What is fascia?'Fascia is the body’s network of fibrous connective tissue. Fascia forms a complex network that reaches everywhere in the body. Fascia is all the soft connective tissue including fascial sheets such as the plantar fascia, the tendons, ligaments, bursae, the fascia in and around muscles, and the membranes around the brain, spinal cord and nerves.

What does fascia do?

 Fascia is what actually holds us up and together (not muscles and bones), so understanding fascia is essential to understanding movement—our horses and our own. Fascia help body parts move together—wrapping around layers of muscle to slide easily as they contract and release. Besides movement and flexibility, fascia maintains balance and our movement. Fascia’s other job is to guard injured tissue. When trauma or stress occurs, the web of connective tissue changes to protect the injured area; it also holds emotions from trauma and shock. Fascia is the largest sensory organ of the body and gives us a feeling of where we physically are.

What happens to fascia?

Just like trauma effects our self-esteem so does it affect our fascia. Your biology becomes your biography.  These stressors compress the connective tissue to form adhesions, and flexibility is reduced. Fascia will hold that compression and restrict mobility as it protects the body by limiting movement. Over time, the restriction grows or small injuries combine, and often persist after the original cause has gone.

How does ageing affect fascia?

You’ve noticed one side of your body is stronger or more flexible than the other. That’s an example of compensations that horses and people develop. These patterns are the body’s ingenious way of continuing to manage around pain or limited flexibility. Bodies want to maintain balance, so they compensate in order to keep going. Small injuries to the fascia can become bigger limitations as they accumulate. Most people believe that physical degeneration is part of aging, and tend to accept their growing limitations. Because horses are flight animals they tend to hide their pain and limitations as a means to survive, and so we often discover their limitations when they influence performance. But the limitations started earlier, before movement was affected.

Body work helps fascia release as fascia clumps up especially over bony areas it gets especially restricted. But being living tissue with affective body work it plumps up and hydrates and release clumps and thickening of fascia becomes supple and more pliable again.

RATES 2022/2023

Equine Fascia Trauma Release R350 as an add on to a communication and self-selection session 

Equine Fascia Trauma Release R450

Human Fascia Trauma Release R450.

Human sessions take place in Wellington at Silver Oaks Farm