Biography of Dr. Ida P. Rolf
Ida Pauline Rolf was born in 1896 in New York City. In 1916 she graduated from Barnard College and was offered a research position at the Rockefeller Institute, studying the biochemistry of the phospholipids lecithin and cephalin. This work became the subject of her dissertation at Columbia University, where she received her Ph.D. in biochemistry in 1920. While at the Rockefeller Institute she published sixteen scholarly papers between 1919 and 1927.
In 1927 she took a leave of absence to study mathematics and atomic physics at the Swiss Technical University in Zurich. In Switzerland she also began studying homeopathic medicine. Upon returning from Europe she continued her studies of healing methodologies in order to help herself and her family with some health challenges they were facing. The standard allopathic medical treatments seemed inadequate for these challenges. This led her to study osteopathy, chiropractic, yoga, Alexander technique, and Alfred Korzybski's work in general semantics.
Applying what she had learned from her studies, along with a great deal of original thinking she began to see problems in people's bodies as evidence that they were at war with gravity. The evolution of her work started slowly at first. She would say to her friend, "I'll tell you what, if I can help you with that problem in your body, will you teach my son how to play the piano?" Thus, Structural Integration was born. Word-of-mouth spread of the miracle work this woman was performing. Soon people were flocking to her apartment seeking relief from what ailed them.
But, Dr. Rolf was very clear with them. She was not offering a medical treatment, but an educational technique using hands-on manipulation of the tissues to create more aligned and healthy bodies. She summarized it in the following sentence: "This is the gospel of Structural Integration: When the body gets working appropriately, the force of gravity can flow through. Then, spontaneously, the body heals itself."
In the 1950's, Dr. Rolf saw the need to train other people in her techniques and philosophies so that more people could benefit from the work. By then she had touched many people and a few of those dedicated themselves to getting her work out into the world. They began to setup seminars where she could teach other people. The first groups of people who came to learn from her were chiropractors and osteopaths. Unfortunately, they saw her work as an nice adjunct to the work they were already practicing. This was not what Dr. Rolf had in mind. She emphasized that this was a body of work that stood on its own merits and did not want to see the work diluted or to see it evolve in that direction. Though many attempts were made to get this message across to her students, those who came in with an already mastered body of knowledge just could not make that shift. So, Dr. Rolf came to the realization that she would have to teach people who were not already schooled in some other somatic healing art if she was to get this work out into the world as a single, integrated body of work.
The big breakthrough came in the 1960's when one of her students summoned her to Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California. Dr. Fritz Perls was working with groups of people there with his Gestalt Therapy. These people were interested in the newly emerging "Human Potential Movement." After working on Dr. Perls himself, his health dramatically improved, including his heart condition which had been so bad before his work with Dr. Rolf that he was barely functional. Dr. Perls was so impressed he began sending his students to Dr. Rolf for bodywork to complement the Gestalt Therapy they were doing with him. Soon, many of those same students wound up in training with Dr. Rolf to learn Structural Integration.
As more and more people trained in SI, Dr. Rolf saw the need to form an organization. The Guild for Structural Integration was born. Humble and meager at first, it was located in the back of a station wagon. Later the Guild evolved into the Rolf Institute of Structural Integration and found a real home in Boulder, CO. Here, hundreds of students were trained. Dr. Rolf selected several of her best and most promising students as teachers who would go on to train others.
Dr. Rolf had called the work Structural Integration. But, many of her followers began referring to it as "Rolfing." The name stuck. The Rolf Instituted decided to register the service marks of Rolfing® and Rolfer® and made that the formal name of the work.
Now, with a solid structure and body of adherents in the 1970's the work really began to take off. Membership dues from several hundred practitioners were available to support scientific research, and trainings were migrating to Europe and South America, Australia and Japan. This thing she had started was becoming an international sensation.
One of her early students, Joe Heller, who was president of the Rolf Institute had some ideas about new ways to teach the work. He approached Dr. Rolf and she didn't want to change the teaching. She and Joe parted ways and Hellerwork Structural Integration was born. Another of her students was Judith Aston who, after developing at Dr. Rolf's request, a body of movement training work to complement the manipulation work, began to have ideas of her own as to how the work should be conceptualize and taught. She and Dr. Rolf also parted ways and Aston-Patterning® was born.
As is typical when a charismatic founder of a movement dies there is often a period of chaos where the adherents scramble to reorganize the movement towards their way of thinking. After Dr. Rolf's death in 1979 the Rolf Institute went through some turbulent times. There were now about a dozen teachers training people in the work. Each had their own ideas about what was most important, and many began to include new modalities into the body of work they were training their students in, including Upledger's CranioSacral work, and Barral's Visceral Manipulation. Several of the old guard, original teachers were quite opposed to this expansion and possible dilution of the body of work they had come to love and a battle royale transpired to determine who would shape the teaching of the work.
This led to the "Classic Coke" group of teachers to split from the "New Coke" group and re-form the Guild for Structural Integration (GSI). All parties came to agree that Dr. Rolf's original vision included many different schools of Structural Integration, each emphasizing different aspects of the work. So, the Guild has endeavored to be the umbrella organization that offers membership to practitioners from any of the qualified schools. Today, there are several other schools teaching the work, and there are several other organizations including the International Association of Structural Integrators who are vying to unite all of the practitioners of this powerful work under a single umbrella for the purpose of setting and upholding standards of practice, and furthering scientific research. Being a registered service mark, only the members of the Rolf Institute can use the name Rolfing®. But, the work goes on and many practitioners practice the very same body of work under the original Structural Integration name.
Today there are thousands of practitioners applying the teachings of Dr. Ida P. Rolf for the betterment of mankind, and she is remembered fondly and with reverence by those whose lives she touched.
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