Connecticut
Gerry Caffrey is a Rolfer specializing in bodywork to eliminate pain and improve posture, using Rolfing Structural Integration.
Phone: 914-282-8126
gerry@fluidbodyrolfing.com
New York
Purely by coincidence, I walked by a doorway in Manhattan and noticed a small sign and a brochure for Attune Holistic Fitness. I’m normally wary of anything labeled “holistic,” a term that doesn’t mean anything in particular, but after a trip up a long flight of stairs, I knew I’d found a gem.
Eva Pelegrin’s sparkling and friendly facility is perfect for rehabilitating a back pain patient – assuming you can make it up those stairs. (She assures me that she has 80-year-old patients flying up them.) I worked out with Pelegrin herself, and I can tell you that she really knows her stuff. She began her career in advertising, but after years of bi-weekly business trips to Europe, she left to become a functional movement specialist. In 2005, she started Attune, determined to focus on all aspects of a client’s health and wellbeing. Attune has other well-trained exercise specialists, bodywork practitioners and acupuncturists on staff as well.
Mirka Knaster’s Discovering the Body’s Wisdom is an excellent all-purpose reference for health and well-being. Knaster covers a wide array of different kinds of body therapy, throughout history and across the continents, explaining each one and offering guidance and resources for implementing them.
Dean Juhan’s book, Job’s Body, is indispensable for anyone interested in a poetic and intelligent guide to how the human body works, and how to care for it.
New York
The Feldenkrais Method is a postural approach that, by employing exercises in movement and encouraging the mind to reconnect with the body, helps individuals restore better physical function. Through the website you can search for practitioners and classes across the United States. Courses offered are either part of their “Awareness Through Movement” therapy, in which patients are guided verbally through sequences of motion and exercise, or part of the “Functional Integration” program, in which practitioners guide participants through movements with gentle, non-invasive touching.
You can also find information and excellent course selections at the New York Feldenkrais Institute, which has Feldenkrais superstar Marek Wyszynski on staff – and Wyszynski is also president of another NY-based Feldenkrais institution, Physical Therapy & Feldenkrais NYC.
Watch this video (or watch below) on “How The Nervous System Senses Differences,” presented at the Feldenkrais Institute of New York.
Colorado
The Rolf Institute of Structural Integration is the official institution of the postural approach called “Rolfing,” developed by Ida P. Rolf. Rolf founded the institute in 1971, and it is located in Boulder, CO. Its website offers information on Rolfing as well as a comprehensive catalogue of certified Rolfers through a search function, if you can’t attend classes at the Institute itself in Colorado. (Note: there are more Rolfers than will appear on the RSI site, however; the site displays practitioners who have paid to be advertised there.)
