Structural Integration incorporates hands-on bodywork to create alignment within the body. Fascia (a dynamic and layered connective tissue throughout the body) is our guide to organize, support, and create ease for your unique body.
Fascia is meant to distribute strain evenly, when we sit, stand, or move. Through injury, trauma, stress, habits, and day-to-day life, our fascia can become tight, short or sticky, not allowing for easeful movement.
Through awareness and movement, Structural Integration lengthens and frees your fascia to restore an easeful and organic alignment. Together, we encourage your body to find its natural integrity of form, enhancing posture, mobility and vitality.
To experience Structural Integration, you may find benefit from just one session. Through The Soma Series of eleven sessions, deeper and long-lasting change is possible.
Goals of
Structural Integration
Reduce pain
Alignment: support the fascia and bones to use minimal myofascial effort
Range of motion: range of movement within joints and movement is more available and open
Generosity of movement: decreased restrictions or limitations in chosen activities
Back to the basics: we use the foundations of movement (standing, walking, sitting, reaching, etc.) to cultivate awareness for new habits and effortless movement
Length and decompression: in the torso and limbs, in the muscles and across joints, the body can live in its full length and expression
Tensegrity: the myofascia is balanced around the skeletal structure such that there is a general evenness of tone (see video below)
Resilience: improved ability to keep your balance and suffer less negative impact from the inevitable rolling seas of stress
Feeling at home in your whole body
An experience of transformation:
One client’s journey through the Soma Series
This client entered the Soma Structural Integration Series amidst a three year period of significant and chronic neck pain, following a spinal fusion surgery. He had begun to believe and accept the ongoing state of pain as inevitable, which was quite disheartening. Many changes occurred throughout the eleven sessions, not exclusive to the changes you may see in the photos and his on words below.
“Now, my pain level has been reduced by about 70% which has made a huge difference in my mood... I feel much more upright, open, relaxed, and fluidity of movement now. Also, my balance significantly improved throughout the sessions. I was amazed at the before and after pictures which dramatically mirrored how I was feeling.” — G.D., 72 y.o.
Structural Integration views the body through the lens of tensegrity
The human body is a brilliant architecture. Tensegrity views the body as whole, interconnected and relational. Bones, muscles, fascia, skin, breath, are all part of your dynamic living being. We cannot separate one from another, so we meet and treat the whole of you.
Watch the short video here by Tom Myers for a little more info. For a more in-depth video, watch here.
A Brief History
The roots of Soma come from the pioneering structural explorations of Ida P. Rolf, PhD and her work known as Rolfing. Dr. Ida P. Rolf created Structural Integration in the early 1950s. She earned a PhD in biochemistry in 1920 and worked as a research scientist for Rockefeller Institute for 13 years. As a lifelong student and instructor of yoga, she combined her scientific inquiry and experiential knowledge to create the system of bodywork called Structural Integration. It was known for a series of 10 separate sessions designed to bring the entire body into balance and vertical alignment.
The Soma Institute of Structural Integration was developed in 1977 by Bill Williams, PhD. of Psychology and a Rolfer® who studied directly with Ida Rolf. Today, the Soma Institute of Structural Integration teaches and trains practitioners on Whidbey Island, WA.
