HEALTH Hands on Health What is Rolfing?
HEALTH
What is Rolfing?
- Details
- Category: Hands on Health
- Written by Christopher Richardson
Rolfing is a therapy that methodically rebalances your body. It frees your body from restrictions as it releases stresses, strains and tensions held in your physical structure. Rolfing improves and restores flexibility and range of motion, releasing bound-up energy. After Rolfing, your body expends less of its vital energies against gravity. This restored freedom leads to a sense of increased physical vitality with less effort, noticeably higher levels of energy, improved health and physical appearance.
In addition to physiological benefits, positive results occur in ones overall psychological well-being. Rolfing is not only an effective and efficient form of body therapy that can be employed to treat existing structural problems, it is also a preventive approach to help one maintain an overall health and quality of life.
How Does Rolfing Work?
Rolfing works systematically on the body’s network of connective tissue (fascia). Through a combination of slow, applied pressure in conjunction with gentle movements, the fascia is released, allowing it to become soft, rehydrated and pliable. The fascia is the body’s organ of structure, giving the body its shape and determining the limits of its movement. Rolfing can reverse the effects of injury and negative environmental influences. Healthy fascia is hydrated, supple and elastic. Injury can easily thicken and decrease mobility through compression, torquing or twisting the tissue. Injured tissue actually sticks to itself and hardens. If overstretched or underused, tissue can become flaccid and toneless. This allows gravity to pull your body’s natural alignment out of balance resulting in compensation by other healthy tissue. This can progress into new patterns of misalignment leading to stress, pain, soreness, tension, or tenderness in a once healthy area of the body. Rolfing works to rebalance and realign your body. As your sessions progress, the body learns to move in more natural ways. You will learn to use breath and movement astools to facilitate positive change and evoke a deeper awareness of your own physiology.
How did Rolfing Start ?
Dr. Ida P. Rolf received her Ph.D. in biochemistry from Columbia University in 1920, and furthered her knowledge of the body through her scientific work in organic chemistry at the Rockefeller Institute. Dr. Rolf spent nearly 50 years perfecting her techniques of Structural Integration, which later became known as Rolfing. Her work was holistic in nature as she treated the whole person.
Why Should You Be Rolfed?
Many people turn to Rolfing for the release of symptoms of pain, tension, stress, both physical and emotional after more traditional methodologies fail. Others desire improved abilities in sports, work or the performing arts. Others are looking for a better way to cope with stress and lack of energy that can lead to depression. Rolfing helps in all of these areas by bringing the body back to its natural state allowing optimal performance, awareness and coordination.
Christopher Richardson graduated from the Rolf Institute of Structural Integration in Boulder, Colorado in 1999 .For more info He can be reached ar 484-888-2550
