Dr. Ida P. Rolf (1896 – 1979)
Founder of Structural Integration

Ida Pauline Rolf was born and raised in New York City. She graduated from Barnard College during the First World War and was hired by the then Rockefeller Institute where she eventually attained the rank of associate. As well as working at the institute, she continued her education and was awarded a PhD in biological chemistry from Colombia University.

Dr. Rolf's structural integration work came about through her biochemical understanding of the body, her understanding of the pressures of gravity on the body and many years of exploring existing approaches to health. Of these, yoga, osteopathy and homeopathy formed the platform and her interest in Korzybski's work aided her students years later.

Dr. Rolf studied the properties of connective tissue within the body and concluded that it was the organ of posture; bones are held in place by connective tissue therefore, if a muscle is chronically short, it will pull the attached bone out of place. Repositioning of the bone alone is not enough to effect a permanent change; the surrounding tissue must also be lengthened.

From her intensive study and discussion of yoga, she retained the principle that the body needs to lengthen through increasing the space at joints and that work with the body will improve not only the physical but also the emotional and spiritual life of the individual.

From osteopathy she retained two major principles; that the human being should be treated as a unit and that structure determines function. In her own experience of receiving osteopathic treatment, a rib had been knocked out of place and so breathing was difficult; when the rib was put in its proper position, breathing became easier.

In homeopathy Dr. Rolf was particularly interested in Hahnemann's "law of cure". This law deals with chronic complaints that have accumulated over time and that have been imperfectly resolved. The various complaints then express themselves in a form that is long-standing and does not readily respond to treatment. In order to remedy this type of condition the homeopathic practitioner must unravel and treat the ailments in turn from present to its origin.

Dr. Rolf incorporated Korzybski's philosophies in the development and tuition of her own work. She stressed the importance of relationships; relationships of structures within the body; of our self-impression and our structure; of external influences on our structure and so on. In teaching her work, Dr. Rolf would often state that, "the map is not the territory"; another example of Korzybski's teachings of the relationship between a symbol and the object.

In Dr. Rolf's early classes, students were drawn from chiropractors and osteopaths. However, they tried to incorporate Rolfing as part of their own technique. Whilst the work of both osteopathy and chiropractic is undeniably enhanced by structural integration, Dr. Rolf was determined to have her work recognised in its own right.

She taught it in its established form for the first time in the early 1950s at a class in Tunbridge Wells, England. By the end of the 1950's Dr. Rolf had been teaching and working with people all over the United States, Canada and England. It was by then a clear, teachable body of work and a proven therapeutic method.

Her process has since brought thousands of individuals back to a place of true health and vitality. Her ten-session recipe is still taught in its original form at the Guild for Structural Integration in Colorado, USA.

"Some individuals may experience their losing fight with gravity as a sharp pain in their back, others as the unflattering contour of their body, others as a constant fatigue, yet others as an unrelenting threatening environment. Those over forty may call it old age. And yet all these signals may be pointing to a single problem, so prominent in their own structure, and in the structure of others, that it has been ignored; they are off balance. They are at war with gravity."

Dr. Ida P. Rolf

 

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