Dr. Ida P. Rolf (1896 - 1979)
Gravity is the therapist.
IPR was a bold original thinker who saw the human form as malleable; that the human organism has a relationship with gravity, and that relationship with gravity is organizing or disorganizing, shaping the human form over time.
Human Life is NOT Mechanistic, it is Malleable.
During her early life, IPR was thinking like a revolutionary with the idea that the human body could be changed by educated touch and sophisticated movements, the predominant thought was the human body was like a machine – when you break a part of it, that part is broken for life.
IPR had direct experience of recovery with her own yoga studies and osteopathy studies, in 1920s New York she had recovered from her own injuries and chronic pain by working with her own soft tissue.
Yet IPR had an academic mind and was totally concerned with physical reality as it is observed with our eyes. After earning her PhD in biological chemistry from the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University, she became an associate Professor at Rockefeller University.
It was in her personal life after this time that she encountered people suffering and boldly knew the path to help them recover from their chronic injuries through manual manipulation and unique movements.
At first she worked with her friends and neighbours, word got around about her success and soon people lined up at her door in New York, wanting treatment from her.
She focused on organizing people’s tissue in the gravitational field as she observed with her own eyes and touch; she empowered people to feel from the inside their relationship with gravity and how they can feel comfortable upward alignment when that relationship is organizing.
Organization in Gravity gives us Upward Lift in our body.
IPR was concerned with physical forces that the individual is managing, primary constant force that a human relates with their whole life: Gravity.
Yet any individual has had many forces applied to their form from their life experience: birth, learning to walk, childhood, motor vehicle accidents, injuries. These forces leave imprints on the fascial web that are visible to a Rolfer™.
What it looks like to our trained eyes is compromised tissue at various tissue levels.
We might hear the client describe that they feel “twisted”, “shifted to the side”, “can’t reach that direction”, or “can’t put weight on that part of my foot”.
What we see is the potential in the tissue, where is would like to be if it had a little help.
IPR’s legacy taught by the Dr. Ida P. Rolf Institute®, see the physical reality of the tissue for the individual client and give that help to the tissue trying to get somewhere.