Structural Integration: The Journal of the Rolf Institute, September 2016

Structural Integration: The Journal of the Rolf Institute® is the professional journal representing the field of Rolfing® Structural Integration. It has been in continuous publication for some forty years, initially as The Bulletin of Structural Integration and later as Rolf Lines. This issue of Structural Integration: The Journal of the Rolf Institute®, Volume 44 No. 3 (September 2016), begins with a collection of interviews and articles on the Rolf lineage. As a largely oral tradition, passed from instructor to student, our lineage is paramount. We first look to Michael Salveson, Jan Sultan, and Emmett Hutchins, all individuals trained by Ida Rolf and among the first instructors she appointed. We then hear more about the dynamic early years of Rolfing SI from Judith Aston-Linderoth, who developed the earliest iteration of what became the Rolf Movement® work, and from Harvey Ruderian, a long-time practitioner. Rolfing SI is a manual approach to organizing the body in gravity, and fascia is the medium Rolfers™ engage with. This issue’s second topic is fascia, but viewed through an osteopathic lens – through the work of Jane Eliza Stark, a manual osteopathic practitioner and historiographer. Stark’s work on the contiguity and fluidity of fascia offers an interesting angle that suggests both similarities and divergences in thinking and approach. We close out the issue with a practical offering from Jeffrey Maitland. His ‘ankle-lean intervention sequence’ works to establish horizontals in the structure in a unique way, giving us another tool to support our work of structural integration.