Myofascial Release & Therapeutic Stretching

Myofascial Release

Myofascial release is a type of massage that focuses on treating the fascia and the muscle it permeates and envelopes. Fascia is a web of connective tissue that forms a lattice work providing structural integrity for the entire body. In simple terms, you can think of fascia as support wires to the bones in the body. If the support wires on one side of a tower are too tight, the other side will be bent or distorted. Myofascial release helps treat restrictions in the fascia that can cause these distortions resulting in pain in the body. Also restricted fascia can inhibit normal fluid flow through the tissues that can lead to thickening and scar tissue. Myfascial release can very effective in helping open these restricted tissues and normalizing normal fluid flow.

Therapeutic Stretching

Therapeutic stretching is a very useful and effective technique I often incorporate into my treatments. Therapeutic Stretching uses the bodies own reflexes to help your muscles lengthen and stretch. Each stretch is held for no more than two seconds while simultaneously contracting the opposing muscles to induce reciprocal inhibition/relaxation in the muscle being stretched. This restricts the muscle spindle/stretch reflex and helps the muscle to lengthen more easily. Another form of therapeutic stretching is post-isometric relaxation . With post-isometric relaxation the muscle to be stretched is lightly contracted against resistance for about 7 seconds. Then the client relaxes while the massage therapist takes up the “slack” in muscle until a new resistance point is reached. Therapeutic stretching can be used as the primary treatment for those clients that aren’t able to tolerate more specific massage.

Here at Structura Body Therapies we are concerned with the overall performance of the body and understand the importance of all areas of health and massage therapy. We treat patients with all types of needs from automobile accident related injuries to sports performance work.

Please contact us today for any information needed related to massage or structural integration. call us at 801-897-8711