“The 10-Series is Dr. Rolf’s gift to humanity.” – Emmett Hutchins
It is the foundational work created by Dr. Ida P. Rolf, to organize the human structure around a central vertical axis. It does this by working with and in the fascial web of connective tissue.
This description will not be a step-by-step manual of what I do. For therapists who wish to learn more, please find an accredited school. For people looking to experience this work, I will try to express the intention of the sessions, what they offer you, what you experience, and what the Series builds across all ten Hours. To learn more about what happens in your first session, please see my post “What to Expect in Your First Rolfing Session in Los Angeles”.
A note on the word: “Hour”
You will notice I keep saying “Hour,” when referring to a session, although I will alternate between the two. This is intentional. Each session in the classical 10-Series is called an Hour, and the word carries meaning. An hour is approximately how long each session should take. Not one and a half. Not two. And definitely not three. More is not better.
This matters because the work is about change, not duration. There are specific goals to achieve for each session. When a session takes much longer than an hour, it is usually a sign the practitioner is doing something too slowly, or doing too much, or both. When I work with a client, I allot a total time of ninety minutes to be in office, but the session itself is about one hour.
When changing the structure, you are changing the person. You do not want to overwhelm or confuse them. The goal is to be as efficient as possible with the work to leave them in the highest energetic state. Not confused, nor excited. Instead, alert, calm, present, and at the highest level of integration for a given session. After a massage, it is fine and normal to feel lazy or sleepy. The goal is relaxation. After a Rolf Method session, your eyes should be clear. You are ready to face the world.
“Practitioners of SI [Structural Integration] do not feel ourselves to be therapists. The gravitational field is the therapist.” – Dr. Ida Rolf
This work is not a therapy, although there are many therapeutic benefits. I am not here to “fix” something, although many practitioners claim that they do.
Yes, of course, things do become “fixed” by getting the body organized. That is the beauty of this work.
“This is the gospel of Rolfing: when the body gets working appropriately, the forces of gravity can flow through. Then spontaneously the body heals itself.” – Dr. Ida Rolf
The architecture of the Series: same Recipe, infinite experiences
Dr. Ida Rolf called the 10-Series “the Recipe.” It is a recipe, a formula for integrating the human structure. It has an order and progression. It sounds mechanical. It is anything but.
The Recipe is uniform, yet unique to each person on the table. The practitioner brings clear structural goals to each Hour. Each body has a different history, different stories held in its tissue, different patterns of holding and compensation. It’s like putting your hand in a river — no matter how many times you do, it is never the same. Same Recipe. Yet your 10-Series experience is uniquely yours.
Across the ten Hours, the work moves through three different intentions. Again, I’ll speak metaphorically.
Hours 1–3: Superficial – “expand the room”. Let me be clear: “expand the room” is my terminology and I am speaking metaphorically. It is not from the Guild (where I went to school) or Dr. Rolf. It is the way I explain this work to clients who come into my practice. Imagine the body as a room with furniture inside. The first three Hours are about expanding the four walls, the floor, and the ceiling. Making the room bigger. This is about creating more space in this outer layer. That alone makes the room more enjoyable to live and be in.
By the end of the third Hour, most clients feel a sense of vitality, lightness, and length. The body has discovered space and breath it did not know it had access to. The deeper work has not yet begun, and already the room feels different to live in.
Hours 4–7: Deep – “work the contents”. Now we rearrange the furniture inside the expanded room. The pelvis is the central piece — three Hours of the seven are dedicated to it. The head is the last piece, placed at the top of the spine.
These four Hours go deeper — into deeper layers of fascia, into the central architecture of the body. The body learns to let weight drop and discovers the lift that follows. By the end of this phase, the structure has been worked from feet to crown.
Hours 8–10: Integration. Once the room has been expanded and the contents arranged, the work becomes integrative. The legs, the arms, the whole structure — all of it is brought into relationship. The limbs through which we move, reach, create, and express become available in a way they have not been before. You have become fully human, so much so — that it allows the final Hour to ask something else entirely: not ‘is this body organized?’ but ‘are you ready to live in this new expanded body?’
Across all ten sessions, regardless of territory or phase, the goal of every single Hour is to horizontalize the pelvis. Not the feet. Not the head. The pelvis. When the pelvis is horizontal, what is above and below has a balanced place to extend from. Everything else in the work is in service of this.
Even the position is doing something
When you lie face up (supine) on the table, your knees will be bent. This is not random. The bent knees put your hip flexors on slack so they do not pull on your lumbar spine.
The position is active. I am not asking you to do anything specific while you are there — the position itself is the instruction. Each position on the table allows the body to fall into length. This phrase is something I say to clients when they wonder why their knees are bent or why their arms are in a certain place. The position is not a restriction. It is the opening for span, space, possibility. Falling into length is what happens when the body recognizes the opportunity it has been given.
What tension actually is: softer, yet stronger
After the 10-Series, clients often feel softer — and stronger.
Not softer as in weaker. Softer as in less guarded. Less braced against life. They notice they have been holding things they did not know they were holding. And the strength they have is not the same kind of strength they came in with — it is a different form. Quieter. Less effortful. More available.
The tension you are carrying is often stored capacity that did its job. It got you through something — a difficult chapter, a season of needing to be strong, a phase where holding was the only way to survive. The body did exactly what it had to do. The strength was real and necessary.
But the season passed, and the strength did not. What was once protection has become restriction. What was once capacity has become limitation. I sometimes describe this as overstrength — strength that has overstayed its purpose. Clients ask me, when I am working an area they perceive as tense, “what is that?” I tell them: it is a strength. It served its purpose, it served you. It is no longer needed in this form.
That awareness — that the tension is meaningful, it had a job, and is now ready to be released — is often what sets the stage for whatever transition the client is in. The courage to make a life change. I tell my clients all the time: it takes a lot of courage to do this work. And growth is not always comfortable. (You can read more about the question that everyone asks: Does Rolfing Hurt?) There is so much value in recognizing that your body was working for you, in your best interests. Now it’s time to let it go.
Softer, yet stronger. That is what the work does.
After the tenth Hour
The 10-Series is the foundation. It is far from the end. It is a beginning.
“Be a big event on your Line.” – Peter Melchior (Student of Dr. Ida Rolf, one of the two students she personally selected to open her school in 1971, and a co-founder of the Guild’s 1989 reopening.)
For some clients, the work is done. The change continues for up to a year. However, the experience stays with you a lifetime.
“Rolfing is permanent.” – Dr. Ida Rolf
Your body knows now what length feels like. If you forget, trust your body — it knows.
Some clients come back for tune-ups every few months and some continue weekly or every two weeks for ongoing post-10 work. Cadence depends on the client’s goals, finances, and time. There is no right answer. The Line is not a fixed destination; it is an ongoing relationship between the human structure and gravity, and the work meets the client wherever they are in that relationship.
Whether the client is done or chooses to continue, the question of how to carry the work forward in daily life is real. There are two paths, and both are valid:
Go mess it up. That is how my teacher Emmett Hutchins put it. Live. Move through your life. Use this body. Do not be precious about the work. A body in a higher state of integration will move how it needs to move, in any given moment. You do not have to think about it.
Or, for those who want to embody the work consciously, there are exactly two cues — and only two:
Waistline back. Top of the head up.
That is it. The first is a drop, a letting go, a release of weight. The second is a direction: up. Together they create span and extension. There is nothing else to remember. No regimen. No daily practice. Just two phrases for those who want to participate consciously in their own organization.
Either path is right.
What this work is, in the end, is participation in something larger than your own body. Dr. Rolf believed humans are still evolving — that we have not yet come fully upright.
“One of the jobs of a Rolfer is to speed that process along. We want to get a man out of the place where gravity is his enemy. We want to get him into the place where gravity reinforces him and is a friend, a nourishing force.” – Dr. Rolf
Each body that organizes around its Line contributes to that evolution. The 10-Series does not just change the body that received it. It contributes, in its own small way, to what the species itself is still becoming.
Be a big event on your Line.
Practical logistics
My office is in Santa Monica, easily accessible from across Los Angeles — the Westside, West LA, Brentwood, Venice, Pacific Palisades, Mar Vista, and Culver City.
Each session is scheduled for 90 minutes total — about an hour of hands-on work, plus our initial conversation, the postural assessment, and a few minutes of integration at the end.
To book, reach out through my contact page and we will find a time that works for you.
Book a session in Santa Monica.
Frequently asked questions
Do I have to commit to all ten Hours before booking? No. Most new clients come in for a single Hour first, see how it feels, and decide whether to continue. The 10-Series is the traditional arc and where the deepest changes happen, but the first Hour stands on its own.
How long does the full series take? Dr. Rolf designed the Series to be done in 6 weeks, there is a structure and reason for this. In practice, many people come in once or twice a week. The limiting factors are your time, finances, and how your body processes the work. This work is about change, so be ready to commit your time.
Will I feel different after just one Hour? Yes. Almost every client feels something distinct after the first Hour — most often a sense of vitality, lift, length, and lightness. The first session is magical and an invitation to experience more.
Is the 10-Series the same for everyone? The Recipe is the same, the same goals for each person. But, as similar as each body is, each body is also unique. So, in one sense, trust the Recipe, it works. But that’s where the experience of 19 years (at the time of this writing) comes into play – understanding the uniqueness of each structure.
What happens after the 10-Series? Go enjoy! Change continues for up to a year. Traditionally, I would recommend clients take a break of at least three to six months before considering more work to allow the body to continue evolving.
Is there work after the 10-Series? Absolutely there is. The work is infinite. The only limitation is my understanding of the work and my imagination. Some clients continue regularly: weekly, bi-weekly, every few months.
Does the 10-Series help with chronic pain? Many clients with chronic patterns experience meaningful change through the series, but the relief is a consequence of structural change rather than a guaranteed outcome. The work is not therapy. It does not claim to fix or cure. It builds resilience that often makes the patterns less necessary.
How is the 10-Series organized? The 10-Series moves through three intentions. Hours 1–3 expand the body’s outer layer of superficial fascia, creating space, breath, and length. Hours 4–7 work the deeper layers and the central architecture, including three Hours dedicated to the pelvis. Hours 8–10 integrate the entire structure and ask the larger question of how to live in this newly organized body.
Why do you call each session an “Hour”? In the classical 10-Series, each session is called an Hour because that is approximately how long the work should take. The terminology, preserved at the Guild for Structural Integration, is intentional. It signals that the work is about change, not duration. A session that runs much longer than an Hour usually means the practitioner is doing something too slowly, or too much. The body integrates change in a contained window; longer is not better.
Why is the pelvis so central to the work? The goal of every single Hour in the 10-Series is to horizontalize the pelvis. When the pelvis is horizontal, what is above and below has a balanced place to extend from. Three of the seven middle Hours are dedicated specifically to the pelvis — from below, above, and behind. The pelvis is the central piece of the structure, and the entire body organizes around it.
Where is your office? Santa Monica, serving clients from across Los Angeles.
Ready to book? Reach out here.
Rolfing is a trademark of the Dr. Ida Rolf Institute. Craig Dunham is an Advanced practitioner and graduate of the Guild for Structural Integration and practices the Rolf Method of Structural Integration in Los Angeles and Santa Monica.
