Snow Days
The snow day mentality is a gift! Snow days are Nature’s way of telling us to SLOW down! We need a day or two on pause, to simmer down and get cozy at home, turn off the devices and get off the racetrack our roads have more recently become. After all it is winter. Take a lesson from the hibernating bears and simply rest and digest, soothe yourself into parasympathetic mode. Most of us, most of the time, typically go, go, go in a rat race mentality that keeps us in fight or flight/survival mode without even knowing it.
Remember, we like the bears, are creatures of nature. Like the earth’s surface, we too are 70% water. We are mostly a liquid body. Like the moon and the tides we are in a constant state of expansion and contraction, ebb and flow, waning and waxing, ever-changing. Our liquid bodies are constantly changing. Our fascia continuously changes states depending on its level of energy and activity.
The fascial system is a continuous web of tissue that envelops and infuses our entire body. Fascia consists of cells, ground substance and fibers. Constantly expanding and contracting, fascia, like snow changes states from a gel to a liquid and liquid to gel. Thixotropy is the process of physical change morphing a gel like state to a liquid like state and back to a gel like state. The protector of our organs and bones, fascia can instantaneously become solidified frozen like ice, stronger than steel and resilient to great force. Healthy, hydrated fascia effortlessly provides balance of flexibility and stability for the entire body allowing muscles to fluidly slide and glide like silk. Over time and with stress, fascia becomes thickened, dehydrated and stuck, solidified like wood. Thixotropy requires energy. Responding to heat created by touch, light pressure over a sustained period of time gentle stretching & movement, restrictions in the fascia undergo Thixotropy, melt and return to a more liquid state.
Continuously melting tension helps to maintain the health of our tissue, our selves. Self Myofascial Release may be one of the missing ingredients to living a balanced lifestyle in the modern world.
We live in a culture deficient in touch and body awareness. In this technological age our movement choices have grown monotonous. We live in a culture more comfortable holding onto tension than releasing it. Sitting in front of a device indoors seems to be encouraged more than moving outdoors.
Our bodies are the vessels that house our minds, our energy, our souls. Our tissues are like containers filled with memories of past traumas, injuries, unexpressed feelings, repetitive movement patterns and sedentary positions - our life experiences. Our issues are in our tissues. Our bodies tell our stories. Posture is the outward expression of our internal experience. We have the power to change our minds, our bodies, our spirit. The way we live affects the way we feel in our bodies. The way we feel affects the way we interact with our world, how we move, and how we treat others.
So the next time school's closed & it's too treacherous even to walk down the street without fear of falling, let alone experience a 100 car pile up trying to get to work...accept mother nature's rule, break out a foam roller and get to work peeling back the layers of life's tensions and reconnect with your essence.