Ida Teaches
Explore the Audio Archives of Dr. Ida Rolf’s Teachings
Welcome to Ida Teaches –
the wit, abundant wisdom and vision of Dr. Ida P. Rolf.
Dr. Rolf is no longer here to teach us directly, to transfer her legendary ability to see the body, to inspire in us the laser-like focus she had for her work, but we can access her voice and vision via these archived recordings of live training sessions. These files capture Dr. Rolf teaching Rolfing® students — blending anatomy, philosophy, movement, and structural insight.
Ida Teaches- Archived Audios of Rolfing® Training
Foundational Teachings
Philosophy & Vision
Anatomy & Technique
Strategy, Assessment
& Structural Logic
Research, History &
Dissection
Plug in to our audio sessions and experience what it was like to study under the master.
A few audio clips are only accessible by DIRI members due to the nature of the recordings. This content is marked, please login for full access.
Please note: These are audio-only recordings. They are not intended as step-by-step training tools, but as inspiration and insight into Dr. Rolf’s thinking and teaching style.
Ida Teaches: Foundational Teachings
Understand the core principles and goals of Rolfing® SI, especially as they relate to the Rolfing Ten-Series®.
Ida Teaches: Foundational Teachings
Understand the core principles and goals of Rolfing® SI, especially as they relate to the Rolfing Ten-Series®.
Ida Teaches: Broad Overview of 10-series
9:00 discussion begins in earnest. Broad overview of the 10-series as it relates to putting the head on the body in the 7th hour./ 11:45 Muscles are complicated chemical factories.
Ida Teaches: Review of Hours 1-5
Dr. Rolf leads student discussion to review Hours 1-5 in preparation for Hour 6.
Ida Teaches: Ida Teaches Continuation of Review of Hours 1-5
Relationship between shoulders and thorax./ Continuing review of hours 1-5.
Ida Teaches: First Hour Processing; Body is a Plastic Mechanism
Don't worry about moving thorax in first session/ 1:15 Most important thing you have to learn as Rolfers/ 6:00 Psychological things that happen to thorax
11:30 Children are born imperfect and unfinished/ 21:30 Purpose of trochanter/ 26:45 Food as anatomy/ 33:00 Hamstrings/ 44:00 Pelvic lift
Ida Teaches: What Do You do in a Second Hour?
Students discuss details of the second hour.
Ida Teaches: Continued Student Discussion of 2nd-8th Hours
Auditing student explains his understanding of hours 2 - 8. Ida approves.
Ida Teaches: Do You Understand What The End of The First Hour Is?
10:30 How to horizontal the pelvis/ 13:30 We want to be able to take this new way of working with the body into the culture./ 20:00 Using the reflexes of the feet/ 33:30 The body shortens by poor use of the shoulder girdle.
Ida Teaches: Goal of Every Hour is Movement in the Pelvis
(hard to hear before minute 15)
16:00 Fundamentals. What happens in the first and second hours?/ 21:30 What is Rolfing?/ 23:00 Your job is to keep people in the common sense world./ 35:30 Where we got our reputation./ 38:45 Getting X-rays into your finger tips; your eyes/ 39:30 The goal of every hour is movement in the pelvis
Ida Teaches: Get the Head On the Vertical Line
Dr. Rolf introduces the importance of having the head on the vertical line./ 5:15 Ida begins body work.
Philosophy & Vision
Hear Dr. Rolf articulate the vision of her work — from energy fields to the evolving role of the practitioner.
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Philosophy & Vision
Hear Dr. Rolf articulate the vision of her work — from energy fields to the evolving role of the practitioner.
Ida Teaches: A Human Being is an Energy Pattern
5:30 Rolfing is experiential and that is all/ 10:50 Between every pair of ribs there are reflexes/ 13:30 Throw out your anatomy book and LOOK/ 15:00 Definition of reflex/ 16:00 A human being is an energy pattern, a set of waves, a set of energy fields./ 41:00 What kind of contour is the evidence of good function?
Ida Teaches: Newtonian Physics; Entropy; Body as Web
5:00 You are going to spend the rest of your life fighting the words which people use to hid facts they don't want to look at/ 13:00 Entropy is always disorder/ 23:00 Body is a solid spider web.
Ida Teaches: Rambling Philosophical Discussion
16:00 Experiencing your body with another person who is experienced in seeing and experiencing the body as a teacher/ 17:15 Time is a dimension that is required/ 22:00 How emotional levels (hear previous audio with that title) are affected by culture
Ida Teaches: Primary Curve; Human Body is The Only Authority
(Hard to hear before minute 14:00)
14:00 Primary Curve/ 20:00 There is only one authority: the human body/ 33:00 Learning from 3rd hour that you didn't know before/ 37:00 Be aware of your own limitations/ 41:15 Great privilege of changing the body/ 42:00 What was added to the picture in the 3rd hour?
Ida Teaches: Speeding the Change of Bodies into 21st Century Bodies
Dr. Rolf discusses body changes through history from the Egyptians, to Greeks, to Romans, to Christians. "You see how ideas have literally shaped people."/ "Now you are at the beginning of a movement. How you got there I will never know." Dr. Ida Rolf.
Ida Teaches: Systems Fitting Into Systems Creating Integration
Student review of sessions 1-4
20:00 Ida enters. Understanding systems/ 48:15 The answer to Rolfing is not to get an addiction to it
Ida Teaches: Gravity is the Therapist
14:45 Living systems do not work the say symbolic systems work/ 18:00 Man has never invented something unless it was inside his skin/ 21:00 How are we going to begin the Fifth Hour?/ 26:30 Muscle is where you keep the fire going/ 30:00 Ida speaks about Buckminster Fuller/ 34:00 What supports everything in life?/ 45:00 Tom Myers being introduced to Bob Toporek
Ida Teaches: Evolving Brain Through Millenia
Manifestations of disease/ 9:00 The way of muscles in the erect personality/ 13:00 What you are looking for in gait/ 16:00 Ilium, brain size and locomotion/ 35:00 Encoded retinal elements/ 36:00 Constructs of human conscious experience
Ida Teaches: Program Planning (Cont.); Mystical Experience; Cerebral Palsy Study
Mystical experiences are IN the body; experiencing multi-dimensionality/ 11:00 Need to investigate energy fields around the body/ 14:00 Need funding for study on Rolfing's affect on Cerebral Palsy/ 24:00 body work on event planner for flu damage in ear/ 27:00 Every significant change demands a complete change in life
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Ida Teaches: Multidimensionality*
Your gospel is you are preachers of the opening of man. This is tough assignment." Dr. Ida Rolf/ 4:25 Body assessment/ 26:20 Body work begins.
Ida Teaches: The Body is a Complex Mechanism, Not Just Mechanical*
7:00 Adhesions/ 13:00 The toughest part about teaching structural integration/ 14:30 "The place you will fall on your noses is when you try to get perfection." Dr. Ida Rolf/ 27:00 The whole first 10-hours of processing deal with a freeing and an ordering of the girdles with respect to the trunk/ 32:00 You relax as you look at a balanced body
Ida Teaches: Don't Start Playing God*
Dr. Rolf's admonition to Rolfers: Keep proper perspective on your size and vulnerability./ Working with insurance companies/ Use a CPA/ 25:30 Male Rolfer working with female client.
Ida Teaches: Recipe as Life Preserver; Legal Position of Rolfers*
Discussion among students about using the Recipe as a life preserver/ 3:00 Review of 1st hour/ 15:30 Ida enters the room. Ask attorney (who is also a Rolfer) to talk about the legal position of Rolfers
Ida Teaches: After the 10-Series*
*NOTE* This recording includes a brief interaction between students and Dr. Rolf regarding the occult. The discussion ought to be understood in the context of the Human Potential movement and the historical context at the time./ 3:30 Cannot balance hard structure, only soft tissue/ 9:40 Reason for the 10-hours/ 15:35 How bones change as body matures/ 19:45 Ida's request: "Go out and gather information that adds to the Rolf concept because heaven knows I didn't finish the job."
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Anatomy & Technique
Detailed anatomical and physiological exploration through Dr. Rolf’s unique lens of Structural Integration
Anatomy & Technique
Detailed anatomical and physiological exploration through Dr. Rolf’s unique lens of Structural Integration
Ida Teaches: Cervical Layers
13:30 Material starts in earnest at minute/ Also leads into thorax, pelvis, top of skull.
Ida Teaches: Abdominal Wall and Psoas
"There is no other single system in the body that is as important to the well-being of the body as the psoas-rectus combination." Dr. Ida Rolf.
Ida Teaches: Cervical Layers, Diaphragm & Psoas
6:00 Visceral fascia is endodermic portion of the body/ 8:30 We are integrators of all this information because the posts migrates from a viscera space in the little egg that is developing/ 20:00 Bodywork begins.
Ida Teaches: Floor of the Pelvis; Coccyx
5:00 It is the floor of the pelvis that is the vital structure/ 11:00 Get our your anatomy books/ 24:20 Comparison with Reflexology/ 29:00 I don't understand how there are any coccyges that are relatively normal.
Ida Teaches: Muscle Wandering
16:50 Psoas is perhaps one of the most important structural units in the body/ 24:30 Go home and meditate for 2 hours in the middle of the night on the psoas./ 27:50 "That's why it takes five years to make a Rolfer." Ida Rolf/ 33:00 Lumbar plexus is affected by any and all movement in the psoas.
Ida Teaches: Head Horizontals
Ida probes students about their head homework assignment. / 9:30 What did you see? / 27:40 Bodywork begins.
Ida Teaches: Relationship Between Head and Pelvis
8:00 Stressors on babies laid in different positions./ 10:00 Babies strapped to board or swaddled/ 12:00 Ida's client Carl who's skull bones had not closed by 14 years of age/ 20:00 The closer a problem is to the brain the more disturbing it is to the person/ 22:30 "Don't do it! If something goes wrong you are not licensed to do that kind of work. You don't work on the acute ever." Dr. Ida Rolf/ 29:20 How do you know you're in an acute situation?
Ida Teaches: Differentiating and Patterning; 6th Hour Assessment
5:00 It is the floor of the pelvis that is the vital structure/ 11:00 Get our your anatomy books/ 24:20 Comparison with Reflexology/ 29:00 I don't understand how there are any coccyges that are relatively normal.
Ida Teaches: Particles and Body Mass
9:00 If body is random it is not going to pull evenly/ 10:30 Feet and inner legs are critical; ankle even more critical
Ida Teaches: Metabolic Fluids; Awakening the Psoas
15:00 Begin review of 6th hour.
Ida Teaches: The Horizontal Line
Beginning is definition of structural integration and brief review of first hour/ 8:30 Ida talks about the disappearing and reappearing horizontal line as the body gains verticality/ 21:30 Deterioration of the rectus-abdominus/psoas combination in athletics
Ida Teaches: Muscle Counterparts
Students discuss the feel of the work in their hands before Ida enters/ 12:00 Why a body feels lighter/ 16:00 Muscle counterparts/ 17:30 First thing you do in a first hour/ 20:00 Counter weighting/ 28:45 Advanced students have to see bodies as webs/ 29:30 Beginning students need to stay with classical anatomy/ 30:30 What else do you do in the 3rd hour?/ 32:30 Mistake all young Rolfers make/ 43:00 Either girdle is a doing not a being apparatus
[Ends abruptly]
Ida Teaches: The Human Use of the Human Being
6:00 Ida's wisdom: This is the point in making a human a bi-ped/ 10:30 Body assessment and body work begin/ 17:40 Thickness and normal functioning do not go together/ 25:30 It is your business to get in there and change the quality of that muscle
Ida Teaches: There are Different Degrees of Vulnerability in Different Parts of the Body
The body lives as a whole. Every part is alive./ 4:45 The Recipe is a response to what goes on in a body./ 8:00 The more superficial the myofascia, the more resilient/ 11:00 I strongly object to being put into the position to where I have to know everything./ 13:30 Fibula is most vulnerable. Next vulnerable is 12th rib./ 15:30 Coccyx/ 17:00 Body is like an onion/ 17:30 Relieving the outside structures of the body.
Ida Teaches: How to Distribute Weight Most Effectively From the Point of Energy
5:30 "I want to leave a couple of hundred people who know how to make a Recipe." Dr. Ida Rolf/ 12:50 How do you distribute weight most effectively from the point of energy/ 15:00 There have always been people who dance. Why? What were they saying?/ 29:00 Harm of military stance / 33:30 "When people are vertical everything inside them has use of energy that comes from gravity" Dr. Ida Rolf/ 41:00 Dancers an the center line/ 44:45 Silent level body assessment
Strategy, Assessment & Structural Logic
Explore how Dr. Rolf guided students in thinking strategically and assessing structure across the 10-series.
Strategy, Assessment & Structural Logic
Explore how Dr. Rolf guided students in thinking strategically and assessing structure across the 10-series.
Ida Teaches: Advanced Students Why You Work Your Client in Different Positions
Dr. Rolf asks, How do you know?/ Why do you start working with someone on their back?/ 16:00 Exercise: Nose to knees./ 27:00 Rolfing and yoga.
Ida Teaches: Going From Higher Abstraction to Lower Abstraction to Silent Level
Ida probes students about their head homework assignment. / 9:30 What did you see? / 27:40 Bodywork begins.
Ida Teaches: The Importance of Seeing
"I don't know how to direct you. My weakness as a teacher is that that which is so utterly apparent to me, it never occurs to me that I should want to teach it that I wouldn't bore you to death with it." Dr. Ida Rolf/ 18:40 Body work begins.
Ida Teaches: Finding Yourself as a Teacher
12:20 Content starts in earnest/ 12:20 Non-medical therapeutic techniques/ 13:40 Find your place as a teacher/ 16:30 We aim only to get into derivatives of the mesoderm/ 20:30 Mesoderm tissue carries traumatic episodes, incidences and attitudes/ 25:00 How are we to present ourselves/ 27:30 There ain't no such thing as psychology/ 28:45 Body assessment
Ida Teaches: Preparing for Seventh Hour
Jim Asher leads initial discussion: Why we work on mouth and neck before going into the nose./ 11:30 Embryo has 8 cervicals and then one disappears./ 25:00 Ida enters the room. Leading into 6th hour./ 31:00 Evolution of linear thinking.
Ida Teaches: Brilliant Anatomy Discussion; Seventh Hour
Continued MAcCOMB research paper discussion./15:00 State of average body/ 30:30 7th Hour discussion begins/ 33:00 start of conversation about people who have never eaten processed foods.
Ida Teaches: Seventh Hour Discussion
Continued discussion on affect of processed foods on structure/ 19:30 Body assessment begins/ 33:00 Body work begins.
Ida Teaches: I Want You to See Bodies in Three Dimensions
2:00 How the body talks/ 2:40 The Recipe will get you out of trouble/ 7:00 Body assessment begins. Function of the legs./ 27:30 Impact of exercise on young bodies/ 29:30 Ida's son Dick's experience with bullying.
Ida Teaches: Do I Work Above or Below the Waist
Surgical scar tissue/ 5:30 You have to differentiate by asking, As I look at this man, will the bottom half contribute to the top half, or will the top half contribute to the bottom half?/ 11:30 Different cultures will show very different foot patterns/ 14:20 Realize that in different parts of the earth there are all kind of different energy relations playing/ 18:50 Body work
Ida Teaches: A Discussion on Cores
7:50 The hallmark of the 6th hour is you begin to see the sacrum participate in respiratory movement./ 12:40 There is a difference between balance and order/ 23:15 What is it that gets people flexed?/ "Everything we do in the line of effort is done in the line of flexion." Dr. Rolf/ 27:00 Ida is unhappy that students haven't studied her earlier writings. Students respond, "Where are they?"
Ida Teaches: A Discussion on Cores (Cont.); Putting Man Upright
6:00 You can tell if a joint is mobile as you watch it not moving./ 12:00 (After watching a movie) "This is the world we live in and my God this is the world this hand full of Rolfers is proposing to change." Dr. Ida Rolf/ 20:00 Releasing the shoulders/ 21:00 Body work begins/ 28:00 This is what SI is doing. It is putting man upright.
Ida Teaches: Preparing to give a talk; Hubbards Emotional Levels
Ida discusses the levels of different emotions as identified by Hubbard. Starting with death, moving up to apathy, grief, resentment and order./ 9:00 When you change someone's body you change the way n which they are in the world./ 16:50 Ida's definition of a good Rolfer
Research, History & Dissection
Listen in on dissections, early Rolfing research discussions, and historical context for Dr. Ida’s work.
Research, History & Dissection
Listen in on dissections, early Rolfing research discussions, and historical context for Dr. Ida’s work.
Ida Teaches: Cadaver Dissection With Discussion
Embryology/ Aging starts before birth/ 2 day old baby and adult male cadavers are dissected and movements observed. (No photos available. Audio only.)/ 46:00 End of lecture.
Ida Teaches: Dissection With Discussion (Cont.)
Continuation of previous discussion with slides of dissection.
Ida Teaches: The Body is Like a Tensegrity Map- Research Paper
Ron McComb explains his hypothesis of the spine as a tensegrity structure, with Ida's critique. Excellent anatomy discussion. His paper can be found HERE. You will have to create an account to access.
Ida Teaches: Jim Asher Leads Discussion on Structural Integration
Student reads from Let's Live magazine on Unorthodox Healing and the Law by Leonard Worthington/ 8:15 Brief definition of Structural Integration/ 13:00 Define second hour/ 32:30 When you do 10 hours of Rolfing, what do you have?
Ida Teaches: 1800's Start of Natural Healing
Dr. Rolf asks students to consider what they are joining as she discusses early adopters of natural healing practices and how they diverge from traditional medicine.
13:30 History of measuring heart rate./ Book mentioned: Philosophy of Natural Therapeutics. Possible author: Dr. Henry Lindlahr
