Grant's Approach to Rolfing Structural Integration 

Graphic credit to Matt Hsu

While steeped in the traditional Rolfing 10-series methodology as taught at the Rolf Institute, Grant also sees value in looking beyond the bio-mechanical model when working with his clients to address their issues. Grant incorporates a wide range of touch styles, from light skin work down to a more traditional heavy pressure often associated with Rolfing. In light of recent research which has begun to show that it may not be possible to manipulate another person's fascial tissue through stretching or pressure as once was thought, Grant addresses postural and pain issues through teaching about ideas regarding the Biopsychosocial model of pain. This model helps explain the role of the nervous system in our perception and proliferation of chronic pain and by understanding these concepts better clients can begin to forge a different relationship to their pain. Grant also utilizes concepts regarding body-maps and the roles that they play in facilitating or hindering movement as well as moderating chronic pain. Touch is the primary tool that is employed in helping clients move away from feeling like a collection of parts and pieces and toward a feeling of awareness, ease and integration.
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How does Rolfing structural integration work to relieve chronic pain and change posture?

Originally, the theory behind Rolfing was that a Rolfer could change, in a positive way, a client's fascia through pressure. Fascia is the thin membranous tissue that wraps all of our muscles and organs and directs a lot of the forces in our bodies.  The old theory, which was primarily anecdotal in evidence, said that fascia could change from being more solid to more liquid under the pressure that was applied by the Rolfing practitioner and therefore, fascia could be manipulated to relieve tightness and strain that contributed to poor posture and chronic pain. However, in the last 10 - 15 years researchers have conducted many scientific studies that seem to show that it really is not possible to melt a person's fascia through direct pressure or any other means. So… if we probably are not effecting fascia like we once thought but yet Rolfing continues to help clients get out of chronic pain and change posture, what is actually happening?

Change the Brain, Change the Pain

The advent of the functional-MRI(fMRI) has allowed neuroscientists to witness in realtime how the brain processes information and experiences and this includes the experience of pain. Essentially, we once thought that pain was a signal that originated in the tissues of the body and was received by the brain. Well, with the help of the fMRI it now seems that when we experience pain it is a bit more complicated situation than we first imagined. We now know that there are no pain specific nerve pathways, but rather our nerves are sending all kinds of information, called nociception, about the state of our tissues and our environment up to the spinal cord and then the brain. Then our amazing Central Nervous System takes that information and interprets it, ultimately it is sifting through all of that information and looking for possible threats to our well being. Generally, our central nervous system sorts through the mountains of info and decides that in fact we are fine and there is no need to sound the alarm bell of pain and cause us to change our behavior. And sometimes we are experiencing a situation in life, like an injury that sends some information through our nervous system about inflammation or other possible messages related to an acute injury, and in that case our nervous system rightly interprets that information as signaling a problem and then creates some helpful pain in the moment to make us rest and allow the injury to heal.

However, there are instances where the nervous system gets stuck in its creation of pain, where perhaps it is paying a little bit to close of attention to a piece of yourself. At this point your pain could be considered chronic and we need to understand that while you experience the pain in the body, perhaps at the site of your old injury or perhaps it has migrated, we need to look at the pain a bit differently now. 

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Committed to Learning

Grant realized early on in his career that working with people to ease their pains and foster a deeper felt sense and greater comfort was a skill requiring many tools and that it would require a commitment to continued learning. Over the last few years he has studied with advanced Rolfers, taken classes to understand the mechanisms behind chronic pain, movement classes, Crainial Sacral and most recently DermoNeuroModulation. He has found that the Biopsychosocial model of pain as taught by many leading chronic pain researches makes the most sense to him. Grant incorporates many tenets of the Biopsychosocial model of chronic pain into his Rolfing practice.

​"WHETHER WE EXPERIENCE WHAT HAPPENS TO US AS OBSTACLE AND ENEMY OR AS TEACHER AND FRIEND DEPENDS ENTIRELY ON OUR PERCEPTION OF REALITY. IT DEPENDS ON OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH OURSELVES"
— PEMA CHÖDRÖN