There are many approaches that can be taken to release fascia tension in the body, all with the same goal of decreasing viscosity or fascial ‘stiffness’. This will help decrease overall tension in the body and increase mobility/function while decreasing pain and symptoms. Any physical modalities whether they are deep tissue, aggressive or gentle will have this affect on the fascial tissue however I have chosen the later, and I’ll explain why.
When I was in Calgary in the 1990’s and working at the chronic pain treatment and research facility, Myosymmetries doing massage therapy, I was introduced to the Light Touch fascial therapy approach as it was favoured by our director, Dr. Stuart Donaldson. This was because, as Stu put it, it did not tend to flare the symptoms of the chronic pain patients. This was an important factor to consider at the clinic because we found that the symptoms of many of the chronic pain patients who experienced deep tissue or aggressive forms of physical treatment would flare and then the threshold for them to flare again would be lessened (making them more susceptible to flare yet again with even less stimuli).
While at Myosymmetries, (practicing Swedish massage techniques) I was asked to work on a particular patient who continually asked my to go deeper to get to the ‘root’ of her pain. She was quite insistent that I continue to increase my depth and my pressure to the point where I had to discontinue because I no longer felt my treatment to be safe as I had felt like I lost direction as to exactly what it was I was I was trying to achieve. I referred the situation to one of our physiotherapists who had treated her previously with Light Touch fascial work and she said that the patient instinctively knew what she wanted but there was a gentle approach that could be taken in which the pressure is light and the body allows you in, barrier by barrier.
Shortly after this I received my first Light Touch fascial treatment and then understood how my body was asking her to go deeper but only once the first barrier encountered released. Then the next barrier, etc until unbeknownst to me, she was in quite deep but did not get there with excess pressure or aggression.
Light Touch fascial therapy is a gentle hands on technique that asks of the practitioner to ‘listen’ or ‘feel’ what the body is asking in terms of pressure and direction. We think of it as an intuitive thing and to some degree it is but it can be easily learned using some basic principles. The practitioner applies a light amount of pressure to the body then feels for the barriers in the tissue that their hand pressure comes up against. Once you sense the barrier of tension, you hold that gentle amount of pressure in the direction of the barrier and bring your awareness to that contact point, and then have the patience it takes to wait for the body to start to release. Unlike other types of therapy, you wait at the barrier for the body to release as opposed to pushing through the barrier with force. Basically, you are working with the body to achieve the release as opposed to imposing your will on the body as to how and where it should release. It must be noted however that the affect on the fascia is happening not just at the barrier of tension but in all directions around the point of contact. How this works has a lot to do with the theory of piezoelectricity but I will leave that for a separate article.