“When the body begins to work appropriately, the force of gravity can flow through. Then, spontaneously, the body heals itself.” - Ida P. Rolf, founder of the Rolfing technique and recognized as the first to understand the role of fascia in human health.
Do you ever feel scrunched and thick around the waistline? There is more than fat to blame here. The waistline gets a bad reputation: lower back pain, extra weight, bloating and thickness. Why? Not an easy answer, like anything worth investigating. There is a plethora of factors that trouble your midsection such as poor diet, stress, hormonal imbalances, emotional eating, lack of adequate rest, and not moving our bodies enough. Additionally, the sides of the body tend to be ignored: we spend a lot of time sitting, slouching, driving, and working on computers (or texting). Essentially, we’re just accumulating tension and stress in that mindsection.
Furthermore, our relationship with gravity, bad posture, poor weight management and upper body weight-distribution can cause the space between the ribs and the hips (your waistline) to get squished and compressed, which in turn leads to a shortening and thickening of the waist. When our waistlines shorten, all the muscles, tissues, organs, skin, and fat start to bulge out to the sides making us look and feel thicker than we really are. To make matters worse, experts tells us that this can also negatively influence digestion, metabolism, circulation, oxygenation, and organ and gland efficiency, leading to bloating, density, and inflammation.
These sounds like a complicated problem, and it is, but there is a magic solution that can shrink your waist and make it healthy: you need to create length and space to your fascia and core. Fascia is critical because it actually helps to create the shape of our bodies. Basically, fascia is like a very thin wet suit just under the skin that wraps around each individual muscle and keeps everything in place (including our organs).
Injuries, stress, bad posture, emotional behavioral patterns, and poor habits can cause fascia to get tight and thick (a.k.a. Trigger Points). These causes restrict movement, mess with your alignment and trap toxins in the fascia, which leads to thicker tissue accumulation throughout the body—such as those that often form around the waist.
The good news is that fascia is malleable and can be repaired—which is the purpose of Roll+Restore: releasing all those unhealthy toxins from the fascia and helping to reduce thickness/inflammation in the body. Schedule a private consultation or join my next workshop to experience additional techniques to lengthen and mold that fascia!
