Please NOTE:

Currently Susanna is not providing the Ida P. Rolf Structural Integration Ten Series. After 30 years of practice she uses the knowledge of this work as part of  Sensory and Structural Integration, but not separately. Please visit the Guild for Structural Integration or The Rolf Institute if you are looking for a practitioner of the Ten Series.

What is the Ten Series?

Systemic reorganization of a person's myofascial planes takes time. It also can not be accomplished in one session.

The Ten Step Basic Series accomplishes a primary re-working of every major joint and all girdles of the human body in relationship to the spine.

When the Basic Ten Series is completed, the myofascial system continues to change and improve it's function over the following 6 to 12 months, after which a new equilibrium is generally attained. Individual's with complex structural histories including scoliosis, sensory complications or surgeries may need some follow up sessions during this period to support the changes being built in the Ten Series.

The Ten Series is accomplished most often in 10-14 sessions of one and one half hour duration.

Any individual may try between one to three sessions to determine their choice on whether to undertake the entire series, but should commit to the entire process once the deeper sessions are engaged in, in order to prevent the creation of structural imbalances. It is a question of not leaving yourself partly unwrapped! 



OVERVIEW OF THE TEN SERIES

Sessions One to Three: Creating a new sleeve (surface circumference) for your body.

Session One: Front and Breath Opening

This session works with the vital capacity of our body to take in breath, and to be able to release breath. We open the chest and create support to keep the chest/breath open above the legs and pelvic girdle.

Movement work: standing, breathing

Session Two: Feet and Back

The basic structure for how we stand in gravity and walk is the feet. Organizing the feet realigns the arches, the set of the heel, and the movements that use the ankle, the heel, the ball of the feet, and the toes through the structure of the arches. Newly balanced feet give us a new stance in life. The uprightness supported by balanced feet allows a newly aligned back to rise up and meet your opened chest. The support muscles for the back are lengthened along the curving movement of the spine in coordination with the feet.

Movement work: Heel, ball, toe lengthening, walking, sitting, rolling forward while sitting, pushing from feet to spine.

Session Three: Wider Sides

This session opens the circumference of your body, balancing the front and back through the sides. A new envelope is achieved and a sense of belonging is enhanced. The next level of breathing is addressed with a special focus on freeing the movement of the 12th rib.

Movement work: Rib expansion in breathing, standing up from sitting.

Sessions Four through Seven: The Core

Session Four: Inner surface of the leg from the ankle to the pelvic floor.

The inner legs are opened and balanced in this session. The pressure along the bones we sit on is reduced, freeing the leg to move. The capacity for the leg to "lengthen out of the pelvic floor to move the knee forward "is worked with. The released legs and pelvic floor complements the feet and a greater balanced depth is created in the body.

Movement work: Knee forward (train track), sitting and balancing on the sit bones, curving the lower back, widening the pelvic floor while sitting to enhance support.

Session Five: Psoas, Diaphragm, Belly

The psoas is the deepest and largest muscle in the body. Lengthening and engaging it while moving frees the legs and the abdomen to allow for softer, more graceful torso-tummy-leg movement. The experience of "support as soft" is explored. The balance between core and surface belly is worked with.

Movement: Walking backwards, leg swinging, legs dropping out of pelvis

Session 6: Legs as three-dimensional columns, breathing sacrum

Once the core is opened, the lower and upper girdles and their limbs are revisited to work myofascial relationships three dimensionally in connection to the core. In six, the legs and feet are widened, lengthened from core to circumference, in the ankle, knee, lower and upper legs. The hips and deep rotators are balanced and opened in respect to the sacrum and lower back.

Movement: Pelvic tilts, standing and breathing from the nose to the sacrum, and from the nose to the feet.

Session Seven: Torso and arms as three dimensional columns, a breathing, balanced head on top

The upper body is now freed on top of the new support of the pelvis and sacrum. Arms are released out of the shoulder girdle; the head and neck are balanced on top. Mouth and nose work support a balanced, open head. The vertical line of the body is now completed in space.

Movement work: Finding the vertical line, head balance using vertical.

Sessions Eight through Ten: Integration: Myofascia as vertical and horizontal movement sheaths

Sessions eight and nine are either upper or lower body depending on which area needs to be worked first.

Lower body: the capacity for balanced movement function is developed from toes, through knees and the pelvis to the dorsal hinge (mid back).

Upper body: The capacity for balanced movement function is developed from finger through elbows and shoulder girdles to the dorsal hinge. Neck and spinal movements are also integrated.

Myofascial sheaths are loosened and aligned according to the necessary movement functions we carry out in daily life, in gravity. This allows us to take our vertical stacking achieved in the seventh hour "on the road".

Movement work: Heel-ball-toe, pelvic curl, top of head, hands down, spinal, curls and arches

Session Ten: Horizontal alignment of the joints

The ten series is completed with a moving alignment of the fascial sheaths across the horizontal axis of the joints. The moving-vertical line then sits steadily and returns to itself in its moving-horizontal relationships.

Movement work: Sitting, standing, walking with the horizontal plane. Breathing through all the diaphragms and joints from nose to toes.

Session Eleven: The next six months to a year are considered session eleven. Ida Rolf recommended this time period for the myofascial sheaths to settle. More immediate work is not better for integrated wholeness and balance. Integration needs to be lived in to be owned and experienced.

Acute cases or needs may occasionally call for a different protocol. The need for structural alignment differs from gentle massage work. Your body will begin to get an instinctual feel for when you want structural integration or stress relief. Gentle cranial sacral therapy may deepen integration.

Completion: movement review session:

Daily/ weekly work with finding your verticality and working with your movement helps to strengthen your integration and re-access body awareness. We will look at your pictures together, if taken. Then we will review movement cues, and learn arm and leg rotations. This session is a complementary session to review the work that has been accomplished.

Movement Work Session includes:

Balancing in the Vertical

Ball Work for the feet

Sitting work

Arm & Leg Rotations Sequence
Arms:
Shoulder balance
back of hands to floor and back
thumbs to floor and back
palms to floor and back
pinkies to floor and back
palms to floor and back
down to floor to floor and back

Legs: Sitting or lying down
Psoas release and lengthen
Heel
Ball
Toe (2 times)
Ball
Heel

Pelvic Lift and Spinal chain release