Correcting Posture Imbalances

Alia and Rob Practising side lying myofascial techniques in Rochester NY workshop.

Muscles and movement are integrated into body-wide fascial webbing. Myofascia refers to muscle tissue and its web of connective (fascial) tissue. Fascia is the thin celophane-like covering that you can see covering the chicken breast when the skin is pulled back. Strains, tension, fixation and compensation are distributed throughout fascial lines and fascial webbing - so painful problems in one area of the body can be linked to other areas that are completely asymptomatic.

Modern medicine has excelled at the reductionist model (reducing the body to smaller and smaller parts to understand individual units). With anatomy the reductionist model has translated into athletic injury and posture imbalances being approached as isolated faulty mechanisms. Myofascial therapy studies the physical 'relationship' (knee bone connected to the thigh bone) of the body, so how one body part affected is effected by the whole.

Your body is a synergistic system stringing all parts together in order to understand the whole. It is still important to understand muscle based techniques, but this needs to be set in the context as a whole. (ie - You have low-back pain but your pelvis is level, not excessively tilted forward or back. The tension may be originating in the rounded mid-back.)

Summary: Myofascial therapy addresses the interrelationship of muscle fascia across extended lines and planes throughout the body. True myofascial therapy takes a global view of the individuals alignment and movement patterns. The body's anatomy transmits strain and restriction of movement through absorbed tension in fascial webbing. Fascial therapy 'unpins' the tight, stuck facia to allow the muscle bundles to move more freely and allow the skeleton to align naturally, free of tension. When thinking 'fascia' think of tension, posture and alignment and 'muslces' is the functional part with specific, controlled movement.

Myofascial therapy is an essential component to fitness training and injury rehabilitation.