FAQ

Most commonly, people find Structural Integration because they're looking for a solution to chronic pain or discomfort. Perhaps you have tried many available conventional medical treatments, going around from one health professional to another so you can resolve a specific injury. Or you just want to feel younger or healthier, and maybe improve your performance as an athlete or movement practitioner. Since this work is about feeling better, moving better, and embodying our potential for awareness and vitality, adults of any age can benefit from it; people who suffer from limiting physical discomfort to the healthiest of all.

Engaging with your physical experience is essential. This work is collaborative, integrative and personalized. You need to be an active participant in reducing tension, pain, increasing your mobility and balancing your posture. Through this process you will develop a deeper awareness and understanding of your body which will serve you well beyond our sessions. This is what I call sustainable change.

Many of my clients come to do the series when they are going through a big life change like a divorce or career transition and find that by deepening their connection to their bodies, they are able deepen their connection to themselves and their relationships begin improving as a result.

There can be substantial overlap between these fields, and the different practitioners within them, but we can make some generalizations to distinguish them from each other.

Massage, especially the type you'd receive in a spa, requires limited engagement on your part and is typically concerned with immediate relief rather than lasting change.

Physiotherapy and chiropractic are more closely allied with the healthcare system, and as such tend to be oriented toward addressing specific symptoms, or restoring lost function. They can vary between low and high engagement, depending on the treatment modality and practitioner.

While SI can (and often does) offer relief to specific conditions, it is based on a systematic inquiry into how you move, feel, and relate to your body as a whole. It is a process-oriented, engaging and educational practice. During the sessions you will learn to notice, register and integrate how you use and experience your body. You will be empowered by practical exercises and body-awareness tools to establish the changes over time.

Persistent alignment problems and sub-optimal movement patterns are often rooted in neuromyofascial restrictions that aren’t easily addressed through stretching or muscle-focused techniques. There is no point in trying to improve your performance and overall efficiency without identifying and removing the limitations that you carry within your body. Targeted fascial work and movement explorations tailored to your individual needs can help you resolve these types of issues so you can reach your alignment goals and accelerate your progress in your movement practice, with long-lasting results.

90 minutes. We sometimes go over time, so leaving some wiggle room after sessions can be a good idea.

Sessions are generally done in underwear or shorts. It is best to wear bras that are not racer back (so they have two straps on the shoulders).

Yes! The series brings about more ease and freedom of movement in your body so we encourage you to explore that within the context of your normal physical activities. It is also an important step to continue moving, but with ongoing awareness!

There are no age limits for Structural Integration sessions. There are considerations based on age due to the response of the fascia.

There is often an immediate feeling of relief as long-held tension is released. However, if our bodies are snapshots of our lived experiences, then we are shaped by the sum of our activities every single day. What we do during the 90 minute session is meant to set you up for new possibilities in your body. So as you learn to recognize inefficient everyday movement and postural habits, poorly designed work-setups, the imprints of invasive injuries or surgeries, it empowers you with the necessary awareness and practical tools for maintaining the changes created.

The increase in body awareness that comes from Structural Integration makes the body more sensitive to the effects of “bad habits” or inefficient movement patterns. In the same way that imbalanced movements will distort or wear down the body’s alignment and condition, balanced and efficient movements build the body back up. Everyday movements that are naturally more easeful and aligned maintain and enhance the body’s structural alignment, not to mention that they are more comfortable. As we integrate all these layers of learning and changing, the transformation gained during the Structural Integration series will be long-lasting for most people.

You are welcome to book single sessions or the complete 12 Series. Clients looking to accelerate change usually come weekly or bi-weekly during a series of sessions. During the 12-series, there are logical points to take a break of up to four weeks, and several sessions that are best grouped together. However, depending on your needs, the schedule can vary based on your availability, energy level and ability to integrate the work.

Of course! After the 12 session series is completed, the body evolves and changes, and in time deeper, more subtle work becomes possible. Just like you would see a therapist for a focused period and then check back when you need more support and are going through new phases in your life, post series work can be extremely helpful after an injury, in times of higher stress or to help manage or resolve deeper patterns.

Structural Integration focuses on the connective tissue of the body called fascia; a three-dimensional continuum of soft, collagen containing fibrous tissue that permeates the body. It surrounds and interweaves between organs, muscles, bones. Its function is numerous and sometimes paradoxical; it connects and divides, contains and yet makes movement - sliding, gliding - possible. It is linked to the central nervous system and carries different kinds of nerve endings called mechanoreceptors that sense the various qualities of touch (depth, pressure, pace, angle, etc.).

Fascia is essential to the dance between stability and movement through maintaining a balance between tension and elasticity. Ida Rolf understood the body as an organism with main units (the head, thorax, pelvis, legs etc.) that are held together by the myofascial system made up of collagen, chemically speaking. Therefore, when we talk about the structure of a living body, we talk about the relationship between different parts as they fit together to make a human body. In other words, fascia is more powerful than most people think, modulating our body’s structure; one one hand it has the ability to shrink-wrap us into a lifetime of pain, dysfunction, immobility and discomfort, on the other, it can also keep us moving optimally, feeling fluid, hydrated, and ready for life.

There has been more and more research in the past 20-30 years on how fascial lines connect to each other, especially through cadaver dissections by Gil Hedley and Thomas Myers who developed Anatomy Trains. We know now that the connective tissue guides nerves, arteries and veins to each muscle and links them beyond joints, continuing into the next muscle, and the next one and so on.

What used to be thought of as the ‘leftover’ of our bodies (other-than muscles, bones, organs), turns out to be an intelligent, active and communicative sensory organ enveloping, permeating and constituting the body. Every cell in our body is linked with and responds to the fascial environment, also called 'neuro-myo-fascial net’. It is literally what holds us together, yet it is also a fabric that inherently connects us with life; “a sensorium”. The goal of SI is to hydrate and neurally activate this sensory web and to recondition the mechanical structure of the collagen. Our cells rely on mechanical stretching to remain healthy, resilient and reproductive and to build functional movement behaviors that optimize our energy.

Movement is not just a symbol of expression, it is expression itself. Observing movement is a well of knowledge, because the way we move and hold ourselves physically is closely intertwined with our emotional and psychological state via our connective tissue matrix. As we go through life and postural patterns become locked in our bodies, they can either enable or restrict our self-expression, mobility and personal growth.

Through the SI movement sessions, you will be supported in becoming conscious of any movement patterns or habitual bodily self-expressions that restrict you such as tightening a certain muscle group, frowning, smiling when nervous, twitching, assuming defensive posture every time you have to speak etc. Our goal together will be to bring awareness to these automatic responses so that your body becomes your ally in full self-expression.

Somatic practices help you to reconnect with your body by listening to your thoughts-feelings-sensations, and their constant movement within. They create containers for thinking of the body as a source of knowledge, body as research, for making sense of the world in new ways: listening to what’s wanting to emerge? What's wanting to die? A curiosity for the unknown.

Through somatic practices, we build a relationship with ourselves that we can trust and rest in, a practice of visiting ourselves; a feeling of being at home in our body, of releasing back to life. Examples of somatic practices include Body-Mind-Centering , Continuum Movement , yoga, Alexander technique, Feldenkreis, etc.

As our current, alienating Western culture conditions us to depart from our direct, felt, embodied experience, we need to be intentional about cultivating embodied practices, building intimacy with our own inner life, remembering that every cell is awake, alive, and aware. It is the process of becoming more aware of our behaviors, reactions, communication patterns, and how they feel in our bodies. Somatic practices are the ancient knowledge of humanity.

This transformational process happens by:

• listening and connecting through therapeutic touch and movement

• observing and understanding what we find through mindful discourse

• discovering new options for movement/posture/everyday habits

• working together so you can claim your direct, felt, embodied experience confidently.

How we act in the world - which is rooted in our perception, emotional patterns, unconscious beliefs, learning styles, relational dynamics, our ability of handling stress and self-regulation - makes a tangible difference in the lives of people around us and beyond. When we work with and understand our internal weather system through starting at our homes, our bodies, we get to develop choices about what impact we are having. By social impact I ultimately mean: embodied social transformation.

I believe that we have the power to create a vital, thriving and interconnected world by transforming the connection with our own bodies. Improving the way we feel inside our bodies affects positive change in our relationships, communities, and eventually whole societies, the earth, and its creatures. When our bodies are fully alive, connected, and ready to play, we can fulfill our greatest potential for creative expression.

This possibility, this potential reality carries responsibility within it.

The work of Structural Integration is a combination of hands-on manual and movement therapy based on the ground-breaking, original work of Dr. Ida Rolf (also known as rolfing). It focuses on re-aligning the body in relation to gravity to reduce tension and pain from long-held chronic misalignments, old injuries, and postural dysfunctions. Adaptive Bodywork (AB) is the Montreal-based practice of Structural Integration developed by John Sutherland.

Alongside manual therapy on a massage table, AB includes bodywork on the floor to give you increased agency and freedom in movement to both accelerate physical change in your body and leverage specific movements within your movement practice.