Rolfing® SI: A Brief Catechism III

"What's the point?"*

Rolfing® SI allows us to live more skillfully in our bodies. To live is, most basically, to sustain a relationship with the world for approximately four years & ten. The finer this relationship, the easier our lives become. Rolfing® SI provides a path to this end—towards more natural integration of the body with its environment. Through the process that Ida Rolf developed, we learn to better inhabit our bodies, & our relationship to the world naturally proceeds with greater ease. Someone said that "all the world's a stage." If this is true, Rolfing® SI gives us the tools to play our parts with greater skill. To struggle against the flow of life is to suffer endlessly in a contest that cannot be won. Rolf writes of this hopeless enterprise:

“Some individuals may perceive their losing fight with gravity as a sharp pain in their back, others as the unflattering contour of their body, others as constant fatigue, yet others as an unrelentingly 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, as well as others, that it has been ignored: they are off balance, they are at war with gravity.”

With balance of structure, however, the conditions change:

“When the body gets working appropriately, the force of gravity can flow through. Then, spontaneously, the body heals itself.”

When our alignment is true, the body is balanced & gravity supports our condition. When the body's "blocks" aren't "stacked," as it were, verticality is an endless struggle with gravity. Rolfing® SI stacks the blocks & delivers ease!*(If you're a nihilist, then don't bother with this entry.)

Alignment Diagram:

A diagram showing proper postural alignment.