64. The relationship between fascia and emotions

If you’ve ever wondered whether emotions affect your fascial matrix, or whether tension in the matrix can affect your emotions… then this is the episode for you!


This is a thought-provoking look at fascia through the lens of just being a human; briefly looking at theories behind the mechanisms of emotional release, stress, stuck emotions and more.

Accompanying this episode is a free journal prompt sheet, to help you understand your thoughts, your personal experiences and views around the relationship between fascia and emotions, you can get yours here.

See the shownotes here  

And don’t forget to let us know what you think!
 
 Happy teaching, wonderful yoga teachers.

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Transcript

Hello, and welcome to For Yoga Teachers. This podcast has been created to help yoga teachers teach with passion, avoid burnout and earn a fair living. 

 Today, we're looking at theories on the relationship between fascia and emotional experiences. So let's get cracking. You've probably heard the phrase the body keeps the score popularized by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk and his work on trauma. This idea is not just metaphorical, it actually has physiological underpinnings and fascia is believed to play a huge role in this. Theories suggest that fascia can store emotional experiences, especially those related to stress and trauma. 

The idea is that when we experience intense emotion, like fear or anger or sadness. Our body contract, right it tightens in response. This is pretty standard thinking in terms of the fight or flight response. We know that in times of stress, The body reacts as though there's a threat to survival, and as such it reroutes blood to skeletal muscles, preparing them for action. But this tightening can become a habitual pattern. And over time un resolved, emotional stress might imprint on the fascial matrix. 

And I think as yoga teachers, We, we worked with our yogis and they are dealing with anxiety and depression and trauma, and we might notice how certain poses or certain movements release the emotion. So I ask you. Could this release be even just in part, due to fascia's responsiveness to physical and emotional states? And so when our students feel safe, And they arrange their body in a way that can facilitate the release of tension, could this also release the pen top emotions, that are stored or held or caught by the fascial tissue.

 You might be wondering how does releasing fascia release emotions? 

Well, The concept isn't fully understood yet, but there are a few theories around a few different mechanisms. 

One theory involves the vagus nerve, right, the primary nerve of the parasympathetic nervous system, the rest and digest mode. The fascial matrix is closely linked with the nervous system as we dived into in some depth in episode 57. And gentle mindful movement can stimulate the vagus nerve, therefore affecting the autonomic nervous system, all ultimately promoting relaxation and emotional release potentially through the fascia. 

Another theory relates to interoception; the body's ability to sense its internal states. And so once again, As your Yogi's feel safe with you, they start to relax into their environment and into their body; they may well increase that interoceptive awareness, which then allows them to understand their stored emotions rather than block them, and this could be the primary mechanism of helping your yogis release emotions. 

And if the fascial network is the pranamaya kosha and emotion's a part of the Manomaya kosha, the yogis already knew that one would deeply affect the other and that both would affect the other koshas and vice versa. I think there's two things that I talk about a lot, a lot, a lot on here on the podcast and on our trainings at yoga hero to. 

One is that it never ceases to amaze me, how, in many ways, modern science studies and research are starting to back up what the Yogi seemed to know about, like even millennia ago. 

And secondly, that stress and the impacts of stress can be a vicious cycle. And I think looking at the relationship between fascia and emotions is a huge topic in both of these. It's really only with modern imaging and a teeny tiny little camera that science has started to understand what fascia actually is in a living being. And when you start to contemplate the very process of experience in emotion and how you feel that in your body? How, you know, when the emotion is taking a hold of you and how you know, when it's passed, or maybe it hasn't passed any, it gets stuck, and then this might manifest as grumpiness or affecting your sleep or physical tension or pain. 

This is a huge, but often overlooked part of managing the stress cycle, both for yourself and your yogis. In an ideal world, we would all acknowledge our emotions, take a little bit of time to svadyaya them to self study them; the cause and the impact, we'd let them flow through us, and we'd come out the other side with the experience and the learnings. 

But unfortunately, often we don't live in an ideal world. Maybe we don't want to experience the emotion, maybe we don't feel safe to experience the emotion, and so it gets stuck.

There's many, many questions here and absolutely tons of food for thought. 

But yoga teachers, I really feel that this fascia and emotions, is one of those areas where we are really right at the very beginning of getting some deep understanding and some concrete answers. And ultimately the relationship between fascia and emotions is a powerful, an ongoing reminder of the body's wisdom and interconnectedness. Whilst science is still uncovering the exact mechanisms, what we do know, supports the healing potential of yoga.

I hope you found this episode thought provoking. On our myofascial release, energetic anatomy and yin yoga training in March, we will start to unpack what the research says about fascia and emotions to layer onto our own private experience, and our more academic understanding too. 

Until then I have some journal prompts for you to help you explore your own experiences and your own views, and notice if and how they evolve. To get yours simply go to the show notes and download your free journal prompt sheet. 

I really hope this episode has got you thinking about the wisdom of yoga, and the anatomy of fascia and how these two may even be one in the same thing. 

And as always yoga teachers. Happy teaching.