Myofascial Release is a slow moving and deeply profound modality that involves sustained pressure or slack to a particular muscle group which can eliminate pain and restore motion to stagnant areas of the patient's body.
Myofascial Release is a slow moving and deeply profound modality that involves sustained pressure or slack to a particular muscle group which can eliminate pain and restore motion to stagnant areas of the patient's body.
The keen practitioner senses subtle movements within the connective tissue from the skin, through the muscle, down to the bone. Working in this way can create lasting changes through unwinding the connective tissues that encase, permeate and sustain our human forms.
Fascia has been referred to as a web or even a train, but if you break down the word "myofascia" You will come up with this: myo - muscle, fascia - an elastic band. So picture a large rubber band wrapping about your body. It is a continuous loop that might stretch, wrapping around your foot, and spiraling all the way up to your shoulder anchor itself at the base of your skull. This rubber band is constantly changing it’s strength and flexibility in response to stresses placed in it. If that rubber band is not able to keep flexible, resilient, and knot free, it can cause discomfort at any point throughout its length.
Sometimes where we experience pain is our body is not the places where the rubber band is dried out and inflexible; often the pain is a result of a more mobile place in the body being over-worked to make up for the lack of movement in another.
A common example is low back pain that is aggravated by poor mobility of the hips. In those who sit a lot the hips are acutely flexed for long periods of time. The fascia in the front of the hips shortens up and the pelvis may take an anterior tilt. This is turn creates a great deal of stress on the musculature of the lumbar spine to keep us erect through poor alignment of the lumbar vertebrae. Of course we want to give attention to the places that hurt, but we also want to increase mobility to remove pressure from overly stressed structures as well.
Upper back tension is often the result of in-balance in the elasticity of the upper torso fascia. The hyper-kyphotic curve the results from chronically leaning forward causes the musculature in the upper back to have to work stretched out, not at their optimal position of strength. Opposing them is a shortened fascia in the front of the neck, chest, and shoulders. We don’t as often feel pain here, but it’s a lack of elasticity in this region that makes it difficult to sit or stand upright and leads to an achy upper back.
Myofascial Release can be used at any point during a massage therapy session but is especially effective when implemented at the beginning of treatment to warm the tissue and nerves in the area of discomfort. For example, if we were addressing the low back, we might start with myofascial release, creating slack in the fascial structures and allowing them to unwind any restrictive patterns causing myofascial pain. In doing so we allow the superficial muscles to soften, the nervous system to send relaxing signals to the site of bodywork, and thus create an environment in the body that is ready to receive deeper pressure.
During your treatment, you may experience a deep sense of relaxation, or feel large areas of your musculature softening all at once. It is best if you maintain a steady breath, directing you healing focus to the sensations happening directly under the practitioner's hands as the tissue heats, melts and shifts. Myofascial Release is performed with little to no oils and may include a variety of different techniques, all with the same objective: to add length to the fascial band that surrounds and encases your frame.
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