Describe how Ida’s words have inspired your work and life…
‘I came to Rolfing, like many people, because of back pain. I was a dancer at the time, and I needed to get out of that pattern of stuck pain and to increase my possibilities of movement. The Rolfer did not focus on the pain, he put me through the 10 series, educated me about the line and Ida’s phrase, ‘We are patterns that perpetuate themselves’. Ever since then everything I do, I can see the pattern, in a client, in myself that relates to the emotion of a phycological habit or pattern that shows up in the body. Patterns that perpetuate themselves gives me the option of changing the pattern through Rolfing. Looking at patterns in people’s bodies through function, through the possibilities of more joyful movement and returning to resilience in their body by changing the pattern’.
How does Ida’s work continue to be relevant in the 21st century?
‘Rolfing is more relevant today than ever. The obvious thing is posture. Everything you read now is about posture and our intense frontal plain focus into the cameras and into the computer and into being bent forward. Those are all obvious things; those have always been relevant. But more relevant is the changing environment and the pressure, the pandemic, the coming out of the pandemic, being shut down, having to adapt to climate change, to cultural demands. Rolfing focuses one of its main principles on adaptability and resiliency, keeping balance through the body and in one’s life. The relevancy of Rolfing is to really focus on that adaptability that exists inside of us now. And that humanity even can be reminded that we have an inside that can respond to the high demands, technology, internet, coming at as from the outside so that we can actually settle in our bodies and stay there’.
