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 Ida P.
Rolf, a native New Yorker, graduated from Barnard College
in 1916. In 1920 she earned a Ph.D. in Biological Chemistry from the College of Physicians
and Surgeons at Columbia
University. Dr.
Rolf worked for twelve years at the Rockefeller Institute, first in the
Department of Chemotherapy and later in the Department of Organic
Chemistry. She rose to the rank of Associate, a rare accomplishment for
a young woman in those days.
In 1927, she
studied mathematics and atomic physics at the Swiss
Technical University
in Zurich and homeopathic medicine in Geneva.
Returning to
the United States
in 1930, she spent the next decade exploring osteopathy, chiropractic
medicine, yoga, the Alexander Technique and Korzybski's work on states of
consciousness. Dr. Rolf was integrating these diverse learning
experiences with the desire to find more effective approaches for conditions
that conventional medical treatments seemed unable to help. She
developed a new approach to working with the body and called Structural
Integration.
Over the next
twenty years she actualized this system in a series of ten sessions, which
later became known as Rolfing. She established the Rolf Institute in Boulder, Colorado,
and began teaching basic and advanced training classes. She wrote Rolfing:
The Integration of Human Structures (1977) and continued teaching, giving
direction to the organization, planning research projects, writing and public
speaking. Her work is continued through the Rolf Institute in Boulder, Colorado and
internationally in Germany,
Australia and Brazil.
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Thanks to Briah
Anson & Jude LaClaire, Growing Right With Rolfing Heartland Personal Growth Press,
1996, Kansas City, MO.
HTML by Ben Hunrichs
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