When we talk about physical wellness - we often talk about flexibility, mobility, and how this intersects with reducing the chances of injury - and for good reason! It’s easy to see how popular practices like yoga have become in recent years for wellness minded people and those seeking athletic maintenance, encouraging flexing, bending, and holding all sorts of shapes and positions (it can be a lot harder than it looks!). As such we concentrate a great deal on the stretching of soft tissues of the body, such as muscle fibers, skin, and fascia - but the same attention to the nervous system is often overlooked.
It can be useful to think of the nervous system as a complex collection of communication lines transmitting information between the brain and the body - much like telephone wires or high speed internet cables - but if these same communication lines get damaged (injury), too much pressure is placed upon them (entrapment), or there is not enough flexibility available (neural tension), things can get painful!
Carpal tunnel syndrome (compression of the median nerve at the wrist) and piriformis syndrome (compression of the sciatic nerve at the posterior hip) are two common nerve entrapment injuries caused by nearby structures such as muscles and other soft tissue compressing our nerves, but excess pulling stress on nerve structures caused by inflexibility can also cause pain, numbness, pins and needles (known as parasthesia), and a host of other symptoms. Our healthy nerves generally have some natural slack in them in order to facilitate the movement of the body through a wide range of motions - but when there isn’t enough flexibility in the body something called ‘adverse neural tension’ can occur. As the nerve is elongated but can’t slide freely along it’s path this adverse neural tension increases.
At Integral Therapeutic, massage techniques applied to the adjacent soft tissue structures of the affected nerves (such as muscle, skin, fascia, and connective tissues) can not only help free up and provide more flexibility to the nerve for better function but can also stretch or ‘floss’ the nerve. Whilst this idea of stretching of the nerve can seem counterintuitive since it is the stretch that produces symptoms, a gentle stretch or traction within comfort range can over time reduce sensitivity and may help stretch some of the connective tissue components of the nerve, increasing flexibility and reducing pain or loss of sensation for our clients.
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