About Rolfing

Rolf­ing engages with the pat­terns that shape your body to dra­mat­i­cal­ly improve the way you feel and move.

How Rolfing Helps

For more than 60 years, Rolf­ing has been a great help not only to peo­ple look­ing for relief but also as a cat­a­lyst for peo­ple of all walks of life—athletes, musi­cians, yogis, and others—to make strides in the mas­tery and ease they feel in their bod­ies.

Rolf­ing is able to help clients with a great vari­ety of prob­lems and goals for their bod­ies. A Rolfer will con­cen­trate on prob­lem­at­ic areas but always seeks to build order, ease and bal­ance through­out the body to sup­port the release and relief of the areas that are under more stress.

Here are a few of those issues that respond well to Rolf­ing:

• relief from chronic tension and pain

  Pain, ten­sion and strain result when your body isn’t han­dling the forces com­ing through it properly—in action (walk­ing, run­ning, lift­ing) and in activ­i­ties as seem­ing­ly triv­ial as hold­ing your head erect or typ­ing all day.Of course, we’ve named many of the kinds of chron­ic issues that peo­ple expe­ri­ence. Among those, Rolf­ing has helped clients with issues like back pain, neck pain, ITB syn­drome, plan­tar­fasci­itis, spine com­pres­sion, some recur­ring headaches, TMJ syn­drome, and a vari­ety of oth­ers.

  If there is a par­tic­u­lar issue that you’re deal­ing with and you’d like to know if Rolf­ing can help, don’t hes­i­tate to con­tact me.

• improved alignment and posture

  Sit­ting or stand­ing “straight” doesn’t have to be an effort a chore. Any­one can ben­e­fit from build­ing bet­ter sup­port and align­ment in every­day life, includ­ing peo­ple with align­ment issues and sco­l­io­sis.

  By orga­niz­ing the body to be sup­port­ed eas­i­ly all the way down through your feet, Rolf­ing aims to make the sim­ple act of sit­ting or stand­ing upright eas­i­er and more pleasurable.Practitioners of move­ment arts like yoga, dance, Pilates as well as seat­ed med­i­ta­tion also find that the detailed atten­tion Rolf­ing brings can help them make shifts that they hadn’t yet been able to make in their own prac­tices

• recovery from injury, trauma and overuse

  Your body changes when it has gone through some­thing trau­mat­ic, such as an acci­dent, injury, surgery, overuse or var­i­ous kinds of emo­tion­al or psy­chic trau­ma. The body builds scar tis­sue around wound sites, mus­cle tone and fas­cia short­en and con­tract to pro­tect the body in var­i­ous ways.

  These pat­terns of heal­ing, pro­tec­tion and com­pen­sa­tion are important—they’re about survival—but they can also out­live their use­ful­ness, reshap­ing the way your body holds itself togeth­er. Rolf­ing works well in these cas­es to sup­port recov­ery of free­dom and full range of motion.

• more powerful and efficient movement

  Many ath­letes have ben­e­fit­ed from the boost to per­for­mance and effi­cient body mechan­ics that the work of Rolf­ing pro­vides. By help­ing the body align and orga­nize at a fun­da­men­tal struc­tur­al lev­el, Rolf­ing frees up mus­cu­lar ener­gy and coor­di­na­tion that oth­er­wise would have been wast­ed.

• improved balance and motor control

  When forces are bal­anced more even­ly through your the tis­sues of your body, you not only have more ener­gy avail­able to you, you also increase your pro­pri­o­cep­tion— your abil­i­ty to sense bal­ance, posi­tion and space as you move.

• greater comfort and ease in the body

  Rolf­ing is essen­tial­ly about ease—bringing a lev­el of order to the body that allows you to be in it with less effort and strain—and deal­ing with the issues that are get­ting in the way.

  When you’re more bal­anced and orga­nized, your joints and spine decom­press, you feel less strain and more open, stronger, and at home in your body.

How Rolfing Feels

A typ­i­cal Rolf­ing ses­sion starts with a short assessment—movement and per­haps a walk around the room—to see pat­terns that are show­ing up in the client’s struc­ture while mov­ing and how they might have changed since last time.

Most of the ses­sion after that takes place on the table as we work hands-on with the rel­e­vant restric­tions, and the hour typ­i­cal­ly winds up with anoth­er short assess­ment as well as some move­ment cues and sug­ges­tions to help you feel what’s changed in your body and to take those changes out into the world with you in a clear­er way.

You’ll leave a ses­sion feel­ing relaxed, aligned, and often hav­ing learned some­thing new about the kinds of move­ment avail­able to you.

The qual­i­ty of touch in a Rolf­ing ses­sion is gen­er­al­ly slow, with a clar­i­ty and pre­ci­sion of con­tact that clients gen­er­al­ly feel “met by” and very com­fort­able with. The pres­sure can range from rel­a­tive­ly strong to very gen­tle, depend­ing on the areas being addressed.

Some peo­ple have the idea that Rolf­ing is very painful, or that it should be painful if it’s going to work. Nei­ther of these is true. See the FAQ page for more my per­spec­tive about the dif­fer­ence between effec­tive work, deep work, and painful work.

Because struc­tur­al work like this devel­ops over time in a person’s body, Rolf­ing tends to be most effec­tive in a lim­it­ed series of ses­sions, each one build­ing on the progress of the next. Sin­gle ses­sions can be very effec­tive, but build­ing ses­sions togeth­er in series tends to help the work take shape stronger and last longer. Dr. Rolf taught a stan­dard series of ten ses­sions (known as the Ten Series) which works method­i­cal­ly through the major rela­tion­ships in a client’s body.

How Rolfing Works

Named after Dr. Ida P. Rolf, Rolf­ing orga­nizes your body struc­ture by work­ing with con­nec­tive tis­sues (or fas­cia).

Fas­cia per­me­ates your entire body. This com­plex and ever-chang­ing web deter­mines the range and lim­i­ta­tions to your pos­ture and your move­ments. Your entire mus­cu­loskele­tal sys­tem is embed­ded in and shaped by fas­cia. Any change to any part affects the entire arrange­ment of the web.

By work­ing with the fas­cia, we’re work­ing with the way your body is con­nect­ed togeth­er on a fun­da­men­tal lev­el. Rolf­ing is able to make last­ing changes in the ten­sion and bal­ance in your mus­cles as well as the rela­tion­ship of your bones, the shape of your spine, and more.

This allows for last­ing relief of areas of ten­sion and strain, along with an over­all bet­ter orga­ni­za­tion of the body that brings about a whole new lev­el of ease.