One of the goals
of your therapy program is to begin to view yourself as a 3-dimensional
being where every area of fluidity or tightness interplays with every
other part of the body to influence levels of flexibility or rigidity
and discomfort or well being. We will go beyond mere muscle attachment/origin
and think of ourselves as one unit, continuous from skin to muscle, muscle
to bone, bone to organs, organs to cells.
Most of us have a pretty good concept of muscle and bone. However,
in western medicine, a crucial system has been overlooked. The fascial system is
one that is made up of a very tough but flexible tissue called fascia. This
fascia creates a 3-dimensional web throughout our entire body surrounding and
infusing every muscle, bone, organ, nerve and cell in the body. Fascia should
be thought of as a complex living system.
Restrictions in this system can be created through injury, emotional
trauma, inflammation, and postural imbalances. As restrictions are formed in the
fascial system, pain, reduced ROM, local dysfunction, systemic dysfunction,
postural imbalances and fatigue may begin to occur. These symptoms can occur
locally or in areas remote from the original restriction because of the 3-dimensional
structure and ubiquity of the fascial system. These restrictions can exert a
tensile pressure of up to 2000lbs on delicate, pain-sensitive structures anywhere
in the body.
Acknowledgement and treatment of the fascial system is credited to
John Barnes, P.T. His work has provided the therapists who practice his work with
new and extremely effective tools to relieve the chronic pain that so many of us
endure. Many of the techniques we will cover are from his courses on Myofascial Release™.
Many of the stretches that will be assigned in your home program are
stretches that specifically address the fascial system. In order to make permanent
changes in the length of the fascia, the length of time that we hold our stretches
becomes important. You will need to hold your stretches for a minimum of 1.5 minutes
and sometimes as long as 3-10 minutes. To judge the time allotment you can at first
use an egg timer. However, it is strongly recommended that you rely less on a fixed
time and more on the sensation of the release to determine how long to hold the stretches.
Keep in mind that fascia will tend to regress, especially in problem areas,
if it is not stretched on a daily basis during the early (intensive) phase of your program.
Therefore, to resolve problem areas, it is recommended that you work on lengthening the
fascia in those areas at least once a day for the first two weeks of your program.
|
