Fascial Integration

Bringing the Soul Back Into The Body

Working with and connecting with our fascia can be profound. It is a doorway into transformation and change. Deeply grounding, nurturing and affecting real physiological and emotional change. And there are different ways, perhaps unlimited ways to engage with our fascia: self-touch, movement, tool-assisted decompression and explorations, sensing, gua sha, manual bodywork. etc.

I'd be honored to be your guide in how you can engage with your fascia to release restrictions and deepen your awareness and connection with your body and more.

Nourishing and Therapeutic

We are working with your body, respecting its boundaries and offering stimuli around the edges to evoke sustainable change.

I approach your body with a quality of touch that guides me into a 'conversation' with the area that is stuck to help bring it back into flow with the rest of the body.

The nature of this work is both, therapeutic and very nourishing, while also increasing body awareness. It is very common to feel more embodied and settled afterwards.

During our session, we are engaging with your fascia. Because when we touch the body, we touch fascia - the white connective tissue holding us together.

What is Fascia?

Fascia is the white connective tissue that envelopes our organs, muscles, cells, nerves, blood and lymph vessels and is our largest sensory organ. It gives our body structure and is the medium within which biological functions take place, for example, nerve transmission or nutrient delivery to the cells.

Fascia can become stiff, dry and matted when we don’t move enough or experienced injury or trauma. Or thick and dense when it makes extra fibers to support our posture and as a consequence of chronic stress. This affects muscle function. Chronically tight muscles struggle to lengthen and get the blood and oxygen supply they need, if the fascia surrounding them is contracted and dehydrated. We feel tight and achy. Our range of movement is limited.

Our biology may also be perpetuating a false positive feedback loop between our mind and body/fascia that locks in the signals that are being send up and down the chain. For example, if we feel chronically stressed or in a flash back, we are likely locked into our primitive brain and flooded with stress hormones. The fascia responds by contracting and tightening to get ready to fight, flee or freeze. Now the body is sending signals of danger to our brain stem via the millions of nerve receptors imbedded in the fascia and receiving confirmation from the brain of the danger.

By working with the fascia, we can find an entry way into beginning to diffuse this false negative feedback loop.

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Caring For Our Fascia

When we take care of our fascia, our whole being benefits. Restrictions and adhesions that form when fascial fibers glue together can melt and release increasing not only flexibility but releasing energy that was stuck back into the rivers of life flowing through the body. In the newly created space, lubrication can return into the area and now blood and lymph can flow unimpeded, nutrients can reach the cells and waste products have a pathway of elimination.

Fascia is Alive

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Some say that fascia is the seat of our soul in the physical body. When we restore health in our fascia, not only do aches and pains decrease or disappear, we nourish our whole being and become more resilient and embodied.

Fascia is also alive...it moves in waves and spirals. And it responds when contacted in a way that doesn’t impose force on the tissue but that moves with it, offering just enough pressure and waiting at a barrier of resistance until the tissue yields. This can also release unprocessed emotions that were held in the fascia, and coupled with injury or trauma we experienced in an area of the body.

When we work with fascia in a life-affirming way, we also engage with the entire nervous system. There is a close relationship between the two.

That connection may become palpable during your session. You may feel your entire nervous system shift and drop into a state of calm and self-healing through the long sustained pressure, slow strokes and gentle traction that meet your where you are at.

Whole Healing

Fascial Work encompasses our whole being. We (literally) touch on intersection of the physical body, emotional, mental and energy body. Perhaps there are specific areas you would like to focus on?

Through listening, I get a sense of what an area of the body may need. Long holds, sustained pressure, gentle traction, slow strokes?

Or does the tissue need me to do nothing, so that it can do everything? This could mean 'just being with' and allowing for what wants to happen. The tissue might begin to release stuck energy through unwinding. It could mean following the movement of the fascia as it may 'pull' my hands into an area of density and restriction.

**Working with Fascia leads to Incremental Change**

𖦹 restore space for energy to flow
𖦹 melt adhesions and restrictions
𖦹 relax tight muscles
𖦹 help desensitize nerve endings
𖦹 restore lymph and blood to flow
𖦹 boost cell energy production
𖦹 aid hydration + tissue lubrication
𖦹 improve organ function
𖦹 increase range of motion
𖦹 increase immune function
𖦹 calm + ground the nervous system
𖦹 help the body self-correct
𖦹 a safe container for the system to settle
𖦹 change your relationship with pain
𖦹 foster Mind Body Holism
𖦹 deepem body awareness
𖦹 allow emotions to be processed
𖦹 strengthen interoception and proprioception
𖦹 lay down new neuropathways from mind to the body

Your Needs Matter

Depending on your comfort level and where you are at that day, you are welcome to remain clothed or dress down to comfort level on the massage table. Only a small amount of oil/lotion is needed.

No matter where you are at and regardless of your degree of mobility, we can find ways that will allow you to feel comfortable and supported during the session. That can mean propped up and supported on my comfortable extra wide massage table, in a chair, an armchair or right on the bed - seated, on the back, on the belly or in side-lying position.

1 hour/$105 | 1.5 hours/$140