The Rolfing Recipe

Session 1

Begin to Balance Your Pelvis Over Legs

We begin the recipe by starting to balance your pelvis with your outer leg muscles (outer hips, IT band, and hamstrings). We also free any restrictions to your breathing pattern by addressing the shoulder/arm to ribcage relationship.

Session 2

Balancing Your Feet, Lower Legs, and Thighs with Your Pelvis

This session is devoted to your connection to the ground. We balance your lateral, medial and transverse arches. Establish horizontals at toe, ankle, and knee hinges. We also begin to neutralize your spinal curves and relate the feet to the spine.

Session 3

Balance Relationship of Pelvis to Lumbar Spine and Shoulder Girdles

This session addresses deeper hip and thigh muscles and works to free tissues that connect the pelvis to the lumbar spine. We also balance the shoulders with the ribcage and pelvis so that the shoulders are not too far forward or back.

Session 4

Balancing the Inner Thigh Muscles with the Pelvic Floor

This session balances the muscles that run the length of your inseam with your pelvic floor. These are your adductor muscles (think of the muscles you would use to squeeze when riding a horse) and are commonly passed over in most massages because they are a sensitive area to work, but very important to the balance of your legs and pelvis.

Session 5

Balancing Your Psoas and Hip Flexors

After balancing your pelvic floor, we move to neighboring anatomy on the front of your body - your hip flexors. We address any imbalance within the muscular layers of your abdomen, quads, and upper thighs. This preps the area to effectively release any restrictions to your psoas and iliacus. All previous sessions support this release as well, which is a significant change to the core of your body.

Session 6

Releasing the Hamstrings, Sacrum, and Balancing the Spinal Column

Now we transition to the deep back of the body. Starting from the hamstrings, we release the back of the legs, balancing the deep hip rotators. Some of the most important work of the session happens when we focus on a thorough release of the sacrum. We then remove any restrictions along the vertebral column.

Session 7

The Neck and Cranium

This session is like the cherry on top. Because of all of the work we have done up to this point, we can release muscles in the neck in significant ways. Even more powerfully, we can work with the alignment of your cranial bones. Most people are not aware that the cranial bones can move, and have profound effects on anatomy in other areas of the body. In this session we get to balance these areas.

Sessions 8 & 9

Integrating the Pelvic & Shoulder Girdles

After sessions 1-7, your body is in a new alignment. Deeper structural imbalances that may have been hidden before will be present now. We will spend a session each with the pelvic girdle and the shoulder girdle. You can think of it as one session for the lower body, and one for the upper. The order that which these are done will be determined by your Rolfer at that time depending on your unique anatomy.

Session 10

Superficial Fascia of the Whole Body

This session zooms back out to the most surface layers after a lot of deep changes have been made. This session can be thought of as balancing the outer layers with the deep layers. This is also the closure session to your Rolfing Recipe work. 

General Info

For Most Sessions

Almost every session will include work on your back and neck. This helps to integrate the specific changes accomplished in each session. The back and neck work is also done in layers and stages as your progress through the recipe. You will also learn "how to be Rolfed" and discover ways that are effective for you to receive work from your Rolfer.