Chronic Pain Problem is in approximately 80-90% of the World's population.
It goes undetected with modern day radiology or tomography imaging, MRIs, scans and often times patients with myofascial restriction conditions with unknown etiology goes undiagnosed or misdiagnosed due to lack of diagnostic imaging procedures and knowledge of this system that envelops every cell, organ and body membrane and cavities of the internal structures.
The Fascia...
If you are in massage/facial session and during neck/shoulder treatment heard something that sounded like crinkling plastic under your skin, that wasn’t your imagination — it was your parched, stiffened fascia plus lymph nodes in need of unloading toxins ...
The collagen fibers that make up fascia need to stay supple to work properly, and to slide over and under muscles and other inner-body surfaces.
Among the many drawings of the human anatomy, 500 years ago, Leonardo Da Vinci astutely depicted fascia in one of his pieces. This remarkable depiction comes ages before its actual discovery by modern medicine.
Fascia is a web of connective tissue formed in bands that wraps around all the internal parts of the body from head to toe and fuses it all together.
It allows the muscles to move freely alongside other structures and reduces friction. It can be found immediately beneath the skin, around muscles, groups of muscles, bones, nerves, blood vessels, organs and cells.
Fascia is everywhere.
Biologically, it’s what holds us together!
Try this now:
Sit in your chair with your knees bent and dorsiflex your ankle (flex up and down).
Now take that leg and with the knee straight, put it on the table in front of you and do the same thing.
The foot moves less.
Now bend your trunk forward.
Even less motion.
Next, drop your head.
Now you can really feel tightness in your calf!
This demonstrates just one simple fascial connection, the back-line, but the fascial connections throughout the body are far, far more intricate.
Since there is one singular piece of this stretchy, mesh-like substance interweaving through muscles and organs from head to toe like shrink-wrap, distress in one area can affect movement and create symptoms elsewhere.
This answers the question as to why our shoulder begins to hurt after a sore ankle has been bothering us, or any one of a number of scenarios where stress from one area causes tension in another part of the body.
The body might be composed of different parts, but they are all connected through this mysterious organic glove-like web of fascia!
As soon as there is dysfunction or pain in one area, the body adapts and compensates to keep the body upright and work without causing pain.
As it does this the fascia will shorten or tighten in areas because the muscles cannot hold the extra tension alone.
Posture changes to accommodate this.
Fascia has enough substance to hold shape, but not enough to support weight.
This illustrates how movement and structure conditions, such as poor posture, affect fascia, causing pain and unstable movement.
I can go on and on, but
Above all, understanding fascia helps us understand the extraordinary power of Massage.
Remember, I talked about commitment and that each Massage Session builds on top of previous one.
Now, you decide...
With Love, T