Structural Integration systematically addresses your body as a whole, over a series of 10 sessions. Skillful touch brings relief from pain and discomfort, and awareness of how you’re holding and using your body.
The result of Structural Integration is a body that is aligned and balanced in gravity that moves with more ease, fluidity, efficiency and grace. Movement becomes a pleasure, breathing is easier and good posture is effortless.
Why ten sessions?
Each session of the ten series has a specific goal to accomplish. Each session builds upon the last, addressing layers of tissue throughout the process. The series is designed to balance your body in segments, with each session addressing a different aspect of your structure and movement. The time in-between sessions allows the body to integrate the changes that were experienced in each session. This is a process of opening, shifting, unfolding, and organizing into an increased sense of wholeness. The goals and territory of each session are described below.
Before and After the 10-Series of Structural Integration
Session 1
Open the breath
We begin by releasing the outer-wrapping of the connective tissue during the first session, particularly around the shoulders, chest, lower back, and pelvis with an aim at freeing restrictions to breathing to increase lung capacity and oxygenation of the tissues. There will also be focus given to increasing mobility of the pelvis.
Each session will finish with a focus on freeing restrictions in the neck and spine all the way down through the sacrum.
Many clients are in awe at the end of this session, because they now have felt new possibilities of how their body can change and heal in a way that exceeded any expectations.
The first session of Structural Integration is an initiation. Lifelong postural patterns of pain and tension are released. The client often feels lighter in their body while simultaneously more grounded to the Earth and filled with energy. The 10-Series is a process. Session 1 is the foundation and beginning of this therapeutic journey.
*If you are interested in trying the Rolf Method, but not sure enough to commit to a whole series, your are invited to come in for this one session and then decide if you want to continue.
Session 2
Find your feet
The foundation of the human structure is in the arches of the feet. This session is all about establishing a solid base of support for the client by balancing the lower legs and feet. This session increases your connection to the earth and gives you a feeling of groundedness. An awareness of how you stand and walk will increase dramatically as you begin to realize how your postural and movement patterns affect the structure and function of your entire body.
“Before aberrations in the upper body can disappear, ankles must be reconstructed, their lines of transmission freed, and structures made sturdy for their job of transmitting weight” - Dr. Ida Rolf
Session 3
Beginning to find your “Center”
This session will reveal to the client their first glimpse of what in means to live in an integrated body that is organized around a central vertical axis. By releasing restrictions along the lateral aspect of the body, we remove tensions between the shoulders and pelvis which brings the major segments of the trunk toward proper alignment.
This session gives you the feeling of being put together, of resting more comfortably on the earth, of having a more elongated body. The client often begins to feel more upright, and even taller. By the end of this session, you will have a sense of what Structural Integration is about.
Session 4
Awaken the Core
This is the first core session, a junction between the surface-layer work of sessions 1-3 and the core work of sessions 4-7. Session 4 improves weight transmission along the inner line of the legs to bring grounding up through to the pelvis and liberate restrictions in muscles connecting the upper and lower body. This session gives a strong sense of increased length and freedom in the legs, and many clients report a new feeling of energy, harmony, and integration in over-all body movement.
Session 5
Balance the Core
This session creates an appropriate relationship between the superficial abdominal muscles and the deeper leg/hip flexors located at the core. It releases fascial restrictions on internal organs, creating proper space for each one and arranging them around the internal vertical line. This session provides increased mobility for the pelvis and begins to create balance and congruence in the spinal column. Many clients report that this session leaves them with a new sense of internal space and a deep feeling of energy, peace, and centeredness.
Session 6
Free the Sacrum and Establish a Resilient Pelvis
This session secures foundations. Work focuses on the back of your body, from the heels to the back of your head, in order to create sufficient space in the hinges between body segments. At the end of this session, all major fascial restrictions below the neck should be released. This session especially liberates muscles along the spine and releases two subtle hinges, the sacro-iliac (at the base of the spine) and the cranial (at the top of the spine). For people who have been blocked at these hinges, the effects can be profound, for they affect how we perceive the world and ourselves in it. Some clients may report a stronger sense of clarity and ease, with improvements in self-awareness, self-acceptance, and self-confidence.
Session 7
Balance the Cranium atop the Spine
This session continues and integrates the work of the previous six sessions. It relates your head and neck to the rest of your body, all the way through to the ground. Your neck may be given greater mobility in relation to your head and shoulders. This session often produces powerful changes in what most clients describe as “energy flow” as a result of the now body-wide freeing of major fascial restrictions. Most clients report a feeling of general lightness throughout the body; their faces appear noticeably more balanced and relaxed. You should now have an improved awareness of the integration of all the parts of your body; sessions 8-10 will further this sense of integration. For some, the sense of increased integration may extend beyond the body to include other aspects of the self.
Sessions 8 & 9
Integration
One of these sessions will focus principally on your lower body, the other principally on your upper body. Which half of the body is the focus of session eight depends on your structure and your responses to the preceding sessions. The goal is to bring your body to the next highest level of order possible, to achieve better side-to-side, front-to-back, and inner/outer balance. Most clients report a feeling of improved lift in their bodies after both sessions; in the days following they usually report a sense of lightness and ease in all physical activities as they experience the benefits of higher energy levels, improved mechanical efficiency, and better coordination.
Session 10
Unity in Gravity
This final session polishes the balancing and integrative process of the previous sessions. It fine-tunes the relationships between segments of your body, thus bringing it as close as possible to optimum balance. Your body should now be aligned or on a course toward alignment. The effects of the 10-series will not end with this session, but will continue for 6-12 months as your body undergoes its own unique adjustment process to the changes initiated by Structural Integration.
