Learn about structural integration and how it can improve your health!
Structural Integration (SI) is a systematic approach to working the whole body over a series of sessions. All bodies assume a pattern, whether it be from an injury, accident, poor posture, traumatic experience or suffer chronic pain, these experiences can have a big impact on your mind and body. How we hold ourselves in space can affect who we are. These experiences can get written in the mind, muscles, and biological fabric, the Fascia. Structural integration focuses on the fascia.
WHAT IS FASCIA?: It is a 3-dimensional web of glue-like tissue that surrounds all the structures in our body, including muscles, groups of muscles, blood vessels, nerves, and organs onto a cellular level. This fascial system is a supportive system that creates a tensional sea for our compressional bones to float in.
In the Anatomy Trains SI, we use anatomy train lines that are continuous fascial lines of pull in the body that runs from your head to your toes. These fascial lines help guide us in helping to facilitate efficient movement and stability throughout the body’s myofascial skeleton. In structural integration, we body read the person and look at the body 3-dimensionally. Looking at the body from top to bottom, the major body segments are organized around a central vertical axis and the goal is to provide balance side to side, front to back, and for the inner core muscles to be balanced with the outer superficial muscles. We are able to determine where in the body the fascia is not functioning properly, regardless of where the pain is.
Structural integration can complement physical therapy work by addressing the whole body imbalances through a methodical unwinding of the soft tissue system, which creates space in the body.
Having practiced physical therapy for many years, I look forward to adding this SI piece to my work. It has expanded my ability to look at the body in a different manner, tuning into the relationships between the fascial planes of the body vs chasing the pain or narrowing into one specific region of the body.
BENEFITS OF SI:
*Improve posture and balance
*Expansion of Breath
*Find ease in body and decrease stress on joints
*Improve overall mobility
*Help prevent recurrent episodes of injuries
*Refine movement and coordination and help a person live a healthy and active lifestyle
*Help person age gracefully