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Staying Fit: Yoga, Rolfing and the Elusive Cinderella Tissues

What is the most plentiful tissue in the body -- and the most ignored? The answer is fascia -- the gooey, gliding stuff that holds you together. Fascia is a broad term for the extracellular matrix of fibers, "glue" and water surrounding all your cells, and wrapping like plastic wrap around muscle fibers and muscles, organs, bones, blood vessels and nerves -- and finally as a second skin around your entire body.
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Brief Training in Meditation Eases Pain

A new study shows as little as an hour of mindfulness training is enough to reduce pain. "We knew already that meditation has significant effects on pain perception in long-term practitioners whose brains seem to have been completely changed -- we didn't know that you could do this in just three days, with just 20 minutes a day , " says researcher Fadel Zeidan , a doctoral candidatein psychology at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, in a news release.

Cell Biology Meets Rolfing

BOSTON—Peter Huijing was far from enthusiastic when he received an invitation to speak at the Fascia Research Congress. The meeting, held here last month, would be the first dedicated to the soft part of the body’s connective tissue system—an important but medically neglected organ. It would bring together top scientists from fields as diverse as cell biology and biophysics, but it would also include alternative medicine practitioners, such as chiropractors and deep-tissue manipulators known as Rolfers.

Feldenkrais Method of Somatic Education

Although Ida Rolf and Moshe Feldenkrais used to argue about their differences when they met at Esalen Institute in the early 1970's, they were good friends and they agreed that the methods they developed have much in common and are strongly related to each other. First, the power of both Rolf's Structural Integration approach, and Feldenkrais' Functional Integration® lessons flow from knowledge of the blueprint of perfection that is in each person. These innate patterns and potential for healing and changing ourselves far surpass anything medical science can currently comprehend.

The History of Ida P. Rolf

Structural Integration is a scientifically validated body therapy. Unlike massage, Structural Integration focuses not on the muscles but on their protective layer, called fascia (also known as connective tissue). Muscles are contracting tissues that give the body and organs physical movement. The fascia surrounds the muscles, bones and organs in the body. The fascia gives muscles their shape and the body it's structure. Structural Integration aligns and balances the body by lengthening and repositioning the fascia.
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Tom Wing about Ida

Ida Rolf guides Peter Melchior

"One of the many anecdotes told about Ida Rolf ends with her calling across the room: 'No, it's under your third finger!'"- Hans Flury, Notes on Structural Integration, 88/1