How Does SI Work?

Most people have experienced having “knots” in their shoulders from chronic stress at work. They may have gone to a massage practitioner and gotten some relief, only to find that within a day or so they are in knots again. If their stress has gone on for any length of time, then in going in for a massage, they are treating the symptom and not the cause. No wonder that within a day or two they are back to feeling stressed.

When muscles are chronically tight from a stressful environment what happens is a tissue called fascia or myofascia, shortens and thickens, and forms adhesions to its neighbors. This will be experienced as the so called “knots” in the body.

Fascia has been called the organ of structure. It is a continuous three-dimensional web that defines all of our body structures, covering and investing the muscles, and containing and defining the spaces for the bones, nerves, blood vessels, and organs. By covering muscles it allows one muscle to slide freely over another.

Think about this for a minute. Why are there so many muscles in the body? Because each one attaches on a different part of the bone and causes a slightly different movement of the bone. By having many muscles with different attachment points we are able to move in near infinite subtly varying patterns. Like me, you’ve probably been to a museum where they have a mock up of a dinosaur that is driven by a small number of hydraulic cylinders. What one notices is how fake the movements of those dinosaurs look. That is because they just don’t have enough control over the subtle movements. Thus, they look clunky and lumbering. Graceful and subtle differences in movement require that every muscle must be independent. It must be able to slide freely over its surrounding muscles. Fascia is what allows this sliding movement that makes graceful movements possible.

Our bodies are designed with incredible wisdom. When muscles are held chronically tense the body says, “Why waste all those calories holding the muscles in a state of contraction?” Why not just lay down some fibrous tissue to hold the bones in the position they are choosing day after day. It’s almost as if I saw you holding your shoulders up towards your ears day after day. Being a helpful fellow I come along and see you wasting muscular effort to hold them there. So, I go out to my garage and get a roll of duct tape, and lay down tape between your neck and your shoulders to help support them in this raised position. And, that is exactly what the body does, only on a microscopic biological level.

The body thickens up our fascia, which is laid down in sheaths consisting of collagen fibers in a gelatinous ground substance. That tissue shortens and thickens. Sometimes it gets so thick and tough it essentially becomes fibrous ligaments, what we are familiar with in steak as gristle. As it shortens and thickens movement is severely hampered. When movement decreases the fascia of adjacent muscles begins to glue itself together by cross-linkages from one collagen molecule to another.

With shortened and thickened fascia, glued together by cross-linkages, movement is no longer fun. It’s effortful and often painful. With increasing stiffness, people tend to move even less, causing more cross-linkages and even more stiffness. As this process continues we start to feel stiffer and more and more plagued by chronic pain. Emotionally we start to feel grumpy and old. Life loses its fun and becomes a struggle just to get through each day.

Thankfully, Dr. Rolf discovered a way to reverse the course of this process. By manipulating the fascial tissue while asking for appropriate movement we are able to unstick the fascia where it has gotten glued to its neighbor and are able to lengthen the fascial sheaths and return them to their anatomically designed length.

Some people have called SI “induced yoga” and for good reason. It does essentially the same thing as yoga and the two are very synergistic. In fact, Dr. Rolf studied Iyengar yoga while developing SI. There are some big differences however. Where yoga is done in very small increments each day over a long period of time, and requires a great deal of self-discipline to master, SI is done in more intense sessions over a short and punctuated period of time with the assistance of a practitioner. While doing broad stretches in yoga can nicely affect the overall length of the fascial sheaths and muscles, often the fascial sheaths are bunched up and thickened in specific areas. Thus, doing broad stretches will tend to lengthen the part of the tissue that is already the most free and elastic while affecting the bunched up parts not so much. The SI practitioner can find the bunchy areas under his or her fingers and concentrate the work on those areas that need it the most.

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