(June 9, 1944 – April 28, 2024)
Editor’s note: In January 2024, Wolf Wagner, PhD, submitted an article to Structure, Function, Integration for publication in the June 2024 issue. He wanted to honor his friend and colleague, Dr. Hans Flury (1945-2023), by publishing the notes he took during a lecture that Flury gave in 2014. Sadly, we are now publishing this article posthumously, with the blessing of his wife, Renate “Male” Mueller. MaryAnn Skillman has graciously written a few thoughts about Wolf’s legacy. His article – The High and the Low Road: A Reconstruction of a Dr. Hans Flury Lecture – follows. We extend our deepest condolences to Renata “Male” Mueller, Wolf’s wife, and all his friends and family.
The Legacy of the Trio
By MaryAnn Skillman, RN, BSN, Certified Advanced Rolfer®, SGSI1 licensed
Dr. Hans Flury (1945-2023), Willi Harder (1947-1997), and Dr. Wolf Wagner (1944-2024) together have left us a legacy of exploration, questioning, development, and documentation into the work of Ida P. Rolf, PhD (1896-1979), and others. The results can be found published in Notes on Structural Integration (1986 to 1993), as well as some individual articles, which are available at www.sgsi.ch (Skillman 2023).
Articles in Notes on Structural Integration by Wolf Wagner, PhD, include:
May 1986, “In search for integrity and life in the human structure on tensegrity revisited.”
March 1987, “How can we know what works? A project report on the value of photographs.”
March 1987, “Technical catalogue.” [Authors Walser, Wagner, and Flury.]
1992/December 1993, “The influence of gravity, normal force, and anatomy on the shape of the body lying on a surface.”
1992/December 1993, “The results of Rolfing and their reaction to structural integration.”
Wagner also published “Introduction to Structural Integration” in 2012, available from the SGSI website [https://www.sgsi.ch/sgsi/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Introduction_wolf_wagner.pdf]
This trio’s legacy is a detailed, abstracted theoretical framework about Dr. Ida Rolf’s work that could be implemented into practice by specific analysis, followed by direct manual application, and with an understanding of normal function movement. It was no easy task to take what was already established and evolve it further into an even more useful template.
Observable structural changes toward integration could be more readily predicted and obtained with their teachings. The goal of this dynamic trio was to work within a verified, well-defined body of knowledge where precise structural changes in the human body were theoretically always obtainable. These applied changes could then sustain an alignment in and between the an alignment in and between the gravitational force field and the normal ground reaction force field so that the body could so that the body could be supported with less 'efforting' of muscles resulting in improved function and economy.
Sadly, we have now lost the last of the three with Wolf Wagner’s passing. He was a highly respected tenured professor and author who also had an active Rolfing practice from 1985 to 1992 in Tübingen and Berlin, Germany. Along with Hans and Willi, Wolf was a founding member of the Swiss Society for Structural Integration (SGSI)1 and maintained his membership until his death on April 28th, 2024.
Just prior to Wolf’s death, in an interview with the Editor-in-Chief of Structure, Function, Integration, Lina Amy Hack, Wolf stated the following: “My best contribution was: ‘How do we know what works?’” Wolf was referring to his March 1987 article in Notes on Structural Integration. It was a project report on the value of photographs. Wolf stated emphatically to Lina that Willi was the physicist! The truth was that all three of them brought and wove physics into the paradigm of structural integration.
Lina then proclaimed most accurately: “My mind has collected the three of you: Dr. Hans Flury, Willi Harder, and Wolf Wagner, together as thinkers, writers, publishers, and teachers.”
Wolf passionately and enthusiastically taught. He generously and graciously gave his time to teach and present what he found to be accurate and workable to the then Rolf Institute® (now Dr. Ida Rolf Institute®) and to the SGSI. Wolf had a keen ability to take complicated abstract material and somehow transform it into a clear, understandable, often colorful summary.
Hans would say that we humans are 70% water and if it were not for the containers formed by the fascia, we would all be a puddle on the ground. Wolf illustrated this in a class he taught for the European Rolfing® Association where he collected various sizes and shapes of balloons, somehow managed to put them one within the other, and filled each with water to demonstrate what Hans had said regarding the human body. Wolf would go to any lengths to bring a clear understanding to the field of structural integration.
It was Wolf’s wish to have his tribute to his close friend and colleague, Dr. Hans Flury, published in Structure, Function, Integration: The Journal of the Dr. Ida Rolf Institute. His article below captures the essence of Hans at a lecture he delivered in Berlin, Germany in 2014. Wolf wanted this tribute to be published and to serve the memory of Hans coming alive to all of us on paper, so that we could access this memory of Hans in the days and years to come. We thank Wolf for this, and now it will serve to remind us of both Hans and Wolf, lifelong friends immersed in structural integration.
Endnotes
1. In German, the Swiss Society for Structural Integration becomes Schweizerische Gesellschaft für Strukturelle Integration; therefore, the group acronym is SGSI. This is not to be confused with a different group of colleagues, the Swiss Guild for Structural Integration, who are not in this network of Rolfers.
MaryAnn Skillman RN, BSN, Certified Advanced Rolfer has studied with her mentor, Dr. Hans Flury, in Zürich, Switzerland, since 1995. Dr. Flury was one of the founding members of the Swiss Society for Structural Integration (SGSI), of which Ms. Skillman is the only member from the United States.
The Schweizerische Gesellschaft für Strukturelle Integration (SGSI, in English, called the Swiss Society for Structural Integration) is an international group of Certified Rolfers® who are committed to continuing the inquiry regarding defining the terms and clarifying the concepts pertaining to the field of structural integration. The results of our ongoing inquiry are documented on the www.sgsi.ch website.
References
Skillman, MaryAnn. 2023. In memoriam: Dr. Hans Flury. Structure, Function, Integration 51(3):14-20.
The High and the Low Road
A Reconstruction of a Dr. Hans Flury Lecture
By Wolf Wagner, PhD, Certified Advanced Rolfer®
Author’s note: These notes are a reconstruction of a lecture given by Dr. Hans Flury at the Swiss Society for Structural Integration (SGSI) meeting in Berlin, Germany, Thursday May 15th to Saturday May 17th, 2014. We all gathered in the practice of Susanne Steinbrich.
Dr. Hans Flury often had a strange way of giving his lectures. He seemingly abhorred conventional pedagogics of making things easily understandable. Instead, he preferred to catch the attention of his audience with a startling opening. For example, writing something on a flipchart in such small letters that the audience hardly could read the text.
Often his lectures would take a parabolic course. His opening could be so far off from any apparent connection to the announced subject that one listened in disbelief. It could be anything but structural integration. But then, like in the geometrical parabola, he would describe an elegant turn and come down smack into the center of the problem with a brilliant solution that justified the apparent detour.
His lecture on “The High and the Low Road” is an excellent example of such a parabolic course. It started with him drawing a rough sketch of a boom on the flipchart (see Figure 1).
Then he explained that such a boom could carry a big load at the end of the horizontal beam without the structure falling over. The oblique connecting strut would work against the rotational force exerted by the load on the horizontal beam and divert most of it onto the vertical beam. If that is anchored well enough in the ground the structure will stay upright.
While we were still wondering where all this would lead to, he took his famed parabolic curve to the solution: The mechanics of such a boom could be used in understanding how we can walk on a longer leg. The equivalent to the oblique strut comes about by shifting the pelvic segment of the body slightly onto the longer leg. This creates an overall convex curve of the body on the side of the longer leg. The upper body slightly leans over towards the shorter leg and, this way, functions like the oblique strut in the boom. The body can then stay on the “high road” of the longer leg while walking. In this way, it does not have to go down on the shorter leg and heave the body up on the longer leg again for the next stride.
In the Notes on Structural Integration (1990), Flury wrote extensively about the problem of the longer leg. In a paper titled, “The Longer and the Shorter Leg,” he had covered all aspects of the problem in standing. This lecture at the 2014 Swiss Society for Structural Integration meeting was a kind of continuation of the paper in the Notes. But this time not on standing, on walking. He had taken a short look at the energetic aspect of walking with a longer leg in that article; I recommend taking a look at what he had written then.
“Many people,” he wrote about the results of his study, “seem to be able to function in two different modes concerning the ‘pelvis on the legs’. In a more stable and relaxed arrangement which [sic] could be called ‘static stance’ the weight of the body rests firmly on both legs. The shorter leg bears more weight than the long one. The situation reminds one of a three-legged table which [sic] is inherently stable. In what could be called ‘dynamic stance’ the weight is carried more or mostly by the longer leg. The body is on top of it. Because there is only one beam of support, this arrangement is labile and must be balanced permanently by muscles, the functional element. This would resemble a table with only two legs!" (Flury 1990, 2-3).
“Energy expenditure is minimal in static stance. This stable arrangement on two legs can be managed and maintained easily and economically. It is not favorable for movement, however. Especially if this is translational as e.g. in walking it takes a lot of activating energy to come out of the stable arrangement. So it pays for the body to go into the dynamic ‘one-legged’ stance when movement is intended. This takes more energy to be maintained but allows to initiate movement by letting go. Movement is (slightly) down initially instead of up first. The gravity center of the body is high and so the system has more potential energy” (Flury 1990, 3).
“The dynamic arrangement at its minimum is not completely one-sided as in standing on one leg. Some support still comes up through the shorter leg. This seems to function very much like the outrigger of a Polynesian boat” (Flury 1990, 3).
Closing up his theoretical analysis of standing with legs of unequal length, Flury pointed to open questions of high relevance for structural integration: “One has sometimes the impression that some people stand and even more regularly in the static régime while others seem to prefer the dynamic one as their home position. Because continuous or repeated function shape structure, it should be possible to observe the impact on structure of either régime, whichever is the preferred one. Perhaps this will turn out to be along the lines of structural dynamics” (Flury 1990, 3).
The lecture in 2014 fulfilled that promise. It taught us how to consciously achieve “the dynamic stance” in walking, which permits a person to stay on the high road while walking. Most of the remaining time we used to exercise and experience the “high road.” It was impressive to see the change in poise as soon as the members achieved dynamic stance and dynamic walking, on the high road. We tried out walking the high and low road, and observed each other. It became very obvious that walking the high road opened a whole different world for us.
Wolf Wagner earned his PhD in 1976 and taught political and social sciences at various universities in Germany before retiring in 2009. Wagner also studied mathematics and natural sciences throughout his academic career. He had an active Rolfing practice from 1985 to 1992, and while he had to retire from physically doing the work due to some health challenges, he stayed active in the Rolfing community by writing articles published in the Notes on Structural Integration and attending SGSI meetings. Wolf is survived by his wife Renate (“Male”) Müller, whom he married in 1997. In 2005, Male and Wolf spent fourteen months traveling the world together in order to study the cultural impact of globalization on humanity as a whole. He never stopped looking at humanity and never lost sight of structural integration’s healing impact upon humanity.
References
Flury, Hans. 1990. The longer and the shorter leg. Notes on Structural Integration 5:2-9.
Keywords
Notes on Structural Integration; Swiss Rolfers; Hans Flury; Willi Harder; Wolf Wagner; Ida Rolf; normal function; fascia; load bearing; upright structure; short leg; longer leg; gravity center; dynamic stance. ■
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