Structural Integration - Restructure Body Alignment
Structural Integration, (also called Rolfing), is the belief that everything physically harmful to your body in your life; all the bumps, bruises, car accidents, spills, blows, tumbles, breaks etc., rearrange and affect our bodies physical structure over time. And NOT in a good way.
Rolfing is a series of massage manipulations that are used to help reverse the negative impact that all these 'little or big accidents' have on our physical structure.
All of the red dots you see on this diagram represents the many trigger points you have in your back. When your trigger points get inflamed with lactic acid build up, your back hurts. Massage therapy helps release the lactic acid in your trigger points, which relieves back pain.
If you combine those 'little or big spills' with the force of gravity pushing down on you over our lifespan, you can envision how your body get crunched together even more. The union of gravity pushing down on you and all of our little or big spills, compromise your basic skeletal structure.
Structural Integration helps to restructure and correct your body's natural alignment.
Ever notice how limber children are? Well, that's because we’re all born that way. We’re born with a natural 'C' shape to our spine, which evolves into a natural ‘S’ curve over the first few years of our lives. This helps us bend more easily, almost spring like. We lose that natural flexibility as we age, as forces of nature impair us.
When you are born, there is plenty of oxygen between your bones and your muscles. The oxygen 'cushions' your muscles and bones so we can bend and move more easily. That’s what keeps our flexibility. Over time, (because of the way we abuse our bodies and the spills we take), this oxygen is lost and our bones and our movement's suffer because they get ‘crunched’ together.
We don’t sit or stand up straight with our shoulders down and back, head up, chest out, stomach in and our hips flexed back. (Did you notice how much you moved to correct your own posture while you were reading this?)
Instead we hunch over and don’t get the exercise we need to maintain our natural flexibility. We lose the natural ‘S’ shape that we’re born with and the ‘S’ becomes inverted or backwards. The natural flow of the spinal fluid, which is the lubrication our spines need to move correctly, gets cut off so we can’t bend as easily anymore.
It all makes a lot of sense if you think about it.
Structural integration is a series of massage therapies done over an 8 week period. (Some therapist's may require more sessions, some less.) Your massage therapist will help to realign your basic skeletal structure, which provides more oxygen in between your muscles and bones.
The result? When the sessions are through, you should have much greater flexibility and a lot less pain. You will also have better freedom of movement and feel re-energized and renewed.
If you think you need Rolfing or Structural Integration, check out your local yellow pages and see if someone nearby can help you. It's worth the investment if you experience and suffer from frequent back pain.