One of the biggest benefits of Fascial Stretch Therapy™️ is the powerful and effective role it can play in relaxation and recovery. Whether it’s the stiffness, soreness or heavy legs that come from working out and competing or the accumulation of tension from the physical and emotional stress of daily life that we all experience, the gentle, pain-free movements and stretch wave of FST help trigger a parasympathetic response in the body ( think “rest and relax”) that allows the body to restore and refresh itself.
We live in a world where our sympathetic ( fight, flight or freeze) nervous system in often overactive and overloaded. Being in a constant state of having to produce, deliver, measure up or just keep up leaves many of us feeing both tense an exhausted at the same time.
That stress gets “stored” in the body. It can be the physical demands of training for competition or , the exercise class we take or the 18 holes of golf we just played. But, it’s also the mental and emotional wear and tear of meeting the demands of work, family life and other daily stressses that gets lodged in the body – the tight hips, the stiff lower back, the tension in our shoulders and neck. ( we’re not meant to be walking around with our shoulders hunched up to our ears)
Some of the tightest, most sensitive, most restrictive clients I work with aren’t athletes or fitness enthusiasts at all. They are people who are experiencing the effects of always feeling “on”. FST has been such a helpful tool for restoring that state of calm that it’s not unusual for some clients to actually fall asleep on the table before our session is over.
It’s important to realize that pain is not a lifestyle and that state of calm is not an luxury or an indulgence. Relaxation and recovery are essential and make us more able, not less to rise to new challenges as they come. While every individual’s threshold is different, powering through is something we do at our own peril.
There are a variety of things that help us recover, refresh and restore ourselves; sleep, nutrition, hydration, getting outside, connecting with others. Good bodywork, like FST helps turn the stress switch off and bring us back home to a more relaxed place where we can take greater advantage of them. While FST was developed in the high performance world of Olympic and professional sports you don’t need to be an athlete to use it. It’s use has spread to health, wellness, general fitness and medical settings around the world.
Check it out here and consider giving it a try. Sometimes we don’t even know how tightly we’ve been wound until we take the time to unwind.
FLOW STRETCH AND MOVEMENT 