In an age where ‘tech neck’ is rife, Charlotte Fraser explains how Rolfing can improve your posture and ease your pain...
The use of smartphones and tablets is contributing to a rise in postural complaints in children and teenagers. Dubbed by the tabloids as ‘tech neck’ or ‘iHunch’, the complaint has led, according to the European Rolfing® Association (ERA), to an increased demand for Rolfing® Structural Integration, as well as a surge in numbers of those enquiring about becoming a Rolfer™.
Last month, the ERA launched its Heads Up! campaign to raise awareness and promote the responsible use of technology among parents and children. Certified Rolfers™ are the only professionals who can provide Rolfing Structural Integration to the public, and the ERA is responsible for the qualification and continuing education of new practitioners.
But what exactly is Rolfing – or Structural Integration, to reference its full title?
Named after the founder, Dr Ida Rolf, Rolfing is a specialised form of holistic bodywork that reorganises the connective tissues, or ‘fascia’, to release, realign and balance the body as a whole. Rolfing can greatly improve a person’s posture and balance. It can also help release tension, trauma, alleviate chronic pain and increase energy levels.
Dr Rolf believed that: “The body is most at ease and functions best when its structure is balanced in gravity.” Working with fascia and within the gravity field, Rolfing aims to restore the body to its most efficient form and to enable full ease and freedom of movement.
Joint pain, muscle soreness and adverse postural changes can arise when the connective tissue, or body’s internal flexible ‘wiring’, becomes over-extended, compressed or out of place. This, in turn, causes tension and short-term ‘compensatory’ shifts away from the natural body structure can develop.
“Of course, it isn’t just children and adolescents who are presenting with tech neck and iHunch. We are treating the parents too,” says Marina Blandini, certified advanced Rolfer.
“With postural complaints, there are so many other associated respiratory, digestive and behavioural problems too… So much interrelates and that’s why Rolfing can be especially helpful for treating children. We have a holistic, integrated approach to health and wellbeing.”
Indeed, in her pioneering work, Dr Rolf recognised the body to be more than a collection of separate parts but an integrated network of tissues that surrounds and supports, and also permeates all muscles, bones, nerves and organs. Fascia is now recognised to have a role in our nervous system.
“The Rolfers were the first to focus on fascia rather than having it as a side product of the nervous system, of the circulatory system, of the muscular system. Yes, there has been connective tissue massage, but they used fascia in order to change the visceral organs,” says Dr Robert Schleip, certified advanced Rolfer, international Rolfing instructor, director of the Fascia Research Project at Ulm University and international fascial anatomy teacher.
Rolfing can work deep inside your body and its practitioners are highly trained and uniquely equipped to help with a wide range of health complaints: from chronic back pain, sciatica, scoliosis, and plantar fasciitis, to postpartum recovery, trauma release and digestive disorders. The practice is popular among athletes and ballet dancers as it helps to alleviate injury and build resilience.
Treatment usually takes place over a course of 10 sessions (‘The Ten Series’) which can be adapted for children dependent on the health condition and treatment goals.
The system is designed to be educational, and as there is no ‘right way’ to move, Rolfers ‘accompany’ the client to enable them to experience and develop alternative ways to express through movement, working ‘with’ patients not ‘on’ them.
For more details of Rolfing® or to find a qualified practitioner in your area, visit: rolfing.org.