Rolfer, somatic educator and structural engineer, San Diego, California
Henry Kagey is an American practitioner of Rolfing and Structural Integration, in private practice in San Diego since 1995.[1][3] He learned the method from Dr Edward Maupin, one of the first students of its originator Ida Rolf, and worked closely with Maupin for fourteen years as his protege.[2] He also holds a PhD in civil engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, which he took in order to understand the body as a structure.[1][2]
With Maupin he built the Structural Integration internship at IPSB in San Diego and co-wrote A Dynamic Relation to Gravity, a two-volume classroom manual still used to teach the ten sessions.[2][4] He taught at IPSB from 1998 to 2010 and led workshops in Ohio, at Esalen, and in Japan and China.[2]
Separately from the bodywork, Henry was a nationally ranked Taiji athlete, winning gold at national and international level in Chinese internal martial arts between 2000 and 2002.[1][2] Since 1998 he has kept one low-income client on his books at all times who cannot meet his session rate.[2]
Ida Rolf was a biochemist who had also kept a serious yoga practice and studied osteopathy. She spent the 1950s building a method out of all three and did not teach it until a group of willing students turned up at Esalen in the 1960s. Edward Maupin, a psychologist, was among the first of them.[1]
Henry met Maupin in the mid-1990s at IPSB in San Diego, where between 1995 and 1997 he completed a thousand-hour bodywork training covering Structural Integration, Sensory Repatterning, Neuro-Muscular Therapy and Tui Na, followed by an MA in Somatic Psychology in 1999.[2] After the apprenticeship he trained further at the Guild for Structural Integration in Boulder, Colorado under Peter Melchior, qualifying as a practitioner in 1999.[1][2] He appears as a Certified Rolfer on the Dr. Ida Rolf Institute's public register.[3]
He names two mentors. Alongside Maupin is the Jungian analyst Dr Robert Johnson, and both shaped him as a therapist, not only as a technician.[2]
Henry taught at IPSB from 1998 to 2010 as both lead and assistant instructor. He developed the curriculum and materials for the school's 700 hour Structural Integration internship, performed the class demonstration of the ten series on models, and taught the four day Principles of Structural Integration course four times a year for twelve years.[2] He also created a thirty hour course, Body Mechanics for Bodyworkers, on using one's own body to improve the quality of touch and avoid injury across different modalities and body types.[2]
Between 1999 and 2009 he travelled to teach Structural Integration and movement, at Esalen more than once, in Ohio, and in Japan and China.[2]
He has taught at university as well. As a graduate student instructor at Berkeley from 2015 to 2019 he taught fluid dynamics, civil design and the physics of electricity, magnetism and sound, and before that he led sections in structural analysis at UC San Diego.[2]
Henry works in ninety clinical minute sessions at Structure In Motion in Bankers Hill, San Diego, and he telephones every new client before a first appointment, on top of the intake form.[1]
He offers the ten series of Structural Integration, which he calls a process of personal change and not a course of treatment.[5] He also designs single and multi-session protocols for individual problems, drawing on Rolfing, structural engineering and Neuro-Muscular Therapy alongside his movement training in Taiji, athletics and yoga. He reports success with chronic pain arising from repetitive stress, recurring sprains, herniations, scoliosis, fibromyalgia, plantar fasciitis and tendonitis.[1]
Connective tissue is the body's primary structural material, and it changes shape under mechanical pressure, for better or worse. A body brought into relationship with the gravitational field can store and release energy, where holding an imbalance upright costs muscular effort. He works towards a native potential for effortless movement, and chronic issues tend to clear as a consequence.[1]
Rates come down by a fifth for active military, first responders and their families, and by the same for primary and secondary educators and full-time students. Since 1998 he has carried one low-income client at all times at no rate they can meet.[1][2]
With Edward Maupin, Henry produced A Dynamic Relation to Gravity (2006), a two-volume set of classroom manuals for Structural Integration. Volume one covers the elements of the method, volume two the ten sessions.[2][4]
He calls it the most used book on the subject.[1] Retailer and library records name Maupin as the author, with Henry credited on the work and not on the cover.[4]
He publishes in engineering too: a 2012 paper with Petr Krysl in the International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering on nodally integrated continuum elements, a 2011 masters thesis on the seismic retrofit of Iranian central plateau vernacular dwellings, and a 2019 doctoral dissertation on building integrated solar technology for greywater recycling and thermal gain.[2]
Henry competed in national and international Chinese internal martial arts between 2000 and 2002, winning multiple gold, silver and bronze medals across Tai Chi, Ba Gua and Liu He Ba Fa, and was nationally ranked.[1][2]
His teachers include Abraham Liu and Ted Purpero, both in lineages running back to Cheng Man-Ching, along with Share K. Lew in Qigong, Siu-Fong Evans in White Crane and Tobey Cooley in Liu He Ba Fa.[2] He taught Yang style Taiji solo at IPSB from 2001 to 2010 and has continued to lead Taiji and Qigong classes since, using both as the basis of a philosophy centred on effortless movement and balance.[2]
He was competing while he was training at IPSB, so his first question about Structural Integration was an athlete's: what does this method do for a body under load.[1]
The ten series. Deep tissue release and movement education worked through in sequence, until the body sits in the gravity field without holding itself up.
Single and multi-session protocols built for one person's problem: repetitive stress, recurring sprains, herniation, scoliosis, fibromyalgia, plantar fasciitis, tendonitis.
Taiji, Qigong and body mechanics, taught on the table or standing on the floor. He wrote a thirty hour course on it for other bodyworkers.
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Entry 300133