What is Structural Integration?
Structural Integration - optimally aligning your structure with gravity.
Structural Integration is a whole body approach to resolving pain and discomfort in the body, changing long held postural patterns and imbalances. Through the mindful collaboration of hands-on bodywork, client movements, and individually tailored movement lessons, your body can learn a new way of being. Clients have said “I thought my body would be this way forever, and I’m so excited to feel it change.”
Fascia is a web of connective tissue that is present throughout our bodies. It surrounds and encases our organs, nerve fibers, and blood vessels, and runs through our muscles. Fascia records our movement patterns, holding our postural habits, and assisting or resisting joint motions. With hands-on bodywork, I use my hands to manipulate the fascia, suggesting new patterns of movement, breaking up scar tissue, and resolving adhesions.
Structural Integration is not a massage, though it may look like one to an observer. Whereas massage is a more passive experience, structural integration is collaborative and active. Every touch I give has an intention; a focus and direction designed to bring balance to your structure. Client assisted movements allow the intention of my touch to become integrated into the client’s movement patterns. The strokes are slow and the work happens on a deep level. When the soft tissue changes, the structural system, or the bones, are able to stack in alignment with gravity, reducing strain, improving range of motion, and facilitating greater ease in movement.
Structural integration sessions can also include a movement lesson - a fresh approach to everyday actions like sitting, standing and walking. The combination of hands-on work, client education, and application of this education in daily life paves the way for lasting change.
For more detail about what happens in a session, visit Sessions.
“When the body gets working appropriately, the force of gravity can flow through, then spontaneously, the body heals itself.”
— Ida Rolf