What is fascia? And what does it do?
Fascia is a highly intelligent, dynamic connective tissue that covers everything within your body. It surrounds muscles, organs, bones and cells, running as one continuous piece through your entire system.
Fascia is incredibly stretchy and strong, providing support, protection, shock absorption, fluidity and balance. It gives your body structural integrity, even after physical damage. Some studies are also saying that it is how the body communicates with itself to maintain healthy function. If you took your fascia away you would fundamentally be a puddle of all your requisite parts!
If fascia becomes stuck, damaged or tight, it can cause stiffness, aches, restriction, nerve pain, chronic and acute pain, and all sorts of physical dysfunction. It can restrict lymph flow and cause oedema, and even effect skeletal alignment.
Fascia Is Everywhere Inside You - And Affects Everything Inside You Too
A simple way to imagine what fascia is and how it works it so think of it like a one-piece bodysuit of clingfilm; it holds everything together, yet you still have free movement. However, if you tugged that body suit tight at the shoulder and kept pulling or winding (just as injuries do), that one-piece is going to gradually pull at your neck… stomach…hips…maybe even your feet if it gets tight enough.
When fascia is functioning healthily, it means we move with ease as everything in the body talks to everything else; everything glides smoothly over everything else and nothing is bound into place and pulling desperately to move against that.
However, if fascia becomes disturbed or tight, not only might you experience issues at the site of the injury or issue, but also in places much further away. For instance, if you have scar tissue in your abdomen, you may not have pain there once the initial injury has healed, but the fascial ‘pull’ from the scar tissue or adhesions may possibly be contributing to knee or back pain.
If you have pain, stiffness or mobility issues that don’t seem to go away, seem unconnected to anything you’ve done and for which practitioners have been unable to find a cause - it’s worth exploring whether fascia is the culprit.
Fascia Can Get Snagged By Lots of Things…
…including surgeries, scar tissue, repetitive movements and strain, postural patterns (such as operating machinery, driving, texting, sports, sitting), injuries (small and large, old and new), ‘emotional holding’ (anger, frustration, fear and anxiety), bad posture, sustained compression (bandages, skinny jeans, narrow shoes), trauma (impact, whiplash and falls) and even dehydration.
And because it is one continuous 3-D web, dysfunction in one area can affect the mobility or sensation elsewhere in the body. Fact: fascia can exert up to 2,000lbs of pressure per square inch on underlying tissues, including joints, nerves and lymph ducts…and it is nerve receptor rich so you can see how fundamental its health is to us on so many levels.
Oh, and because fascia does not show up on X-Rays or MRIs, problems with it can go undetected indefinitely or are often misdiagnosed.
“Find the pain and look elsewhere for the cause”
The Origins of MFR
Evidence of MFR’s beginnings can be found in the work of the osteopath Andrew Taylor Still, towards the end of the 19th century but the term has been pioneered by John F. Barnes, a physical therapist in the USA who has been teaching his own, powerful but gentle style of MFR since the 1980s.
Other threads of origin link to Dr Ida P. Rolf, a biochemist who established the soft tissue manipulation and movement modality called Rolfing® and
Thomas Myers, the originator of Anatomy Trains® method of Structural Integration.
The form of MFR that I work with was that developed by John F. Barnes and pioneered in the UK by Ruth Duncan at MFR UK.
How Does Myofascial Release (MFR) Work?
Using gentle, hands-on, sustained techniques (without massage oil or balms), MFR therapy can help to effectively and globally change and release the areas in the body where the fascia has become stuck or bound down and can in some cases achieve positive results in a short space of time. It is a whole-body approach.
You might feel sensations during treatment, such as heat and tingling, even twitching or what feel like ‘little tears’ as restrictions let go. Because the technique is so gentle, the work always goes at a pace and level you can tolerate. Most clients find it very relaxing, as the style of sustained touch used down-regulates the stress response.
Your treatment may well end up touching on injuries or issues that happened a long time ago. If left untreated, fascial restriction and adhesions can ‘creep’, binding down further and further through the system until the ankle you fractured when you fell off your bike aged 10, manifests as inexplicable, nagging neck pain in your 30s (the bone may have mended but the fascia will still be under tension, stuck with scar tissue and ‘creeping’). Fortunately, this is exactly the sort of issue that MFR can potentially help, and that may well get missed by other modalities. So don’t be surprised if you tell me that you have knee pain and I start working on your shoulder!
Find out more about what happens in a session HERE