We had a good laugh reading Joel Rozen’s "exposé" of KMI in Sarasota (FL) Creative Loafing (October 18, 2006) searching in vain for a fact. To begin with, I favor collared shirts from L.L. Bean and have never knowingly worn a caftan, not even in California in the 70’s. But thanks for this opportunity to clear up a few more important misapprehensions that appear in this article.

KMI, far from being a person-centered cult, is but one of 14 schools of Structural Integration, a technique evolved from the pioneering work of Dr Ida Rolf. Although still a small profession, we have a professional organization (www.theIASI.org), and the usual ethical and grievance procedures to reassure and protect the public.

While I did in fact meet Ida Rolf in 1973, and was mightily impressed with her integrity and skill, she neither "had me screaming", nor did I "find salvation". I did find useful work to do, and it is true, as the article implies, that many of us have been struck by how this form of manual therapy can affect mood and, trite as it sounds, release the body from physical "memory" of former trauma, as well as be applied to stubborn aberrations in posture.

But the characterization of Rolf’s work and KMI as a "massage that’s so painful you scream" is so outdated as to be trite in the extreme (I haven’t seen an article this puerile since the 1970’s). Anything that gets change will produce pain along the way – good psychotherapy, fitness training, a deep yoga practice, finally telling the truth to a wronged spouse – who would say that any of these are pleasant all along their way? But who could deny that in the end they produce a feeling of freedom and relief?

KMI sessions are intense – and our clients want that intensity in order to experience themselves deeply and make a real change. But anyone who is screaming in pain from any kind of applied therapy should head for the door without passing "Go" or re-collecting his $200.

The desired end of this deep exploration of the musculo-skeletal self is an autonomous, self-regulating person with an aligned body and a youthful spring in their step. Unlike many therapies, Structural Integration (popularly known as "rolfing") and KMI have a beginning, a middle, and an end – after about a dozen sessions, the client is set free to make of the experience what he or she will. Hardly the guru-centered dependency that one would expect from Rozen’s article.

Finally, Rozen quotes a "former insurance analyst" (surely a ringing endorsement) to intone that this kind of work is "no better than any other expensive placebo". The entire alphabet of methods for complementary healing from Acupuncture and Bioenergetics to Yoga and Zero-Balancing are certainly open to this charge. We all look forward to the studies – now beginning, but it takes decades – to demonstrate the efficacy of this and many other methods. And to the methods improving themselves, for they are all at the beginning of the journey that medicine itself took from William Harvey four centuries ago, or that psychoanalysis took from Freud a century ago. Give the somatic arts a century, and I believe you will see efficacy and efficiency in dealing with conditions appropriate to its use.

And the expense will come down when insurance pays for the treatments. Insurance will pay for the treatments when and if it can be shown that they are effective in getting people back to health or work more efficiently and cheaply than conventional surgery or rehabilitation. We in the trade are more than willing to put these methods to the test and learn from, and abide by, the results.

More can be learned about the research under way (some of the best of it in Florida), at www.massagetherapyfoundation.org, or specifically about fascial plasticity at www.fascia2007.com, or www.somatics.de.