The art of Structural Integration represents the life work of Dr. Ida P. Rolf. She spent over fifty years studying, searching, developing and teaching her system of creating a more upright human structure, a body with greater verticality and balance ,which functions more efficiently in gravity, the field in which we live.
She determined that the human structure is a "plastic medium", and that by applying pressure, energy and intention, the muscular structure can be altered and freed from long-held patterns, the result of physical and/or emotional traumas. Working to free the fascial network which encases and relates each muscle and group of muscles, the body returns to a more natural organization. Accordingly it can function in a more efficient, practical and comfortable way. She observed that when human structures become more balanced and upright, a whole series of other significant changes occur. Further, she noticed that a body which becomes more structurally upright, provides greater emotional and psychological adaptability. Structural Integration has a simple message: The body is a plastic medium (changeable) and by changing the structure, one changes the function of a human being.
Structural Integration consistently demonstrates that imbalance can be replaced with balance, limitation can be replaced by freedom; a random and painful body can grow into greater verticality, order and comfort.
You can read more information at www.rolf.org, the web site of the Dr. Ida P. Rolf Institute of Structural Integration, the organization where I originally trained, that Dr. Rolf founded in 1971.