You’re achy, you’re sore and you have no idea why? Whether you are an athlete, yogi or just trying to keep healthy and pain free at any age, treating your fascia properly can make a remarkable difference to how you live your life.
Our monthly fascial release workshop (based in TIllington), is a two hour session which can be booked at www.bookwhen.com/bodhi – so why should you come along?
No matter how many dynamic stretches you do your hams and glutes never seem to ease up? You just feel that in the last few years EVERYTHING is getting little more stiff and unhelpful and think that its something you just need to ger used to?
It may feel like muscle pain, but unlike a tight hamstring that makes you yelp when you stand up, your ache isn’t triggered by a particular movement, and you can feel it in different places at various times. Fascia could be the reason you’re aching, feeling sore and have no idea why. It could also be the reason you are inflexible, tired and feeling generally run down. The good news is, you can do something about it.
What causes fascia to tighten?
- A lifestyle of limited physical activity
- Repetitive movements that overwork a single part of the body (fascial release is key for athletes including cyclists and runners)
- Trauma such as surgery or injury
- When we contract a virus and our immune system goes into overdrive – the inflammation that occurs as part of the immune response can damage our tissues and our fascia reacts reducing blood flow to areas of our body and causing fascia to tighten and making us feel tired, aching, stiff and lethargic.
So what exactly is Fascia?
Fascia is a fibrous tissue that ‘connects’ every cell in our body. This connective tissue forms a 3-dimensional web of our body, extending from our head to our toes. Fascia surrounds and infuses every muscle, muscle fibre, bone, blood vessel, nerve and organ in our body. It also directly affects our body systems like our muscular and neurological systems. It helps different muscle systems communicate with one another and helps us to maintain posture, control body position and make smooth, co-ordinated movements.
It’s made up of collagen, which provides tissue resiliency, strength and elastin which when healthy has a gelatinous, fluid texture allowing organs and muscles to glide over each other without creating friction and allowing easy movement. When not functioning properly, signals from the nerve endings are muffled or muted (so you don’t feel comfortable in your own body) or they’re interpreted by your brain as pain and discomfort.
If you’ve been sitting at a desk or in a car for a long time and your hand instinctively goes to your neck as you roll your head from side to side, that sound (like a packet of crisps) under your skin was probably your less than mobile fascia.
Collagen fibres that make up fascia need to stay supple to work properly – to slip and slide over and under muscles and other inner-body surfaces but when it dries up and tightens around muscles, it can limit mobility and cause painful knots to develop. There are certain things that cause fascia to thicken and become sticky.
Fascia can carry strain, stress, trauma and injury, and when trauma or injury occurs, the fascia hardens and blocks, stopping oxygen and nutrient flow to the injured site.
Yoga teachers have been passionate about fascia for decades, but often in a yoga session we pay much attention to muscles and less to improving our fascia. As a firmly vinyasa girl – I still believe that there’s an important place in every class or practice to address this very important area of our well-being.
In stronger forms of yoga such as vinyasa, power yoga or ashtanga we are generating oxygenated, nutrient rich blood and circulating it through our muscles by flowing the body in and out of various postures. This circulation ensures old cellular debris is eliminated and relevant nutrients are brought in to feed the cells. Forward folds, back bends, twists and inversions mean we are moving our bodies in all the ways it was built to be moved and our body loves it. With healthy fascia tendons slide smoothly and help activate muscular contraction, providing more power and strength.
But not all Fascia is created equal!
It is very important that we keep Fascia well hydrated. The older we get, the drier we become. This dryness contributes to joint stiffness and muscle tightness, which can accelerate the aging process. But in order to truly keep our fascia working well – we need to work with Deep Fascia.
Without including fascial release poses in our health routine fascia can become dehydrated, stiff and less elastic. As this occurs fascia begins to stick to each other, creating adhesions that decrease mobility and increase fatigue and ultimately cause pain. Toxins and waste products get stuck where these adhesions take place and harmful bacteria can rapidly multiply in these areas.
How do we work with Deep Fascia?
Happy fascia is fluid. It’s springy and strong. When we run or walk, happy fascia will return the force we emit right back at us, making us feel lighter and softer. We use less energy to do things and our muscles and body will work less and move with greater efficiency.
Our joints are supported by tendons and ligaments connecting our bones together and attaching our muscles to bones. They can get tight and rigid and if injured they can take a long time to recover because there is less blood circulation there.
To keep joints mobile and healthy we need to keep our ligaments and tendons happy and we do this by addressing Deep Fascia. When we hold certain positions for 90+ seconds we move from superficial tissue into Deep Fascia. This transition is called a ‘phase change’ and it this ‘phase change’ that creates the environment of change that hydrates fascial tissue allowing ligaments and tendons to relax and release.
Tom Myers (a pioneer in functional anatomy) highlights how deeply our fascia is connected with our neurological system. Our postural habits and environmental factors clearly affect our form, but our thoughts, emotions and our brain chemistry play a major part too.
Fascia has been with us from the beginning of our human journey – it’s our fascia that guided our form when we were a tiny embryo in our mother’s womb.
“In the development of the embryo, it’s actually the connective tissue cells that are organizing the brain. The brain cells of the neo-cortex are originally born in the ventricles in the middle of the brain. And they have to migrate out to the surface of the brain. That’s not very far in a little tiny little embryo, but it’s incredibly long, as far as the cell is concerned…So how do the cells which get born in the middle of the brain know where to go on the surface of the brain? The answer is that they put their little ‘arms’ around a connective tissue fibre and ride that connective tissue fibre out to the surface of the brain and are deposited in just the right spot.” – Tom Myers
This shows incredible insight into the importance of fascia. It shows just how intimately connected it is, not only to our physical form, but also our mental and emotional form.
So whether you just want to stay healthy and ache free or want to improve your sports performance and reduce the risk of injury taking care of your fascia is a must in your regime.
