The Traveling Web (Part Four) Stretch Into The New Year!

I hope that this finds you all well and that you have enjoyed the festive season! It has been a very relaxed Christmas for me as I took 10 days to kick back and relax, so am fresh and raring to go this new year!

This is the final part of the mini series on fascia. Today I want to take a look at how we can all start to help our fascia unwind at home. I have spoken in the past about how I would approach fascia release in the treatment room, so I think it is time to look at how you can work on it in-between treatments.

Before we start through, I think I need to do some mopping up around the edges of the blog which will help with today's subject. Over the Christmas break David, (my husband), pointed out that I need to start linking my spurious thoughts together for my clients. I know what is in my head and how it links together, but it could be a little annoying if I don't make it clear to all of you!

There has been a link in all the blogs over the past six months and it would be a good time to highlight my train of thought and the main gist of it all is Stretching!

My work at Craggy Island for my dissertation is looking into how climbers can stretch their muscles and fascia to improve their climbs on the bouldering wall. My reading into Dr I. Rolfe on the subject looked into how yoga stretching can help with fascia unwinding. I stretch every client that I see in the treatment room to help the releases within the treatment... It has been commented on that you can walk around London and spot my clients very easily: They are the commuters doing neck and leg stretches on the tube and the streets!

To help your fascia become healthy, flexible and able to stand up to the riggers of life you must stretch!

In the last blog we looked at how fascia can become stuck when joints don't work correctly (when a leg is in a cast or when a client is suffering from arthritis in the hip for example). If you imagine the connective tissue around the joints bunching up and becoming contracted, dense and brittle you very easily begin to see how stretching that area would ease everything up. Stretching allows fibres to stretch, encourages movement and flow around the area with an increase of blood and nutrients and allows the central nervous system to tell the brian that the body can move out of it's current position.

Even a little stretch can make a huge difference. When I was listening to Leon Chaitow this year he was talking about the theory that even if the mind simply thinks about stretching a muscle and it's associated fascia the fibres engage in the process and start to change; therefore if movement is really painful and yet we still want to encourage change, we can start with the simple and basic principle of just thinking about stretching and then move on from there.

With a lot of clients I often stretch them as they resist my pressure; Resisted Stretching. For an effective stretch we only need a maximum of 20% resistance from the client and as it is their personal value of 20% it doesn't matter how classically strong or weak they are, they are still working with their body at the point where it matters.

You can do resisted stretching at home really easily, but I think it is yoga and tai-chi that I would direct most clients to enable them to stretch passively over a longer time to allow the space to encourage pliability within the body connective tissue.

Try this experiment as you read this to see what I mean:

As you sit down, straighten your leg and then point your foot to the ceiling so there is a nice angle at your ankle. You should feel the muscles at the back of your leg stretch. Hold that stretch until you feel it lessen (30 – 40 seconds or longer) and then point your toes further to the ceiling without going back to the start point. You'll feel your leg stretch in a new and maybe deeper way and this is because you have allowed the time for the fibres to elongate out of their contracted position. A three minute stretch is not unusual!

Yoga helps this process and is a brilliant way to stretch the whole body in a class. Once you have been to a few classes you can start doing it at home on your own and hold the poses for the time that you feel is necessary to help stretch and release the body.

Tai-Chi is great as it adds movement to the stretch, so if you are looking for something with a bit of flow, you may find that this is more suitable for you.

Just remember to be slow and steady; it's a process and not a race. It can take years for the body to 'get stuck', so don't expect to 'unstick' all of a sudden! Listen to what your body is saying, so if it feels that you are taking a stretch too far too soon, back off and start in a gentle place and move forward with your body instead of trying to jam it into a pose that looks great but may be causing you more pain.

If it helps, my problem is incredibly tight hamstrings. On a bad day I find it hard to bend over and touch my knees! However, if I spend about 10 minutes stretching them out and easing into a new place I can bend over and get my hands on my shins. It's a problem that I will always have to work at, but that is just what I have to do to avoid lower back and knee pain. We all have our homework to do!

So happy stretching! If you want more advice on what to stretch and where, then I am more than happy to show you at the end of each of your massage sessions with me.

What I'm loving in the Treatment Room today:

Barrier Repair: In this howling wind and rain it is the product to help your skin survive the elements.

Music of the day:

Sting: Live in Berlin with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.