appointments with my Rolfing
practitioner, Jennifer-Lynn Crawford,
who works from her two practices in
Leeds, West Yorkshire, I didn’t know
if she would blame my posture, a
weak core, my advancing age, the
menopause... or all four. Luckily for
me, there was no blame just lots of
understanding about how I’d got
myself into this unbalanced state.
“The fascia is connective tissue
that holds the muscles in place and it
comes in different shapes and sizes,”
explained Jennifer-Lynn, who qualified
as a Rolfing practitioner in 2015. “It
holds our bodies together.
“We tend to think of ourselves
as being one bit stacked on top of
another, but the fascia is more like a
web. It’s all connected, so if you pull
one thread, the whole lot moves.
“But we don’t just have fasciaaround the outside. Our fascia is like
the white pith in an orange. It can
be tough near the outside, just under
our skin, but it gets finer and finer on
the inside.
“When the fascia gets stuck, we
don’t move as easily or with as
much fluidity, sometimes because
of the pain, and we can lose that
movement. Our circulation fluids don’t
move through and our bodies stop
working as well as they did.”
At my first appointment,
Jennifer-Lynn carried out a postural
assessment of me in my underwear.
I had to walk around her consulting
room and turn, bend, even breathe
more deeply so she could see how
my body was – or more to the point,
wasn’t – working. Even the smallest
of movements, such as my diaphragm
when I breathed out, seemed key to
this process.
In what felt like a mixture of34 S MAGAZINE ★ 25 AUGUST 2019
I
’ve been Rolfed. No, I’m not
rolling around on the floor
laughing, though I probably
could get down there more
easily now, and it has certainly
made me happier.
An alternative hands-on health
treatment, Rolfing is named after
its designer, the late American
biochemist Ida Rolf, and it claims
to align our bodies by literally
getting under our skin and ironing
all our creases out. By freeing up
our bodies, it’s said to help us
move more easily, improve our
circulation and even ease
conditions such as arthritis,
headaches and asthma.
For me, it wasn’t so much an
illness as the way I felt. As a
journalist in my fifties, it seemed
that every little exertion out of theordinary, like a sudden pull from
my Border terrier Buddy while out
walking, sitting at an odd angle to
interview someone or even driving
a longer distance than usual, left
me with twinges of pain.
True, I could still walk long
distances and I could still take
part in my local park run, but the
tiniest change to routine, like an
extra flask in my rucksack, sent
me off kilter and reaching for
painkillers. And having spent the
best part of 30 years sitting at a
keyboard or on the telephone, my
neck and shoulders were usually
the first area to suffer.
On top of that, I felt I was losing
my balance. Almost overnight,
I started gripping rails as I went
downstairs. I avoided wearing
high heels and I dreaded having
to walk downhill.
When I booked my three initialA cure for what
“It left me pain-free, physically
stronger, taller and steadier”
Rolfing has helped people
with complaints ranging from
anxiety to arthritis. Christine
Fieldhouse gives it a try