Doing a body good – one fascia at a time

For Mother’s Day, my sweet daughters pooled their money and got me a massage. This is particularly impressive because they are little and really don’t have much money of their own. Lucky for them, their dad got wind of their plan and offered to pitch in 50%. It was the sweetest, most thoughtful gesture I have received in a long time.

Fast forward one week and I marched in to my massage. It was a new place I had never been to before. I had never met the masseuse and to be honest, I was a little thrown off at first by how much she talked. I was in a quiet mood and didn’t feel like making small talk. But then, I took a deep breath and told myself to chill out and try to enjoy what she was saying. And once I turned my mood around, I realized that this lady knew a LOT. Every muscle she touched, she named. And then, she would proceed to tell me how that muscle was connected to other elements of my body that caused me problems.

For example, my right hip has been really painful lately. This has caused me much concern because nearly every older lady in my family has had 1 to 2 to 3 hip replacements. Three! Thinking this was in my not-so-distant future, she said no, the pain was actually 1/ not skeletal and 2/ actually not my hip. She believed it was my hip flexor and actually tied to my anterior thigh muscle, I believe it was called the Sartorius.

And then suddenly, I felt a different sensation. Instead of a deep rubbing, I felt almost a hard edge, a scraping. Slightly alarmed, I asked what she was doing. She assured me, it was a good thing. She was scraping my fascia.

Ummmmm…. what?

She proceeded to “scrape my fascia” on both hips and then my heels. And I have to tell you – I have gotten a LOT of massages in my life thanks to several car accidents and some pretty permanent back pain – and I have never walked out of a massage feeling as good as I did yesterday. And that feeling lasted all night long. I am not totally clear what she did but I do know, I am a believer.

So … as a result, I thought I would deep dive into Fascia Scraping, so that I could learn more about it and in the process, share some of what I learned here.

What is Fascia?

According to Johns Hopkins, fascia is “a thin casing of connective tissue that surrounds and holds every organ, blood vessel, bone, nerve fiber and muscle in place.” Without getting into the weeds too much, although it looks like tissue, it is actually layers of liquid and if it gets stressed, it can dry up and result in pain and limited mobility. The slipperiness of the fascia is what allows for fluid, pain-free movement. But certain things like stress, trauma, repetitive movements or long periods of stagnation, can cause the fascia to become sticky and knotty.

How do you know if it is your Fascia or your muscle causing pain?

This is a particularly interesting point for me because I actually thought my hip pain was skeletal. But as one article I read pointed out, if your pain is muscular, continued movement exacerbates the situation. Every movement causes additional pain. However, if your pain is caused by a tight and dry fascia, movement actually helps alleviate the pain.

How to avoid an inflexible, painful fascia

Johns Hopkins suggests the following:

• Maintain good posture at all times, while standing, sitting or really doing anything.
• MOVE! Stagnation = pain!
• Stretch. This is becoming my go to morning routine. Downward dog? Check. Runner’s Stretch? Check. Give the stretch a name and I will do it. I need to either find a way to sleep less or creatively come up with an additional hour a day to fit in my new stretching routine!

And if you already have fascia pain? Will Fascia Scraping help?

Muscle scraping, or fascia scraping, evolved from the ancient Chinese form of massage therapy called guasha. When done correctly, muscle scraping is thought to promote more rapid healing of connective tissues, ligaments, muscles and fascia. The idea behind the aggressive, sometimes anxiety-inducing, deep scraping is that the affected muscle/tissue adhesions or scar tissue will break up and begin to heal itself. As I learned from my therapist, the best motion is to scrape (deeply, almost painfully) in a one inch, repetitive motion up and down, along the muscle line. From what I have read, doing this one to two times/month is suggested. Guasha has shown to improve many soft tissue issues, including knee pain, plantar fasciitis, shin splints, various back muscle issues and much more.

Wow – this blog got more complex and lengthy than I was planning. A lot of research was required to find what I wanted to know. But I feel confident that what I did find was solid. If you have had any experience with Fascia Scraping and feel like I left something out, I would love to hear it.

And if you haven’t heard of it before, I hope you feel like you learned something beneficial. I can’t wait to try it again!