The Magic of Fascia

I remember one particular episode when I wore some black shoes to work, and then that evening wore those same shoes as I trekked from Albuquerque, NM, to Lubbock, TX, where I would visit some cousins for the weekend. For the entire day, my shoulders ached. By the time I was on the drive, it was nigh unbearable. I ended up taking my shoes off in the car, and my shoulder pain almost instantaneously disappeared. I remember being extremely confused… “I’m sitting down, so it’s not like I’m putting pressure on my feet in those shoes. How is it that their mere removal (the shoes, not my feet) was able to result in such immediate relief?”

“I wore the wrong shoes.” This was a difficult concept for many of my friends to grasp. When I would tell them that I wore the wrong shoes, they might think that I was making some kind of fashion judgment, but instead what I was trying to communicate was that I usually had only one pair of shoes that I could wear (usually running shoes with a great deal of arch support) without pain. Other pairs of shoes would result in mild-to-severe pain in various areas of my body. I never was able to pin down what exactly was causing this. But I knew that the “wrong shoes” would make it worse.

So, essentially from then on, I simply knew that 1) the “right shoes” could be worn with no pain, 2) the “wrong shoes” must be avoided, but 3) on the occasions where it’s inevitable that I should wear different shoes (particularly more upscale social occasions, like weddings or professional events), I could grant myself temporary relief if I removed my shoes for a brief time, with the caveat that 4) there would be longer-term, lingering aftereffects.

That was until I started training. I would come to Tim fairly frequently with complaints of aches and pains, and when he would ask what I did physically that might have led to these, I would tell him, “This may sound weird, but… I wore the wrong shoes.” I assumed maybe the shoes caused alignment issues. If you’ve ever seen the Frida Kahlo painting, “The Broken Column,” then that’s what I felt like (if you’re not familiar, then look below—it’s gorgeous work), that because of some foundational lack of structural integrity, the “wrong shoes” could cause a misalignment that scaled all the way up my body.

Tim was unphased by this news–he already knew what the likely culprit(s) might be–and he had several solutions. One was to work on my mobility, which is a topic for another day, as it became one of our primary focuses in our work together). The other solution was to release the fascia.

I had heard the term fascia before, usually in the context of the feet—plantar fasciitis. But I didn’t know much else about it.

Fascia is “a thin casing of connective tissue that surrounds and holds every organ, blood vessel, bone, nerve fiber and muscle in place,” (thank you, John Hopkins Medicine) though in my mind I like to think of it as analogous to 1) sausage casing (a thin sheath holding your meaty parts together) or 2) cable binding (look above the ceiling tiles in most businesses and you’ll find a large network of cables and cords, for various functions like electrical wiring and Internet access, that are frequently held together by cable binding).

Have you ever gone to a massage therapist, complaining about a “knot” in your neck, shoulder, back, or wherever? I’ve come to understand that this is not necessarily a single muscle that has thrown a tantrum, but instead, it is tension within the fascia. There are a number of factors that may cause fascia to thicken and become “sticky,” which causes it to dry up and tighten around the muscles, which can limit mobility, resulting in painful knots. (Thank you, again, John Hopkins). This is also one of the primary reasons that, post-massage, they ask you to drink plenty of water. Or have you ever woken up in the morning so stiff that you couldn’t even turn your head more than a couple of degrees without excessive pain? Blame fascia.

But the thing to remember, as regards my shoulder pain consequent of wearing the “wrong shoes,” is that fascia is an advanced network that spans your entire body, from the bottoms of your feet, spiraling up to the base of your neck. This means that, as I described as a misalignment before, something that causes minor distress lower in your body can have consequences that radiate all the way up your body.

I came to understand then that whenever I felt some tension in my shoulders radiating from some indeterminate place, frequently the solution would be to release the fascia in the bottoms of my feet, the relief from which would ride the entire system upwards and alleviate my pain very quickly. How to do this? Get a golf ball or something close, place your foot on it and find where you experience the greatest tension, and now put more weight onto that. IT WILL HURT. But do this for about 20 seconds, then move the ball around to find another place of tension, rinse, and repeat. Do this one more time on a different place in the foot, as if you’re triangulating, and then see what happens. Now, this is not a permanent solution because there are probably other structural issues or deformities at play (which I’ll address in a different post… someday), but it still feels somewhat miraculous. Shoulder hurt. Release tension in foot. Shoulder pain be gone.

Now, this blog post does not aspire to give you an advanced course in fascia; this is only a brief introduction. And, since I’ve breached the topic of the human body and borderline-medical claims, I must give the disclaimer that I am no medical professional. But I am someone who is eminently curious about the complex inner machinations of the human body, someone who is learning as much as I can in order to understand this giant piece of meaty, boney, fleshy equipment that we all inhabit. And the more I learn about the body, the more I come to recognize how everything is interconnected in ways that might surprise you, if you’re uninitiated in this kind of learning as of yet.

Until next time.

– Duncan