Solve Chronic Mystery Pain! Become Aware of the Lateral Lines of the Fascia

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cH83Z1f5qdo

In this video, we're going to be talking about the lateral line of the fascial network and how that relates to spinal stability in the realm of working with chronic pain. The lateral fascial line runs from the middle of the bottom of both sides of your foot, around the outside of the ankle, up the outside of the leg, over the knee, over the outside of the thigh, and as it approaches the hip, it gets wider and wider, covering the whole side of the hip, and then as it moves over the hip onto the side of the abdomen, it starts to form like a crisscross pattern, and it continues to move up, making that crisscross pattern underneath the shoulder, up the neck, and it connects to the skull near the ear. There's one on either side of your body, and as you can imagine, it stabilizes your body side to side.

But this fascial line also connects to the edges of the superficial back line and the superficial front line, which we talked about in a previous video. And so you can imagine that if you took two sheets of paper that were to simulate the superficial front line and superficial back line, and stood them on one end, one in front of the other, and let go, they would just fall over. But if you took two wide pieces of tape and you taped the sides of both of those papers together, it would form a cylinder.

In effect, that is what is happening in your body. The lateral lines of fascia are connecting the superficial front and rear lines, and it's forming a fascial cylinder around your body. And so you can imagine how much stability the lateral fascial lines provide in doing that.

But they also intersect with other superficial lines, which we're going to discuss later. The spiral line, which the next video is going to be about, and then the superficial arm lines. As tension is transferred through a fascial line, that tension is going to equalize throughout the fascial line.

And that same thing is going to happen where these fascial lines intersect. Tension is going to transfer from one fascial line to distribute throughout the fascial network into other fascial lines. And so whenever we get an interruption in tension, the body is going to figure out how to re-establish tension that's appropriate to stabilize the entire body.

And so when a problem arises, the nervous system and the body have this same response, which is to bind the fascia to protect the body and then distribute the tension that's created throughout the entire fascial network. And so a common problem that arises in the lateral fascial line that almost everybody has is caused by overpronation or oversupination. The overpronation is much more common, but there is a fair amount of people that also have oversupination.

And what happens is when the foot is overpronated, which means it's turned inward, the middle arch has started to collapse. And so your foot, instead of sitting level, is going to sink down on the middle or on the inside of it. The tissue of the inside of the leg is going to get overstretched.

And you can imagine the tissue on the outside of the leg as the inside sinks down is going to become lax. And so your body is going to start to compensate by having the fascia reach out, grab fascia next to it, and bind in on itself, creating more tension along the lateral line and then trying to balance you out. Your body can never create enough tension doing this, so it slowly gets tighter and tighter over time.

And this is why people end up with problems in their peroneal muscles or their IT bands. But as we talked about earlier, the tension is going to distribute through the entire fascial line. And so if you have an issue with overpronation or oversupination, you're going to end up in a situation where the space along the side body, from your hip to your shoulder, is extremely tight.

And that tightness is going to spread along the other superficial lines. It's going to start to move into the superficial front and back line. It's going to move into the spiral line.

It's going to limit rotation, which we're going to talk about in a minute. Now a similar tightening will happen if you're in oversupination, but it will tighten for a different reason. If you're overly supinated, meaning the outside of your foot is sinking down, where the lateral arch or the arch on the outside of the bottom of the foot is starting to collapse, it's not supporting your weight anymore, and the fascia in the lateral line is going to reach out and grab the fascia next to it.

And it's going to try to pull it back together, or at least stop it from spreading farther apart. And this is going to create excess tension, which will spread through the line. In either problem, the fascia is going to bind.

It's going to feel like you're tight, and you're going to end up with too much tension in the fascial network. And this is an example of why chronic mystery pain is so hard to deal with, so hard to find. And that is, the body's response is similar for two completely opposite situations.

One situation where you have too much laxity, and one situation where you're being overstretched, and the feeling is the same. Too much tightness causing a lack of mobility. This problem that we're talking about with the oversupination or overpronation of the foot, is caused primarily by the way modern shoes are designed.

As you probably noticed, most shoes come together with a narrow toe. So when you put your foot in there, it's going to inhibit the spreading of your toes. If you look at a baby's foot, the widest part of the feet are the toes.

If you look at your own foot, it's probably not the case anymore, but it should be. And the reason this is tied to the oversupination or overpronation, is it's the spreading of the toes that stabilize the foot. The big toe's ability to move inward is what stops the foot from overpronating.

And the little toe's ability to move outward is what stops the foot from oversupinating. When that is inhibited, we have to rely on compensatory balancing mechanisms. They're going to be overused.

And this happens in any situation where a tissue is used for a reason that it's not supposed to be used. One of the most important things to do when talking about restructuring fascial tensegrity and working on spinal stability is to get your toes spreading again. Some people are unable to even move their toes they've gotten so far into a dysregulated fascial pattern.

There's a couple things that you can do. One of those things is start to wear toe spreaders. I'll put a link in the description.

It is important to note that you don't want to wear them when you're sitting down and watching TV or when you're not moving. You want to wear them when you're active, when the tissues are active. It's the same as we talked about in the seven rules video.

We're never searching for relaxation when we're working on changing how the body is structured. We're always searching for activity. And then when you purchase your future shoes, I would advise putting the toe spreaders on and putting the shoes on.

And if you can't put your feet in the shoes wearing the toe spreaders, they're not the right shoes for you. Another thing you can do is you can practice reaching down, picking up golf balls with your feet and moving them into a cup while you're sitting down just to have your toes start to move around and try to build up some dexterity in them again. And I would highly recommend walking around in sandals or flip-flops or something that allows you to spread your toe.

If you have been in supportive shoes for a very long time, you'll have to limit the amount of time you'll be barefoot. I've worked with many people who when they first start trying to be barefoot around their house can only tolerate a minute or two, sometimes even less. Like walking across the room barefoot is intolerable for the amount of pain that's in the bottom of their feet.

Just like any of these other movements we talk about, you only want to do them to the point that you feel pain and then you want to stop. So if you have to go back into your supportive shoe, that's fine. You want to revisit this every single day until the time frame that you can stay barefoot if you wanted to is the entire day.

Another problem that we can that we see in the lateral line is an overuse due to the inability to rotate. As somebody walks around and one glute activates, as the glute drives you forward through space, the opposite lat should activate. And so what happens is my left glute, my glute max activates and pushes me forward in space.

My right lat activates and it twists my torso. When this rotational ability stops, which it will stop if your fascia is guarding your spine because it's going to get tighter and tighter and tighter, people are going to have to start to waddle from side to side. And so you start to get a rebounding from your lateral lines of fascia and your body is not designed to move like this.

And so this waddling walk will start to create even more compensation in your body. And so just like the subtle movement we practice for the superficial front and back line where we're working on flexion and extension, we are going to be sitting. I always start people sitting when they're dealing with chronic pain because the fascial lines probably have many areas where there is restrictions or inappropriate tension that we need to work through.

And activating an entire fascial line from start to finish is an unreasonable thing to ask and likely will lead to injury. We need to reconnect the body from the center outward. We need to re-establish balance.

We need to re-establish control of the center of gravity. We need to re-establish spinal stability and move outward. So the reason I have people sitting is we are just working on the part of the fascial line that is along the spine.

The same way we talked about it when we're talking about inappropriate tension transferring through the fascia, we can create a release and a movement towards appropriate tension through the entire fascial line by working on a piece of it. So we start with the piece that's along the spine. The same as before we want to be seated on a flat hard surface.

If it is too uncomfortable for you to sit on a hard surface then you can put a cushion under you but you want the surface to be level. The reason why I ask for the surface to be hard is because you have two hips that move alongside each other. There's a third piece called the sacrum which is a triangle at the bottom of the spine in between the hips.

As you get too much tension in the fascia it is very common for one hip to be rotated forward and the other hip to be rotated backward or one hip to be rotated forward and backward and the other to be neutral. And so if we have the level hard surface when we're doing this work we're slowly pushing our hips back towards neutral and that's a very significant change in the body to make when you've been in chronic pain and so we can slowly and subtly do it over time while we're working on other things. For this exercise we're simply going to stretch our arm over our head and lean side to side but there are a series of things to be aware of or to develop in our awareness like we did in the previous one with the superficial back and front line.

I'm going to place one hand on the ground near my hip and I'm doing this so that when I start to stretch my opposite arm over my head I'm not leaning over and crunching the side that we're working on. We want to create space we're not trying to close space on the other side. So this hand is to provide stability.

If you cannot reach the ground which is common because these fascial patterns of compensation tend to affect the shoulders a lot and so if you're in a place right now where you can't sit on something level and then reach the same surface you can put a cork yoga block under your hand or a stack of books but I want something again I want something solid so I'm going to put my hand on the ground and then as my other arm comes up I'm going to really bring my awareness to stretching my right shoulder from my right hip moving to the left as little as possible and that's the first thing you want to build in your awareness. So I'm going to move back and forth. Remember that when we're moving back and forth between fascial lines we're looking for rebound so it's okay to move slowly and softly in the beginning but as time goes on we want to look for that bounce and rebound back and forth.

So I'll start by placing my hand on the ground asking myself how far I can move my shoulder from my hip and then I will come back down and I'll do the same thing on the other side. I'll keep going and first we're just bringing our awareness to that space between our hip and shoulders and asking ourselves how much space we can create. After you feel comfortable doing that and you feel comfortable bouncing from side to side we're going to start to think about as we raise an arm the arm that's raising is going to externally rotate.

Our thumb is going to move back and out and our pinky finger is going to move forward and in and as we come back down that pattern is going to reverse. So we're going to start to think about the spirals of the arm as we spread our shoulder from our hip and then of course we're going to add in the breathing. As my arm raises and externally rotates I'm going to inhale and as my arm comes down and plants on the ground I'm going to exhale.

Once you have become aware of all those actions simultaneously then we're going to start to incorporate the toroidal shape of the breath whereas I'm inhaling the exterior of my body is raising and the interior is moving downward and I'm exhaling the exterior of my body is moving downward and the interior of my body is moving upward. The final thing that we're going to incorporate is the movement of the pelvic floor muscles with the diaphragm. So as my arm comes up and I inhale I'm trying to feel an active activation of the pelvic floor and then as my arm comes down as I exhale I'm trying to squeeze the muscles of the pelvic floor together.

As we talked about if you have a hard time squeezing the muscles of the pelvic floor or you just don't know where to start you just squeeze like you have to pee really bad and you're holding it in. So my arm comes up I'm inhaling I'm trying to find a spreading of the pelvic floor and then as I come down I'm squeezing the pelvic floor together. When you can connect all of these things in your awareness during this subtle movement it'll be time for you to move on to the second stage of getting more active more integrated dynamic movements.

If you're looking for a resource to learn more about the fascia on your own I'll put a link in the description for the best resource I've ever used in learning about the fascia. If you have any questions or concerns about doing the exercise you can ask me in the comments and I'll get back to you and if you like this video or think the information I'm providing is helpful please feel free to like and subscribe to support me in what I'm doing. Thank you have a great day.