Dr. Ida Rolf
Dr. Ida Rolf was born in New York in 1896. In 1916, she graduated from Barnard College and was hired to do research work at the Rockefeller Institute in New York where she continued her education. She received a Ph.D in biochemistry and physiology from the Columbia University College of Physicians and surgeons in 1920. Dr. Rolf spends several more years working in the department of chemotherapy and organic chemistry at the Rockefeller Institute.
Dr. Rolf’s interest in Structural Integration, or Rolfing, came about through her research for solutions to personal and family health problems for which conventional methodologies had proven unsatisfactory.
The techniques Dr. Rolf developed during 50 years of study and practice first received wide professional exposure at the Esalen Institute in California during the mid 1960’s. She then established the Rolf institute in Boulder, Colorado where she spent the last years of her life refining her methods and teaching them to other Rolf practioners.