A first look at Rolfing a fascial therapy
First, Rolfing as fascial therapy addresses clients with chronic pain who are looking for a solution. Like osteopathy, Rolfing treats the entire body as a holistic manual therapy. The focus of these treatments is on reducing discomfort and pain.
Second, there is the formalistic work, the Rolfing system, that is, the 10 series of Rolfing. This work takes a much larger perspective on you as a client. The focus is on a holistic, systematic change in tensions within your body. There is this one question asked from different perspectives: Does every fascia layer glide in its environment? And can these fascia layers use the leeway of your body? That is why the Rolfing fascia therapy, especially in the 10 series, includes movement training. The goal is to translate tissue changes into mobility. Rolfing aims for an easy and pain free uprightness.
And thirdly, the fascial therapy Rolfing addresses clients who have already experienced a certain amount of body work. Be it a completed Rolfing 10 series, osteopathic treatments or Feldenkrais sessions. This type of fascia therapy is then like a refresh or readjustment. Most clients use it as careful maintenance of their body in the process of getting older.
Fascia therapy – why at all
Fascia has only recently come into scientific focus. As recent studies have shown, fascia is very rich with sensory nerve endings. If you look at the entire fascia network, this represents even the richest sense organ in the human body according to a new projection.
Every manual therapy wants to bring about changes. This is why fascia therapy is so useful because it is addressing directly at our “intelligent” fascia nerve system. Healing and relief are therefore easier to achieve. This is important to me: an intelligent system like our fascia network needs to be treated intelligently. Hence, a fascia therapy that merely tries to mechanical pull tissue apart and smooth it, is not smart. It just hurts and our brain, the evaluation of our nervous system rejects changes in tension and pain. Treatment must therefore see everyone in their uniqueness, in their preferences, their beliefs, their strengths and pain.
Forms of fascia therapy
There are currently 2 forms of therapy that focus primarily on the treatment of fascia. Since there is always an exchange of knowledge among the various manual therapies, the treatment of fascia is of course also available in osteopathy. In “Greenman’s Principles of Manual Medicine”, a standard work on osteopathy, fascia techniques are described as “newer access to manual medicine”. In Rolfing it is exactly the opposite. Fascia treatment was the starting point. Visceral and neural techniques were later adopted and added. Rolfing has been a fascia therapy right from the start and this is actually a unique feature.
In addition to osteopathy, which also performs fascia treatments, there are 2 methods that specialize in fascia. On the one hand there is the fascia distortion model (FDM) by Stephen Typaldos. On the other hand there is the Rolfing fascia therapy and its variants from Dr. Ida Rolf. Rolfing’s descendants are students of Rolfer Tom Meyers Anatomy Trains and its older form Kinesis Myofascial Integration (KMI). Other Rolfer have founded schools: Myofascial Release, structural integration without the addition “Rolfing”, Hellerwork. The distinction between these Rolfing descendants lies in the length of their training and the personal preferences and strengths of the founders. But the “gold standard” is still the training that ends as a “Certified Rolfer” or as an “Advanced Certified Rolfer”.
3 Reasons for Fascial Therapy – Rolfing
The goal in Rolfing
Read here about 3 reasons why you want to come to Rolfing, 3 reasons for more quality of life: First of all you want to be pain-free. Then you want to be able to move as freely as possible. And finally, you are looking for well-being, joy and fulfillment. Or, to put it in the words of Dr. Ida Rolf: “You want to recognize your true potential”. As you can see, Dr. Ida Rolf’s claim went beyond “pure” fascial therapy
Reasons for Rolfing
Pain leaves traces in the tissue and therefore directly in our posture. In addition, we are increasingly restricting our range of movement through pain prevention. Consequently, we increase the wear and tear in the remaining range of movement. In order to provide relief here, Rolfing works both on the level of tissue and coordination.
Efficiency: You want to improve your personal performance. Then Rolfing can help you to use your body more efficiently by using your kinetic energy lossless.
But even in old age, efficiency is becoming increasingly important in order to maintain your personal potential despite existing limitations. And Rolfing can support you here too.
Benefits of Rolfing: external link
What is Rolfing
Rolfing is like your 100.000
Keith Grahammilage service.
The Method, the Session, the Certified Advanced Rolfer
One individual may experience his losing fight with gravity as a sharp pain in the back, another as the unflattering contour of his body, another as a constant fatigue, and yet another as an unrelenting threatening environment. Those over forty may call it old age; yet all these signals may be pointing to a single problem so prominent in their own structures and the structures of others that it has been ignored: they are off-balance; they are all at war with gravity.
Dr. Ida Rolf
Rolfing signposts
People are as different as Rolfer are different. If you are looking for more Rolfer in Germany, you will also find what you are looking for here.
Details about Rolfing – a Fascia Therapy
We mostly consider our body to be sick or healthy. If we’re sick, we consult a medical doctor, otherwise we’re healthy. There are nuances. We have known about many complaints that later develop into diseases for a long time without paying attention to them. However, we are usually simply too lazy to take care of ourselves. Fascia Therapy Rolfing can help you to take care of yourself.
Ways to Rolfing
Rolfing 10 Series Overview
Missing compass for upright posture
Is Rolfing painful?
Fascia – why the hype
Rolfers have always worked on and in the fascia. Thus, they were exotic in the world of body therapists, because the majority of therapists were interested in everything except this fascia. It was indeed a German Rolfer, Dr. Robert Schleip, who initiated research on fascia. International fascia congresses and talking about the importance of fascia are only now developing.
Fascia – an insight
Puzzle pieces without connections are uselesss
Fascia is also called connective tissue. And this is one of their main tasks, namely to connect structures, e.g. muscles.
Historically, always the structures have been important and interesting, and not the tissue that connects them, that is the fascia. It’s like a puzzle: you can focus on the single pieces, their shape, their color, and so on. But it’s the connection that gives those pieces hold and position in the big picture.
As a result, there are two equivalent views on such a puzzle. Either the puzzle piece is broken or the connection to its environment. Or, to relate it to our body, either the problem lies in the structure, a muscle, or a connection, a fascia.
A Net for Fast Transmission
Once you pick up the idea that connections are important because they relate structures and muscles to each other, then the question arises of how far these connections will reach.
In the body, this fascia not only stretches between adjacent structures,but form a dense network, which also creates connections locally and over joints and organs.
And these connections are used to relay information. This knowledge is new, because we usually keep our nervous system responsible for transfer of information. But fascia can transfer tension faster while working purely mechanically than our nervous system.
Let’s take the example of being pushed from behind. Hence, no planning of our nervous system is possible in advance. Our body reacts because tension spreads through fascia in our body.
The fascial system in our sole is stretched, as are the fascia around our calf muscles and around the back thigh muscles. This tension is transmitted via reinforced fascia, so-called ligaments, to a multi-layer fascia system of the lower back. The change in tension is then measured by receptors and passed on to the nervous system, thus leading to an appropriate backlash. So we have a mixed “signal chain” of fascia, receptors to nerves.
Insight for therapy
Fascial therapy – Rolfing mainly addresses issues when
- interferences persisted over a long time
- big forces distorted our fascial net
- relieving postures persisted for quite a while
Member of
- Rolfingverband Deutschland e.V.
- European Rolfing Association e.V.
