Helping the body find balance.

Sometimes muscles need a little more help than just a work out or a stretch. 

Deep fascia is the thin layer of soft fibrous tissue that surrounds your muscles, bones, nerves and blood vessels.  Think of the thin opaque onion skin like stuff that you pull off of a chicken breast.  That is fascia, it encases the muscle coming together at the end of the muscle where it becomes the tendon, which attaches the muscle to the bone.   When I do hands on work with a client I imagine the fascia to be like a stretch girdle for the muscles that helps to hold the muscles in their shape.  The fascia also helps separate your individual muscles from other muscles allowing them to slide along each other.  For instance the muscles of the quadriceps which are four muscles sitting on the front of your thigh that work in tandem as you walk, bike or use your legs.  They need to function fluidly.  During exercise as your muscles become engorged with blood your fascia stretches to accommodate the muscles expansion inside the facial encasement…

The fasciae system of our body can be looked at as an encasing that creates interconnectedness through out the body.  Because of this, one part of the body has an effect on every other part of the body. For instance, if the fascias of the quadriceps are glued together then that tension will affect the torso.  One of the first things that I do with a new client is release the fascia in the quadriceps.  For people with back pain this often leads to a sense of release and often a relief from pain, as releasing the legs allows the hips to move better which in turn takes the strain off of the back.

When Fascia becomes glued together and restricted there is lack of movement in the body.  This can occur after an injury, surgery, prolonged poor posture, repetitive postures like sitting for hours during your day, and just general lack of exercise.  I also believe that fascia becomes restricted due to inflammation and (with permission from the clients doctor) have found it helpful to release the connective tissue close to the injury or surgery site giving more mobility to the joint and therefore more blood flow.  Like post knee replacement.  If the person has restricted movement and their doctor says that there is no reason for the restriction to remain then permitting the clients stabilizing muscles have enough strength and integrity I will go ahead and manually release the connective tissue which often feels like working with a taught band of metal, it’s a slow and gentle process that must be done over several sessions.  When we are in our optimal condition our body moves freely without restriction, our fascia is loose allowing for our muscles to engorge as needed with exercise and the tissue is moist permitting muscles to slide against each other and not have the layers of fascia stick together.

The introduction of the foam roll and the use of tennis balls to help facilitate fascia release is a wonderful tool as people can now benefit from the use of these tools in their own home.  I will be posting “how to clips” soon, so please check back.  Foam rolls are available on my products web site.  The tennis balls, (which you can make yourself at home.) will be available on my equipment shop, as my daughter and I make those ourselves.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 28th, 2010 at 8:17 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.