Ida P. Rolf - Rolfing and Physical Reality

ROLFING

AND

PHYSICAL REALITY

Ida Rolf

Edited and with an introduction by
Rosemary Feitis

Healing Arts Press
Rochester, Vermont

Acknowledgments

My thanks go first to Jan Davis, whose financial help, practical organization, enthusiasm, gentle prodding, and kindness got the project under way. Then, as it was about to fail, Tim OReilly gave it a new direction and the appreciation that beginning writers need. Tim and Chris OReilly gave a fresh perspective on the final manuscript, again adding a welcome burst of energy. And at the end, Jan Crawford pointed out that physical reality, being so much a part of IPRs point of view, should also be a part of the title.

Contents

Introduction

I first met Ida Rolf at Esalen ten years ago. What is now called humanistic psychology or the human potential movement was then just beginning to hit its stride. People like Will Schutz, Abe Maslow, and Fritz Perls had been doing their own work for years, but when they got to Esalen it was as though they had been handed a megaphone. Showing your work at Esalen could either make your reputation or break itEsalen was always a turning point. This was equally true for Rolfing. Ida Rolf had been working for twenty-five years in New York; she had been teaching all across the United States and in Canada and England since the 1950s. Yet it was only after she began at Esalen that Rolfing became widely known, the subject of much notice and some controversy.

The people who came and the beginnings of research; any number of articles have been written and books are coming into being.

I was one of the people who trained as a Rolfer. And, after I learned Rolfing, I worked with IPR It was quite literally an education for me to work on that book with IPR, and work on it we did for five years.

As we wrote, rewrote, and edited, I realized that I would like to see another book, one that was less formal, one that could capture the everyday feeling. Spending a day with IPR, working together, was so often a matter of moments that could shed light on a whole landscape. She was generous with her responses, unguarded and quick to let you know what she thought. This is the feeling that Ive tried to capture here. My hope is that the serious student of Rolfing will read this book in conjunction with the formal exposition, the person who was just Rolfed may read it to get some amplification of his or her experience, and others may find in it some wisdom from a pioneering, original mind.

People like to ask about the origins of Rolfingeven to speculate and invent. Dr. Rolf tends to be reticent. On one occasion, a friend and I tried a trick. We made up a plausible lie for an the Bronx wasnt so very far from the truth.

IPR was born in New York in 1896 and grew up in the Bronx. She attended Barnard College, graduating in 1916 in the middle of World War I. At the time, with young men fighting in Europe, the supply of qualified technical personnel in so many fields was pre-empted, and so she was given a unique opportunity for a woman at that time. She was hired by Rockefeller Institute (now Rockefeller University) in New York City, and allowed to continue her education while working there. She received a Ph.D. in biological chemistry from the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University and continued at Rockefeller, eventually attaining the rank of associate. In the late 1920s, family business, including the management of her fathers estate, forced her to leave.

Dr. Rolf started to work with people almost accidentally. As she tells the story:

During the early war years, a friend of ours one day brought his wife to call; it must have been about 1940. I was talking about the fact that I had been visiting schools. I used to come into New York once a week and visit some of the experimental schools, trying to make up my mind what kind of school I wanted to send my kids to. I think the school I was talking about was the Ethical Culture School; at any rate it was somewhere they did unusual work with music. We were talking about this work and that I admired it, and so forthjust afternoon-tea conversation. And she said, It sounds like the work my sister Ethel does. I said Id like to meet her sister Ethel, but she said, Theres no use meeting her because shes been through an accident and she cant teach music any more. She cant play the piano, she cant use her hands, she cant even comb her own hair.

And I said, Well, Id like to meet your sister Ethel anyhow. So the day came when Ethel came up the front lawn. Shed fallen on a hole in the pavement in New York and she had very badly injured one hand and arm, and the other wasnt that good. I looked at her and I said, I bet I can fix that. Do you trust me to try? You cant be worse off. (She had just sued the City of New York and lost the suit, and she had paid all kinds of money in doctors bills and so forth$20,000 anyway. So she was feeling pretty low in her mind.) I said, Ill make a bargain with you. If I can get you to the place where you can teach music, will you teach my children? She said yes. And so I started in. I started, really, with yoga exercises, which I myself was using at that point. After we worked together about four times, she was in good enough shape to start teaching music. So we had a small class for four kids in Manhasset at my house. And thats where Rolfing really started. Because, of course, Ethel had a friend who hadnt been able to get help, and this friend had a friend, and so forth. And from then on my doorstep was pretty much filled with people who hadnt gotten help elsewhere. This was the beginning of the war, by the way, and Ethel was accepted as a WAC in a year or two, so you could call that a successful undertaking.

This story contains a number of the elements in IPRs personality that brought Rolfing into being. She had always investigated what was new and was never afraid to take what she learned and use it. She already knew a fair amount about yoga and osteopathy and had done considerable reading in homeopathy. All of these she investigated out of concern for her own health, because she too was one of the people who hadnt been able to get help elsewhere. She told me:

As a young woman, I had been struck by a horses hoof on a trip to Colorado. As a result of that I had some symptoms that looked like pneumonia. The accident occurred the day before I was leaving for Yellowstone. It was a horrible trip. I had a temperature of about 104 degrees and was stranded alone in a cabin that was heated only by a stove and had no hot water. Eventually I landed in a hospital in Montana. The doctor there wasnt satisfied with my progress and so he said, Im going to send an osteopath in. So a young man came and after his ministrations I could breathe again. When I got well enough to walk home so to speak (there was a railroad strike in those parts at the time), I could barely get across the country. Eventually I did get across, and my mother took me to a blind osteopath in Port Jefferson, Dr. Thomas Morrison. (He was very highly regarded by his confreres: shortly before his death, they planned to build an osteopathic hospital or center on Long Island and wanted to call it the Morrison Center.) It was unusual to go to an osteopath at the time; there was still a great deal of controversy going on between the medics and the osteopaths and they were not accepted at all. I got to be friends with Morrison, and I became interested in the theory of osteopathythat structure determines function.

Osteopathic treatment changes the way the bones of the body relate to each other, freeing obstructions between joints and thereby improving well-being. This is easy to understand in an injury caused by a traumatic impact such as Idas kick from a horse: in that case the simple mechanics of the situation dictate that if a rib is out of place, breathing will be difficult. When the rib is put in its proper position, breathing will be easier. Osteopaths work directly with the bony structure throughout the body.