Welcome to Ida Teaches - the wit, abundant wisdom and vision of Dr. Ida P. Rolf.
We are going into the archives to bring you recordings of Dr. Rolf as she teaches experienced Rolfers in live trainings. Experience what it was like to study under the master.
Dr. Rolf is no longer here to teach us directly, to transfer her legendary ability to see the body, to inspire in us the laser-like focus she had for her work, but we can access her wisdom via recordings.
These are audio only. You cannot see what Dr. Rolf is demonstrating, how she is seeing or what she means by her words alone. Therefore, do not use these audios as training tools. Let them inspire you to learn more but not to guide your hands.
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Please click on one of the audio titles below to listen to the words of Dr. Ida Rolf.
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Ida probes students about their "head" homework assignment./ 9:30 What did you see?/ 27:40 Bodywork begins
13:30 Material starts in earnest at minute/ Also leads into thorax, pelvis, top of skull
Ida Rolf Teaches Cervical Layers, Diaphram & Psoas
6:00 Visceral fascia is endodermic portion of the body/ 8:30 We are integrators of all this information because the posts migrates from a viscera space in the little egg that is developing/ 20:00 Bodywork begins.
Dr. Rolf asks, "How do you know?/ Why do you start working with someone on their back?"/ 16:00 Exercise: Nose to knees./ 27:00 Rolfing and yoga
"Your answer stops you're seeing. Stops you're looking." Dr. Ida Rolf/ 15:25 This is my entire sermon, not only today but every day: The job of a Rolfer is creating order./ 22:00 What is the goal of the first hour?/ 25:00 Metaphor of key in lock./ "You can see in their eyes what you are going to find in their hips and pelvis." Dr. Ida Rolf
Ida Rolf Teaches Going From Higher Abstraction to Lower Abstraction to Silent Level
28:00 Are you all beginning to understand "where you think it is, it ain't?"/ 29:00 Body work begins.
Discussion among students at opening of Santa Monica Advanced Training about defining the territory of Rolfing. Legal and semantic challenges are discussed.
Ida Teaches The Territory of Rolfing (Cont.); The Evolution of The Recipe
Beginning of the talk is a continuation of the discussion of the territory of Rolfing led by Jan Sultan./ Evolution of the Recipe by Dr. Rolf./ 12:00 What is in the body that it asks you to start at the chest?/ 24:00 How did the Recipe evolve the way it did?
Ida Teaches Do You Understand What The End of The First Hour Is?
10:30 How to horizontal the pelvis/ 13:30 We want to be able to take this new way of working with the body into the culture./ 20:00 Using the reflexes of the feet/ 33:30 The body shortens by poor use of the shoulder girdle.
Ida Teaches After the 10-Series*
*NOTE* This recording includes a brief interaction between students and Dr. Rolf regarding the occult. The discussion ought to be understood in the context of the Human Potential movement and the historical context at the time./ 3:30 Cannot balance hard structure, only soft tissue/ 9:40 Reason for the 10-hours/ 15:35 How bones change as body matures/ 19:45 Ida's request: "Go out and gather information that adds to the Rolf concept because heaven knows I didn't finish the job."
"I don't know how to direct you. My weakness as a teacher is that that which is so utterly apparent to me, it never occurs to me that I should want to teach it that I wouldn't bore you to death with it." Dr. Ida Rolf/ 18:40 Body work begins
"Your gospel is you are preachers of the opening of man. This is tough assignment." Dr. Ida Rolf/ 4:25 Body assessment/ 26:20 Body work begins
5:00 It is the floor of the pelvis that is the vital structure/ 11:00 Get our your anatomy books/ 24:20 Comparison with Reflexology/ 29:00 I don't understand how there are any coccyges that are relatively normal.
16:50 Psoas is perhaps one of the most important structural units in the body/ 24:30 Go home and meditate for 2 hours in the middle of the night on the psoas./ 27:50 "That's why it takes five years to make a Rolfer." Ida Rolf/ 33:00 Lumbar plexus is affected by any and all movement in the psoas.
"There is no other single system in the body that is as important to the well-being of the body as the psoas-rectus combination." Dr. Ida Rolf
3:00 When the day comes that we have an Institute/ 6:00 "If you're a good Rolfer he will get on his knees to get on your waiting list. If this isn't happening to you, there's something wrong with your Rolfing." Dr. Ida Rolf/ 10:00 Horizontalizing the pelvis/ 17:40 Communicating with the silent level/ 23:15 When you are doing the 3rd hour, do the 3rd hour./ 33:00 This is your job. It is an integration, putting more dimensions in, increasing the dimensionality. You have to recognize that as you get into multi-dimensionality you get into dimensions that have no reality in time or space.
Getting where you want with the sacrum./ The spine is the organ of respiration./ 10:45 How you know you've gotten where you should be in the 6th hour is the sacrum is moving with every breath./ 20:00 Body work begins
1:50 There are two reasonably distinct nervous systems in the body. There are in charge of two different levels of functioning./ 4:15 Differentiating and patterning./ 9:00 As you get more movement in the vertebrae it is calling for water./ 10:00 6th hour body assessment/ 15:00 Hours 1-10 are not intended as advanced hours and can destroy advanced work.
15:00 Begin review of 6th hour
Ida Teaches Review of Hours 1-5
Dr. Rolf leads student discussion to review Hours 1-5 in preparation for Hour 6.
Jim Asher leads initial discussion: Why we work on mouth and neck before going into the nose./ 11:30 Embryo has 8 cervicals and then one disappears./ 25:00 Ida enters the room. Leading into 6th hour./ 31:00 Evolution of linear thinking.
Ida Teaches Brilliant Anatomy Discussion; Seventh Hour
Continued MAcCOMB research paper discussion./15:00 State of average body/ 30:30 7th Hour discussion begins/ 33:00 start of conversation about people who have never eaten processed foods.
Ida Teaches Seventh Hour Discussion
Continued discussion on affect of processed foods on structure/ 19:30 Body assessment begins/ 33:00 Body work begins
2:00 How the body talks/ 2:40 The Recipe will get you out of trouble/ 7:00 Body assessment begins. Function of the legs./ 27:30 Impact of exercise on young bodies/ 29:30 Ida's son Dick's experience with bullying
8:00 Stressors on babies laid in different positions./ 10:00 Babies strapped to board or swaddled/ 12:00 Ida's client Carl who's skull bones had not closed by 14 years of age/ 20:00 The closer a problem is to the brain the more disturbing it is to the person/ 22:30 "Don't do it! If something goes wrong you are not licensed to do that kind of work. You don't work on the acute ever." Dr. Ida Rolf/ 29:20 How do you know you're in an acute situation?
Dr. Rolf introduces the importance of having the head on the vertical line./ 5:15 Ida begins body work
Ron McComb explains his hypothesis of the spine as a tensegrity structure, with Ida's critique. Excellent anatomy discussion. His paper can be found HERE. You will have to create an account to access.
Ida Teaches Finding Yourself as a Teacher
12:20 Content starts in earnest/ 12:20 Non-medical therapeutic techniques/ 13:40 Find your place as a teacher/ 16:30 We aim only to get into derivatives of the mesoderm/ 20:30 Mesoderm tissue carries traumatic episodes, incidences and attitudes/ 25:00 How are we to present ourselves/ 27:30 There ain't no such thing as psychology/ 28:45 Body assessment
Ida Teaches The Horizontal Line
Beginning is definition of structural integration and brief review of first hour/ 8:30 Ida talks about the disappearing and reappearing horizontal line as the body gains verticality/ 21:30 Deterioration of the rectus-abdominus/psoas combination in athletics
Dr. Rolf discusses body changes through history from the Egyptians, to Greeks, to Romans, to Christians. "You see how ideas have literally shaped people."/ "Now you are at the beginning of a movement. How you got there I will never know." Dr. Ida Rolf
Dr. Rolf's admonition to Rolfers: Keep proper perspective on your size and vulnerability./ Working with insurance companies/ Use a CPA/ 25:30 Male Rolfer working with female client
Ida Teaches Jim Asher Leads Discussion on Structural Integration
Student reads from Let's Live magazine on Unorthodox Healing and the Law by Leonard Worthington/ 8:15 Brief definition of Structural Integration/ 13:00 Define second hour/ 32:30 When you do 10 hours of Rolfing, what do you have?
Discussion among students about using the Recipe as a life preserver/ 3:00 Review of 1st hour/ 15:30 Ida enters the room. Ask attorney (who is also a Rolfer) to talk about the legal position of Rolfers
7:50 The hallmark of the 6th hour is you begin to see the sacrum participate in respiratory movement./ 12:40 There is a difference between balance and order/ 23:15 What is it that gets people flexed?/ "Everything we do in the line of effort is done in the line of flexion." Dr. Rolf/ 27:00 Ida is unhappy that students haven't studied her earlier writings. Students respond, "Where are they?"
Manifestations of disease/ 9:00 The way of muscles in the erect personality/ 13:00 What you are looking for in gait/ 16:00 Ilium, brain size and locomotion/ 35:00 Encoded retinal elements/ 36:00 Constructs of human conscious experience
9:00 discussion begins in earnest. Broad overview of the 10-series as it relates to putting the head on the body in the 7th hour./ 11:45 Muscles are complicated chemical factories.
Dr. Rolf asks students to consider what they are joining as she discusses early adopters of natural healing practices and how they diverge from traditional medicine.
13:30 History of measuring heart rate./ Book mentioned: Philosophy of Natural Therapeutics. Possible author: Dr. Henry Lindlahr
5:30 "I want to leave a couple of hundred people who know how to make a Recipe." Dr. Ida Rolf/ 12:50 How do you distribute weight most effectively from the point of energy/ 15:00 There have always been people who dance. Why? What were they saying?/ 29:00 Harm of military stance / 33:30 "When people are vertical everything inside them has use of energy that comes from gravity" Dr. Ida Rolf/ 41:00 Dancers an the center line/ 44:45 Silent level body assessment
Ida Teaches Particles and Body Mass
9:00 If body is random it is not going to pull evenly/ 10:30 Feet and inner legs are critical; ankle even more critical
8:00 The limitless of the being goes on in the pelvic level
Is the pelvis simply about reproduction?/ 10:30 Measuring the horizontal sign of the pelvis
(Hard to hear before minute 14:00)
14:00 Primary Curve/ 20:00 There is only one authority: the human body/ 33:00 Learning from 3rd hour that you didn't know before/ 37:00 Be aware of your own limitations/ 41:15 Great privilege of changing the body/ 42:00 What was added to the picture in the 3rd hour?
(hard to hear before minute 15)
16:00 Fundamentals. What happens in the first and second hours?/ 21:30 What is Rolfing?/ 23:00 Your job is to keep people in the common sense world./ 35:30 Where we got our reputation./ 38:45 Getting X-rays into your finger tips; your eyes/ 39:30 The goal of every hour is movement in the pelvis