Rolfing® SI: A Brief Catechism IV

"What are the benefits?"

Through Rolfing, we come to inhabit our bodies with greater skill. Life becomes easier as a consequence. When I learn to relinquish an ancient tension in my shoulder girdle, I have also freed up a determinate amount of energy that was previously invested in an activity that was not only pointless but also pernicious: besides the obvious inconvenience of having to overcome this tension to execute any kind of coordinated motion, such chronic contraction places the shoulder-girdle under chronic stress and foments the conditions for injury. Rolfing® SI intervenes to sever this maleficent circle. The convenient benefit of such a preemptive intervention is that one avoids the inconvenience of an eventual affliction. And for this very reason, the precise benefits of Rolfing® SI escape quantification (we cannot put a price on the benefits because we can never know the future until it is not the future anymore). Conventional Western Medicine tends to adopt a reactive approach to illness and injury; on the coattails of catastrophe, it strives to clean up the mess. As a Rolfer™, I aim to keep the kitchen clean from the beginning and avoid the catastrophe altogether.

Speculation & sloppy metaphors aside, through the release of a chronic tension pattern, we resolve an energy vortex. This leaves a body unencumbered and energized.

A penny saved is a penny I can invest towards anything I choose. If pennies were kilojoules, Rolfing would make us gentry or Herkuli. The hundred-odd dollars for a session at The Way of the Elbow is a small price to pay for gentrification or apotheosis.

Hercules:

Hercules fights a lion on an anchient Greek vase.