The Fascia-Inflammation Link: What You Need To Know

Introduction to Fascia and Inflammation 0:00

What happens with the fascia system is as our body starts tipping over, we start having a migration of collagen to the areas where we need to build up false walls and false floors in the body. Otherwise we tip over. This creates adhesions forming and gripping to anything in its pathway ultimately on the bone and can grip with a force of up to 2,000 pounds per square inch. Welcome to the Conquering Chronic Inflammation Summit. I'm your host, Dr. David Jockers, and today we're talking about the fascia and inflammation connection.

When we talk about inflammation, we've got to talk this connective tissue we call fascial that connects our muscles, bones, ligaments, right? That's connecting all the parts of our body together And most people have really no idea the major role fascia plays in our body. And there's so many people out there that are dealing with really tight, congested fasci. We're going to talk about its important role when it comes to releasing fascio, helping the body detoxify, help improve overall circulation and healing.

My guest is Deanna Hansen. She's a pioneer in the field of fascial decompression. For physical and emotional transformation, with more than 20 years of hands-on clinical experience, Deanna created Block Therapy, a fascia release protocol to relieve chronic pain and disease, encourage healthy detoxification, and reverse cellular aging. You can find her website. and we're gonna go on a deep dive into fascia. You're also gonna learn the important role your feet play in your overall health and wellness.

And so without further ado, let's go into the interview. Well, Deanna Hansen, great to connect with you. This is such an important topic, understanding the role of fasciitis and how that plays into all forms of chronic inflammation and particularly into pain

What Fascia Is and Why It Matters 1:58

syndromes as well. So let us start with Really understanding what fascia are. And thank you so much, first of all, for having me here. What fascial is. I don't even know how to exactly ask that question. So I've spent over 60,000 hours diving into the fascia system with my hands on other people's bodies and my own and I do feel I have a bit of a different perspective on the fascia system as a result of this. So essentially fasci is this beautiful connective tissue that connects every single one of our trillion cells together.

It's the communication system between all cells and it's really here to provide both stability and mobility for the body. The ultimate goal is that there's optimal space in and around every cell because if there is space, there needs to be a flow of nutrients into the cells as well as the removal of waste and toxins away from the cell. So that's really the goal of the fascia, primarily comprised of collagen and elastin. Again, it creates both the stability and the mobility. The challenge is we are constantly being afflicted with external forces on the body, gravity being, of course, the one most prominent that's continually pulling us down toward the earth.

And we're not balanced in our body. We're non-symmetrical. Were dominant on one side. So we don't simply compress linearly. we literally wind down over time in one direction or another depending on a number of factors. So what happens with the fascia system is as our body starts tipping over, we start having a migration of collagen to the areas where we need to build up false walls and false floors in the body, otherwise we tip over. So this creates adhesions forming and gripping to anything in its pathway ultimately on the bone and can grip with a force of up to 2,000 pounds per square inch, holding the body out of alignment in these negative fascia patterns.

So, this create stagnancy in the blood, it blocks blood and oxygen flow and nutrients from entering the cells as well as keeps the area stagnant. And that attracts, of course, you know, disease in the body, parasites, bacteria, fungus, whatever. Basically, we create these scenarios, though, for the fascia system to become clogged with debris, with waste, and with toxins. And then this creates disease, pain and aging as we understand it in our body. As well as impacts our size and shape. Yeah, so important.

And so how does somebody end up getting fascial adhesions? What are like some of the major risk factors? Well, basically we have this beautiful body that if we actually knew how to use it properly, we could really go through time and have a very different perspective on what aging looks like. So we this diaphragm muscle, this muscle the foundation of The Rib Cage that when it's working properly it moves up and down in the body and when we exhale it lifts. So it's basically the counter force to gravity.

And also there is all of this wonderful research now coming out, I'm so grateful. I love the breath book by James Nestor. He talks a lot about the exhale as well as the carbon dioxide oxygen balance in the body. But if our body is working as it is designed, we have the foundations, We have to breath to keep that space within the However, if we're not conscious of posture and breath, and most people aren't simply because we really weren't trained to be conscious, of how to use the body properly, you know, we play these sports that are so asymmetrical, that creates asymmetries in the bodies, it creates a winding of the fascia and a tipping over of body, so then we ultimately have to have these counterbalances created, which again, is this migration of college and away from the balance.

So, imagine walking a 120-pound German Shepherd that's really well trained, you've got it on the leash beside you, and there's no pull on your body. However, now imagine the same massive dog yanking on you constantly. So these are in-the-moment forces, but the body, the equal and opposite side of the bodies is going to contract so that we don't land flat on our face. Now, if This is a constant forming slow version of that which is really what happens over time with gravity and unconscious living.

The body is constantly developing these false walls and false floors to stop us from tipping over. But again, that migration of the collagen which, is what the adhesions are made of, which basically same as scar tissue, they block blood and oxygen flow. They hold us in these negative holding patterns. And whenever I'm looking at a body, I always look down at the feet, the foundation first, because we have these beautiful structures that are designed

How Adhesions Form and Affect the Body 6:34

to allow us to move through life and support our body weight and all the different landscapes that we walk on. However, most people don't recognize how to support their structure, so we end up pancaking the feed. And I look at one foot is always going to act like a flat tire. It's going be driving away from the body. And then the other side is going to have to anchor again to stop us from tipping over. So through our lifetime with whatever we're doing, whether we play sports, what our job is, if we are sitting in front of a computer slouched all day, we were doing manual labor, playing an instrument, all of these things add up to create the fascia system that we have today, including injuries, surgeries, as well as other stresses, even in relationship.

It all impacts how we breathe and how he breathe is really the key. because if we're breathing optimally with this beautiful muscle, we are feeding the cells properly and keeping the body clean. However, when the diaphragm becomes compromised and pain, fear and stress cause you to reactively hold the breath, We start breathing through the muscles of the upper chest and then we really limit the amount of toxins we can remove from that exhale as well as the amounts of oxygen we bring in from the inhale.

So the thick and dense and heavy and congested. Think of blowing up a balloon, it's nice and full and it glows almost to find gravity and then take half the air out of the balloon and becomes wrinkled and you can have dust and debris caught in the creases and become heavy in dense. That's what the body does over time when we don't have that optimal breath. And what does a healthy respiration cycle look like? If you're watching somebody, observing them, what are you looking for with their respirations cycle?

We want to see the belly moving first. So if we're just in a relaxed state, really the breath should be coming from the bell. If you see somebody breathing We don't want to see that chest rising unless we're doing strenuous activity and then that's that last phase of the breath that should be happening. Yet most, many people at least, are really using this area to breathe from all the time. So again, we are very depleted in what we were able to do. At the base of lungs is where the majority of oxygen receptor sites reside.

So for breathing these shallow, rapid breaths, we're not pulling the air deeply enough into the lungs for optimal absorption or optimal removal of that carbon dioxide. And in fact- Is there like a certain amount of breaths or do you count the amount breaths too? Because I imagine people are doing short, shallow breaths. They're probably taking more, they probably have more respiration cycles per minute than somebody who's taking, more of a deeper, you know, with their belly, in the diaphragm, kind of pulling all the way down.

I would imagine it would be less breaths per minutes. Absolutely. And in fact, in that breath book, they were saying that the optimal amount of breath is five and a half seconds for inhale and exhale equaling five-and-a-half breaths per minute, where many people are probably breathing, you know, every couple of seconds they're going through that respiration. Yeah, yeah, so important. And that diaphragm plays such an important role. I know I've interviewed somebody else recently about pelvic floor, right?

And how, you know, when there's adhesions in the fascia and the pelvic, floor you're not going to, it's harder to breathe, and so breaking up those adhesion can be super helpful, And so many women are dealing with pelvic-floor issues. That is a function of how the fascia will wrap around the calves and the feet. Because whenever looking at a body, I'm always looking for the cause sites to the pain issue site, and they're at distance. And because the diaphragm is this plate of muscle in the center of the body when it's moving up and down again, it creating a beautiful massage to all the abdominal organs, the heart and lungs.

However, if it is not, its the extremities that are going to become the coldest. because they're the furthest from the engine. So if you have, say, low back pain and you'd have all these wonderful treatments on your low-back, but then you stand up and start walking and fall back into that negative fascia pattern, then the cause sites haven't been addressed. And I always say that the limbs are like the tent poles. When we have tent pulls firmly in the ground, your tent is nice and taut and all the contents inside the the tend are safe.

However, when the limbs don't have that structure and stability, that impacts what's going on in the core of the body and it creates that twisting. And that's twisting basically, here's your diaphragm of course, it's a plate moving up and down and its working properly. Again, we're getting this beautiful massage when we collapse. the muscle is going into a twist and a holding pattern, again, with a force of up to 2,000 pounds per square inch. So even if you're doing breathing exercises, to be able to release that muscle to allow it to optimally function requires an ability to get those adhesions

Breathing, Diaphragm Function, and Fascia 11:28

to melt from the ribs so that we can activate more of the diaphragm. Yeah. How do we go about starting to So fascia decompression, so basically we compress over time. As we get older, we become shorter and wider typically. So what we want to do is we wanna go backward through time in the tissue. Adhesions basically, the tissues becomes colder and I live in Winnipeg. I'm very familiar with, if you go outside and it's minus 30 and you try to start your car, A, it might not start. B, if it does, you might have to let it warm up for 30 minutes or so before you can drive it.

Or if you're in a nice warm place like Florida, You can start the car right away and you just go on your way. So if people haven't been breathing properly over time, their body essentially is a lot colder in general. And these adhesions, basically it's frozen tissue. You could feel that. People's feet feel cold. Their calves feel really dense. We shouldn't have dense tissue when it is relaxed. It should be nice and fluid and malleable. So what we want to do is we wanna start creating heat and there's ways we can do that.

So the first thing, your diaphragm is like the body's furnace. I live in a 30-story building and if it's minus 30 outside and I only have a space heater, I can heat one room in my apartment. You turn on the building's furnace, now I could heat the entire building. So bringing the breath down to the diaphragm is number one because we want to turn on that really powerful engine, this muscle. And then the other thing is through the process of pressure over time. What we do with our process block therapy as an example, we have people lie throughout the entire body in positions and you're lying on a tool for a minimum of three minutes because pressure over time creates heat, it creates blood flow.

So when you combine pressure overtime with that diaphragmatic breath, you're heating the body from the inside as well as the outside. And then when your in position, we teach you how to navigate not on the surface but through the layers of fascia. Kind of the difference between if you're in a boat on, the ocean or going deep sea diving. We want a deep-sea dive because the adhesions again will grip and occur to bone with that 2,000 pound per square inch force. So that's where we're locked and sealed away.

So to be able to do that, we teach you how basically to follow the Fibonacci sequence because everything in nature has been created from the sequencing of numbers, the spiral pattern. This is the fibonaci sequence, how our bodies were created, but also the patterning of how we age. So when we are in position, we don't move on the surface, but we teach you how to twist and turn and you're following the pain because pain equals adhesion. So pain basically becomes your roadmap, But it's not like we're adding pain to the body.

We're making you aware of the paint that's deeper. than what you're consciously aware of. And then as soon as you get in position, because the pressure fibers are larger than the pain fibers, suddenly that pain signal becomes like a good pain. We teach you that your breath is your guide. Of course, we don't want to put people in situations where they're in so much pain that they can't heal in the proper way and the rule is as long as you're breathing in a relaxed way, you are feeding and healing the tissue.

If anything hurts so much it takes that relaxed breath away, that's your body saying, no, I'm not ready for this and then we have alternate ways of allowing you to get deeper in through those layers over time. Yeah, so it's kind of like a guided, almost like I guided self massage in a way. And you talk about obviously decompression and how things get congested. What are your thoughts on like inversion tables or things that help to traction or open up discs, ligaments, different things like that?

I think they're wonderful. And in fact, when I was in my yoga teacher training, I remember reading, it was the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, where they said, one of the best gifts we can give our body is to invert for up to 10 minutes a day, because all of blood, especially in the head, has to fight gravity to get there. So that inversion is a lovely thing. However, inversion alone isn't going to release those deep adhesions. There's definitely benefit, but when you combine the fascia decompression with basically any other modality, then you're going to be able to get that energy, get the supplement nutrition or whatever it is to the cells that are lacking in the moment.

Yeah, it's good to know. And what's the difference between the block therapy and going to perhaps a massage therapist that, you know, will get in and kind of do some deep tissue work? So I initially developed fluid isometrics long before block therapies. So fluid was a technique that I learned through my hands how to navigate the deeper layers of adhesion. So again, if you're getting a treatment where you are stroking the surface, you'll get improved circulation to the service, but that won't get deeper.

So can I show what the tools look like? Yeah. Yeah, so these are what blocks look, like we have one size the block buddy and then a smaller one the Block Baby. They're made either from bamboo or wood. because we want to use something similar in density to bone. So there's a lot of fascia rollers and things out there where you're rolling and they might be made of a more porous material. But in order to be able to navigate again through those layers to get to the bone, we need something in similar density too that.

Fascia Decompression and Block Therapy 16:48

If you are doing fluid isometrics, basically block therapy is the self-care version of fluid Isometrix using a fascial roller, for example. Fluid Isometric is like a massage therapy form using rollers and things like that using tools. No, no, it's using hands. I teach how to use the hands with fluid isometrics. Yes. And then the therapy becomes the self-care version for people to do for themselves. That's really good to know as well. How does that impact the organ systems, right? Because typically when people are thinking about massage or, you know, any sort of kind of body therapy, they're typically thinking of pain, reducing inflammation, just kind feeling better, feeling lighter.

But how does it actually impact organ system? Oh, it's lovely. And in fact, the very first position that we teach, no matter what area of the body we're making a focus, is the belly position, where we have you lying on the tool, right on belly button for three minutes as you breathe into the tools. So again, if people have been breathing through the muscles of upper chest for years or decades, It takes a little bit of training. Even though we were born to breathe diaphragmatically, we also have to teach the bodies how to remember to do that.

So again, that pressure over time as you're breathing, it starts to heat up the contents inside the abdomen. And again we've got so much inflammation in the abdominal cavity from again incorrect sitting. I mean here we have, let me just bring this down. So here's our stomach organ. If I've been sitting like this in front of my computer for a number of hours and I'm eating food and i'm not using this muscle to create this heating in through here, everything becomes again stagnant. And before I started this journey, I was 50 pounds overweight and struggling with anxiety, depression, and I Was dieting, reducing calories, working out like a fiend, yet getting more compressed and more ballooned and toxic.

So very frustrating when you're actually doing what you think is the correct thing to do. And then it was when I had an anxiety attack. that this whole journey began for me because in that moment I actually thought I was going to die. I wasn't frozen in fear and I couldn't find my breath. And for some reason I intuitively dove my hand into my belly. Now up until that point I had been an athletic therapist for years, always focused on deep tissue work, but working people's backs and legs and necks.

And I was very familiar with what scar tissue felt like. However, this was the area that I stored so much of my weight. I hated that part of the body, so I never touched it. So here I am, I'm diving in here, and the first thing I encounter is pain, but the pain brought me back to my breath. And like, okay, am breathing. Then as I started intuitively exploring with my hands, it felt marbled with scar tissues, even though I hadn't had any injury or surgery in this area. So after 30 minutes of exploring in the tissue, I felt really calm.

I woke up the next day a little tender, but excited to get back to it just because it felt so good to feel calm, which was not my norm. And then after the second evening of doing that similar work, when I stood up, and felt taller. and I went and looked at myself in a mirror and literally began to cry because I had been working for years, especially to try to lose that size in my belly. Now in two days, it was already starting to change. So as I continued to do this work over the years, I was getting deeper and deeper, and I recognized that I'm heating up all of that stagnant inflammation.

And then things started to move out of the body. I am digesting better, my liver was functioning better. My skin was improving, elimination, all those things through heating that area, melting those adhesions deep within. When I first started again, using my hands, so on myself or my clients I could feel the changes. in the tissue and then again to teach people the self-care version where literally you're simply lying on this tool and activating your breath as you slowly start to search through those layers, it's fascinating the changes that can happen.

And it was about a year ago, there's a woman in New York that has a thermography She has thermography images and she took a before photo of a client and then two months after she had been blocking, she did a follow-up photo. She said she's never seen anything so dramatic. The change in the inflammation in her gut was mind-blowing to her because it was just so efficient at getting rid of that. Yeah, when you break up those adhesions and you get increased circulation and really open up all the drainage and detoxification pathways, it's just so important how it can affect everything in your system, right?

And typically if you're dealing with chronic inflammation or mental health issues, anxiety, depression, things like you were talking about, Yeah, there's a backup there. There's congestion and lack of the ability to detox effectively. So yeah, this can be really powerful. Plus you're stimulating endorphins, which most people in our study are not getting enough of, Which have a natural pain relieving effect. They make you feel good. they simulate positive neurotransmitters. Kind of like the effects of exercise, right?

Most people feel a lot better whenever they test exercise against a antidepressant. Exercise always wins by a lots, And so you're kinda getting the effects of exercise from that perspective. You're getting a lot of other additional benefits, but from the endorphin perspective without actually exercising. So yeah, a lotta great effects there. Let's talk about, like you had talked about how you look at the feet and you wanna get to kind of the root cause.

Feet, Posture, and Whole-Body Repatterning 22:08

Is the feed kinda the first place you are looking at, along with the breath? It's the the place, absolutely. And it's lovely. Our community is so female centered. And a few months back, this gentleman, 73 years old, his name is Walter Kells. We've done some interviews with him that he shared. He posted a before and after picture in my community group of the changes that had in his face after doing my 30 day upper body program. Two months prior, I actually had a challenge, which he didn't do. Had he done it then, he would have absolutely won.

But then he was also sharing what he doing with his father's feet. His father is 102 years. And in one of my program, I call it the pronator-corrector program. I teach people how to release between the toes with their fingers, holding for three minutes. And if you do it, you'll certainly encounter lots of pain. So I had him come out and I did an interview with him and it was fascinating, but he sent me a video the other day. He's been doing this for 3 months every day to his father. He didn't think his father would ever get out of the chair again or be able to walk.

His legs were really inflamed, that ready look. his feet were size 10 when initially they were a size 8 and he said if you moved his foot around it would basically move like one solid unit all the way up to the hip. He showed me the video the other day, his dad now is, you know, moving his feet completely independently. His feet are now that size eight, skin color looks great and he's motoring it around his house on his feed. He's also improved his sleep as well as his increase in eating. So just fascinating.

Yeah, phenomenal results and that's a good sign. At 102 years old, that sign that, no matter how old you are, You can get a lot of improvement here. Yes, and that literally was really just the work between the feet. So now he's doing more stuff, but we've had so many people doing that alone and just sharing the incredible benefits. One woman said, just from the breathing, the footwork, And then I also share, you know, between fingers as well. If you do this for three minutes between each joint, You're going to repattern what's going on.

in the upper body, because if you see how most people stand, their palms face the back, where if look at that skeleton, anatomical position is palms forward. So I always teach people when you're walking, turn those palms forwards, it lifts the rib cage, It opens up the lymphatic area. But again, this being, you know, the most frozen along with the feet because they're the furthest from the engine, these holding patterns, if I have a frozen shoulder and I don't release the wrist and the hand, I'm not going to do a lot to release this negative holding pattern in a shoulder.

So she shared, as soon as she started doing that, her hair stopped falling out. Her hands and her feet, which had been cold for decades, were no longer cold. So it's really fascinating by just doing some simple little things, how much change you can make when you start addressing the body from that perspective of melting adhesions and repatterning the fascia. After I have people do that I always say that then you want to stand up and you wanna grip the toes and have your knees slightly bent because most people hyperextend at their knees and that's what creates such a twisting of the pelvis, which will impact how we breathe and so on and on.

So when we can actually grip the toes into the floor after we've released them and start to bring that spring back into your step, now you're not dealing with flat tires anymore. You've pumped up the feet so that they can guide you through life and you can navigate the direction that your feet are going instead of having these solid clubs that we're basically walking on with very little awareness of what's happening. Yeah, sounds like your program is doing really great work. And so how do people get started with your programs?

What does that look like? You said you mentioned you had a 30 day upper body program. What are the different options and how to people, uh, get starting? And what does it look? So the starter program itself is. We're actually just going to be changing it. Right now it's nine classes in about a month or so. It's going be 12 classes where we basically have you cycle through the body in general. And we always start core and rib cage. Because again, we really want to make you aware of your breath and we want you to open that breath so that you intuitively and internally become your own healing machine.

And then there we have a membership with a number of different guided programs. And for people that are basically after the starter program, we say, you know, We really need to get you into that foundation piece because even if you're dealing with the frozen shoulder or migraines, if do a whole bunch of upper body work, but you haven't changed the foundation, You're going to continue to hold back in, so there's most efficient ways to go about the process. And we have a lovely community group and people are connected to me and I come live with the community frequently to give guidance along the way depending on the situation.

But I think one of my most favorite programs, which is new as of December, I took 13 members of community through a concussion protocol.

Getting Started with Programs and Final Advice 26:48

I also added in fascia decompression for the eyes. And we also have a hair health class which teaches you how to release the scalp from the skull. And every single one of those people in all of the categories we were tracking had improvement. So I really like that program because it is a full body. We don't just work up through here. we do work foundation through the hands and in order again to change the patterning of fashion your whole body, Wow, sounds really interesting. and people can find that at blocktherapy.com.

Is that correct? Blocktherape. com? Yeah. Well, fantastic, Diana, you're doing great work. And this is kind of information that people need to know and need hear, that you don't have to age and kind get all the postural changes and all of the restrictions that most people in our society, unfortunately, because they don' know this information, are dealing with. You can age gracefully, lower inflammation, improve your overall mental health, organ function, improved overall circulation to all systems of your body, increasing your energy, mitochondrial function.

Really with simple techniques to release the fascia and make sure the body's in balance. So real powerful stuff. Any last words of inspiration here for our audience? Well, we have a free gift for everybody so that they can really dive in and understand fascia. Plus we had a nine day series where we teach you using a rolled up towel. So you can start right away. You don't have to wait and decide if you want to make a commitment to the actual program. The towel itself, because you roll it up and make it really nice and dense.

It really does do a lot and along with the teaching. start to see right away and you have that understanding of fashion decompression in your own body. But no matter where you are, just like the 102-year-old, it doesn't matter what you're starting with. When you start turn on your body's internal engine and start understand how to undo the patterning of unconscious living, you really can turn things around. And I believe that there is no situation, as long as a person is conscious enough, that can't be improved.

to a large degree. So it doesn't matter, again, age, man, woman, whatever level of health you're at, simply by starting and understanding the breath work, it's really the key. Perfect. Well, thanks so much for your time, Deanna. Guys, check her out, blocktherapy.com. Check out her programs and her free gift there as well. And we'll see you all in a future interview. Be blessed. Thank you for tuning in to Doctor Talks. We hope today's episode has enlightened and inspired you on your path to optimal health.

Each day is a new opportunity to make choices that empower your well-being. For more insights and strategies, subscribe to our podcast and visit our website, www.doctortalks dot com. Stay connected, stay healthy, and join us next time on DoctorTalks, real talks from real doctors on the issues that matter to you most.