The human body is not static; it’s plastic, and that plastic quality enables a person’s body to be realigned into a more optimally functioning and feeling human being. Rolfing accomplishes that realignment. 
Dr. Rolf Explains Rolfing®... Historical Videos
Here we present two short clips extracted from older documentaries that give quite thorough explanations of Rolfing by Dr. Ida P. Rolf herself.
It was she who created the technique in the 20s and 30s. Dr. Rolf called it Structural Integration (later to be named Rolfing) because it basically describes the essence of the work. Structural integration simply means to place the sections of the human body in their optimal alignment. Misalignments in our bodies with the gravitational forces of nature will require more muscle effort and result in compression. Dr. Rolf believed that compression was responsible for most of the chronic pain that we humans suffer from.
In the first video Dr. Rolf is assisted by a young man acting as a model to graphically demonstrate the concepts in Rolfing.
The second film, shown in two parts, was created by the Rolf Guild, a Brazilian organization, their site is at www.rolfguild.net, note though that it is not available in English at this time.
1. Dr. Rolf talks about structural integration (9:58)
2a. Dr. Rolf enlightens us further - Part 1 (9:36)
2b. Dr. Rolf enlightens us further - Part 2 (7:54)
See the new video we just made of Craig speaking about Rolfing!