In Depth Massage Therapy

The picture says it all!

The spine can develop growths called bone spurs. These bone spurs can cause back pain and other symptoms if they cause excess friction or lead to compression of a nerve root or the spinal cord.

What is Fascia? Fascia is tough connective tissue that creates a 3-dimensional web extending without interruption from head to toe. Fascia surrounds and infuses... every muscle, bone, nerve, blood vessel, and organ, all the way down to the cellular level. The fascial system affects every system and function in your body- musculoskeletal, neurological, metabolic, etc. The white, glistening fibers you see when you pull a piece of meat apart or when you pull chicken skin away is fascia. What is Fascia made of ? Fascia consists of a complex which has three parts: 1. Elastin fibers - This is the elastic and stretchable part of the complex. 2. Collagen fibers - These fibers are extremely tough and give support to the structure. 3. Ground substance/matrix: A gelatinous like substance that transports metabolic material throughout the body What does fascia do? The fascial system generally supports, stabilizes, and cushions. Fascia creates separation between vessels, organs, bones, and muscles. It creates space through which delicate nerves, blood vessels, and fluids can pass. What are Fascial Restrictions? In a healthy state, the collagen fibers wrap around the elastic fibers in a relaxed, wavy configuration. Trauma, repetitive motion, inflammation, or poor posture can cause the fascia to become solidified and shortened. These thickened areas are referred to as a fascial restriction. Fascial restrictions have the capacity of creating up to 2,000 pounds of pressure per square inch in a restricted area. That crushing pressure can compromise any physiological system in the body resulting in pain and dysfunction. The fascia throughout the body is all interconnected like the yarn in a sweater or a complex spider web. A restriction in one area of the body creates tension throughout this web pulling on other distant structures. This explains why some people may have pain that appears unrelated to their original injury. Furthermore, myofascial restrictions do not show up on common standardized tests such as x-rays, MRI, CAT scans, etc. Fascial restrictions can pull the body out of its normal alignment, compressing joint surfaces and bulging disks, resulting in pain, loss of motion, and weakness. Info collected from Spine - Health, Mayo Clinic, NIH & Medterms Art by Dan Beckemeyer

In a moment of activation when hooked into personal and collective patterns of shame, rage, and fear two ancient pathways appear. The first is to move quick...ly away, dissociate, and locate the erupting energy outside ourselves. To bail out of the body, abandon the life surging within us, and do whatever we can to stay out of the underlying vulnerability. The other is to become flooded, drowning in the material, fusing with it and getting tangled. Here, we lose contact with the space in which the emotion is appearing, fall down the rabbit hole, and identify with the thoughts and feelings as who we are. These pathways are not neurotic, evidence of failure, or a clear sign that something is wrong with us, but adaptive strategies which arose creatively to protect a fragile little nervous system from a plunge into fragmentation. They were our best attempt at self-care and can be honored for the role they once played. The invitation now is to see if we still require that level of protection or if we are now in possession of capacities that were not available at an earlier time. To replace the archaic circuitry with a new way of curiosity, empathy, and attunement to replace the urgency with slowness and to discover in an embodied way that we will never truly care for ourselves by way of self-abandonment. To flood our immediate experience with warmth and slowly and consciously enter that very shaky, contradictory, hot, sticky, pregnant alchemical middle territory, which can appear quite groundless and disorienting until we get used to it. To practice intimacy with our thoughts, emotions, and sensations, while not becoming enmeshed in them. Intimacy without fusion. Close, but not so close we fall in. For this is where the water of life will be found. While it may seem like moving a mountain, we can encode new circuitry, both in these miracle brains as well as into the collective, into the psyche of the culture. It is an offering that each of us can make, as a practice of compassion, one moment at a time. This is an art that we can bring into this world, which seems to need this sort of magic now more than ever. Autumn glory photo by Heung Soon via Pixabay

We all need loving touch <3