Impact Injuries: Structural Integration is designed to restore the fluidity of the body that impact injuries reduce. Think of something as trivial as a stubbed toe. The impact can resonate all the way through one’s body up to the head. After stubbing a toe, we would walk lightly on the side that hurts and heavily on the other. The painful side has shifted away from the source of pain and the compensation (shortness and deviation) becomes a permanent pattern of movement. If we’re not aware that we’re doing this, we then keep the shift in weight long after the toe is no longer painful. An even more obvious example is a broken arm or leg — long after the cast has been removed; a person tends to walk with their arm bent as though it were still in a cast, or walk on that leg as if they were still compensating for the extra weight and bulkiness of a cast. In both cases, the result will be glued-up fascia as a result of compensation. Releasing this glued-up fascia restores the fascial system to balanced fluidity, making it possible to erase these kinds of habits.
Injury Prevention: Most bodies have a history of some sort of trauma, whether from childhood or later in life. Sometimes the trauma has not been identified as a major problem but creates dense fascial tissue that later makes the body vulnerable to injury and compromised function. In this situation, Structural Integration clears out the old injury and allows re-patterning of old movement habits.
Bones and Joints: When the fascia is dense it will compress the joints because they are surrounded by bands of fascia. When the fascia is released, it creates more space. For instance, dense fascia in the lower back can create a compressed disc because the vertebrae are being pulled together by the tight tissue around them. The disc will bulge out, potentially inflaming the nerve, resulting in conditions such as sciatica. Loosening the fascia can avoid this.
