauma     The spinal column remains straight and balanced as long as the head is center over the neck. Following an accident, the head has shifted away from center. To compensate for the change and to keep the body in balance the entire spinal column begins to buckle. Over time, an injury to the head and neck can cause low back pain. Most misaligned states are not sudden; most take years to develop. Trauma directed into any part of the body extends points of stress three dimensionally up and down the entire structure. A body cannot go from a Trauma-State to a Balanced-State and remain with stability without balanced legs as a foundation and lift from a balanced pelvis and spine.

The traditional allopathic view of diagnosis and prognosis deals with treating the effects  of  trauma  both physical and body emotional  and  its resultant symptoms.  It does not  ultimately deal with treating the cause.  "Structure has to do with cause!"  If you can  change and modify  the shape  of the human structure,  you can  effect and  eliminate causal relationships.  However, alleviating symptoms and pathology is neither  the focus nor the goal of Structural Integration; balancing and aligning human structures  in gravity  is.  We shall perceive the human body not as a group of parts, but instead as  an  aggregate  of parts  existing  within  a total system  of  interdependent  relationships  residing within a  larger,  single,  whole,  collective relationship. 

Structural instability is a constant and dramatic and destructive influence.

Your body's personal relationship with gravity 
is more important to you than you have
ever here-to-fore imagined!

I was personally taught and instructed by Dr. Ida P. Rolf, the creator of the process of  anatomical work known as "ROLFING" the Rolf Method of Structural Integration.  She was creator of the Guild of Structural Integration and the founder of the Rolf Institute.  (I was fortunate enough to be specially trained by and later assisted, taught, and studied with  Dr. Rolf for many years. We closely trained, coached and tutored currently practicing Rolf  Practitioners in advanced and innovative Rolfing Techniques.)  While preparing myself for primary and advanced Rolfing education with Dr. Rolf, I studied  Gestalt Therapy with Robert Hall, MD and the works of its founder and creator, Fritz Pearls.  I also trained in the following massage and deep tissue techniques: Kaupo (Japanese), Dojo  (French), classical deep Swedish massage with the famous Gunvar Jackson, the pressure  point techniques of Shiatsu, CMT in Germany, and Polarity Therapy wherein I was personally  trained by its creator, Randolph Stone, DO, DC, ND of Chicago, Illinois with his assistant  Pierre Pannetier, later to become his successor..

Having taught and lectured all over the country (showing my slide show) at Marathon  Sports Seminars, Medical Schools, Hospitals, Chiropractic Colleges, Osteopathic Schools,  and Physical Therapy Conventions,  I have also spoken at meetings of the American Medical  Jogging Association, The American Academy of Podiatry Sports Medicine, the American  Academy of Sports Physicians, the British College of Chiropractic Medicine, the Royal Medical  Society in London, the Svedenborg Society of Great Britain, the National Athletic Trainers’ Association (Football), and many private and professional groups and clubs.  For the past  four years I was Professor of Structural Integration at the Utah College of Massage Therapy.

Being a competitive athlete myself, much of my focus and effort has been directed toward  working with performance and structure of World Class Athletes training for the 1984, 88, 92,  and 2002 Olympics (skiers, track & field, gymnastics, fencers, bicyclists, and swimmers) also  professional dancers, baseball players, marshal artists, including football working with the great  Joe Montana and other fine professional competitors. My client/patients have ranged from new-  borns a few days old to the aged in their nineties, and with anyone else having physical pain and  problems of compensation, movement and structure. 
                         Structure indeed does follow form and form follows structure. 
Performance, therefore, becomes the expression of functional balance in these relationship!

Please contact me for further information concerning the actual process of 
the work or with reference to the specifics of any of the individual sessions.

Offices: Layton, UT (Ogden to Orem) and Northern & Southern California. 
Please Phone: (801)  498-ROLF (7653),  By Appointment Only.

Note: Man and woman are, from the moment of conception, tied to the earth’s gravitational field.  We have, as a species, evolved and grown as creatures of Gravity. When we leave the comfort  and the dependency of our Gravity relationship and we dwell in space, our physical bodies begin  to molecularly defuse and lose mass. Left in space long enough, we will defuse like smoke.

" The appropriate integration of the bodies of man in the gravity field is a long term  evolutionary project. It is possible we are witnessing the first conscious attempt at  self-evolution that any species has ever evidenced. "           Ida P. Rolf, Ph.D.

"A paper by Andy Crow"
Copywrite © 1975 Andy Crow