Your Fascia is Organic Symmetry

Your body is a living work of art. It has grown from the division of one cell into two. Each cell has an organization and structure that is wrapped in a lining that holds and mothers that cell. 

Every time there is an addition, each cell is wrapped and bathed in fascia: the tissue that connects, your connective tissue. This fascia changes form depending upon what is needed and what is current in your internal and external environment, in a very similar way to water.

Fascia is the interstitial fluid within the cell, it is plasma, your blood. It ranges from these fluids, your organs, muscle fibers, all tissues, teeth, skin to the density of your bones. It relays information based upon the shape and movements that are requested, required, or demanded from your daily life.

Fascia can be pliable and flexible, or dense and rigid. The matrix of connective tissue is so dynamic that scientists are still trying to understand the variety of mechanisms at play, because it has so many ways of being.

Fascia is constant arrangement and reorganizes itself to provide you structure and stability as well as strength, balance and tensegrity: equal positive tension.

Fascia holds the cells and it relays information, it is informed and informs. The brain is a sponge of connective tissue.

SO, what does this mean for us as human beings?

Hydration is Key, Be like a Body of Water 

We want our tissue to be bathed and hydrated and in dynamic ease. We want to be able to have the flexibility, agility, stability, strength and mobility of our highest potential. To be nimble and be quick.

In order to keep our tissues healthy, they need to be hydrated. Make sure you are getting plenty of water, even if you have to go to the bathroom more. Your water needs electrolytes and trace minerals in order to hydrate you.

You can also hydrate your tissues with your nutritional food and supplemental sources. Treating the fascial restrictions in your body is effectively done through advanced bodywork techniques.

Myofascial Release hydrates tissues by treating denser fascia that has become more gummy, less pliable, adhered, adhesions that glue down and stick together the fascia as well as muscles. These restrictions need to be broken down and reabsorbed, flushed out and excreted.

Hydrating more stubborn areas with manual therapy restores function. Function is hydration. We are after all a body made mostly of water.

If we look to the earth as a mirror, in her processes, we can find our own body mimicking these principles. 

We are made of roughly 80–90% of water. So as we look to the ways in which the earth moves, washes and cleans, we can find ways to be.

Looking to precipitation, and the ways in which water moves to the lowest point and is held in gravity. It then changes form to be able to lift and rise to the clouds, to be moved to other parts of the earth, moved by winds and by the air.

Conscious breathing can be practiced to create more movement in the body and can be directed to different areas of the body.

When water moves it shifts in temperature and altitude and changes form and can become ice and snow. In these processes the earth helps to purify the water, with the lush wetlands, forests and vegetation that combs and cleans the water as it makes its journey onward.

We can liken the lungs to our internal trees, our branches and tributaries. Water is ever moving, changing and adapting to its environment, in gravity, and in relationship.

Moving Your Body is Key to Keep Your Body the Most Alive it Can Be

Like water, we need to keep moving. To have healthy tissues we need to keep flowing and staying connected.

When we have injury, trauma or stillness, our muscles can atrophy, our parts start to compartmentalize and isolate, and with stagnation (again think of water that stagnates) there is less ability for the systems of the body to function in their optimal way.

The stillness and sedentary positions, the ways we drive for hours, do computer work for several days at a time, bent over, the way we lift and pick up heavy things—the functions required in our modern society lead to dysfunction in the body.

As I sit at the computer here writing, I can feel my shoulders hunching over, my head forward, my fascia molding to the shape I am taking. I am writing on the couch which is extra stumpy (note to self: don’t write at the couch next time). Haha. 

I am planning my extra long movement session (I am going to commit to an hour and a half) today to counterbalance these positions and give my body the extra care it needs on this rainy Saturday morning.

We need to move our bodies regularly. If there has been injury, or it hurts to move, we stop moving as much. The body starts to compensate after injury by favoring one side. This can lead to tension patterns that can ricochet up the body by making one side tighter than the other, and then the body has to tighten somewhere else.

We can become fearful of moving. It can be painful, and most humans avoid pain. Unfortunately, what we resist persists. Pain relays within the fascial matrix and the mind-body connection can become a negative feedback loop.

When you have pain it is a fascial restriction. Pain can also be emotional, mental or stress related. All of these issues are held in the fascial network.

We want symmetry in the body, we want to find balance by creating tensegrity. We are looking at tension patterns left to right, front and back, ground and rise. Because fascia is the mother of all systems, we find that fascial health restores function to all systems of the body.

Addressing your fascial system is the most effective way to get moving again, and to finding health, no matter what the diagnosis.

Myofascial Release is the most effective therapy I have found in my more than 20 years as a bodyworker to release holding patterns of tension, restoring function and health.

Angela Rose is a Myofascial Release Therapist and Injury Specialist. She has successful outcomes with clients who are looking to avoid surgery, who have had surgery and need rehab. 

Clients with scoliosis, knee and hip surgery or replacement, spinal fusion, bulging discs, sciatica, women’s health issues—you name it. She creates lasting structural change in your body.

She practices Presence Centered Awareness Therapy, a psychosomatic experience during sessions to integrate and treat consciousness, so that any underlying mental or emotional patterns, past traumas that could be creating and maintaining physical issues can be addressed.

Angela treats clients in Grass Valley, CA at Sol Bodyworks. Book an intensive, series, or session today at Solbodyworks.com.