Sarah Ruholl, sruholl@qconline.com
Chronic pain had plagued Laura Gsell for 10 years. Since contracting lyme disease from a deer tick in her garden, the Davenport resident has gone from doctor to doctor looking for relief, before finding one in Minnesota willing and able to help her.
"Unfortunately, regular doctors don't want to deal with a lot of problems simultaneously," Gsell says. "I have an umbrella of problems, each one contributes to the next, and I couldn't get anyone here to listen."
The disease causes bacteria to build up in her muscles, making them stiff and sore. She tried regular massages, but it "did nothing but make me mad," she says. Then, her physician, Dr. Karen Vrchota, who specializes in chronic fatigue immune deficiency syndrome, lyme disease and fibromyaglia, recommended she try rolfing.
Rolfing is a system of deep tissue manipulation developed in the 1950s by Dr. Ida P. Rolf designed to realign and balance the body. She called it structural integration. It later became known as rolfing. "It's like advanced massage," Judi Clinton, a licensed rolfing practitioner, says. "It's a very efficient way to get the whole body stretched quickly."
Gsell had heard about the technique from an aunt whose husband had gone to a rolfing practitioner, though he described the process as "very painful." Eventually, though, Gsell faced her fears and made an appointment with Clinton, who practices in Iowa City, the closest rolfing practitioner that can be found to the Quad-Cities. She hoped it wouldn't hurt too bad.
Clinton says the idea that rolfing is painful is a common misconception. While most people have "hot spots" that will hurt when stretched, she works to make sure clients don't come out hurting afterward. Gsell found it didn't hurt at all, and, in fact, made her feel better both physically and mentally. "You come out more positive, more relaxed," Gsell says. "I feel like a wet noodle."
The positive outlook it gives her is one of the benefits Gsell most treasures. "With chronic illness, you can get down, not depressed really, but definitely down," she says. "After a session, my spirits are lifted. I feel like I'm doing something good for myself. It's like doing maintenance, being proactive."
Rolfing seems to be making her muscles feel better on a permanent basis, says Gsell. Since she started seeing Clinton in the fall of 2009, she has decreased from weekly sessions to monthly ones. "It feels like the muscles are healing themselves," Gsell says. "I'm looking forward to getting better."
The price of the hour and a half long sessions varies, but it generally costs about $110 for each session, which includes instruction on stretches to do at home.
Dr. Rolf designed a 10-session program, which Clinton says she uses "like a recipe." Some clients will come twice, feel better and not return. Others, like Gsell and other chronic pain suffers, need to come back for tune-ups.
Chronic pain is what brought rolfing to Clinton's attention as well. When she was pregnant with her third child, Clinton was thrown from a horse. She suffered no broken bones, and her daughter was born without problems. After the baby was born, though, Clinton began to suffer debilitating back pain. She would be bedridden for days on end. A chiropractor, she says, would help for a few days, but the pain would soon return. Then, she tried rolfing and found relief, as well as additional height and arches in her formerly flat feet.
The structural integration process manipulates the connective tissues in the body, particularly the fascia, a layer of fibrous tissue that isolates and surrounds muscles. This manipulation allows the muscles to shift and balance themselves. The balance helps alleviate muscle pain, and the changes she noticed so impressed her that she knew she had found a new career.
Clinton, who lived in North Carolina at the time, arranged to attend the Rolf Institute in Boulder, Colo. She has since moved to Coralville, Iowa, and practices there and in Iowa City. "I could feel the difference, and Iwas like, 'I have to do this,'" she says.
