i’ve been a structural therapist my whole life - ever since learning about posture, pain, and movement as a little girl. i’ll never know how or why people came to me for realignment help starting when i was about 12; but i listened, looked, and did my best to get them out of pain.
It worked so i kept going, and here we are today.
When people today ask how i got into bodywork and massage, it’s easy: “i could never keep my hands off people - because i could feel their pain - and help them feel better - so i figured that’s what i’m supposed to do…”
In my quest as a young bodyworker to solve pain, NeuroMuscular Therapy training and internship brought boring anatomy books wildly to life, as my hands learned comprehensive structural assessment on real people and medical massage for their pain. After two decades as a structural therapist using bodywork and yoga for chronic pain, i became captivated by the breathing rhythms of the brain - the interdependence between the craniosacral and central nervous system and the life-sustaining movement of cerebrospinal fluid.
But it didn’t end there…
In 2006 as an advanced craniosacral therapist, i was grandfathered into brain-lymph therapies with the Chikly Institute, where we are now studying and working with the extracellular matrix, or interstitial fluids, and neurodegenerative pain.
We are 75% water - so where is it?
…circulating between the brain, central nervous system, and the interstitial fluids…in the fascia…
FASCIA
Fascia is a stretchy web>>>
(endoscopic surgery magnified thousands of times, demonstrating the interconnectedness of the whole body within fascia; courtesy JC Guimberteau)
This visco-elastic (gelatinous-stretchy) fascial web houses the extracellular matrix.
The extracellular matrix is:
fluids, structural proteins, and millions of nerve endings; AND
Fascia conducts light…but that story’s for another day…
Today let’s keep it simple:
Fascia is why structure responds to life, and fascia is the medium through which structure and alignment find form.
HOW STRUCTURE RESPONDS TO LIFE
Structure is infinitely more than basic posture and standing up straight.
Structure refers to how things are built and fit together.
Living systems are pliable, and morph in response to environmental forces and how they are used.
Most team sports are unilateral (one-sided); for instance a baseball or tennis player will have one over-developed arm and well trained lead side. Their bodies adapt to these asymmetries, and the care they receive keeps them functional and in the game.
Another example: nursing mothers tend to hold and nurse their baby on their favored side - and twist their head the same way every time to look down; so torticollis (twisted neck), upper back pain, and repetitive wrist, hand, and forearm pain, are frequent results. However, in my experience, these moms can rarely find the time or resources for the treatment they actually need, so their suffering can go on a long, long time.
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Caveats and Compassionate Suggestions:
Each of us is unique as our fingerprints; so our approach to health and self care should be personalized as well. These medical articles offer general guidance that safely informs and serves the majority.
If your situation is extreme, under no circumstances should you ever suddenly take on your own healthcare all alone.
Living with chronic pain can make you feel crazy and increase trauma triggers and agitation - so get support!
Don’t do it alone. When the intensity builds and old symptoms surface, your brain will fear reactivating pain and trauma so it won’t feel safe.
A trusted bodyworker, yoga therapist, somatic counselor, or holistic medical team will offer you and your body safety and support to finally cross the bridge past fear, panic, and pain to a higher vibrational frequency and resonance with life.
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i want to mention Forward Head Posture (FHP), a commonly unnoticed structural distortion with far reaching symptomology - we will cover this in a future stack.
For now let’s simply say FHP is based on postural and emotional habits engrained in our fascia, and aggravated by prolonged sitting, lack of movement, and occupational stress.
“The issues are in the tissues!” as we bodyworkers love to say.
HOW STRUCTURE MORPHS OVER TIME
Most of us living in the modern world have to sit far too much, hunched over our digital technology,
so our backbone tends to bow backwards and those muscles and ligaments grow overstretched and weak; meanwhile our front body is forced to shorten.
And it’s not just muscles that shorten; compression travels through the fascia into all tissue layers,
so that the anterior (front body) ligaments are held short and tight, while our organs become chronically compressed - heart, lungs, stomach, liver, intestines, reproductive.
Plus, structural compression blocks lymph, meaning our inner sewer system backs up because stale fluids can’t get out into circulation.
We are 75% water after all, and nerve information travels through fluids…
When we sit all the time, the central nervous system is literally bent out of shape;
this creates enormous unconscious pressures that manifest in severe physical symptoms. Posturally, the adrenals are over-extended - shoved backwards by our slumped posture, and pumping out stress hormones like nobody’s business…
(which they will continue to do unless interrupted by a safety signal or until they completely burn out.)
AND THEN our sympathetic (fight-flight-freeze) nervous system gets locked in hyper-alarm, increasing agitation, tension, and unconscious stress.
Our adrenals are continually strained by bursts of stress hormones and nerve impulses firing frenetically because we are off-balance and our bodies are struggling to self-correct to survive.
So, it’s sort of like when the fire drill is no longer pretend and a power beyond mind has taken over to assure we survive…
We can’t heal, connect, or live our creativity when the house is on fire and we’re running for our life.
…and this is why people are getting sicker and suffering more even when they seem to be trying their best…
The good news is:
(yes, there’s always hope)
Self-Regulation (brain balance) is under our control, once we trip the main switch.
(Want to trip that switch right now? Scroll to end of this article and use these breathing exercises)
STAY TUNED FOR MORE STORIES OF STRUCTURE, PAIN, AND SELF-HELP
for everyone alive in a body today…
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👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽 Sound as a pound! I will share this one with as many people as possible ✨
Thanks for highlighting the importance of the fascia system... looking forward to "the other story" about it being light conducting..