Fascia Holds More Than Tension

One of the biggest keepers of tension in the body is the fascial system — thin, connective tissue that wraps around your muscles, bones, and organs. This interesting system is a major factor in holding your body upright and controlling how we move. It holds onto patterns and experiences from your life. For example, if you were a tennis player as a teen, you may hold onto tension patterns in your body that mirror the movements made in tennis, which may look like a twisting pattern between your shoulders and hips that influences how you move.

Releasing fascial tension is important in body work. It's separate enough from the muscles and bones that it needs it's own attention but it's woven into these other systems so deeply that it effects how easily they move and adapt.

However...tension is not the only thing fascia holds on to.

Fascia and Memory

Fascia is a connective tissue that doesn't just hold us together, it holds onto memories, emotions, and experiences.

When you have any experience, small or big (from running into a friend at the grocery store to birthing a baby!), your body pairs an emotion with the physical experience you had. It's how we learn.

Fascia locks in this memory-emotion pair, which influences how you hold your body moving forward, especially when you're in a similar situation. It's kinda like the idea of muscle memory, but it's actually fascia that holds the memory. It's helpful because it takes more off the plate of your conscious mind, allowing you to do more without having to think more, giving your brain more space to think of new things.

When Fascial Memory Becomes a Problem

Overall, this system is pretty genius. The body is very smart and incredible at adapting.

BUT...without the opportunity to review what you've learned and absorbed into your fascial system, your body might come to conclusions that aren't quite helpful for you, leading to pain and emotional responses that are less than ideal.

Because the thing is, the body is incredible at adapting for survival, not necessarily thriving. And these survival systems can override our plans for thriving.

For example, if you find that you have an extra stressful week at work approaching with a lot of projects due or things to prepare for and your back starts hurting, it might be remembering how often you sat in uncomfortable positions studying for your upcoming final exams in college. The anticipation of busyness and hard work is triggering a memory in your fascia to the time when you developed back pain before finals.

And it’s possible to shift these patterns! But awareness of the pattern in the first place can help a lot.

Fascial Release During Pregnancy

Pregnancy is a common time to build awareness over your patterns because your constantly shifting body brings these patterns to the surface. 

Maybe that twisted fascial pattern from your tennis days hasn’t ever bothered you because you were so used to it that it was your normal. But now that your body is moving all your insides around to make space for a baby, you can feel a pulling in your low back and hips that you might not have felt before.

Getting body work in pregnancy to manage these patterns as they surface, as well as balancing your body as you grow and change, is one of the best things you can do to feel good during pregnancy and encourage your baby to grow in the best position possible. 

Through gentle, fascial-based chiropractic and Webster technique, you will be giving your body and your baby the best opportunity to remain aligned and open throughout pregnancy.

Neuro Emotional Technique

When the fascia patterns can’t release with body work alone, or you can tell you are holding onto more than tension, Neuro Emotional Technique might be just the tool you need to release the pattern.

NET is a mind-body stress technique that releases emotional patterns stored in the body. 

Emotional energy can create a lot of tension and dysfunction in the body beyond the fascia. Having a technique that can specifically target the location, subject, and emotion that got stuck, can make a huge difference in how you feel and how your body functions. 

And it might only take a few minutes to get there.

NET works with the body to release what it is ready to let go of and it so specific so quickly that people often report feeling lighter, more peace, and less tension after one session. 

You can schedule an NET session with Dr. Becca if you are ready to release the tension you feel like you can’t access, or find and NET provider near you.