Andreo Spina has just come out with what I think is his best video yet. In it, he describes the way scar tissue adheres between layers of soft tissue in the body.
This information is critical to everyone who has a body. Soft tissue scarring is a fact of life. Everyone gets it. Knowing what to do about it and actually doing those things will improve your health, your movement, and your strength.
What are Soft Tissues?
The body has several layers of tissues.
There’s your skin, on the surface.
Under that, there’s the fascia, a contractile connective-tissue. Fascia is that white stuff you see on meat that you get in the supermarket.
Then there’s the muscle, which is attached to bone by tendons.
And the bones are attached to one another with ligaments.
Scar tissue, or “adhesions,” are areas where some part of the soft tissue gets damaged, and doesn’t actually heal. Instead it forms rigid connective-tissue bridges in order to stabilize the tissues and allow for movement.
Typically scar tissues remain when the body isn’t moved. But we’ll get to that in a second.
First, here’s Andreo’s video:
So you can see the importance of breaking up scar tissue. Imagine, as Andreo said, “stretching your leg up with a pair of skin-tight jeans on.”
You can’t do it.
That is, you can’t move well if your soft tissues are full of scar tissue that is preventing them from moving.
And if you can’t move well, your body can’t do several things:
1. It can’t pump blood back to your heart sufficiently. The contraction of muscle is what pumps blood back to your heart. If your muscles can’t (or aren’t made to…different issue) contract fully, your circulation sucks.
2. If that happens, metabolic waste builds up in your tissues…so, number two is You can’t clear metabolic waste produces efficiently. When those build up, disease happens.
3. You can’t feel the joy of movement. If you’re bound up by scar tissue, movement is probably painful. That’s no fun. And that doesn’t help you want to move.
So, what can you do about it? Here are a few things:
1. Get high-quality bodywork.
What do I mean by this? I mean bodywork from someone who understands the video above, and who isn’t just giving you a “relaxation massage.” People who label themselves as offering “sports massage” often have a good understanding of the above. Self-massage works as well. Investigate some techniques and apply them (on YouTube you can search for things like “myofascial release” or “skin sliding” or “break up adhesions” or “self-massage” or any combination of the above).
2. Take hot baths.
Yes, a nice hot bath is relaxing. Throw in some Epsom Salts if you want. The bath can also help to “liquify” the very soft tissues in your body, allowing them to slide again. But that will only happen on one other condition…that you:
3. Stay well hydrated.
This means drinking plenty of high-quality H2O. Not going to go into a lot of detail here. Simply try the pee-test. If your pee is not clear, you’re dehydrated (with exceptions). Also, try to get well-water from reliable local sources rather than drinking chlorinated/treated water from the tap.
4. Move Well, Move Often!!!
This may be the single most important factor. Moving itself, as long as your body gets heated up to a nice sweaty level, will help to resolve soft tissue adhesions. Of course, it won’t usually do everything, but it will sure help. And once those adhesions have been (manually) broken up, there’s nothing better than full-range, hot movement to keep things from sticking together again. That’s one of the reasons Tai Chi is so good for you. Getting down into the pose above (snake creeps down, I think) demands a high level of balance and strength, AND – to the point of this post – it puts the soft tissues of the body in the deepest possible level of stretching and contraction…
Foam rolling can help, but as Andreo points out, it doesn’t really or necessarily slide one layer of soft tissue over the other.
But don’t just sit there reading this! Go do one of those three things (or all of them)! And put them into your regular practice!!!!
Key is a physical therapist (or “physiotherapist,” as they’re known outside the USA) who has studied several somatic disciplines and integrated them into her physical therapy practice.
Why?
Key’s realization, and the realization that the best “body-professionals” are coming to, is that our scientific understanding of how the body moves and “works” is useful to identify (and sometimes address) particular features of the body, but that the health of the body is always based upon strong, aware, exertive, and “functional” movement.
Professor Shirley Sahrmann summed this up well in her 2002 book “Diagnosis and Treatment of Movement Impairment Syndromes.” She outlined the history of physical therapy, which began with a focus on dysfunctions of the neuromusculoskeletal system through “cadaveric” anatomy – focusing on individual muscles and innervations, and the restoration of muscle function through manual methods. The field shifted in the late 1950′s, when the polio vaccine significantly reduced the incidence of polio in the “developed” world. Research and practice shifted to a focus on the central nervous system’s role in dysfunction, particularly as related to cerebral palsy. Joint dysfunction became the predominant area of study and treatment in the 1980′s, as physical therapists began to realize release techniques applied to joints could resolve nervous system disorders. In the 1990′s focus shifted again, this time to “movement” – largely due to an increase in the number of patients presenting with problems related to dysfunctional movement.
Sahrmann’s book takes a traditional approach to treating movement impairment and dysfunction, asking the practitioner to test individual muscles and perform many single-muscle-specific or joint-specific exercises to retrain movement patterns. Key’s work, by comparison, approaches the body in a more holistic fashion, focusing on patterns of movement (though Key does use standard physical therapy techniques – individual muscle and joint testing and treatment).
Embedded within these approaches is THE BODY. Which presents something of a “problem” to me, and is one of the reasons for this post. The body in-itself (as an object – something you have) is not the approach of somatics. The body-as-central-point-of-focus (as something you do) is what somatics is about.
See the difference? Simply “working the body” might get some results, but doesn’t increase your awareness of why you got those results. So you’re helpless the next time you get into trouble.
It’s the old – “Give a man to fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him to fish and you feed him for life.”
Janda was a leader in the 1960′s transition Sahrmann mentions, with his focus on neuromotor control and stability, which was significantly different from the “muscles and mobility” approach before him.
Janda’s major contributions are his “crossed syndromes” – patterns of muscular dysfunction that occur in a predictable manner.
For those with no access to the journal article above, check out the equally-great article “The Janda Approach” by Phil Page and Clare Frank. To avoid lawsuits from Lippincott and Williams, I’ll post Page and Frank’s fantastic representation of all of Janda’s crossed syndromes:
Janda’s lesson was that it is necessary to understand and utilize rules and techniques from each of “the three interdependent neuro-musculo-articular systems.”
The paper “Lessons for the Future” by Karel Lewit outlines the history of
rehabilitative medicine, roughly along the same lines as Sahrmann’s work. But Lewit goes one further, and addresses the body as a system (something the Czech school has been famous for).
Lewit makes the point that the dysfunctional motor patterns that Vladimir Janda discovered (and that Sahrmann and Keys are treating in their own ways) can be understood through basic rules about how the body functions.
First, the long-muscles of the body cross the joints in opposing innervations that, if “pulling” equally, result in “good posture.” But beyond that “global” (“superficial”) system there is a “local” (“deep”) system, of smaller muscles that cross only one joint at a time, providing local stability to the joints.
Lewit lists the clinical signs of weakness of the local/deep system (pp. 134-136):
Weakness of the lateral part of the abdominal wall (weakness of the TrA and diastasis (separation) of the rectus abdominis).
Faulty respiration evidenced by a lifting of the thorax rather than its expansion during breathing.
Sagging of the longitudinal arch of the foot and poor toe flexion.
Protruding or “winging” shoulder blades (lower trap and serratus ant. underactivity).
Overactivity of the short extensors of the neck and the sternocleidomastoid muscle.
These dysfunctions are addressed readily by (pp. 136-138):
Placing the hands on the border of the waist and exerting pressure outward against them (feeling the TrA activate in a ring around the abdomen, squeezing its contents laterally out against the hands).
Performing #1 while inhaling and keeping the thorax and clavicles from rising, allowing the thorax to expand with the breath (and the diaphragm to contract downward).
Leaning forward in standing (with “good posture,” of course), just to the point that the toes flex automatically (keeping the heels on the ground). Repeat slowly 10 times. AND, feeling the outer margin of the foot during walking.
Practicing drawing the lower point (ramus) of the scapula in toward the spine (against resistance – a therapist’s thumb, for instance). AND, in the four-point position on hands and knees, keeping the scapulae abducted (spread apart) keeping pressure on the base of the thumb (hands flat).
Sitting with “good posture,” and pressing quickly with both hands flat onto the top of the head, straight down the vertebral column.
Releasing the psoas, quadratus lumborum and erector spinae. How do you do that? Like this:
OR, if you’re a self-starter and have a creative streak – you can do it YOURSELF!!!
Also see Deric Stockton’s foam roll sequence:
Lewit goes on to discuss the importance of releasing muscular trigger points, and healing muscular and fascial scar tissue and lesions.
SO WHAT?!
The point here is not to give you a bunch of videos to watch or words to read that you may not be able to relate to.
The point is to say that there are very simple actions that lead to large changes in the way the body behaves. These are the things Lewit is pointing toward.
He is not saying that all the therapeutic techniques ever invented are not needed, but he is saying that there are often much simpler solutions that rely on the innate behavior of the body.
The LIFT Approach
Somatics attempts to teach the participant how to feel optimal function and movement in their own body.
But somatics alone isn’t good either. All the touchy-feely stuff in the world gets you nowhere. Yes, I can feel xyz, but what exactly am I feeling?
A merging of both approaches becomes necessary.
Lewit’s approach is something like this. Extremely effective at solving seemingly unsolvable (from the perspective of cadaveric anatomy) problems in the body. Lewit may not instruct his clients about neuromusculoskeletal anatomy, but he is in at least some way, simply by having them place their own hands on their bodies. He must provide a reference, which is an anchor back to “experiencing your own experience” (so to speak).
I think a merging of every approach becomes necessary. That’s what LIFT is all about.
But how can I do that? How can I possibly merge every approach?
It’s really simple, actually, and it’s the way that all body-practitioners follow already, whether they’ve consciously realized it or not. Here it is:
Start with a DESIRE to learn, feel, and express more and more deeply and broadly. It’s the mantra the Barefoot Sensei taught me – “TEACH ME.” To follow this principle requires deepening sensitivity and awareness.
Study the PRINCIPLES of the body (from every perspective – physiology, anthropology, physics, history, etc.).
Observe the principles in PRACTICES and tease them out – by doing them. Mere observation and laboratory analysis won’t help you here.
SHARE what you’ve learned with others, and hear/observe their feedback.
Sensitivity and awareness are requisite throughout, and those qualities should deepen as time goes by on this path.
