Getting to it! Sharing my PASSION for Fascial Priming
I just can't put this down! I am either nuts or I have some good stuff to share that the Universe is nudging me along with. "But aren't there more important things to do now with my time to save the world???" Well...yes...and, let's not go there! Let's go with getting Fascial Priming birthed! For some reason, it's knocking at the door!
And why yet another movement method? Yes, great, good, fine...but, do we REALLY need another technique to learn? Fascial health...yes,..Pilates, Yoga, Massage, Physical Therapy, Rolfing, etc....don't they cover it?
Yes..those modalities and others for sure are fascial healing modalities. I have been a student of all these approaches...and, I feel there is something NEW here that can ADD to all those wonderful practices. I've practiced yoga for years and had tons of bodywork and Rolfing, but nothing helped my knee and hip problems completely until I got this new orientation and related techniques. The reason is...there is a gap between the new scientific research, namely a paradigm shift in how we are put together anatomically...and the general public's understanding of what this is ...and how it changes the underlying conceptual framework so much...that it's a new ballgame! Imagine that a carpenter or architect just learned that wood is really bendable. That really you can just curve a piece around a corner. Suddenly all the methods and designs shift as we don't need cuts, nails and right angles in the same way. Let's...make a spherical house!
So, we've all grown up knowing that "the hip bone is connected to the...leg bone, the leg bone is connected to the, foot bone"! It's a fairly well known old kid's song in case you never heard those words together! We mostly all learned somewhere along the line about the "Musculoskeletal System" along with the Cardiovascular System, Respiratory System, etc. Great to learn about each separately...but, really they aren't separate at all. If you studied anatomy in school, you learned that tendons connect muscle to bone and the muscle's contract to move the bones. So we then studied each muscle, where it attaches and what then it does- what it moves.
So...what's the big shift??? The big big news is that NERVES are everything. Really! I could start talking about what fascia is...but really underneath that is this huge revelation about nerves! I have been a bodyworker for almost 30 years and taught massage for 10 years, and we have always been trained to avoid nerves. They were called, "Endangerment Zones". Yes, true, don't ream (press hard) on main nerve trunks...but releasing where the nerves are trapped not only releases a whole area of tight tissue (muscle, fascia, blood, lymph...and more nerves!), but it begins the rehabilitation of the nerves and that has far ranging consequences.
So...back to the paradigm shift regarding the fascia: Think of a wetsuit...that is covering your body from head to toe...and has layers that interweave all the way down to the bones...AND...has a vast network, web of nerves in every little minute place. There are 10x as many sensory nerves in this connecting stuff interweaving everything together than there are in just the muscle parts of this wet suit. I like to call it a "Websuit" since it is a web of fibers that have some pathways that run in a line..but mainly the fibers go all different directions...and the nerves are a web within those fibers going everywhere. It's the health of the nerves that determines whether our brain gets accurate information about what is going on....Is it hot out? Should I sweat now to cool my body? How cool? Do i have a cut or infection? What fibroblasts or white blood cells do I need to send? How many? To where? Am I leaning too far to the left and I'm going to fall over if I don't shift right?
If the brain is getting faulty or inadequate info from the sensory nerves...because they are asleep or suffocating in tight saran wrapped fascial patterns, then we don't know how to fight that infection...and it can grow. Or, we trip and fall because we don't really know where our feet truly are. Or, perhaps an area of the body is harboring organisms or toxins and not doing proper housekeeping...cause it doesn't know what is going on there! Basically...when we aren't getting good sensory input...and when our motor neurons, the nerves that do the actions our brain asks for are also offline...we just aren't very tuned in! This can look like being weak, ill, clumsy...not getting picked for basketball, not, "on our game"...oh, and possibly not looking good. Studies haven't been done yet, but the anecdotal info in is that cellulite goes away when the nerves and brain are in good communications!!
It's the sensory nerves that "read" what is going on in your and my body's world...and for most of us, they are not operating at very high efficiency.
Why? These patterns restricting the healthy communications within the fascial nerve networks develop from traumas/injuries in our past...but even more common is the deadening that happens just from lack of a variety of full body movements beyond the usual chair to car to bed actions...or even repetitive bicep curls (!), aging, overuse, and, wearing garments that strap down/restrict/inhibit the nerves and fascia from proper functioning...like SHOES!
The big deal that is so exciting now is that we can rehabilitate those nerves! Now that we better understand how they are so important for overall health and that the majority of these sensory nerves live in this Websuit, and we are learning more about the properties and needs of the websuit; we can now PRIME this websuit for optimal functioning BEFORE we do things...like get out of bed! Priming is preparing something for action...getting ready. It is "Primary"..first! Fascial priming is basically a collection of exercises and some self massage that particularly release, train and rehabilitate the Neuromyofascial web so that we are more alive, coordinated, agile, precise, strong, sensitive, aware, awake...HEALTHY and primed..ready for what the day shall bring! Fascial Priming is not your exercise for the day. Body's are designed to MOVE...not to sit all day. Fascial Priming is something you do both just BEFORE you move, in order to lube, attune, prime the fascial layers so that they are working as one unit with many easefully gliding layers all listening, harmonizing and collaborating and thus don't get injured. It also is done to train the body to function/move, especially walk in full body/full fascial suit movements. Through careful release and retraining the Neuromyofascial web (for some bodies, this can take 6 months to a year..fyi!), old chronic and recent acute pain can disappear. We can bring the body back!
And why yet another movement method? Yes, great, good, fine...but, do we REALLY need another technique to learn? Fascial health...yes,..Pilates, Yoga, Massage, Physical Therapy, Rolfing, etc....don't they cover it?
Yes..those modalities and others for sure are fascial healing modalities. I have been a student of all these approaches...and, I feel there is something NEW here that can ADD to all those wonderful practices. I've practiced yoga for years and had tons of bodywork and Rolfing, but nothing helped my knee and hip problems completely until I got this new orientation and related techniques. The reason is...there is a gap between the new scientific research, namely a paradigm shift in how we are put together anatomically...and the general public's understanding of what this is ...and how it changes the underlying conceptual framework so much...that it's a new ballgame! Imagine that a carpenter or architect just learned that wood is really bendable. That really you can just curve a piece around a corner. Suddenly all the methods and designs shift as we don't need cuts, nails and right angles in the same way. Let's...make a spherical house!
So, we've all grown up knowing that "the hip bone is connected to the...leg bone, the leg bone is connected to the, foot bone"! It's a fairly well known old kid's song in case you never heard those words together! We mostly all learned somewhere along the line about the "Musculoskeletal System" along with the Cardiovascular System, Respiratory System, etc. Great to learn about each separately...but, really they aren't separate at all. If you studied anatomy in school, you learned that tendons connect muscle to bone and the muscle's contract to move the bones. So we then studied each muscle, where it attaches and what then it does- what it moves.
So...what's the big shift??? The big big news is that NERVES are everything. Really! I could start talking about what fascia is...but really underneath that is this huge revelation about nerves! I have been a bodyworker for almost 30 years and taught massage for 10 years, and we have always been trained to avoid nerves. They were called, "Endangerment Zones". Yes, true, don't ream (press hard) on main nerve trunks...but releasing where the nerves are trapped not only releases a whole area of tight tissue (muscle, fascia, blood, lymph...and more nerves!), but it begins the rehabilitation of the nerves and that has far ranging consequences.
So...back to the paradigm shift regarding the fascia: Think of a wetsuit...that is covering your body from head to toe...and has layers that interweave all the way down to the bones...AND...has a vast network, web of nerves in every little minute place. There are 10x as many sensory nerves in this connecting stuff interweaving everything together than there are in just the muscle parts of this wet suit. I like to call it a "Websuit" since it is a web of fibers that have some pathways that run in a line..but mainly the fibers go all different directions...and the nerves are a web within those fibers going everywhere. It's the health of the nerves that determines whether our brain gets accurate information about what is going on....Is it hot out? Should I sweat now to cool my body? How cool? Do i have a cut or infection? What fibroblasts or white blood cells do I need to send? How many? To where? Am I leaning too far to the left and I'm going to fall over if I don't shift right?
If the brain is getting faulty or inadequate info from the sensory nerves...because they are asleep or suffocating in tight saran wrapped fascial patterns, then we don't know how to fight that infection...and it can grow. Or, we trip and fall because we don't really know where our feet truly are. Or, perhaps an area of the body is harboring organisms or toxins and not doing proper housekeeping...cause it doesn't know what is going on there! Basically...when we aren't getting good sensory input...and when our motor neurons, the nerves that do the actions our brain asks for are also offline...we just aren't very tuned in! This can look like being weak, ill, clumsy...not getting picked for basketball, not, "on our game"...oh, and possibly not looking good. Studies haven't been done yet, but the anecdotal info in is that cellulite goes away when the nerves and brain are in good communications!!
It's the sensory nerves that "read" what is going on in your and my body's world...and for most of us, they are not operating at very high efficiency.
Why? These patterns restricting the healthy communications within the fascial nerve networks develop from traumas/injuries in our past...but even more common is the deadening that happens just from lack of a variety of full body movements beyond the usual chair to car to bed actions...or even repetitive bicep curls (!), aging, overuse, and, wearing garments that strap down/restrict/inhibit the nerves and fascia from proper functioning...like SHOES!
The big deal that is so exciting now is that we can rehabilitate those nerves! Now that we better understand how they are so important for overall health and that the majority of these sensory nerves live in this Websuit, and we are learning more about the properties and needs of the websuit; we can now PRIME this websuit for optimal functioning BEFORE we do things...like get out of bed! Priming is preparing something for action...getting ready. It is "Primary"..first! Fascial priming is basically a collection of exercises and some self massage that particularly release, train and rehabilitate the Neuromyofascial web so that we are more alive, coordinated, agile, precise, strong, sensitive, aware, awake...HEALTHY and primed..ready for what the day shall bring! Fascial Priming is not your exercise for the day. Body's are designed to MOVE...not to sit all day. Fascial Priming is something you do both just BEFORE you move, in order to lube, attune, prime the fascial layers so that they are working as one unit with many easefully gliding layers all listening, harmonizing and collaborating and thus don't get injured. It also is done to train the body to function/move, especially walk in full body/full fascial suit movements. Through careful release and retraining the Neuromyofascial web (for some bodies, this can take 6 months to a year..fyi!), old chronic and recent acute pain can disappear. We can bring the body back!
Here's to FEELING fully ALIVE in a Body!
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| Laurie Keith, Licensed Massage Therapist and Perpetual Humble Student of the Living Body |
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