when it’s time to change the system
Life organizes around systems, so when we want to make a change, we risk disrupting a system.
Raise your hand if you’ve moved away from home, but when you visit your family, you regress into your familiar role? What happens if you want to act differently? It can feel risky and disruptive. The dynamics of your family are a system, organized around each other. If you’re interested in change, you may have to disrupt the comfortable pattern you've established, and it’s not always easy.
Your body is a system. Have you ever made a change to your diet and stuck it out? I’m doing whole30 this month and all of the articles talk about the detox phase, which includes headaches, sleep disruption, mood swings, and more—they have to promise a concept called tiger blood when you get to the other side just to keep you motivated! If you’ve accumulated some unhealthy habits, in order to get to a healthier, more balanced place, you’ve got to be willing to go through some stuff. You will probably experience resistance, especially around the most important changes, and you’ve got to be willing to disrupt the system.
Your fascia is a system—within and part of—your body’s system. Among other things, your fascia provides structure, stability, and movement efficiency. If you’ve had a movement pattern for a long time, shifting that pattern—even for the better—can feel confusing and uncomfortable.
When it comes to changing your fascia, look for the areas in your body with the most resistance. In our fascial re-tuning sessions, we first engage an area of the body, allowing it to organize around the tension, and then we elongate that area of the body, maintaining the resistance. This creates an active stretch, and also creates a tension on the fascia that allows it to reconfigure. The areas where we feel the most resistance are the areas where we likely have the most dense fascia. It can be incredibly strong, but also may be limiting, potentially putting more strain on other areas of the body, creating an imbalanced system. So if you are aiming for healthy tissue in a harmonious body, you have to seek resistance and be willing to move through it.
Often after a session, clients or students will report experiences that are surprising to them. Some examples include the welling up of big emotions, a need for deep sleep, a change in cravings or behaviors, muscle soreness, or even re-discovering a long lost memory in their mind or body. To me, this is an indication that a shift has occurred. It is an invitation to be gentle with yourself, and curious about what is ready to change.
