ISI Catalog

Initiation

We seek to align the body — create fluid movement — instill balance physically and spiritually.

The Spiritual Initiation of an S.I. Practitioner
As the Director of the Institute for Structural Integration, I want to share my own personal experience of the Rolf “Line”. It reveals my understanding of Dr. Rolf’s work and the approach I use in my teaching.

In 1985, when I first began studying Structural Integration, my own spiritual initiation with the Line eluded me until one fortuitous encounter with a true master of Ida Rolf’s teachings, Emmett Hutchins. It was Hutchins who brought me further into my own “Line” through the embodiment of his own.

I vividly recall the night my awareness of Structural Integration was radically altered. I was walking home after class from the Rolf Institute® on a very cold, clear December night. I had just finished receiving the last of an extraordinary three-session series from Hutchins in a six-day continuing education workshop.

That night, I truly experienced the profundity of my Line. As I walked home, I felt my feet connect not just to the ground, but also deeply into the core of the earth. I can only describe it as a tangible, magnetic relationship to the earth’s gravitational field. It was more solid than anything I had ever imagined. The top of my head felt wide open, energetically expanding toward the sky. In this state, every intention of lengthening upon my Line, each breath I took, evoked a blissful state of being. Waves of energy washed through me, transcending the physicality of my body. I perceived in my mind’s eye a stream of light vibrating through my being, revealing a new realization of self. I had become the Line.

Expanded Consciousness
This sublime state of expanded consciousness reminded me of what the yogis and ancient mystics have spoken about: The Line or Channel within our physical bodies where the currents of our life-force energy flow – the prime circuitry capable of dramatically altering and expanding our consciousness in unfathomable ways. Needless to say, I was lost in the bliss of the experience and it took me two hours to walk the three blocks home that night.

My life would never be the same again.
Structural Integration is clearly a spiritual initiation capable of unlocking our most sacred self. Receiving Structural Integration at its highest form is meant to be an initiatory rite of passage. I believe that Ida Rolf’s recipe was designed as a ritual to create an opportunity for just such an experience to occur.

Although Dr. Rolf herself may never have referred to her work as an initiation, I remain certain that many who were touched by her would describe their experiences of coming into their Line, and the opening of their core, as such. My personal experience is a connection to the divine, and I have found that embodying this new, personal perspective of Dr. Rolf’s work brings forth an expansive paradigm. This allows for radical improvements in both a practitioner’s awareness and their results in Structural Integration.

This is the inspiration that formed the creation of my school: The Institute for Structural Integration (ISI).


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Institute for Structural Integration (ISI) : 455 Tarrymore Ave Minneapolis, Minnesota 55419 : phone 786-606-9744 : john@johnlatz.com