(Structural integration: balance, permanence, and body-mind)
The technique itself involves a ten-hour cycle of deep manual intervention in the elastic soft tissue structure (myofascia) of the body.
The technique of Structural Integration is powerful, and the resultant changes are far-reaching. As practitioners, we do not aim for change alone; we wish to induce change toward balance. Change without balance can be destructive.
Balance in the body does not reveal itself to the dilettante; it is a matter of intuition, experience, knowledge, and study.
They are best summed up in the phrase “I feel better” (or “lighter” or “easier”). The added ease, the improved vitality are the result of greater balance; this does its own beneficial work on physical and psychological ills.
We are asked if rolfing is permanent. Rolfing enters into the body’s process and changes its course. Unless an accident intervenes, the body will continue along its new course. The effects of rolfing are not simply permanent, they are progressive.
It is an accepted truism that body and mind co-act, express each other, influence each other, yet there are few satisfying constructs defining the relation. Does psyche determine physiology, or is the opposite true? Where do the various schools of physical and psychological human improvement fit in?
Preface Literal Thorns in Literal Flesh
We are not stuff that abides, but patterns that perpetuate themselves. —NORBERT WIENER
We mean that bodies—average physical bodies of flesh and blood—are amazingly plastic media, which can change quickly toward a structure that is more orderly and thus more economical in terms of energy.