Today I did my first myofascial release session with Wendy, a specialist that works out of my Pilates studio. I can’t really report on any sort of long-term results yet, since she said it can take 3 days before the body settles. However, my immediate experience is interesting. It’s unlike anything I’ve done before.

The cobweb looking stuff is the myofascial tissue. This is between ribs.

The myofascial system runs through literally every cell in your body, and it’s all connected. It’s the structure that holds us in a 3D form. It communicates almost instantaneously around your entire body. If you get punched in the stomach, the force can be distributed through your entire body extremely quickly due to the myofascial tissues. The tissue helps you absorb impacts and force, but it also can get stuck when doing so. When the tissue contracts, it also squeezes out it’s fluids; sometimes that fluid doesn’t return and the tissue stays contracted. Emotional things can also imprint on the fascial tissue, meaning that releasing the tissue can sometime release emotions.

Today was my first visit, so it was mostly an evaluation. As it turns out, actually, my system is so intense (and not intense, I’ll get to that) we didn’t get a full evaluation in. She was having a hard time convincing my system to “talk” to her. But she found a pattern that needed releasing in my head and into my right arm, pretty much right away. So she mostly decided to work on that this session. I still haven’t been able to decide how my body feels about what she did. But she found a few things, which I’ll kind of list below. To make each thing clearer, I’ll be breaking each thing into a different paragraph; however, this could make my post less fluid than my posts usually are. I apologize, but it’s the best way to get the information out there.

First off, she said my nervous system is actually kind of dead. I guess it is kind of hibernating? That’s how I understood what she was saying. It didn’t want to respond to her and it didn’t want to send any energy into my fascial system. She was able to wake it up a bit and get more response and more energy into my tissues. I thought it was interesting that my hypersensitive and always-on system was “dead.” I don’t completely understand, but I guess it might be how it copes with the chronic pain and stimulus (by kind of checking out a bit).

She said a lot of energy was stuck right at the base of my neck. That’s what she worked on, releasing that energy. It does feel like my right arm is a little more responsive than normal, kind of. It’s a weird sensation that I don’t really understand.

Once she got things responding, however, she said I was highly responsive. She was able to get a bit of release and said that my entire system responds really well once it wakes up. Hopefully that means that this will be very helpful.

The fascial system is connected all the way from head to toe, and I could tell while she was working. She worked on my head, neck, right arm, and right shoulder, exclusively. But at different times, it felt like she was pushing in other locations. At one point I could have sworn she was pushing into my lower left ribs, but I could also tell exactly where her hands were and they were no where near my ribs. There were also a few times when she was in my arm that it felt like she was pushing on my head. A few times, I even got odd sensations in my feet and toes. I found it fascinating that I could feel it like that.

The releases in my head felt weird. The ones in my arm were kind of a pins-and-needles feeling (like when your foot is regaining circulation after you were sitting on it), but the stuff in my head was bizarre. It’s an odd congestion feeling that is still lingering a bit; almost as if I had my head hanging over the edge of the table for a while. I also got a sensation similar to that of sinus pressure, but it was a sudden onset and it’s almost gone now. The congestion feeling makes sense to me though, since she said that when the tissue releases the fluids rush back in and allow it to release further. I just wasn’t expecting the odd pressure in my head.

My head puts off a lot of heat, apparently. Wendy said that means that there is a lot of stuff going on in my head. I don’t know if it means tension or just some sort of energy congestion, but something is going on up there. She also asked about my birth and my infancy. When I mentioned that I was born vaginally but didn’t end up with the cone shaped head, she thought that was interesting. She also found my absolute necessity to move as a child odd (like I figured out a way to move before I learned to crawl). My methods of locomotion (I would scoot around in a back bend before I could crawl, and walk on the tips of my toes once I could walk) also seemed to be of interest; they aren’t normal and apparently point to oddities in my system that could have stuck around. She wasn’t doing too much talking about that, the feeling out of the fascial system takes a lot of concentration.

I think that’s the majority of what happened. I still have kind of a dazed sensation, and I’m going to take half a metaxalone because my muscles seem to want to rebel in my shoulder (and I really don’t want to lose the looseness she introduced).

I’m going to go back in two weeks (it’s expensive) and see if we can figure out more so I can decide if it’s worth the expense on a regular basis. I wish I just had endless money to make myself better. I’m hoping this will really help; it seems like it has the potential to. I’ll see if I can remember to update about how I feel in a few days.