Fascia is connective tissue that covers everything in your body, including your muscles, bones and nerves. It’s made up primarily of collagen and it has multiple layers: superficial, deep and visceral. It essentially holds everything together and provides a smooth pathway for tissue to slide and move fluidly over each other. 

Normal fascia is easily flexible and helps your body move properly. However, fascia also can get injured or torn (creating adhesions) which makes it more sticky, fibrotic, and less resilient. This transformation will cause it to grasp itself to whatever tissue is running through it: muscles, joints, nerves, blood vessels, etc. Which may lead to your muscles being incapable of gliding smoothly over each other, joints limiting their range of motion, and blood vessels unable to deliver oxygen and nutrients efficiently. Some of the most common causes of fascial adhesions are:

• Sports-related injuries

• Improper body positioning

• Misuse or overactive muscles

• A sedentary lifestyle

For some people, adhesions can worsen over time causing the fascia to compress the muscles it surrounds and provoke stubborn pain in any given area. This often can result in hard, tender knots in the muscles, called trigger points. With the help of soft tissue recovery tools that are in the market like foam rollers, massage guns, or lacrosse balls, you can definitely assist in distracting the nervous system from feeling your fascial pain, but essentially it isn’t enough to remove months, possibly years worth of connective tissue build up.

 Through specific manual techniques and assisted modalities, an effective bodywork session will ‘flatten out’ the crinkly fascia, diminish pain and restore proper fluidity within your movement. Whether it’s build up from an old injury, overused movements, or you taking on new work environments (i.e., Working from home on your kitchen table), book a session with a therapist today and take control of your fascia health.