Based in Astoria, Queens and New York City, MKSI – Minki Kim Structural Integration delivers long-lasting health and greater well-being by restoring postural balance and functional ease throughout your entire body. The Rolf Method of Structural Integration is a highly effective 10-session series that alleviates chronic pain, tension, and rigidity with enduring and longstanding results. Profoundly improve the quality of your life and regain the healthy alignment, balance, ease, and fluidity inherently within you. Learn healthier postural habits and more efficient patterns of movement to empower yourself with the necessary tools to prevent future dis-ease, dysfunction, and pain. Structural Integration is a holistic and educational process taking into account all the aspects of what makes a person whole – the body, mind, and spirit. We are more than our physical bodies in which the whole of a person is greater than the sum of his or her parts. You do not have to lose the inevitable fight against gravity so long as you engage in the Structural Integration process. It definitively forges a harmonious relationship with gravity, denying your decline into the ‘aging process.’ Explore the profound benefits you will develop and integrate into your daily life and activities here with Structural Integration.

The Rolf Method of Structural Integration utilizes a 3-pronged approach consisting of:

I. Hands-on Bodywork       

Dr Ida P. Rolf developed Structural Integration as a 10-session series to restore postural balance and functional ease throughout your entire body. Using heat and pressure with our hands, we aim to lengthen, reorganize and re-balance connective tissue and more specifically, the soft-tissue matrix of fascia, encompassing every major organ, muscle, bone, blood and nerve vessel throughout the body (for more info, click on the bold words). The fascial matrix is considered the organ of support that bolsters and supports our structure and gives us our unique shape and form. It is a unique and exceptionally effective health care approach because it manipulates fascia, instead of our musculoskeletal system, which allows us to reorganize and realign the major structures of the body vertically. The ideology behind Structural Integration also takes into consideration the whole picture of the human body. For example, we reorganize a wrist joint imbalance while acknowledging its relationship to the upper arm, neck, and shoulder.

Another significant feature of Structural Integration is the biomechanical assessment of each client and refining habitual and routine movement patterns. I work with each client to optimize and enhance the efficiency of his/her movement patterns within the field of gravity. For example, we can work together on refining your volleyball spiking motion, deepening and facilitating difficult yoga poses, changing your movement pattern to walk up stairs more easily and without pain, and other repetitive motions.

II. Movement Education      

The movement education is a vital component for maintaining the structural integrity and balance achieved through the Structural Integration 10-series. The movement lessons are taught after each session. The movement lessons refine our most habitual or routine postures such as sitting, standing, walking, bending over, and body/mind relationships and aims to raise one’s own body awareness and spatial orientation. It pertains to the anatomical terrain worked on in the particular session. For instance, just as yoga is meant to be practiced and refined over time, each movement lesson’s intention is to hone and refine your movement patterns in order to move more efficiently, conserve more energy day-to-day, and prevent future dis-ease and discomfort. Embrace these ‘movement tools’ which enhances your body awareness and educates you on practicing preventative measures against physical injury, pain, tension, and discomfort.

It is important to keep in mind that the overall head-to-toe structural alignment and integrity revealed and achieved from the series can be sustained throughout your lifetime by continuously practicing and adopting the new movement patterns until it becomes a new and healthier habit. Bad habits can be unlearned but it takes time and patience. Remember to keep in mind to go at your own pace and always be patient with yourself. And to also keep frustrations and tribulations at bay, I’d like to offer a quote from an esteemed Structural Integration practitioner, Mary Bond - “Real change takes time.”

III. Client-Practitioner Dialogue     

The third facet of Structural Integration for cultivating optimum health and well-being is through the avenue of client/practitioner dialogue. Structural Integration clearly takes into account all the dimensions of what makes us human. We take into consideration the indivisible relationships among the body, mind, and spirit. As Structural Integration practitioners, we embrace the philosophy that the body/mind share an inextricable circular relationship, and how one affects the other, and vice versa. As a general example, repressed emotions that are not expressed and bottled up can manifest as physical pain in the back of the body. Emotions, memories, and trauma is claimed to be stored in our tissues and manipulation of connective tissue can help one to let go of them.

That being said, if it sounds similar to a psychotherapy session, it really isn’t. It serves as a tool to raise the client’s awareness to how their personal philosophies and ideologies influence their structure and can attribute to physical imbalances. In other words, taking care of our emotional health will positively influence our physical health.  Structural Integration practitioners typically delve into the relationships of how our thoughts, belief systems, opinions, and emotions affect our bodies and structural balance. It is interesting to see how our minds directly influence and affect our physical nature. In other words, Structural Integration affects the mind through the body.

Essence of Structural Integration

Structural Integration is an incredible holistic and educational system to empower you to take responsibility towards your path to longstanding health and wellness. In essence, the process reveals and reestablishes your natural state of alignment, ease, and balance. It aligns the human structure as a whole around a vertical axis, which allows gravity to lift and support the body, instead of adversely hindering balance and fluidity. Friend or foe, gravity is an unseen force continually interacting with the human body in the many postures we perform everyday. Gravity will continue to reinforce your less-than-ideal postural positions and habits, or gently support your body upwards if our structures are mutually in unison with the force of gravity.

Remember trying to balance a broom or a stick in the palm of your hand? The moment you had the stick balance effortlessly and stand perfectly straight is a wonderful demonstration of a structure in harmony with gravity. The stick is balanced on a vertical axis and feels weightless. However, as soon as the stick moves around, you feel its weight, which then requires effort and energy to compensate for its inevitable pulled by the force of gravity towards the ground. We can draw parallels with the “balancing stick metaphor “to the human body. When the major structures are organized and aligned along a vertical axis, gravity can flow through and sustain effortless balance. On the other hand, when body structures are imbalanced and misaligned, the body must make compensations in order to keep itself upright and find some semblance of balance. These compensations occur in the FASCIAL MATRIX and creates strain within this complex network of connective tissue. Strain in one area of the body will cause strain in other areas because of the inseparable connectivity of fascial planes within the body. Fortunately, fascia can be brought back to its healthy state, rejuvenating its tone and chemistry. Fascial change brought about locally in a particular area of the body, creates change globally.

Integrating all the major structures of the body vertically creates an adaptable, resilient, balanced, and energy-efficient whole, unveiling your innate state of vigor and well-being. Structural Integration is a profound process for your everlasting radiant health and well-being.