What Is Myofascial Release?
What is Myofascial Release?
Fascia:
Fascia is a tough connective tissue which spreads throughout the body in a three-dimensional web from head to toe. The fascia is ubiquitous, surrounding every muscle, bone, nerve, blood vessel and organ all the way down to the cellular level. Generally, the fascial system provides support, stability and cushioning. It is also a system of locomotion and dynamic flexibility forming muscle.
Tightening of the fascial system is a histologic, physiologic and biomechanic protective mechanism that is a response to trauma. The fascia loses its pliability, becomes restricted, and is a source of tension to the rest of the body. The ground substance solidifies, the collagen becomes dense and fibrous, and the elastin loses its resiliency. Over time this can lead to poor muscular biomechanism, altered structural alignment, and decreased strength, endurance and motor coordination. Subsequently, the patient is in pain and the functional capacity is lost.
Value of Myofascial Release:
Myofascial release is a hands-on soft tissue technique that facilitates a stretch into the restricted fascia. A sustained pressure is applied into the restricted fascia. A sustained pressure is applies into the restricted tissue barrier: after 90-120 seconds the tissue will undergo histological length changes allowing the first release to be felt. The therapist follows the release into a new tissue barrier and holds after a few releases the tissue will become softer and more pliable. The restoration of length and health to the myofascial tissue will take the pressure off the pain sensitive structures such as nerves and blood vessels, as well as restoring alignment and mobility to the joints.
Myofascial Release Benefits
Benefits of Myofascial Release
Experts estimate that upwards of ninety percent of disease is stress-related. And Nothing ages us faster, internally and externally, then high stress. Myofascial Release is an effective tool for managing this stress, which translates into:
- Decreased anxiety.
- Enhanced sleep quality.
- Greater energy.
- Improved concentration.
- Increased circulation.
- Reduced fatigue.
Myofascial Release can also help specifically address a number of health issues. Bodywork can:
- Alleviate low-back pain and improve range of motion.
- Assist with shorter, easier labor for expectant mothers and shorten maternity hospital stays.
- Ease medication dependence.
- Enhance immunity by stimulating lymph flow—the body's natural defense system.
- Exercise and stretch weak, tight, or atrophied muscles.
- Help athletes of any level prepare for, and recover from, strenuous workouts.
- Improve the condition of the body's largest organ—the skin.
- Increase joint flexibility.
- Lessen depression and anxiety.
- Promote tissue regeneration, reducing scar tissue and stretch marks.
- Pump oxygen and nutrients into tissues and vital organs, improving circulation.
- Reduce postsurgery adhesions and swelling.
- Reduce spasms and cramping.
- Relax and soften injured, tired, and overused muscles.
- Release endorphins—amino acids that work as the body's natural painkiller.
- Relieve migraine pain.
Mind And body
By: John F. Barnes, PT
Without Awareness, There is No Choice!
Imagine you were injured a couple of years ago. You received on-going therapy in the form of hot packs, ultrasound, massage, electrical stimulation, exercise and flexibility training, joint mobilization and muscle energy techniques, medication and psychological counseling with no avail. All of the standard tests show nothing and you desperately want to get better. You've been given a multitude of different diagnostic labels and all the experts are telling you there is nothing wrong. You feel imprisoned in a body that won't respond and allow you to play and work again. You feel helpless and out of control. What if something was overlooked? What could it be? THE INSTINCTUAL "FREEZE RESPONSE"
When many of us are injured, we go into a state of disassociation at the moment of trauma to survive. Our body/mind experiences an instinctive "freeze response" and the positional, psychological memory becomes indelibly imprinted into our mind/body awareness. The sympathetic and parasympathetic autonomic nervous system becomes stuck in a state of hyper arousal that is not under our voluntary control. It is like having your foot on the accelerator of a car and the other foot on the break. This consumes an enormous amount of energy and eventually exhausts us.
Because this positional memory becomes disassociated and locked in our subconscious, we have no awareness of it and without conscious awareness, we have no control of it.
This "freeze response" over time, creates holding or bracing patterns that eventually produce increased chronic muscular tone, spasm, and myofascial restrictions that eventually become symptoms.
Traditionally, therapy focuses on symptoms, explaining why modalities, exercise, joint mobilization and muscle energy techniques, massage and/or medicine can, many times, only produce poor or temporary results.
Why didn't good psychological counseling help? Possibly because the majority of psychological therapy is done in consensus consciousness. In other words, "talk therapy" and analysis are focused on the conscious level and the cause of the chronic symptom complex is on the instinctual level, which is not accessed by words and analysis, or for that matter by traditional therapeutic interventions or medicine.
What can help this state of disassociation? Myofascial release and myofascial unwinding.Myofascial restrictions do not show up in any standard tests, so myofascial restrictions that solidify these chronic holding or freeze response patterns in our bodies are missed or misdiagnosed in healthcare.
Myofascial release frees these powerful, structural restrictions that place enormous pressure upon sensitive structures that produce pain, headaches and restrictions of motion. And myofascial unwinding (the motion facilitation component of myofascial release approach) guides the patient into significant positions of past traumas.
In the safety of the therapeutic environment, the therapist gently holds the patient in these significant positions of past trauma. In these therapeutic positions, the patient's tissue memory releases the instinctual bracing patterns. The "freeze response" is then deactivated, which allows for continued structural release and elimintaion of symptoms. The release of tissue memory creates awareness to return the patient to conscious choice and control of his or her destiny. The patient can then progress toward the ultimate goal of healing and health.