ABSTRACT In this interview, Lina Amy Hack interviews Marilyn Beech about the history and early development of the International Association of Structural Integrators (IASI). Beech delves into the challenges and achievements surrounding creating structural integration as an internationally recognized professional category. Once formed, the IASI volunteers developed the Certification Exam for Structural Integration (CESI) to standardize entry-level professional competencies and promote distinctiveness in the field. Hack and Beech reflect on the first IASI symposium in 2005, and Beech offers some future thoughts about the profession.
Editor’s note: Both authors (Lina Amy Hack and Marilyn Beech) are members of the IASI; this conversation is their personal opinions; they do not speak on behalf of the IASI organization or their Board of Directors.
The Start of Structural Integration as a Professional Category
Lina Amy Hack: Hi Marilyn, thank you for meeting with me today. In the spirit of our theme, The Lives Lived by Rolfers™, I want to spotlight your Rolfing® career because in the early 2000s, in your spare time, you and two Rolfing colleagues, Liz Gaggini and Lisa Fairman, led a movement intended to end the ‘school wars’ [from the early 1990s] that had pulled practitioners from the then Guild for Structural Integration and the then Rolf Institute® for Structural Integration [now Dr. Ida Rolf Institute®] apart. You envisioned a membership organization where practitioners of any school that taught Dr. Rolf’s work could meet and work to turn structural integration into a true profession. This is the organization we now know as The International Association of Structural Integrators, IASI.1
It’s important to acknowledge the historical context of Rolfing® Structural Integration. Rolf started her school, known now as the Dr. Ida Rolf Institute, in 1971. She built both a school and a manual, movement, and somatic therapy profession that she called structural integration.2 The faculty members that she trained were a passionate bunch of people, and after Rolf died they had a conflict about core ideas of how to teach structural integration. Some of them started their own schools of structural integration, and they teach their brand of Dr. Rolf’s work. The Dr. Ida Rolf Institute (DIRI) teaches the brand Rolfing® Structural Integration and is the publisher of this journal.
Fast-forward to the late 1990s, eight schools were teaching a version of Rolf’s ‘Recipe’: the Dr. Ida Rolf Institute, the Guild for Structural Integration, Hellerwork International®, Soma, Core, IPSB (Ed Maupin’s school), Zen Therapy, and KMI (now known as Anatomy Trains® Structural Integration). Practitioners from that era remember how the Dr. Ida Rolf Institute and the Guild for Structural Integration were fighting for ownership of the Rolfer™ and Rolfing® service marks. Practitioners felt they had to take sides. The Dr. Ida Rolf Institute successfully defended its ownership, but the animosity between practitioners, faculty, and schools did not diminish. The rest of the six schools were out there on their own and pretty much unknown to each other.
I’m a Canadian Rolfer, so I didn’t understand these tensions when I trained at the Dr. Ida Rolf Institute in 2001, 2003, and 2004. I’m proud and loyal to my school, and at the same time, I feel a kinship with the other structural integration schools. As I learned about ‘the split’ (Noel and Hack 2024), it mostly made me feel sad for us as a group. It is hard to find agreement among passionate groups of people, especially on how to best honor, teach, and safeguard the work of Dr. Rolf. The argument is understandable, but it has come at quite a cost to all of us.
Your leadership and volunteerism at that time were pivotal. As a student in 2001, I heard about IASI, and it brought hope to our structural integration field. The formation of IASI led us out of an endless and expensively litigious war between the two main schools. Your efforts moved us from being a little-known bodywork practice to a significant player in the manual and movement therapy category. One school doesn't make a profession; a collection of many schools teaching a category of manual therapy produces a profession.
Now, I know you had a lot of help, and many dedicated people worked many volunteer hours to create the International Association of Structural Integrators; you led the movement. Twenty-three years later, we still have this place where all the structural integration schools that meet the IASI standard have a home together – a container big enough for all the tensions, growth, and professional development. Because of your steadfast work, structural integration was able to begin its development into a recognized profession.
So, thank you for meeting with me today. Although many colleagues know you, I appreciate this chance to introduce you to our readership and talk about your life as a Rolfer.
Marilyn Beech: Thank you, Lina.
LAH: Let’s start with what inspired you to become a Rolfer in the first place. Tell us about the beginning of your structural integration career.
MB: Well, I was at a place in my life that I needed a new career. I had been a ballet dancer until I was thirty, finished my bachelor’s degree between gigs, then married and ran my now ex-husband’s business. Once my boys got into grade school I turned to the problem of what I was going to do next. I needed my own career or I was going to turn into someone I didn’t like.
LAH: Wow, I didn’t know you were a professional ballerina. So you came into this work with sophisticated movement as your previous profession.
MB: Being a Rolfer is my third career. In the middle of doing the ballet work, I did a bachelor’s degree in anthropology, which after I became a Rolfer, gave me great groundwork for understanding human bodies. Knowing how we got these two legs and started walking on the ground the way we do was absolutely essential to doing this work, I felt. All of that fed into becoming a Rolfer, as well as the administration work I had done for my ex-husband. I learned accounting and taxes in that job, and how to be organized in the business world. These things apply to being a Rolfer, but they also helped me take care of IASI and get it legally formed as an organization.
But I wasn’t thinking about Rolfing [Structural Integration] that year as I was contemplating my next career. I met a Certified Advanced Rolfer and author at a health workshop, Briah Anson. We had lunch together, and I decided to get some of this Rolfing work with her. About session four, it just suddenly occurred to me that this might be something I could do and it would be interesting, a way to do something good in the world, and I could see that I would never get bored.
At first, I was worried that Briah didn’t need a competitor starting a new practice in her area, so I didn’t mention it at first. How many Rolfers do you need in one town? I went to session five, and about halfway through, we heard this door open and shut with a gush of air, only the door hadn’t actually opened and shut. And there was nobody else in the office. Briah looked at me and said, “Did you hear that door open?” I said, “Yes, I did.” She said, “Feel that breeze?” “Yes.” And then a little while later, she said, “Marilyn, have you ever thought about doing this work as a profession?” And I said, “Yes, but I figured you might not want the competition.” She was quick to say, “Oh, no, the more the merrier. We need more Rolfers.”
LAH: That does sound like Briah.
MB: That steered me in the direction of studying Rolfing [Structural Integration]. It still took me a while to take the step to do the training. I had never worked on bodies before, never touched anybody in a therapeutic way. So I took a very short massage course just to see if I was averse to working on bodies. And it went well.
IASI Started in Montana
LAH: When did you complete your Rolfing training? And did you start your first practice near Briah in Kansas City?
MB: I graduated from the Rolf Institute in March of 1993. Kansas City, Missouri, was my last stop in my ballet career. It’s where I got married and had my kids. I started my first Rolfing practice there, and after three years, events conspired to help me get back to a place that felt like home – Missoula, Montana. It was in Montana where a situation developed that led to the movement to form IASI.
It was about the year 2000 when we started having a problem with the physical therapists in Montana. They wanted to pass legislation saying that if you weren’t a physical therapist, you couldn’t physically touch anyone therapeutically. They had it worded so that not just bodyworkers but even sports trainers and yoga instructors would not have been able to professionally touch people. It was a lobbying organization for physical therapists that was pushing for this, and it was disconcerting not just to all of us who were looking at being put out of business, but also to a lot of physical therapists.
That’s when a massage therapist in Missoula, who was watching the state legislature happenings, noticed this bill coming along and they started waving a red flag for the rest of us. The American Massage Therapy Association (AMTA) was very new and only beginning to do legislative stuff. They hadn’t started any licensing legislation in Montana yet but jumped in to help us out with money and advice. The local massage therapists were very helpful to us Rolfers. I remember going to many meetings, and with the help of the AMTA, we were able to pay a lobbyist to stop this particular attempt. Without them, I don’t know how we could have done it.
That’s when I realized that another group could have a very detrimental effect on our profession. We were legislatively vulnerable and that’s when Lisa Fairman, another Montana Rolfer, and I started wondering where we would get help with this. Our school seemed to be the obvious candidate, but they were busy with lawsuits and had no help to give. It was very frustrating. Lisa and I realized that we were going to have to handle this ourselves.
The massage world was coming on strong. AMTA and Associated Bodywork and Massage Professionals (ABMP) were working towards licensure with their own certification exams, which was a good thing. But they were trying to lump all bodywork and movement professions into the same massage category, creating a situation where structural integration practitioners would have to fulfill massage schooling and their continuing education (CE) requirements. It was getting complicated. These big players were vying for practitioners, and all the little players were going, “Whoa, stop. Leave me out of this.” And it seemed nobody from the structural integration side of things was listening. So we focused on that to start.
Being International
MB: The first solution Lisa and I pondered was to start a state-wide Rolfing organization for Montana, to follow the legislation, get involved with it quicker than we had before, and work with the licensing processes that were beginning to happen. Not long after this, Liz Gaggini [Certified Advanced Rolfer] came to Missoula to teach a CE class, and during lunch Lisa and I told her about all of our legislative woes and thoughts about a state Rolfing organization.
Liz said, “Yes, you need to do that.” Then she said, “Actually, you need to do this nationwide. . . . Well, really, internationally. There are other people who’ve talked about this, and someone just needs to do it.” She was staring at us meaningfully as she said that, and Lisa and I realized at once that she meant WE needed to do this. She went on to say that she would help, and she did. Lisa looked at me and said, “I’ll do this if you will.” So that’s how it all started.
LAH: Wow. It was such a great vision on Liz’s part to see that it needed to be international to include everyone. And when did IASI start? What was the moment that the paperwork made it real?
MB: It was 2000 when Lisa and I started figuring out how to find practitioners and what to tell them. It was 2001 when IASI was incorporated and got the nonprofit designation in the United States. Then, we could start taking in money from practitioners and offering memberships. We had a lot of meetings between Helena and Missoula, a lot of mailings, a lot of late nights, and it was so gratifying (and surprising) how quickly practitioners and some faculty responded.
After that first year, Liz needed to step away. She suggested we reach out to Tom Myers [founder of Anatomy Trains® Structural Integration] since he had come to know many players in the structural integration arena; he had a lot of energy and good ideas. Tom joined us, and with that, the rest of the structural integration schools at that time suddenly became a source of colleagues. He did know everybody: SOMA, CORE, IPSB, Hellerwork® International, and Zen Therapy, and brought them under the expanding IASI umbrella.
LAH: So, in 2001, the IASI was a nonprofit, and it was probably based out of Montana because that’s where you and Lisa were? How did you connect with international partners?
MB: Yes, Montana is where this all started. Structural integrators from other countries didn’t join us right away, but when they did, they were practitioners from Germany, Brazil, Australia, and Canada. Mainly from the schools in Germany and Brazil.
You have to understand we weren’t a school organization; we were a membership organization. The schools were fighting, and we knew we could not go to the schools and ask them to stop. That wasn’t going to happen. The two main schools were very suspicious of us. They didn’t know what we were doing and why. We met with representatives at the then Rolf Institute and separately with the Guild. Over time, they came to understand what we were up to and either offered their support or just got out of our way, but our focus was not on the schools. We wanted a place for all practitioners to meet, exchange ideas, support each other, and promote our profession.
We had hoped that eventually, the practitioners would help to calm down the fight that had been ongoing and eventually support us in our bigger vision for the whole profession. And I think that’s exactly what’s happened.
Early IASI Goals
LAH: And what was the big vision? What were IASI’s main goals?
MB: The main goal at that time was to create a coalition of all structural integrators, this whole community of people doing the work of Ida Rolf, so that we could stand together and face the massage world and say, “No, we’re different. And this is how we’re different.”
We needed to be able to regulate ourselves in a way that kept us different from what the massage professionals are doing. Pretty quickly we realized we needed to have a certification exam. We needed one that wasn’t only a licensing exam but was also something massage therapists couldn’t pass. To be a distinct profession, somebody who took massage training alone wasn’t going to pass an exam for structural integrators.
LAH: I hadn’t thought about that, how true! It had to be specific to our lane of manual therapy.
MB: It did, yes. To reflect the different kind of training that basic structural integration certifications provide, to test the understanding of the profession. Before you could do that, we had to come to an agreement on what the heck we were doing.
LAH: Defining this work is a challenge.
MB: And that’s what we had to do: define the work, define the curriculum in general that all the schools shared, and communicate what are the elements required to become a beginning practitioner. Not an advanced practitioner, only defining entry into the work.
At first, this exam was meant to be the way practitioners would become members of IASI. We envisioned it as an entrance exam for IASI as well as a licensing tool for states, provinces, and countries. We didn’t know how certifiable exams worked and that we could not have an entrance exam be a licensing tool at the same time. It was very difficult explaining that to our members and we lost some people through that misunderstanding. So then we had to be more rigorous in how we approved school curriculae as well as get through the difficult, expensive, and time-consuming project of exam creation.
LAH: The exam became something that members could opt into.
MB: Yes, practitioners would choose if they wanted to take it. It was important to us to create an exam that could be accredited through an independent national organization like NOCA (noca.org) and ANSI certifiable (www.ansi.org). We knew those two certification organizations would give our profession total legal standing internationally, as well as start us on the track of defining our profession. To me, it would have been good to get our own CPT® code [Current Procedural Terminology codes offer health care professionals a uniform language to identify interventions] or ICD code [International Classification of Diseases, a list of diseases and treatments by the World Health Organization].
I kept saving all our membership money, putting everything I could aside to get enough money together to hire a professional who could walk us through the process of creating a real certification. Liz Gaggini came back to take on the job of getting this exam done. She found a wonderful fellow to guide us through the process and she put in untold hours and energy to get this done.
LAH: That is a monumental job; thank you to Liz for taking that on.
MB: Big job and she did it masterfully. She had two people assisting her: Anita Boser, a Hellerworker from Washington State, and Donald Soule, Rolfer from Chicago, Illinois. They are very dedicated and hard-working people. To get this done correctly, we had to bring in at least one, but we tried for two, faculty representatives from each of the schools, including all of the non-United States schools: Australia, Brazil, and Germany. This was the first time most of these people had met each other. I recall them working together, disagreeing, agreeing, pondering, and always maintaining (and enjoying) a respectful interaction.
LAH: You’re describing real practitioner-driven momentum, grassroots, from the people doing the work.
MB: Exactly, yes.
LAH: Eventually, IASI must have become undeniable to the reluctant Rolf Institute and Guild. Their practitioners were joining this group together. Tell us more about these meetings where these representatives came together.
MB: We had two really big meetings. IASI paid for everybody to come to us. We paid for everyone’s hotel room. This was a lot of money we had put together. Liz, Anita, and Donald had volunteered all their time, they didn’t get paid, a labor of love.
LAH: Sounds like this was all born out of necessity and a fight to survive.
MB: Yes, exactly. And that was it. Many practitioners at the time understood that if we did not unite and face the growing world of legislation, research, medicine, insurance, and marketplace recognition, we would most likely lose our profession. If not through legislation, then through atrophy – other fields taking over our work piecemeal and the basic ideas of Dr. Rolf being lost.
LAH: I started my Rolfing training at the Rolf Institute in 2001 and completed my training in 2004. We had informal conversations about IASI and how to join during the breaks from class. I remember feeling relief hearing about this organization because, as a new practitioner, I wanted to join a growing profession. I joined as soon as I was certified. IASI gave me further legitimacy beyond just the school I graduated from and a professional membership organization to which I am proud to belong.
The First Symposium
LAH: Another big part of IASI is the annual symposiums that bring everyone together. When and where was the first symposium? And what kinds of things were done at the members’ first gathering?
MB: It was in 2005 in Bellevue, Washington, which was a much smaller place at the time. We had hoped to get about 125 people to show up, which would let us break even. It was so inspiring to have double that and need to move from a small room to a large one. Thank heavens the hotel was able to accommodate us.
We went out of our way to make sure we had keynote speakers from several schools as well as non-school-affiliated speakers/authors: Deane Juhan, Jim Oschman, Susan Melchior, Rosemary Feitis, and Dr. Louis Schultz. We also had breakout rooms with speakers from all the schools.
What I remember most about this Symposium was that everybody had a good time – it was very joyful. People got to meet new colleagues from different schools, take classes from instructors from different schools, and find out that we had an awful lot more in common than we had suspected. That was a big thing.
It was a chance to meet this vast, big world of people who we didn’t know anything about. The conference made it possible for us to start getting to know all the players from the different schools, which made it a lot easier to bring faculty representatives together to start creating the certification exam. That was a huge help with our momentum.
I think that the first symposium was a kind of shot across the bow for structural integration schools that wanted to work in isolation. It was common for the schools to isolate themselves, to seemingly protect their intellectual property, but that made them stand out on their own. The graduates from all the schools brought the profession together.
LAH: By 2005, it had been more than fifteen years since ‘the split’, and many newer practitioners were not directly a part of that fight.
MB: Right, exactly. So, “Why are we fighting anyway?” Well, that symposium showed it was possible to get along and share ideas.
LAH: Let’s help each other get better at this thing.
MB: And let’s try to save this profession from being taken over and turned into something it’s not. Massage practitioners often incorporate what they think is structural integration ‘techniques’ into different kinds of myofascial or deep tissue massage, calling it structural integration or “just like Rolfing” [sic]. We need to make sure our work is understood for what it really is and that it cannot be learned in a three-day weekend workshop. I tell people that Rolfing [Structural Integration] isn’t a technique, it’s a way of looking at the body. People react in a surprised way, “What? Not a technique?” No, not really.
LAH: I’ve had that conversation with so many people.
Speaking of the 2005 symposium, I attended that event, and being such a new practitioner, I didn’t really know many people or the details about IASI. I didn’t realize that was the first one! It felt like I was among a work family that knew each other, and I was so glad to be joining this vibrant group. It was fun.
MB: It was lots of fun. During those years, I had been in touch with the structural integration teachers on the phone but I hadn’t met them in person until that event. And we had an open board meeting where anybody could come, and mostly faculty members from the various schools came to ask questions and find out what we were doing.
LAH: I remember there was a big meeting room packed with so many people, it was standing room only, and the board was at the front of the room. Microphones were set up for people in the audience to give feedback to the board. I remember that very well; it was spicy, and listening to intense comments about this work was exciting. I remember thinking there were hundreds of people in the room, so many different points of view and things people wanted. And the IASI board seemed to be listening, writing it down, and responding to the group.
MB: Well, that was the thrust of it. You’ve got to listen to people. Ask questions when you don’t understand, and make sure everybody gets their point across so that it’s understandable. Then, take it from there.
LAH: In the foyer, there was a market-place-type set up where people had tables showcasing their products, their gadgets, and artisan-type things. I remember there were cool items: innovative Rolfing benches, tensegrity models, and anatomy models. Things like that.
Also, the Seattle Seahawks having their training conference in the same hotel. Do you remember that? I remember the whole professional football team would come down the escalator in that foyer of our conference, looking at our stuff with interest. I talked with a few of them in the elevator; they had three dedicated floors where they were doing pregame preparations; they noticed our group and were wondering what we were up to.
Still Working for Widespread Recognition
LAH: These topics you, Lisa, and Liz were talking about way back in the late 1990s that led to the creation of the IASI, are still salient today. Every structural integration practitioner, depending on where they are, has to face different challenges to get recognition as a practitioner in their community. Each state in the United States is a little bit different. Each country is different, but we all share this problem: how do we get recognition as valid health practitioners? Here in Canada, insurance companies with wellness packages typically don’t cover our work for their clients. For me, my clients pay out of pocket.
MB: I am the same. Insurance companies can be a pain to deal with even if they do offer coverage, getting paid by them can seemingly take forever. Here in the United States, most Rolfers I know don’t like to take insurance. There are a few that do, they got it worked out in a way that fits for them.
LAH: Years ago, you passed the reins of IASI on to the next generation of leadership, and it has been going strong ever since – thankfully!
In general, where do you think structural integration practitioners need to focus now? How does our profession need to grow in the years to come, in your opinion?
MB: I’ve been thinking about that. One thing that comes to mind that would be good to do is networking between the schools, creating an opportunity for them to discuss questions: What are they teaching right now? Are they teaching the Ten Series? Have they veered into having other focuses? Are they looking at teaching fix-it work, symptomatic work, or maybe more movement work? Or less movement work, more psychology content, or what theoretical ideas are grounding their teaching?
That’s where I think we are at; we still need to come together as a collection of schools and find out – where are we at right now with what is structural integration education? What relationship does each school have with what Rolf was doing? Each school has different certifications; it would be useful for all of us to know how each school frames its concept and the requirements they have for its graduates. Are the schools giving their practitioners more awareness of
the medical perspective of this work? Maybe people are doing more post-surgery work?
LAH: I like that and think about that, too; what specificity do we have with different pathologies? As a profession, are we all addressing non-specific low back pain with the same theoretical framework and then interventions?
MB: Yes. Are we heading towards working with pathologies? As practitioners, we learn from experience working with people who have surgeries, car accidents, migraines, etc., and we can help them a lot. But our knowledge is anecdotal. We do systemic work, wholistic and global for the whole person, with their relationship to gravity.
We can’t describe our work in technical terms: I push this button and I will always get this result. We don’t do that. We don’t know what’s going to happen, but when we follow the road that Dr. Rolf laid out for us, not only do we see where it goes, we participate with how healing happens. We follow these routes in the body. That’s what Rolf left for us to work with – how to help people heal themselves. We don’t fit well into the medical model, but we could be very helpful to people if the medical model knew more about us.
LAH: True. And people who are professionals in the medical model, like doctors, nurses, and the many professionals, they benefit from our work, they come to see us as clients.
MB: They do. Exactly. Part of our problems are the insurance bit, people have to pay out of their own pocket for us, which is hard for people to afford.
LAH: It is a barrier, for sure.
MB: At the same time, once insurance is paying us for our work, people expect us to fix them, and they aren’t as engaged with the process we have to offer.
LAH: That’s true too.
MB: People who experience the Rolfing Ten Series™ have to be involved in their own awareness and maintenance. We support people to be responsible for their own bodies and health. Our clients come to us because they’re already taking responsibility for their situation.
LAH: So true, people who find us are self-selected for being engaged with
their health.
MB: And people out there in the big wide world get used to the medical model where the expert takes responsibility for the patient and people think the doctor fixes them. They say to the doctor, you’re the expert, so you should tell me what to do.
LAH: Right. The doctor has the power to decide for us, hopefully with us. As Rolfers, we hand the power back to our client, we empower and educate so they deepen their experience with themselves. And hopefully expand the comfort they feel.
MB: Right, we tell our clients one way or another, we’re going to work with this together. It’s a different model. We can be a big help in this way. And for this reason, we can’t let ourselves get turned into this other medical model. We can’t become reductionist, that’s not who we are. Structural integration is unique. What Rolf developed for the world is a whole and distinct perspective. Maybe we can’t help everybody, but we can work on this together. We have to stay strong about what it is that we do and keep communicating this to the world.
LAH: That’s well said. The more the public hears about our unique work, the more we practitioners will remain very busy. Our schools will also have prospective students enrolling, keeping the momentum going. The more developed structural integration is as a professional category of manual therapy, the more it offers solid ground for students and practitioners to stand on when interacting with the public.
MB: Yes, and to offer people more access to a different kind of help for their discomforts. People need to know that, in many cases, they don’t have to suffer chronic problems. Our clients tell us what this work means to them, like when they can hike again after they had thought they’d never be able to. Or, the value of feeling our feet, feeling our toes.
Since we put so much effort into creating that certification exam, I want to see that it continues to be useful in defining our professionals. It’s a tool we have.3
We need to push all structural integration practitioners to join the IASI, to keep getting specific with our vision for the profession. It takes all of us, not just those who are on the IASI board of directors, but all of us members need to push this. We have a lot more integrity as a profession now than when we first started IASI over twenty years ago, but we need everybody, the schools and their graduates, to get involved.
Keeping the profession strong is in our hands, it’s something active to do, to get it out in the world so we don’t lose it in the generations to come. I’d love to see another IASI symposium in person, so we see people face to face and have those discussions that are so fun.
LAH: This reminds me of the lunches I had with colleagues at that 2005 symposium. A large group of us would spontaneously go out for meals together at a restaurant. Gosh, one time I remember there must have been thirty of us at a long table. All of us loudly talked about all our topics, and bonding. It was so fun.
MB: Yes! We just couldn’t stop talking with each other, that’s my memory too. That’s what I mean, it would be fun to have that happen again. And as Briah Anson said so long ago: “The more the merrier!”
LAH: I agree; I would love that, too. Thank you so much for your time, Marilyn. I’ve enjoyed revisiting the beginnings of the IASI. To think you did all that while being an active Rolfer and a parent. You’ve lived quite a life as a Rolfer. Thank you for helping SFI Journal tell the story about the lives of Rolfers. It’s a rich professional life in many dimensions.
MB: You’re welcome. It’s been fun talking with you.
Endnotes
1. The International Association of Structural Integrators (theiasi.net), which has the acronym IASI, is the professional membership organization for structural integration and it works to advance and promote the highest professional standards for the profession of structural integration. In 2024, there are fifteen IASI-recognized schools that are compliant with IASI’s educational standards in teaching the work of Dr. Ida Rolf.
2. “Structural Integration (SI) is a process-based approach to somatic education, typically involving manual therapy, that explores the possibility of change in how you use and experience your body. Through education, awareness, and therapeutic touch, you can release painful, stressful patterns of tension.” (Available from https://theiasi.net/content.aspx?page_id=22&club_id=386922&module_id=535853).
3. The Certification Exam for Structural Integration (CESI) is available worldwide at Pearson VUE Testing Centers. Practitioners must graduate from an IASI recognized basic training in order to be eligible for the CESI. For more information, see https://theiasi.net/content.aspx?page_id=22&club_id=386922&module_id=651516.
Marilyn Beech is a Certified Rolfer who works and lives in Port Angeles, Washington.
Lina Amy Hack, BS, BA, SEP, became a Rolfer™ in 2004 and is now a Certified Advanced Rolfer (2016) practicing in Canada. She has an honors biochemistry degree from Simon Fraser University (2000) and a high-honors psychology degree
from the University of Saskatchewan (2013), as well as a Somatic Experiencing® Practitioner (2015) certification. Hack is the Editor-in-Chief of Structure, Function, Integration.
References
Hack, Lina Amy, and Elisa Jane Noel. 2024. Be big, inhabit your space: The legacy of Emmett Hutchins. Structure, Function, Integration 52(1):94-100.
Keywords
structural integration; international association of structural integrators; certification exam for structural integrators; Rolfing; manual therapy; Dr. Ida Rolf; professional standards; somatic education; practitioner unification; annual symposium; legislative advocacy; massage therapy differentiation; professional networking; pathology awareness. ■
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