Perls was amazed by the power of her work and credited Dr Rolf with adding many years to his life. Thanks to the persistence and insistence of Fritz Perls, Ida Rolf found herself teaching on a regular basis at the Esalen Institute. Dr Rolf called her work Structural Integration but other people were calling it Rolfing and were calling the practitioners of Structural Integration, Rolfers. Eventually Rolfing became the more accepted term and the Guild for Structural Integration metamorphosized into the Rolf Institute. It is based on two central ideas.
Most human beings are significantly out of alignment with gravity.
And to the extent we can align these two energy systems, we can create a better functioning person. The organ of structure, or shape of the body, is the web of connective tissue which has a plastic property. Think of a leather shoe as fascia or connective tissue. After the shoe is worn for a few months, it takes on the shape of the wearer's foot. Tissue which was short and hard becomes soft and has more length and resilience.