Peter Melchoir and Emmett Hutchins

Instructors at and Founders of the Guild for Structural Integration

Dr. Rolf's legacy and teachings were gifted to both Leslie and Christopher through their primary teachers and guides, Peter Melchoir and Emmett Hutchins at the Guild for Structural Integration.

Both Peter and Emmett began studying with Dr. Rolf in 1965. She selected Peter and Emmett as the first two teachers to follow in her footsteps in Structural Integration in 1971. Since that time, both have been integral in developing and teaching her work.

Peter and Emmett left the Rolf Institute to start the second Guild for Structural Integration, a school dedicated to teaching the traditional and fundamental principles of Dr. Rolf's work. These principles were grounded in Dr. Rolf's beliefs that Structural Integration is a method and philosophy of personal growth and integrity based upon the vertical line of the human structure as the fundamental concept of physiological and psychological balance and beingness in the physical world.

Structural Integration is about the whole person . . . the sensation of moving from weakness into strength, the exhilaration of owning a new part of oneself, the immediate and simultaneous re-education of one's being and action with the joy of self-empowerment, waking up. These are the experiences of Structural Integration. - Emmett Hutchins

The Guild bases its program on teaching and transmitting Dr. Rolf's work through "the recipe," a multiple session systematic form designed to open and balance the human body in its relationship to gravity.

In the spring of 2005, Peter passed away in Boulder, Colorado. Emmett continues to teach and practice in Kauai, Hawaii. You may contact the Guild at www.rolfguild.org for more information on its educational programs.

I believe that it is the creative use of imagination that separates "cook from chef," to use Ida P. Rolf's old metaphor. The ability to send one's shaped intention moving ahead of the ends of the fingers, fist, elbow, etc. to make contact with the living breathing presence at the core of that person, and to ride the wave of the breath through the body, is a major ingredient in any artistic presentation of Structural Integration. - Peter Melchoir