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).
