About Ida Rolf
May 19, 1896 – March 19, 1979
Ida P. Rolf was born in 1896 in New York City. She graduated from Barnard College in 1916, and in 1920 received a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University. For the next 12 years, she worked at the Rockefeller Institute in the Chemotherapy and Organic Chemistry departments, eventually attaining an Associate rank. These were all no small feats for a woman in her day.
Taking a leave of absence to study mathematics and atomic physics at the Swiss Technical University in Zurich in 1927, Ida also found time to study Homeopathic medicine in Geneva. She also did work at the Posteur Institute in Paris.
During the 1930s, Dr. Rolf was challenged with some personal and family health issues. Dissatisfied with standard medical treatments available, she sought alternative answers to these problems. Departing from the traditional modalities, Dr. Rolf explored Osteopathy (from which its founder, Dr. Still, influenced her greatly), and Chiropractic medicine. However, her four greatest influences were Tantric Yoga with Pierre Bernard, Amy Cochran’s Physiosynthesis, the Alexander Technique (where “the line” comes from), and Korzybski’s General Semantics.
Her search for health and wholeness was definitely influenced by her Organic Chemistry background, which led to some fundamental discoveries about the body (particularly the physiological properties of fascia), including its function and form. She was able to envision the connective tissue as a system in and of itself with particular structural and functional qualities.
This eventually enabled her to develop the method of bodywork now known as Structural Integration. “The Recipe” of the 10 Sessions is not just a pedagogical technique but what she very much believed in and actually used herself.
By the 1940s, she experienced breakthroughs with chronically disabled people who were otherwise not finding relief. In the 1960s Dr. Rolf joined psychologist Fritz Perls (founder of Gestalt Therapy) and many other pioneers of the “Human Potential Movement” at the Esalen Institute in California. She trained practitioners there, and the more classes she taught, the more students sought admission to training. Newspaper and magazine articles began featuring her work and ideas, and soon the necessity for a formal organization became apparent. In 1967 the first Guild for Structural Integration was loosely formed and eventually headquartered in Boulder, Colorado.