Structural Integration is an elegant form of manual therapy bodywork created by Dr. Ida P. Rolf that addresses our relationship to gravity. Structural Integration (SI) is a journey through structures (muscles, ligaments, fascia, tendons, bones, organs, nerves, and skin) to get us back into the flow of breath and life force, back into healthy relationship with ourselves and with gravity, and back into wellness. Think about how all the little injuries and repetitive movements of everyday life have piled up to create postural/structural patterns of holding and tension. The patterns might be subtle or they might be painful and feel enormous.    

We birth habits to protect ourselves after injuries and traumas. These habits are not exactly a part of the healing process; they’re more like a reflection of the cultural pressure to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and keep going that we insert into our healing process, often hurrying and/or interrupting the process. The will to push on is so strong that we “get back to it” long before we’ve fully recovered. This causes us to be literally hauling our wounds around until they are, hopefully, addressed at some point down the road. An unhealed wound can be reflected in the way we carry ourselves and move our bodies as a whole, the way we hold our head, even the way our skull bones are held inside of our heads. 

The imprints are like clothing we’ve grown out of that can really mess with a natural flow of breath… But they served a purpose, right? Of course! We put up armor for a reason, usually a good one. It's letting the armor down when the threat has passed that we tend to fall a little behind the curve on. Our bodies are always at work trying to maintain the highest level of health and wellness possible. Our work in SI is a practice of letting go the armors that no longer serve and replacing them with new networks and arrangements of support, and possibility.

Holism is a primary tenet of the work. Structural Integration is about unpacking (not in a talk therapy kind of way, though big emotions are present, often) the ways we’ve gotten to here, today. Injuries and traumas happen in the physical, emotional, psychic, somatic, spiritual, and collective bodies. Many happen preverbally, in utero, and at birth. Along with the following principles of adaptability, resonance, integration, and support, SI treats all of these bodies through the vessel of the physical in the here and now. The manual therapy techniques I use are gentle (see the faqs page on “depth of pressure” for more on that) and include myofascial, neuromuscular, muscle energy, dermoneuromodulation, Thai massage and craniosacral.

Structural Integration happens on and around a massage table, but is not massage. We will integrate movement, observation (yours and mine), breath, standing in and exploring movement in gravity, yoga, walking, stretches and strengthening exercises, somatic awareness, self-care tools, as well as plenty of time with you on the table, participating with a soft mind and an invitation to listen deeply to your body. I wholly recommend at least three sessions (of any style of bodywork), as change happens over time and subsequent sessions can enhance the effects of previous work and prepare the way for deeper future healing. Often SI is practiced in a ten series model over a span of several months.