Fascia: The Little-Known Secret To Solving Inflammation Naturally

Deanna Hansen

Thank you so much, Laura. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Likewise. And we’re going to talk about a really important topic today, Fascia. And let me introduce you to our audience. You’re the pioneer in the field of fascia decompression for physical and emotional transformation. You’ve got more than 20 years of hands-on clinical experience. You’re the creator of block therapy, which is a fascia release protocol, and it relieves chronic pain and disease and encourages healthy detoxification and reverse cellular aging. And this is why I am so thrilled to bring you on here because we’re all about detoxing the body around here. And if you ignore this, I would say, I was going to say a little piece to fascia, but it’s actually an enormous piece of your body. But if you missed that piece, that is going to be hard to get your health back in shape, resolve your symptoms, and hit your health goals. So let’s jump right in. If you could describe the role and the importance of fascia in the human body especially in relation to our overall health. And this may be the first time that some of our viewers are hearing the importance of this. And they may have learned in biology class or human biology class at some point that it just holds your muscles together, it just surrounds your muscles but it’s a lot more than that.

Deanna Hansen

Yeah, it is a lot more than that. And it’s so exciting when you really start to understand the integrity of the system. So fashion basically, is the cell membrane of every other cell connected to each cell. So there are trillions of cells in the body and the fascia is the communication between all cells. It also creates both stability and mobility for the body. And the goal is that we keep every single cell in it’s correct alignment. Because if that’s the case, there’s optimal flow. This is a flow of nutrients and oxygen into the cells as well as ease of removal of waste and toxins. So as long as we have optimal flow, really there’s no issue for the body to go through pain, aging disease. Because whatever comes in goes out. That’s not that’s not necessary.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

So you just suggested something that may be, something that our viewers haven’t heard before. You just suggested that fascia is everywhere. It’s not just surrounding the muscles. It’s literally in every nook and cranny, crack, and crevice in the extracellular spaces. Those are the spaces in between our cells. Is that what you just said?

Deanna Hansen

Yes. So whether we’re talking nerves, blood vessels, fat tissue, ligaments, tendons, or skin. It’s all connected through the fascia system.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

And so that’s pretty mindblowing, I think. And I feel like, you know, at least my training in medicine did a disservice to this really important aspect of the human body because I certainly didn’t learn about the importance of this until I got into my functional medicine training. And even then I didn’t hear about it until I dug deeper and started meeting people who were talking about fascia. So it sounds like it’s pretty important to our overall health.

Deanna Hansen

It to me is the most important aspect of what we really do need to look at when it comes to our health. Because when the body is correctly aligned and there’s optimal flow, really what’s driving that is the diaphragm, this incredible muscle that pulls oxygen into the body as well as removes waste from the body. However, when we fall out of alignment, which we do because gravity is constantly compressing us down, we’re dominant on one side, we have scar tissue from injuries or surgeries potentially, as well as just unconscious living, we start compressing. So because we don’t just compress in a linear fashion, we literally wind down one direction or another, typically based on what side we’re dominant on and the fascia in its goal to keep us upright and aligned creates adhesions throughout the layers of fascia, and we’ll actually grip onto a bone with a force of up to 2,000 pounds per square inch. It’s a magnetic seal. So that is because it’s trying to stop us from tipping over, from basically falling flat on her face.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

I’m envisioning a level inside of our body. Like our body has its own leveling process. And if we start to get lopsided, it corrects us.

Deanna Hansen

Yeah. So as we fall into these joint spaces over time and these adhesions are riddled throughout the fascia, adhesions basically act like scar tissue. It’s a buildup of collagen. There’s collagen and elastin. Basically, the primary components of the fascia. And the collagen will start to migrate as we start tipping over to create building blocks essentially. And so that’s what those adhesions are. But the problem with that is they block blood and oxygen flow to cells as well as trap toxins, parasites, and all the things that we don’t want in those areas of the body.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

And I definitely want to have a talk about parasites today. Before we get to parasites, what I’m hearing you say is that posture is really important on our health. In fact, you would say probably crucial to our health. And nobody thinks about their posture.

Deanna Hansen

Yeah. And it’s not just about sitting up straight. It’s really about understanding the proper postural foundations that support correct cell alignment. Because that’s what we have in our body in order to keep that full space in the body and keep that optimal flow.  As soon as we start tipping over, if we’ve been sitting in front of a computer for 20, 30, 40 years in this compressed position, again we start migrating the cells, migrate away from correct alignment, adhesions are created and now we have again blocks. We have cells that are hungry as well as dirty. And that is a recipe for disaster.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Hungry and dirty cells. Okay. Like we have to figure, we have to talk today about how to fix this. But let’s dig into what happens with those dirty places. What gets into the dirty places? Let’s start there.

Deanna Hansen

Well, it’s stagnancy. Because when there’s that flow, of course, there’s I mean, like a car having exhaust, every cell creates waste from just function. As well. We all know how toxic this world is so we’re constantly absorbing through food, through water, through the air, everything. Even the EMF. We’re absorbing all of this into the body. And if we don’t have that ability to pull in what we need, keep what we need, and then get rid of what doesn’t serve us, those things start to build up in the fascia. And the body because it’s recognizing that it needs help and support it actually sends blood flow, and inflammation to these areas. Now, if we don’t have that flow and we don’t treat that inflammation properly it keeps continuing so it gets backed up and it becomes more acidic. So now we’re creating these environments all through the body that are basically, you know, breeding grounds for all the things that we don’t want to live inside of us now.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Now I’m envisioning little cesspools. I have so much imagery coming up.

Deanna Hansen

Well, and I love that because basically, energy moves in waves and spirals. So again, we don’t compress linearly, we spiral down. So as we start to spiral further and further out of alignment we become more compressed, more dense, colder, lack of flow, and then these areas become extremely problematic.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

And so people who say, I can’t seem to regulate my body temperature, I’m always cold, my thyroid checked out normal, all my labs are good. What’s wrong with me? It could be.

Deanna Hansen

What’s wrong is the breath is compromised. So the diaphragm is the body’s furnace or major engine. If we’re not breathing diaphragmaticly and pain, fear, and stress cause us to reactively hold the breath. So most people are breathing through the muscles of the upper chest, those secondary muscles. But that’s like a space heater. I live in a 30-storey building and I have basically two rooms. If it’s -30, I live in Winnipeg it’s cold in the winter. If it’s -30 and I only have one space heater I can only heat one room in my apartment. But you turn on the building’s furnace and you keep the entire building. So when we’re breathing diaphragmatically we’re able to move the fluids, move the energy to all of the cells in the body, as well as release the toxins from the body. When we breathe through the muscles of the upper chest, we are literally, physiologically a different animal. It’s incredibly significant, the difference. Is it okay if I dove in and share a little bit about the diaphragm?

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

I find myself taking deep breaths right now. I’ve got my shoulders up, I’m sitting up straight, I’m deep breathing. What’s happening to me?

Deanna Hansen

So basically the diaphragm is a plate of muscle that supports the foundation, the rib cage. When we inhale, it moves down. When we exhale, it moves up. And if this is happening properly we’re getting a continual message to all of the abdominal organs. Again, this is creating heat. It supports the heart and the lungs. The challenge is, though, if we aren’t breathing this way and keeping this muscle strong, it collapses. Our whole rib cage and the weight of the upper body crash down into the core space. So this is a problem because now we’re going to be displacing organs/ As we’re breathing up here and we’re not getting that mechanical action of the diaphragm, that area is becoming colder. And we need heat, we need energy to have our systems function optimally.

So as soon as we start breathing up through here, we are literally cooling down the body. Now at the base of the lungs is where the majority of the alveoli reside. So we can feed the body six times, 600% more oxygen when breathing properly. And they did a study in 2014. It was in the medical news proving that 84% of weight loss comes through proper exhalation. So because of the detoxifying effects. And so when even talking about people having issues with size and shape, I used to be 50 pounds overweight and I was starving myself and I was working out like a fiend, and the more I worked, the bigger I got. As soon as I recognized the significance of the diaphragm and how it is really the regulation for the entire body everything started to change. So it’s fascinating when we actually really tap into this muscle and how different you feel almost immediately. But the challenge is we can’t just start doing breathwork. Because if we’ve been collapsed, we are literally sealed magnetically in that negative alignment with that 2000 pump per square inch force. So to try to bring that muscle into action is challenging for some people.

So through the process of fascia decompression, we melt those adhesions from the bone and we create correct alignment so we can integrate this muscle into how we’re supposed to breathe. And that’s how we’re born to breathe. So it’s the most natural thing. But we’ve fallen so far out of balance with our alignment that most people literally have a frozen diaphragm just like a frozen shoulder.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Well, I think light bulbs are going off for people right now. I we’re going to get into this whole talk. We’re going to talk about solutions. We’re going to talk about the types of toxins and the things that happen in the body. But right now, in this last, you know, six, seven minutes or so of this first part of our interview, could you talk about the link between this, problem within the fascia and stagnation a and the posture? You know, oops. I think my camera just froze. We’re good? Okay. So can you link that to the inflammatory process in the body and chronic disease and what the majority of our audience is experiencing and you’re trying to solve?

Deanna Hansen

Yes. And I love chatting about inflammation because to me inflammation is the gold. It’s how we heal. We sprain an ankle, the body inflames. We have stress. We have any issues in the body. Inflammation happens because in its ingenious design. It’s recognizing that there’s cells and tissue that need extra attention. However, we don’t understand how to approach inflammation properly. So I just want to jump in just to give a bit of a different understanding of acute injury.

So the first thing, let’s say I sprained my ankle, now the body’s directing all of this wonderful inflammation to do its job. However, if we do things like ice compress, slow down or stop that inflammation for 48 to 72 hours as we’re taught to do with the rice method. We’re basically sealing that injury in its space. Because the second law of thermodynamics is nature abhors a gradient. So what this means is if there’s a gap in the system, nature is going to fill it in. So now I have a tear in my ligament or tendon, my body is sending inflammation to rebuild that. But if I don’t put energy into that space then the tissue, the surrounding fascia gets sucked in like a vortex into that gap because nature’s going to fill it in. If I treat the body as it should be through proper breathing, through heating, through doing the correct work, then we actually rebuild that tissue. So it’s good as new as opposed to leaving the body with a scar.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

 And adhesion right? okay.

Deanna Hansen

Yes. And they’re dense. They’re basically collagen. So there’s no elasticity, there’s no life, they’re heavy and then gravity grips that and it keeps manipulating you. So from an acute injury standpoint, this can often start chronic inflammation through the entire body because now we have a body that’s shifted, so now my alignment is different. And because now I’m going to be constantly levering, like you mentioned in the beginning, how we’re always going through this back and forth motion to keep upright more adhesions keep developing, the body keeps sending more inflammation but we don’t have that proper flow because nobody’s breathing properly. And we’re treating inflammation in a way that isn’t serving the body. So basically, we want to turn on all of the healing proteins in that inflammation so that they can do their job. And there’s all this potential energy just sitting and waiting to get turned on but we need to heat it.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Just how would somebody know that they really need to work on their fascia? Can you run down like a bunch of different symptoms or signs? Because I bet right now people are working on self-diagnosing as they listen to this. So how might they know?

Deanna Hansen

And it’s pretty much anything and everything that doesn’t feel good. So chronic pain, issues with size and shape, emotional struggles, anxiety, brain fog, skin rashes, like psoriasis, autoimmune disease, cancer. I mean, basically it all comes down to flow. So if we have optimal flow and every single cell is getting properly fed and clean all the time, the body doesn’t accumulate any negativity, and gravity again, is this force that’s constantly pulling us down but the full exhalation is the counterforce to gravity. So when we have a body that’s working and aligned, the breath is keeping everything as it should be. So we can actually go through time without having that compressive action from gravity creating aging, which is really exciting.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

It is. Well, I want to dig in deeper here about solutions. I want to talk more about infections that can get trapped and hidden in the body. I want to talk about the relationship between posture, fascia infections, how you can you know, how you can approach this to solve it. So I want to thank you so much for joining us today for this first part of our talk on fascia and root causes of chronic illness. And to our audience, I hope you found our conversation insightful and helpful. If you’re a summit purchaser, stay right here, because we’re about to dive even deeper into this discussion with Deanna. And if you’re not, click on the button on this page to get access to a continuation of this conversation and many others and get the tools you need to reclaim your health. 

If you’re watching this continuation of my talk with Deanna, thank you for being a valuable member of our community and we’re going to dive right back in. So I would love to really dig in. We have a lot of speakers on this summit talking about various toxins, talking about different infections, everything from parasites to Lyme, you know, bacterial infections, infections that originate in the gut and move into other places of the body. And I think that oftentimes people think that parasites live in the gut. So let’s break some myths right now and let’s talk about what you’ve seen in your practice, and what you’ve helped people resolve, and what actually what actually moves beyond that GI tract and into the fascia.

Deanna Hansen

And it’s like everything and everywhere. I had a client, this was wild actually. I have a 21 day head, neck, and face program. So where we’re really targeting in through this space. And we also get into the mouth. And after she was doing some of the work, she said she had these like threads coming out of her gums.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Worms.

Deanna Hansen

Yeah, yeah. Also, I’ve heard from clients, all through the nose, back to the neck, of course, the GI track, everywhere. Like it’s fascinating what comes out of the body. I personally had a horrible, horrible parasites that I got rid of. I mean, you know, little white bugs in the toilet. There’s this thing. And once you see them go and you’re like, thank goodness, right?

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

I know, it’s this crazy thing. All my clients say, I don’t want to see it. I don’t want to see it. And then when it comes out and it’s gone, like, okay, that wasn’t bad and I’m really glad he’s gone..

Deanna Hansen

Yeah. So especially like if areas are itchy, you know, like a lot of people have, you know, itchy scalp, you know, likely you’ve got, you know, a whole bunch of parasites in there. And so it is amazing. But they can come out through any part of the body.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah, everybody’s itching right now. Like they got exposed to lice. Okay, so what about toxins? So, you know, heavy metals, environmental toxins, these endocrine-disrupting things like phthalates and parabens, the forever chemicals that’s in our cookware, the mold and mycotoxins that, you know, and fungus. I mean, we’re covering all these topics on this summit but what are you seeing affecting the fascia? Probably all of it.

Deanna Hansen

Well, all of it. And really, it comes down to when we’re breathing diaphragmatically, basically, we’re creating a heating in those organs. So the liver. Like if you think of an NAFLD, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. It’s butter at room temperature as a solid, when you melt it or when you heat it it becomes a liquid. So this filter is getting literally clogged because of the fats that we’re eating they’re not mobilizing out of the liver. So now this liver that has this crazy job today, because, again, we’re living in such a toxic world, it can’t do its job of cleaning the body properly, cleaning the blood because it’s filled with these fats that are cold. So again, if I start like, here’s my liver, so if I start breathing properly now I’m giving this whole area a continual massage to stay heated so I can start melting through those frozen fats that are creating that barrier for the liver to do its many functions.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Can you get into giving our audience some actionable tips they could do right now to start supporting their fascia? And, you know, I’d love it if you talk about block therapy, you have this book on Block your body. I mean, there’s a lot of places we could go here in, you know, we’ve got another 20 minutes where we can just rift So what would you like to cover here?

Deanna Hansen

So the first thing that everybody can do, and it’s probably easiest starting this if you’re lying down on your back. Place your hands on your belly. When we inhale, the belly should get big. When we exhale, it should come back down. Most people are breathing through here. When I was a teenager I was a dancer and they always said, hold your belly in.

But if you’re doing that now you’re forcing people to breathe from the muscles of the upper chest. So that whole concept of keeping your belly nice and flat, it’s actually going to create more ballooning. Because as we’re not breathing from that diaphragm now, again, the weight of everything collapses into the core, it displaces everything outwards. So we get a bulging belly. And now because also we’re creating inflammation and we’re cold in this space, we’re becoming more toxic. So it’s like I really see weight loss as being a function of decompression and detoxification. So much less than how much we put into our mouth and how much activity we do. Because I was that person and I was 50 pounds overweight and I was getting bigger and bigger and bigger because I was so toxic from that lack of understanding of how to properly breathe.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

So just breathing, right off the bat can start support.

Deanna Hansen

Just breathing. And so for those that can actually access that right away, that’s where we should be breathing 24 seven. However, because again, we get collapsed in through here and then that diaphragm becomes locked and frozen away. That’s where block therapy and other fascia decompression techniques come in. Because through the process of. Can I hold one up, one of the tools? So this is the block. It’s a very specific size and shape. There’s actually two sizes. And they’re made of either bamboo or wood. And the reason that they’re this material is because we want to get to the root of the problem, which is at the bone. That’s where those adhesions will grip and adhere so powerfully. So when we’re moving through the layers of fascia in the process that we share, we are actually able to melt through those adhesions. So we don’t roll on the surface. You know, fascia rollers, for example, that you do surface work, that’s like taking a boat on the ocean, we want a deep sea dive. We don’t move on the tool, we simply get on the tool. 

We instruct you how to connect to your proper breath. And then once you’re connected in, we teach you how to very slowly maneuver your body over the tool through the layers of fascia. So the breath combined with pressure over time creates that deep heating, and that’s how we melt through those adhesions. And then once we melt them, then we have again an influx of blood and oxygen into that newly created space as well as we start pulling away all of the toxins, the parasites, all the bad stuff that’s been stuck inside there. So through that process, sorry.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

So many questions. So many questions. So I’m envisioning myself on the floor with the block and learning how to put my body onto the block. And I’m sure you explain how long each body part should be there and what you should do. And I’m guessing that there’s all kind of a whole body flow and system to do this.

Deanna Hansen

It’s a full-body thing. And we stay in each position for a minimum of 3 minutes because you can’t rush melting. So this is a very restorative practice that has profound benefits on every level, whether it’s emotional, physical, detoxification and managing size and shape, anxiety, stress, like it’s all that. Because again fascia interconnects every single cell in the body. So the practice itself is really simple. What is the more challenging piece? There’s three pillars to block therapy. There’s the creating space that we do with the tool and the breath. We inflate that space with the breath and then maintaining that space. This is the posture piece. So for everybody that’s sitting, if you can just look at where your feet are, the feet should be 90 degrees with the full foot on the floor.

Lots of people will tuck their feet underneath the chair or they might be sitting with more pressure or more weight on one sit bone on the other. For us to be sitting properly all the time, we get to this point where it’s effortless effort. I love that expression because they use that in yoga. When we are correctly aligned and we’re breathing properly, the cells are magnetically seated where they’re supposed to be. So there’s still effort. But there’s far more effort required to hold up the weight of the head when we’re collapsing forward. And then the chronic pains and issues that that creates. So that’s just one thing that we can do as well right off the bat to create a shift in how we feel when we’re seated.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

You would not like the way I was sitting just now when you said that. My legs were crossed, one foot was on the ground with my toes curled under like unconsciously. I told you as I was doing this interview I’m like, okay, watch your posture, sit up straight.

Deanna Hansen

Well, and then another foundation that people don’t recognize is the tongue. It’s not just meant for chewing and talking. It’s actually also here to help support the weight of the head. So people that have a double chin, it’s not really a double chin, it’s a displaced and a weak tongue. But the problem is too when we collapse in the rib cage, it pulls the head forward. If we don’t have all of these foundations properly aligned then gravity just plays havoc on what’s going on in the body. Where if we have that conscious awareness, then we again, we stack ourselves so that leveling, that you mentioned, that doesn’t have to occur because we are supporting ourselves correctly with proper foundations. So the fascia will build through those adhesions, false walls, and false floors. And it’s basically just that migration of the collagen creating density. And then typically, I mean, we’re aging in this forward space, so most people have pain in the backs of their body. However, it’s because of this forward collapse that we are actually creating this chronic situation in the back of the body. And as the calves and the feet and the forearms, and the hands that are the most frozen because they’re the furthest from the engine. So even for people with scoliosis or migraines or whatever the situation is, if we don’t address the calves and the feet and bring them back into alignment, every time we take a step we’re going to get pulled back into that negative fascia pattern.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

So how much time would one want to spend working on this and how quickly can people see results? Because I know people are result-driven. So what kind of time commitment is this?

Deanna Hansen

15 minutes a day will make a big difference. But typically our classes are 30-minute classes and then we do generally a 3 to 5-minute alignment training. So we release, we rebuild, we release, we rebuild. So it’s lovely though., you do it lying down. You can do it in bed. So it’s not something that’s physical. I mean, we can take it to different levels on the block. However, the action of doing it itself is super passive and relaxing and restorative. Yet again, we have all these crazy shifts and changes even with our size and shape. Because when we release those negative patterns in the limbs then the body comes to balance. We start breathing more effectively and then we release again 84% of weight loss, it’s huge.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Wow. And so how long should people be doing this practice? Is this a lifelong thing? Is it a thing? I mean, obviously, I’m thinking there’s probably phases like get yourself out of your chronic situation and then probably a maintenance from there, if I’m guessing.

Deanna Hansen

Yeah, and most people become blockers for life because it feels so incredible. And I mean, we’re constantly being flat, right? So like, we’re always under the influence of gravity. We’re always absorbing stuff that we shouldn’t absorb. So to keep your fascia healthy, to keep your cells aligned correctly, again, it becomes the workout but people are putting extra time and attention into doing other things.

So often, you know, the running might go or the weights because I mean, it’s not great to compress the body on purpose yet. That’s what we do when we exercise. Or if you’re playing a sport that’s asymmetrical, that’s a really. They’re probably the most challenging people to work on because they’re so strongly conditioned out of alignment that their body is denser. So it doesn’t take a long time but people absolutely fall in love with it. And we have over 10,000 members in our private Facebook community. And I mean, they’re just they’re blockers for life because of the ease of doing it and then the results that you get from it. So, yes, you’re correct, though, people typically will start because of pain, because they’ve heard it’s helped their friend with something. And then as they get rid of the initial reason that they come to they find there’s all these other amazing benefits.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Wow. It sounds really extraordinary. Let’s talk about layering it into protocols. Right. Because most people here are working with practitioners. You know, supporting their gut health, supporting their detox process, helping them with chronic infections or chronic toxic overloads or fatigue, or whatever it is. So I’m assuming that this just layers into whatever you’re doing and won’t obstruct anything that you’re working on.

Deanna Hansen

No, it’s a complement to absolutely everything. Whether it’s holistic, medical, it doesn’t matter, it’s a complement. Because when you again activate the breath properly, you’re basically turning on the body’s natural wisdom. This is, again, how we’re born to breathe. But pain, fear, and stress cause us to react, to hold our breath. This world is stressful 24 seven So most people don’t even recognize that they’re not breathing in the correct way. And you can ask the question, how long does it take to notice a change? People will typically notice a change after the very first class. Because the very first thing we always do is we release the diaphragm, and we teach people how to breathe properly. So as soon as you do, you start moving that waste out and you start increasing the oxygen absorption.

So energy changes right away because now you’re fueling the mitochondria as opposed to if you’re feeding only 10 to 20% of your cells proper levels of oxygen. Like no wonder we feel so weighted and sluggish and tired and heavy. We’re literally slugging around a body that should have 100% of its cells acting for your health as opposed to ten or 20%. You know, they say that the brain only uses, like we only is about 10% of our brain. I believe it’s because most people are only breathing 10% of their capacity.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Oh, that is a fascinating concept. Yes, I have so many questions. Do you mind if I just keep firing them? 

Deanna Hansen

Oh, please do. I love it.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

So I’ve heard that scars in the body from surgical, from injuries, from whatever. That scars block fracture flow and that this in turn can prevent the body from being able to heal. So what do you do with people who have surgical scars, who have injury scars? Is there something special that they’re doing? Is that something you, if that’s something you can handle with block therapy, is that or is there some other special device they need?

Deanna Hansen

No, not at all. Actually, it’s the process of melting. Because like adhesions, scars are just an accumulation of college. And so when we put that space back into that tissue that has become dense, then again you start pumping that blood flow in. So we have a lot of women in our community that have had C-sections, for example. And for anybody that’s had that, it’s so frustrating because you lack that ability to connect to that part of your body and then often like you get pouchy. So, so many have just had such incredible changes with their scars just by simply doing the work. It’s also understanding, again, the cause sites though. So of course the scar that’s put in through a surgery is the initial site. However, there’s going to be reasons that that happened, that are going to also be postural.

So, I mean, if you, whenever I look at full bodies to assess, I always look at what’s going on with the feet. Because if you think here’s the hips and here’s the feet, if you’re in correct alignment the hip joints sit as they should in the pelvis. People always have one foot that acts like a flat tire. So it draws away from the body and then the fascia unconsciously will anchor that other side so again, we don’t tip over. But now we have this happening in the pelvis. So all of the things in the body again can really get tracked back to a postural imbalance. And then how the body has had to adapt with adhesions to address that. So whether again adhesions or scar tissue through the process of diving through those layers, following the flow of everything in nature, the spiral pattern, the Fibonacci sequence, which is how we direct people to move through the layers, you literally are unzipping the seams of time and getting that blood and oxygen into those scars however they were created.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

And then can you also talk about the relationship between your lymphatic system and your fascia? Because you often hear, I think people are more aware of their lymphatics and how important that is to healing. What happens if you do one without the other and what’s the relationship there?

Deanna Hansen

Well I mean because again, the adhesions block flow, it doesn’t matter if it’s energy flow or fluid flow. So when we are filled with adhesion, now the lymphatic flow is compromised. So doing this work actually improves lymphatic flow significantly. And again, that breath is the driver of moving the fluids throughout the entire body. So for example, if somebody has had breast cancer and have some lymph nodes removed and then, you know, has that scarring off and we’ll have lymphedema in that arm. So by working through the areas of the scarring, we can get our breath strong again. Now we start pumping out that stagnant fluid that’s been stuck in whatever spaces of the body and we start mobilizing. So again, the body will get rid of what it needs to through healing crises. It could be a rash. It could be, you know, diarrhea, mucus, production, whatever it happens to be to remove that negativity from the body. But that’s the key, we have to melt those adhesions. So initially when we were talking about inflammation, I’d mentioned that inflammation is actually the gold, it’s the scar tissue and the adhesions that are really the root of everything negative in the body because they are. what, are the barriers to flow.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah. And what I picked up from this talk is that obviously scars happen to us because of injury, surgery. But the fact that adhesions, this is new to me. I mean, I know about adhesions from having this C-section or that form for after surgery but the fact that your body creates adhesions to balance and level you is mind-blowing to me. Like we’re literally creating this.

Deanna Hansen

Totally. And when I really recognized, this was this was the very beginning of my journey,  I was again, 50 pounds overweight and the majority of my weight was in my core. So I never touched my belly because I hated it so much. And then I was having an anxiety attack. And for some reason, I dove my hand into my abdomen and I was a therapist at this point, an athletic therapist. So I’d already spent five years working at people’s body, very familiar with what scar tissue felt like. But my abdomen was riddled with what felt like scar tissue, even though I hadn’t had any injury or surgery. And then suddenly I was like, okay, now I understand why when I come home from a five-mile run dripping wet with sweat, my belly is still cold.

There is no flow getting to the space. So after literally two nights of just intuitively working with my hand in my belly, when I stood up that second day, my belly was flatter than it had looked in years. And I mean years of working out like crazy as an athletic therapist. I mean, I’m working with these high-level athletes and I’m doing everything I was trained but my body was not following the rules of weight loss. So I understand why now, though.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Oh, gosh, so amazing. So in the time we have left, what other. I mean, I know I’ve been peppering you with questions. But what other things do you want people to know before we complete here? What are some other pearls of wisdom that you really want to make sure people get?

Deanna Hansen

There’s so many people that had traumatic events in their life. So trauma also gets stuck inside the body and will create challenges down the road. Because when we have a trauma we go into that freeze mode with the breath. So if you see a deer who survives an attack, they shake, they release that negativity. We as humans, we tend to go into freeze mode. So we have an ability to undo and unlock the trauma that had happened and then the result of what that means. So if I was ten years old and I saw something horrible and I went into freeze mode now I’m aging from that space. So now my whole body is not being able to develop as effectively as it can because I’m literally starving it from oxygen and then I become denser, and then I end up with chronic disease down the road. So even trauma can be released and not even it is released through the fascia decompression. As soon as we open up those layers of fascia, all that negativity, that emotion that was also trapped in there also releases. So whatever it is that people are struggling with, understanding how to support fascia and how to connect your proper diaphragmatic breath, in my opinion, is the most important thing we can do to reverse what’s happened as well to age in a healthy way.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

I’m assuming that everybody’s system improves, brain function gets better, hormones balance, moodiness goes away, digestion gets better, and energy goes up. I mean, headaches go away, skin clears up. I mean, so many benefits are what I’m thinking is possible.

Deanna Hansen

What was fascinating, I have a community member who’s in New York that does thermography. And she took a before image of a client before she had started block therapy. Within two months she had cleared out all the inflammation. She had red and orange. And those are the like indicators for, you know, stagnant inflammation all through that diaphragmatic area. Within two months it was completely gone. And she said she’s never seen anything so profound as far as before and after in that period of time. So that’s again, that’s the magic of connecting to that beautiful breath

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

That is huge. Okay. So tell our audience where they can find you, how they can get block therapy, and how they can get into your groups. I know that people want this.

Deanna Hansen

So block therapy community is our Facebook group and you just have to ask to join and it’s free for everybody. And again, we’ve got so many members in there. So that’s a beautiful place to ask questions, to see and hear what other people have experienced, that’s probably the most important place. Blocktherapy.com is my website. And from there you can access all of our social media handles. We have so many videos on our YouTube channel, instructional videos to teach people how to do the work. And we also have a free gift.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Amazing. Yeah, tell us about it.

Deanna Hansen

So there are nine videos in this series and we teach you using a rolled-up towel so you can access it immediately. And it’s really about teaching you how, instead of using the block, using the towel, how to decompress the fascia from head to toe. And you will see changes in those first two classes. Because again, even that rolled-up towel, when you spend the time and you connect to that proper breath, it helps to melt those adhesions. So it’s not quite as efficient as the tool however, you’ll certainly get a very strong understanding of how this impacts the body.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Okay. Thank you so much for spending this time with us today, for explaining all this. I know that the people’s minds are blown.

Deanna Hansen

Thank you so much. This has been really fun. It’s been a pleasure chatting with you.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

It’s fun. So everyone, I really encourage you to go find Deanna out there in the online world, it sounds like she’s everywhere. And until next time, everyone. Take good care. Bye now.