About Ida P. Rolf

Ida P. Rolf PhD was born in 1896 in New York City. Her father was an electrical engineer. From early childhood she had a marked swayback, and a pre-diabetic diagnosis. She went looking for answers to both these problems. She earned her undergraduate degree from Barnard College and then a PhD in Biological Chemistry from Columbia University. She then did biochemical research at Rockefeller University for 12 years, during which time she was also a serious student of tantric yoga, read the literature of the Osteopaths and married a civil engineer. During World War II she relocated to Los Angeles to study with Amy Cochrane DO, and other Osteopaths. It was at this time she began to formulate her own work which she originally called Postural Release. During summers in the 1950s she taught her work in England, initially at the European School of Osteopathy in Maidstone, where she met and studied with additional Osteopaths. In 1964 Gestalt Therapy founder Fritz Perls invited Dr. Rolf to work and teach at Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California. It was here that she first had a significant number of students. During her years at Esalen she founded The Rolf Institute and trained several teachers of Rolfing®, as well as over a hundred individual Rolfers. Her Institute moved its headquarters to Boulder, Colorado in 1972. Ida Rolf died in 1979 in New York City.