Fascia Flossing Basics

Fascia Flossing: A workout for your fascia!

Fitness trainer stretching her arms using a yoga block.

What is Fascia Flossing?!

Fascia Flossing – also known as “resistance stretching” – is a way to change your tissues from the inside out! The process of engaging your muscles while adding length and elongation is what makes the stretch a “floss” or resistance stretch. This directly impacts your connective tissue (myofascia) – providing an internal exfoliation of this tissue. It is a strength and flexibility workout that leaves you feeling like you just received a deep tissue massage – while also providing you with energy, strength, and flow!

What is Fascia?

Fascia is our body’s scaffolding. It’s the tissue that connects all other tissues – bones, ligaments, tendons, fat, skin, blood vessels, gray brain matter, and so on. There are several types of fascia, including myofascia, scar tissue, deep fascia, fuzzy fascia, lymph, gray matter, and adipose tissue. Fascia is made up primarily of collagen, hyaluronic acid, and elastin.

Fascia provides us with structure, tensegrity, and transfer.

It is the “formless form”. Like a webbing throughout our body, it forms the scaffolding for our organs and tissues, giving us our structure. It is continuous and ubiquitous, taking on the shape of whatever it is enveloping.

Much like the principle of tensegrity in architecture, fascia uses compression and tension to help us move our muscles, stabilize, and maintain our posture.

Fascia provides transfer of energy, fluid, and piezoelectric communication.

“Connective tissue wraps virtually every other tissue formation in our bodies. If everything else were removed, the network of empty connective tissue compartments would preserve our physical form in detail…

…In the tendons and ligaments, its tensile strength is superior to steel wire; In the cornea of the eye, it is transparent as glass; it accounts for the toughness of leather, the tenacity of glue, the viscosity of gelatin. Invest it to various degrees with hyaline…it becomes various grades of cartilage; invest it with mineral salts, and it becomes bone.”

– Deane Juhan  – Job’s Body, a Handbook for Bodywork

Fascia Flossing Vs. Conventional Stretching

Conventional stretching, as holding a stretch without activating a targeted muscle group, can lead to over-stretching. This can cause tears in connective tissue by exceeding the tissue’s natural range of motion and elastic limits, causing the collagen fibers to elongate and potentially rupture.

Collagen fibers have some elasticity, but when they are stretched too far beyond their limit, they can break, leading to tears in the connective tissue and pain in the joints.

Fascia Flossing equals “strength plus length”. Rather, engaging your muscles while elongating. This combination applies a greater tensile force to the fascial fibers than a passive stretch does. This in repetition begins to reorganize the fascial fibers – creating more flow and space in the muscles and joints.

Dynamically adding resistance while pulling the tissues into an elongation phase means we can impact the fascia at higher intensity than traditional methods.

A Workout For All!

Fascia Flossing, resistance stretching, and dynamic stretching can be customized to meet each individual where they are at. We all feel tension and tightness throughout the day… from the moment we wake up, from sitting for too long, and from built up scar tissue.

Learning how to engage and add length is handy tool in your wellness kit. These stretches can be small, targeted, assisted, and can be performed right from your desk. Or, if you’re looking for a full workout experience, you can learn to flow and combine various resistance stretches to give you a full fascia overhaul, leaving your feeling spacious and strong, fluid and free!

Book a Private Session

If you are looking for a deeper stretch and a more customized approach, you can book a private session online or in-person (Louisville, KY residents), Five-Packs also available.

Floss With Your Friends!

Host your friends for a blissful gathering including a self-flossing fascia workout, optional partner flossing for deeper experience, healthy-bites, games, and relaxing beverages for a feel-good time! Book a PamperedStretch event today!

Minimum 3 guests, Maximum 10 guests

Starts at $350.

For Booking, email Melissa at mombellyfitness@gmail.com

Melissa is a certified Fascia Flossing Trainer through her Level II certification at thefloss.com.

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