York Health Services

Myofascial Release:

Myofascial Release is a whole-body hands-on approach for the evaluation and treatment of the human structure. This approach focuses on the fascia (aka connective tissue). Your body's fascia is functionally one continuous laminated sheet of tissue that runs uninterrupted, structure to structure, throughout your body from head to toe. It wraps, surrounds, and penetrates every muscle, bone, nerve, blood-vessel, organ, right down to every cell of your body! In this way we can begin to appreciate how one area of the body is interrelated to all other areas through the influence of the fascia. 

In a healthy state, the fascia is very liquid. It acts to allow movement between two adjacent structures (ie: muscle and skin, muscle and bone, muscle and muscle...), as well as acting as a shock absorber, by creating a wave like effect following an impact, which serves to disperse the force so that no one area bears the brunt of the impact. Following injury to any part of the body, due to trauma, repetitive strain, poor posture over time...etc, the surrounding fascia becomes less fluid, allowing less movement in your body's attempt to support the area. Often times this decrease in mobility goes on long after the initial injury has resolved, leaving you with decreased ease of movement and less "give" or resilience, compressing the underlying anatomy. Since the fascia surrounds every anatomical structure in your body, the list of potential symptoms is enormous, ranging from musculoskeletal pain to nerve pain, vascular impingement or visceral (organ) pain! 

Myofascial Release is generally a series of very specific, but gentle stretches aimed at relieving compression and/or strain that is being caused by the fascia. Because of the "make-up" of the fascia it responds very differently to stretch than a muscle, which is why this important body tissue may not have been sufficiently addressed through other forms of treatment.