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What is Structural Integration?
How does it work?
Who can benefit?
A Word on Gravity and Balance
What is Structural Integration?
Structural Integration can literally change the shape of your body! Structural Integration is a method for bringing organization and balance to the human body.
The basic work consists of a series of 10 sessions which aims to maximize length and balance along the central axis of the body using gravity as both a tool and a guide.
The practitioner makes an assessment of the effects of gravity on the client's structure and uses heat, pressure, and client movement to facilitate changes in the
client's body tissues.
These changes result in greater length, balance, and ease of use in the client's body. Over a course of series of sessions, one's posture and postural habits improve noticeably and can change dramatically.
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How does it work?
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Fascial tissue makes up the primary unit of structure in
the human body. Fascia is a three dimensional, web like, network of connective tissue which wraps all of the muscles, bones, organs, and brain. Additionally, fascia can be changed by forces outside of the body itself (like a SI practitioner and the gravitational field for example). The body deposits additional fascial tissue in areas that are under long term strain (from patterns of use, trauma, etc.). This has the effect of both strengthening and stiffening the area of deposit while limiting movement and sometimes causing pain.
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"Rolfing is like making your bed. . .thinking you'll get by without pulling the bed apart, you pull one cover over the next. When you get it all pulled together, you find ridges running across the top of the bed.
Now you've got to pull the top covers back and go to the deeper layer where the wrinkles are and organize it; then you make the bed. It's the same with the body . . .you've got to organize those deeper layers."
- Ida Rolf
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Fascial tissue has the special property of responding to heat and pressure by becoming temporarily softened and malleable. Thus, as the practitioner and client work to free the areas of strain (and thickened fascia) in the body, the body changes by lengthening. Gravity helps the process by providing a constant force for the body to organize around once the client is back in the vertical position.
"You can think of this relationship as similar to a
boat being pushed in water. The push gives the boat
its direction and momentum. The boat continues to move
in the same direction for a while even after the push
is over."
- Manny Aragon
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Who Can Benefit?
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While many people come to Structural Integration to address specific injuries, and conditions, people of all ages can benefit from a more efficient, aligned, and upright body.
I have worked on newborn babies to 93 year old folks.
Some of the more commonly manifested conditions successfully addressed with this work are:
- Chronic postural problems
- Scoliosis
- Knee pain and injury
- Hip pain and injury
- Pelvic and Back pain and injury
- Shoulder pain and injury
- Chronic ankle sprains/injuries
- Repetitive stress injuries (carpal tunnel, etc.)
- Lack of balance
- Lack of stamina
- Lack of coordination
- Chronic injury
- TMJ
- And many others
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"This is the gospel of Rolfing: When the body gets working appropriately, the force of gravity can flow through. Then, spontaneously, the body heals itself."
- Ida Rolf
A Word on Gravity and Balance
The human body attempts to maintain its equilibrium (physically, mentally and chemically) in response to any environmental demands placed upon it.
Balance is a dynamic and ongoing process and is not static as conditions are constantly in flux.
How do Balance and Gravity work for or against us?
Gravity is the force which draws us toward the center of the earth.
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The actions of Balance and Gravity working together allows people to stand, walk, etc. (i.e. gravity pulls down, the body compensates by applying tension to specific muscles to maintain its balance). Because gravity is always pulling us into the earth, the more aligned our structure is with the force of gravity, the more the gravitational pull helps us to maintain balance within its field.
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In other words, the more aligned our structure is with the field of gravity, the less energy we expend on holding ourselves up. That energy can be applied to other areas of the body (to maintain health and deal with stress, for example). Additionally, the force of gravity acting on a body which is in close alignment with the gravitational field will actually help the body to become more aligned with the gravitational field over time (and become more balanced as well). This results in a more upright posture.
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Chronic tension of muscles is the body's response to chronic mis-alignment with the gravitational field (i.e. sitting at a computer with the head thrust forward on a daily basis for an extended period). As gravity pulls down on the head, the body responds by tensioning various head, neck, and back muscles because there is nothing underneath the head to support it in its forward thrust position.
This will result in the head, neck and back muscles trying to hold the head up at great energetic expense (and often much pain) to the body.
This person will, when standing, typically display the forward head thrust.
This situation could be remedied by simply positioning the head over the shoulders, the shoulders over the hips, the hips, over the knees,
the knees over the ankles, etc. to create a stable base for the structures above. This is what Structural Integration does.
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"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 a constant fatigue,
yet others as an unrelentingly threatening environment. Those over 40 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."
- Ida Rolf
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