What does Fascia have to do with my Aches and Pains?

Fascia is a very thin strong connective tissue. It surrounds and intertwines with every muscle, organ, and bone in your body. Some think our skeletal system is what keeps our body upright, but without our fascial network holding everything together as one, we would be a puddle on the floor.

There is much new research and information coming out on Fascia, and it is starting to get the attention and credit it deserves. For both the amazing way it allows our muscles, joints, and organs to glide smooth and friction free over one another, but also for how detrimental it can be when it becomes dehydrated, stiff, and restricted.

There are different depths to fascial layers. From right under our skin helping to create a protective barrier from the outside world,  to deep in our torso where it keeps all of our organs safely in place. When we take time to look at the body, connected as one, we find that those aches and pains you feel, or the restrictions in your range of motion can come from many different links in the same chain.

The job of a Bowen Therapist is to find where the fascial restrictions are, whether it’s in one area or multiple, and release them. And if they come back, determine why. For instance, work related stress injuries can be easily released, but if you go back to the same behavioral patterns, they will most certainly rear their ugly head again. Another example, when we release a specific area in the body that is in pain and inflamed, but the release does not hold over time, it may be due to the tightness and restrictions of other muscles in a different part of the body (ie, knee and foot pain caused by a misaligned pelvis)

To make matters more complicated sometimes not only is the job finding the restrictions, knowing why they are there, and releasing them with as little work as possible, but also what order they need to be released in! At times this is easy and to the point, but you can start to see that over time, when some people have restriction after restriction, and as the body tries to compensate for the imbalanced posture and function, this all becomes a repeating cycle. These are the imbalances that can lead the body into a vulnerable state where illness, injury, and anxiety are more likely to occur.

Watch an Example of How Fascia can Affect Pain