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Ida Rolf Dr Ida Pauline Rolf (1896 - 1979) was a native New Yorker who graduated from Barnard College in 1916. In 1920 she earned a Ph.D. in biological chemistry from the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University. For the next twelve years Ida Rolf worked at the Rockefeller Institute, first in the Department of Chemotherapy and later in the Department of Organic Chemistry. Eventually, she rose to the rank of Associate, no small achievement for a young woman in those days.In 1927, she took a leave of absence from her work to study mathematics and atomic physics at the Swiss Technical University in Zurich. During this time, she also studied homeopathic medicine in Geneva. Returning from Europe, she spent the 1930’s seeking answers to personal and family health problems. Medical treatment available at that time seemed inadequate to her. This led to her exploration of osteopathy, chiropractic medicine, yoga, the Alexander Technique and Korzybski’s work on General Semantics and states of consciousness. Her first foray was to put people into yoga positions (asanas), and upon seeing where they were not able to stretch into the pose, started manipulating their bodies so that they could achieve the depth of the pose. So SI started out as a way to give Westerners a yogic experience. She could not have anticipated that by the turn of this century, 15 million people would be doing some form of yoga in this country.The encounter with osteopathy changed her work from a more yoga-based to a more manipulation-based practice. Through the 1930's, she traveled widely and developed her "recipe" into her "series", a brilliant piece of apparently original work on "how to open a body without opening a can of worms". By the 1940’s, she was working on Riverside Drive where her schedule was filled with people seeking help. She was committed to the scientific point of view, and yet many breakthroughs came intuitively through the work she did with chronically disabled persons unable to find help elsewhere. This was the work eventually to be known as Structural Integration. For the next thirty years, Ida Rolf devoted herself to developing her technique and training programs. During the 1950’s, her reputation spread to England where she spent summers as a guest of John Bennett, a prominent mystic and student of Gurdjieff. She taught osteopaths in England, and also taught in Oslo, Norway. Then, in the early 60’s, Dr Rolf was invited to Esalen Institute in California at the suggestion of Fritz Perls, founder of Gestalt Therapy. There she found a group of people who, although they knew nearly nothing about anatomy and manipulation, understood both practically and intuitively what the professionals she had previously taught could not seem to get: a system-orientation to their clients, not a symptom-orientation. The hippies at Esalen, not her natural kin (she was a Victorian woman and a scientist to boot), had been learning Gestalt therapy and studying Eastern thought. They were ready for her early exposition of holism: "Where you think it is, it ain't," and "If your symptoms get better, that's your tough luck". From this crowd, she began training practitioners and instructors of Structural Integration, and this led to the formation of the Rolf Institute and of "rolfing". The more Structural Integration classes Ida Rolf taught, the more students sought admission to training. Newspaper and magazine articles began featuring the person and work of Ida Rolf, and soon the necessity for a formal organization became apparent. As early as 1967, the first Guild for Structural Integration was loosely formed and eventually headquartered in a private home in Boulder, Colorado. Until her death in 1979, Ida Rolf actively advanced training classes, giving direction to her organization, planning research projects, writing, publishing and public speaking. In 1977, she wrote Rolfing: The Integration of Human Structures (Harper and Row, Publishers). This book is the major written statement of Ida P. Rolf’s scholastic and experiential investigation into the direct intervention with the evolution of the human species. Another book compiled by Dr. Rolf’s close associate and companion, Rosemary Feitis, is Ida Rolf Talks About Rolfing and Physical Reality, which offers glimpses into a diverse and ever-inquiring mind. Ida Rolf Remembered gives many stories from early Rolf practitioners about difficult but rewarding encounters with Ida Rolf.
This site contains hours of Ida Rolf's taped transcripts: To listen to mp3 files and transcripts of original tape recordings from classes and lectures given by Dr. Rolf, check out this site: http://www.rolfguild.org/av/intro.html. To read another fascinating interview with Ida Rolf, take a look at this site: http://homepage.mac.com/jefflinn/INTERVIEW/interview01.html
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