Inspired with Nika Lawrie

Fascial Freedom: Healing Pain and Restoring Mobility with Julia Blackwell

September 17, 2024 • Julia Blackwell • Season 2024 • Episode 92

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Can chronic pain and limited mobility really be transformed through fascia release? Julia Blackwell’s miraculous journey suggests so. Born with significant nerve damage, Julia faced years of limited physical capability and chronic pain. Traditional Western medicine offered little relief, but her relocation to Boulder, Colorado, brought her into contact with a fascia release technique that changed her life. In my heartfelt chat with Julia, we uncovered how this method dramatically improved her mobility and overall well-being, providing hope for others facing similar challenges. Join us in this insightful episode to learn about the transformative power of fascia release and how it can revolutionize your approach to chronic pain and mobility issues.

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Nika Lawrie:

Welcome to the Inspired with Nika Larie podcast. Julia Blackwell, welcome to the show. I'm so happy to have you here today. Hi, I'm so grateful to be here. Yeah, so we're going to do things a little bit different on the show today. I know a lot of times we talk about nutrition and kind of functional medicine and stuff, but I think this is a really key part that a lot of times, I don't get to discuss with clients or with my audience on the podcast. I'm excited to have you here because it's such an important part of our body. We're going to talk about fascia and kind of how to take care of it and how healing it can really improve a lot of different aspects of our lives. Before we get into all of that, though, can you tell me a little bit about your backstory? Who are you? What led you into being interested in fascia?

Julia Blackwell:

Yeah, well, I've been doing fascia release here around the Denver Colorado area for 11 or 12 years. At this point it's been a minute, yeah, and you know I've certainly been enjoying the scenery here. I do a lot of mountain climbing and rock climbing and running around with my dogs and helping people heal from pain and improve their mobility, improve their general health all across the board. But yeah, the story of how I got into this is lifelong actually. So I was almost a 10-pound baby.

Nika Lawrie:

Oh my goodness, I know yeah.

Julia Blackwell:

Starting strong in in the process of being born I got stuck. So when they pulled me out, the doctor ended up stretching and tearing most of the nerves in my right shoulder.

Nika Lawrie:

I'm so sorry.

Julia Blackwell:

That is, it's my, it's my journey, you know yeah.

Nika Lawrie:

Yeah, in a way it's kind of a good thing because it leads you know, that trauma leads to positive things for a lot of people sometimes. So absolutely.

Julia Blackwell:

It took me a while to get there, yeah, but uh, you know, I did have a nerve regraft surgery when I was about four months old and that did help bring my arm somewhat back online, if you will. It really was the lowest possible functioning arm at all, but I was still left with a lot of limited mobility all throughout my arm, my shoulder, my elbow, everything in that section, and so much incessant tightness. And I grew up going through the standard Western medicine system. So many of us have the same roundabout story. But I went from doctor to doctor, practitioner to practitioner, and really everyone told me that there was nothing further that they could do for me, that the limited strength, the limited mobility, the tightness was just going to be a part of my life forever and, if anything, I should prepare for it to get worse over time.

Julia Blackwell:

And when you hear these types of things from people of authority, you believe them, especially when you're younger and you're not any different, especially when you're younger and you're not any different. So while I did fully believe in many ways that nothing was ever going to change for me, I still was fascinated by the body. I wanted to understand as much as I could about myself and my limitations, and so I still tried all kinds of different things. So I went to massage therapists, I went to chiropractors, I did acupuncture, physical therapy, bought just about any tool or gadget that you can think of to just see if anything would help, but truly nothing gave me lasting relief, if anything helped at all.

Nika Lawrie:

Yeah.

Julia Blackwell:

So it wasn't until I moved out to Boulder, colorado, in 2010. And by some beautiful, fateful chance, I met this lady who did a specific type of fascia release work, and I'd heard fascia mentioned. I went to school for exercise physiology because of my you know obsession with anatomy and understanding the body, but they had mentioned fascia in a way that was very fleeting, like hey, this is what connects tendons and ligaments to bone, and they moved on for the most part. So I was very unsure about what exactly this fascia work was going to do and, just like everything else I had tried, I really had no expectations at all for it. But this work took me by complete surprise.

Julia Blackwell:

I knew very quickly that this was different from anything else that I had done before, and I saw more results in just the feel, the function and even the look of my arm in three months than I had in a lifetime of doing all these other traditional methods. It was incredible. I had emotional releases, I had muscles started to fire again. I finally started getting some relief from this tension that I was feeling. It was so powerful and, while it didn't completely eradicate this issue and I'm still working on it it's unbelievably better, especially for something that I was told was never, ever going to change. Yeah, was never, ever going to change.

Julia Blackwell:

So I pivoted almost immediately into learning everything I could about fascia and started learning some different modalities that were similar to what I had experienced, and I started to see the same results for all of these other people. It was almost miraculous at times. So many people that, like me, had tried all of the typical things that we're told to do or that we think are our only options. This was the missing piece for them as well. So it's been a really fun journey and I'm so glad I'm here and I've really enjoyed helping other people understand that there are answers for things that they've been told there are no answers for.

Nika Lawrie:

Absolutely. I mean such a powerful story. I know. You know I talked to so many people and they have it's always a different thing that they you know an ailment or a struggle that they've had, but it's always that piece where you know they kind of went outside the box a little bit, they opened up themselves to you know potentially a new option that might work, and then bam, it changes everything for them, right. And so I think that's such a key component of your story and others is be willing to you know, cautiously and carefully, but be willing to try new things and see how they can potentially improve. You know things that you've struggled with your whole life maybe.

Julia Blackwell:

Absolutely. We live in a pretty incredible time as far as the things that are available. The key is just needing to discover it. Yeah, do our own research and search around outside of the options that we're given. There's really, there's really a lot of incredible things there.

Nika Lawrie:

Definitely yeah. So can you tell a little bit about what fascia is and what role it plays in the body? I know basics it connects skin to muscle and muscle to bone. But beyond that, what is it? What is the real role that it plays in the body?

Julia Blackwell:

Yeah, great question. So I think the easiest analogy is to envision fascia like plastic wrap that wraps around every single thing in the body. So every muscle fiber, every muscle group, every bone, ligament, tendon, nerve, organ, blood vessel, literally everything in our body is wrapped. I can't live without it. Yes, If it were to magically disappear out of your body, you would go tumbling to the ground in a pile of bones and goo On the side. If everything else except for your fascia were to disappear out of your body, you would largely still look like you.

Julia Blackwell:

So, that's how imperative it is for our shape, our structure, our posture, our texture even is being dictated by fascia. But it does so much more than that. It's like we have a bunch of oil between those layers of plastic wrap as well. We have a very specialized water within our fascia, called extracellular fluid. I don't want to go too heavily into science so that we don't lose people here, but it's kind of like having a lot of oil between all of those layers.

Julia Blackwell:

So fascia is what's actually allowing muscles and joints to glide. These things are not just mechanical functions, they're actually more functions within the fascia. So our ability to move freely or not is dictated by how well our fascia is able to glide. It's also what allows us to absorb shock well, through that water. That water is what's deeply hydrating all of our tissue. It's so much more than just how much water we're drinking. And our fascia even has a key proprioceptive element it can actually communicate within itself, outside of the nervous system. So it's this incredible second communication network that we have that is taking in so much of the world around us. And you know, based on our levels of stress and our past traumas, surgeries, injuries, all of these things that are essentially being logged by our fascial system and it's going to react depending on even just the emotions of us on a daily basis. So it's playing so many roles in the body.

Nika Lawrie:

Yeah, that's huge. I mean, I think there's so many little pieces of the body that you know we never hear about, we never even think about, but like literally make every part of our body function and without it, you know, we completely, like you said, you know disintegrate into bones and mush on the ground. It's crazy how little the general public really knows about how the body works and how many pieces are so critical to everyday life. You mentioned, you know, some of the different things that can negatively impact fascia, like trauma or surgery, those kind of things. What are some ways that we can identify if we have damage to our fascia? Are there symptoms? Are there, you know, things that we might be feeling? What is that? How does that work?

Julia Blackwell:

Yeah, so any, really any type of ache or pain in the body is a sign that fascia somewhere is unhealthy. Pain is a signal that our body gives off when something is off or when some type of a threat has been detected. So there could be an emotional component to that, but there could be a physical one as well. Sometimes it's both. It's really hard to separate that mind-body connection and how they react to each other. Any struggle with mobility, like so many people think as they get older oh I'm not as flexible as I used to be or I'm not as mobile as I used to be. It's not age, it's just that more time has passed for your fascia to get in a more unhealthy state and that can fully be restored when you've released fascia. But you might feel sluggish. You might feel sluggish, heavy dense, you may have some brain fog. That could also be a sign if you get sick a lot.

Julia Blackwell:

So our lymphatic system lives in our superficial fascia. That just means fascia closer to the surface of our skin. The lymphatic system is like a low running hose through our body, helping filter out toxins and help our immune system in all sorts of different ways. But if you can imagine that plastic wrap slowly shrinking almost like a vacuum seal bag. Everything within the vacuum seal bag is going to start struggling to function correctly. Vacuum seal bag is going to start struggling to function correctly, so that could be mobility and that's what could be causing pain. But if the lymphatic system, for example, is trapped in a lot of tight fascia, it's like having a bunch of kinks in the hose and now your body's not able to detox very effectively. So you might have more bloating. You might have again some type of autoimmune condition or feelings like you get sick a lot. There's a lot of things that yeah, it's the difference between having an aquarium, let's say, that is turned on and one that's turned off and it's slowly growing algae.

Nika Lawrie:

Oh, it's a great analogy to kind of give you that example. I remember a long time ago I was learning about fascia and I saw this guy talking about he had like a pantyhose or something on his hand and he poked a hole in it and when he stretched so the hole was damaged to the fascia right, like a surgery or something right, and so it was just this one single little spot. But then when he pulled the pantyhose so like when you would, you know, walk or move your body or whatever right, that hole like you would think, in pantyhose, when it stretches out and rips throughout the pantyhose. That's kind of what was happening with the fascia too. And so even though the trauma happened in one place, it could then extend and stretch out. That trauma stretches out, or that damage to the fascia stretches out to other parts of the body or a larger part of the body, parts of the body or a larger part of the body. Have you seen that happen? Or is there, I guess? Am I kind of correct in?

Julia Blackwell:

that analogy. Does damage like that happen to the fascia? Well, damage is going to happen to fascia through an injury you know an impact injury, surgery, things like that but you're right in that it will start to spread its effect to other places. So anytime I'm working with someone, we end up talking pretty extensively about as many injuries as they can remember, because even something that may have happened 10, 20, 30 years ago could still be impacting your body. You know, so many of us we wake up one day with shoulder pain, or maybe our knee hurts after one run and it sticks around for a week and we're logging it in our minds like, oh yeah, that really hurts, I don't know what's going on. And then after a couple of days or a week it goes away and in our mind we think, great, that issue solved itself, High five to me and move on with my life. But the reality is, your body just finds a way around the pain that you're feeling and that creates a compensation pattern. And so while you don't necessarily feel the pain compensation pattern, and so while you don't necessarily feel the pain, you're also not feeling the compensation pattern. That is happening.

Julia Blackwell:

And when you add up all kinds of things that you may have experienced in your life, all of these things that we didn't feel like addressing or we thought went away on their own. Those things build up. Our fascia is logging, all of these slight changes in our movement or all of these different patterns that they may be firing muscles and we end up one day with pain. You know that's super common. Someone throws out their back. Or they get up one day and their knees just has exploded with pain and they think, well, I don't understand what I did. I just bent down to tie my shoe that one time. Or I just got out of bed one morning and this happened. But the reality is it's a movement that you likely did hundreds, if not hundreds of thousands of times until the body finally was like we can't do this anymore. It's not safe to move this way because of this tension pattern or this compensation pattern that's about to fail.

Nika Lawrie:

So what do we do when we hit those points? How do we start repairing it or, you know, really supporting the overall health of the fascia?

Julia Blackwell:

have 10 hours to rant about the typical rest recommendation that most doctors give out. Well, that's certainly something you should do. If you've had an impact injury, right Like you fell off your mountain bike or you were in a car accident, you should rest for a couple days. That's for sure what needs to happen. But in order for our fascia to restore that glide and become more hydrated, movement is such a key component, and I really don't mean a hard workout. It can be hanging from a bar, twisting your torso side to side, tilting your neck side to side, your arms over your head Really any type of movement is going to help the fascial system and help it rehydrate.

Julia Blackwell:

But most of what I focus on with my work specifically where I'm teaching people how to release fascia, we want to come at it with two main principles. So number one is how we release fascia. So I've found through my own experience when I discovered this work as well as working with you know, like a thousand people or so at this point in my career, that we need to come at fascia with a specific combination, and that combination is compression and then active movement. So we're all familiar with compression. That's maybe something some of us are already doing where we're like oh, my shoulder hurts, I'll laying there on the ball for 10 minutes, or even going and getting a massage and you lay there and let someone else try to make change to your body. It takes so much longer to see any results from a passive treatment. For me personally, I never saw results from it, and I've seen that very often with my clients as well.

Julia Blackwell:

The active movement is so important because we're not only engaging the nervous system but we're also engaging that communication system within our fascia, and so as we choose to move our body through a certain range of motion while an area is compressed, it's going to stretch our fascia in a more three-dimensional way. For one, you know your typical static stretch. Let's take a hamstring stretch, for example. You throw your leg up on a box or whatever you've got and lean forward. It's only stretching in one plane of motion. So when we compress an area and actively move, we're now stretching it in a much more three-dimensional way because we have layer and layer and layer of fascia. But we're also communicating with our fascia and our nervous system that it's actually safe to access certain ranges of motion again and that we can repattern a poor movement that we've been doing over and over again. So that is really the main thing that not only changes fascia quickly, but it keeps it in that new position for a much longer period of time. That's been one of the most common compliments I've received.

Julia Blackwell:

Sharing this work over the years is like I can't believe how long I'm feeling better. I'll do a fascia release session and either the pain is totally gone and it stays gone, or they feel great for days or weeks before they may have to hit it again. You know it's very dependent on the person, but it's certainly a much more powerful way to create fast and lasting change. And then the second principle is we need to know where to release fascia. Yeah, this is where you may have to become a bit more of a detective in your own body, although I also help people all the time uncover these patterns, because, while everyone is unique, we all have our own movement patterns and life experiences and trauma there are certain patterns that tend to persist in the majority of people and, unfortunately, where we feel pain is almost never the problem I mean, it's similar in the nutrition world. Right, people are having all these symptoms. Maybe they're attaching it to one thing. It's a totally different thing when you look for the root cause. Right, yeah, it can take a little bit of work, but the where is so important and that's what makes this work seem almost like magic. Sometimes. As soon as you know where to go, it changes everything.

Julia Blackwell:

So a good example is low back pain.

Julia Blackwell:

We all think, okay, my low back hurts, I need a massage on my back, I need to go get adjusted in my back, maybe I'll even foam roll my back. But the issue is almost always coming from tension in the fascia on the opposite side of our body, in the quads, in the core, maybe even the adductors. That fascial line through the adductors actually goes up through the core. So those things end up making a huge and significant difference to back pain and it's something that no one goes there. They think they're tight, they think it's a back problem and those are really the last places I would ever go for someone with back pain. So when you start to understand this system of pulleys and the balance that our body wants us to have, when we can restore that balance in our fascial tissue, pain goes away, mobility is restored, things become more hydrated, we can move a lot more easily. There's so many incredible health benefits that come from just going, exploring and finding the right places that are contributing the most to the issues that you have.

Nika Lawrie:

Yeah, you know, while you're speaking I'm thinking of I have a family member who's been struggling with mobility recently and this family member has also been trying to get their health back in order. So struggling with, like weight and diabetes and things like that, you know, and that person's really motivated, but the pain that the person feels, mobility wise, you know that being able to get up and move hinders the ability to go exercise or do things different, and it just makes me think, you know, maybe if there's support for the fascia, healing that pain, that can help overall health too, because it will allow people to not struggle as much and then, you know, approach other aspects of their health once they're feeling better or have reduced that overall pain.

Julia Blackwell:

Oh my gosh, absolutely. That's such a great part about this type of fascia release is you can get a type of movement in without it being an actual workout and then eventually it's going to support you working out either without pain or just working out with more efficiency. In general, I've had, you know, I've worked with some professional athletes over the years that they couldn't run faster than a certain amount of time or they were struggling with agility, pushing past a certain weight in their squat, whatever it was. Once they had more space in their fascia, they were actually able to push past that plateau. So there's also a lot of incredible benefits for the performance side of things. I just you know most people. You know someone that is suffering from either chronic pain or some type of limitation that's preventing them from working out.

Nika Lawrie:

So I mostly help people get through that initial phase of how can we relieve the pain and make you feel good while you things that you want to do and that's the you know, that's the key is, like you, really just I think all of us who kind of work in this health and wellness industry, like all we want to do is help people feel good and thrive, like that is the ultimate goal, and so figuring out how to really support that is, you know, golden, I guess.

Julia Blackwell:

I mean, think about what you're faced with on or with going to a doctor, right? They're pretty much going to give you the same options. They're going to recommend PT, and it really depends on the physical therapist. I certainly don't want to discourage anyone from going to PT, because it can be incredible, but I've also seen more people than I can possibly count come from like six months to a year or more of PT and they haven't had any real lasting results. But that's kind of a different conversation. It's the where right, Like if you're going to for knee pain and they're only working on your knee to strengthen your knee, they're not looking at the big picture and finding what is the root cause. But coming back to that, though, they'll recommend PT, they may try to give you a cortisone shot, PT.

Julia Blackwell:

They may try to give you a cortisone shot which is silencing your body's messages to you, and there's some pretty significant side effects to cortisone shots out there. You know, one, two, three. Maybe it's not a huge deal, but once you get past three, cortisone will actually start to kill your fascial tissue and once it is not be restored and people that get cortisone shots in the same place over and over and over again. Um is is actually. It has a lot of negative effects that are going to damage your tissue, and not enough doctors are warning people that this is a as a side effect, or rather it's inevitable, it's going to happen with a lot of consistency.

Julia Blackwell:

Or, lastly, they will maybe recommend some pain pills, and all of these options are pretty poor in my opinion, and so we just need to open up the possibility of oh, how can I start to find out what is the root cause myself? What happens when I work on my quads for my low back pain? What happens when I work on the calf and the hamstring for my plantar fasciitis? Our body gives us such incredible feedback, and our whole industry is about how we silence our body from giving us feedback. It's wild.

Nika Lawrie:

Yeah, I know that that piece always blows my mind is like, you know, symptoms are messages from the body. You know, like our bodies don't just break for the sake of breaking, like there's something causing it. And when you're feeling pain or discomfort or you're having, you know, bowel issues or whatever it is like that is a message from the body that hey, there's an issue, let's address it, let's fix it. And then you go to. You know, I feel bad too because I was kind of bashed on the typical medical system, and I don't mean to because there was kind of bashed on the typical medical system, and I don't mean to because there's so much value that comes from that too. But we miss the fact that addressing that root cause, getting to you know the specific thing that's causing the pain or the symptom, that's how you fix it. You don't shut up the messenger, you listen to the messenger and you follow it to the actual cause and then you support the cause and that's how you get better. So I think it's so key there. Yeah, sorry.

Julia Blackwell:

Go ahead. I was going to say I have no judgment for that. I spent 23 years of my life ignoring my arm and disconnecting from my body and doing the exact same thing so many people have done. So there's certainly everyone's done it.

Nika Lawrie:

Yeah, yeah.

Julia Blackwell:

It's like there's certainly no judgment in it. Uh, the key is just to understand. The medical system is so exceptional at certain things, but understanding when is the time and place to utilize the magic that's there. And unfortunately we've really dropped the ball when it comes to chronic pain. There's just not a lot of education or really time available to help someone discover that root cause. You can understand that hey, my doctor isn't trained in fascia and understand what mechanical issues or fascial issues might be going on within the entirety of my body. Then you don't have to judge them for giving you poor advice. That's just what they know and it's not their field of genius. Let's call it so. That's where we need to go find other ways to solve a problem that we know is not as simple as throwing some ice on it or just popping some pain pills the fascia.

Nika Lawrie:

What role does just being properly hydrated, like drinking enough water, what role does that play in overall fascia health?

Julia Blackwell:

So I know I've been throwing a lot of analogies at you, but our fascia is also like a water irrigation system. There's some really cool videos you can look up on YouTube where, when they're looking at fascia on a microscopic level, you see all these little crisscrossing fibers. You can see little beads of water traveling along the fibers. That's water being carried to literally every cell and tissue in our body, and so we have to have space within our fascia for hydration to travel. So I've talked to so many people over the years that say oh, I know, I just need to drink more water. You've probably said it, I've said it. That's right. Where we think the issue is simply that we're not drinking enough water. But the reality is it's useless to drink more water if it's not actually getting to where it needs to go.

Julia Blackwell:

Yeah, every 30 minutes in order for water to get to where it needs to go, one, like we were saying before, the movement component is so important. You know, every 45, 50 minutes it would be ideal for you to stand, move your body around, even for two minutes. Again, it doesn't have to be a workout, but just move your body, try to twist and stretch all kinds of different ways more than just walking, although walking is great too. That's going to help a ton of getting those water little droplets everywhere, but then releasing fascia as well. So if you think about a crumpled up ball of plastic wrap, if you dumped a bottle of water over it, how much water is going to get to the inside of that crumpled up ball of plastic wrap?

Nika Lawrie:

Yeah, not too much.

Julia Blackwell:

Yeah, so by strategically releasing these areas of our fascia that feel sore, tight, tender and strange texture, you know if it feels really ropey or stringy, if it feels lumpy, like you've got some muscle knots which, by the way, are just fascia knots, they're not really muscle, they're mostly gut. I was going to ask that, yeah, but that's a sign that, hey, the texture there is more like a crinkled up ball of plastic wrap. So how can we release it and then allow water and blood flow to go rushing back in to hydrate these places? So, of course, we need to be drinking water, ideally, you know, good quality water with minerals. I'm sure you have a lot more advice that you could say on water to be putting in your body, but again, ultimately it has to be able to get to those places, and so movement and fast release, I think, are just as important as drinking water itself.

Nika Lawrie:

Totally makes sense. Yeah, I think you know a lot of times with the water. I mean, most Americans chronically are dehydrated. I think there's a very small I don't know what the exact number is but there's a very small percentage of Americans that are actually fully hydrated most of the time, especially those that live in more kind of hot, arid areas. I know I live in New Mexico. It's desert here, it's sun 360 days a year pretty much, and so most people are dehydrated.

Nika Lawrie:

And then thinking about taking in the water, a lot of times people actually need some electrolytes with it. So putting a little tiny bit of salt in with your water, you'd be surprised it doesn't taste like salty water. If it does, you're putting too much in, just a little, you know, a little tiny bit there making sure that you're getting electrolytes that you need for the body, and a lot of that can actually come from eating just fruits and vegetables and eating healthy, nutritious food too. But if you don't have those factors, the water's not going to kind of absorb into the cells that you need either.

Julia Blackwell:

Yeah, that's great advice. Electrolytes or eating your water, essentially.

Nika Lawrie:

You'd be surprised how much water we actually get from the food that we eat, or that we're supposed to get from the food that we eat. Definitely, yeah, supposed to. Yeah, yeah, um, do you notice, um, any difference between, um fashion issues with male versus female, or does it tend to be pretty even across the genders?

Julia Blackwell:

Oh, that's an interesting question. Um, what I will say is I've noticed and I apologize to any of the men listening to this I do find that women handle the possible intensity of fascia release much better than men do. It's not necessarily tighter, and I wonder it could be hormones. Us women have hormones that are ready to go through the intensity of childbirth and things like that I don't know if that's playing a role.

Nika Lawrie:

We're just known for handling pain a little bit better, but yeah.

Julia Blackwell:

Yeah, I think that's really interesting. But overall, a lot of us have a significant amount of tension and, honestly, more and more, especially in the post-COVID time, there's a lot more tension that I think is coming from stress and the collective trauma that we've all experienced. I've really noticed that in the last four years, where it's taking just a little bit longer for the results to happen and there's some resetting of fascia, more so than I ever used to see in the previous, you know, eight years, and I'm very curious to know what emotional and mental effects have happened to fascia in everyone's body since this time. I will say that I've noticed just a general increase in tension for everyone across the board.

Nika Lawrie:

Yeah, yeah, definitely I've heard, or I guess not heard but I'm curious. You know how the body is known to remember trauma. Like we've gone through not necessarily a physical trauma but an emotional trauma, and the body, the cells, can tend to remember what that trauma is. And unless you really work through that trauma and release it from your body, it can have a ripple effect on your health. And I'm curious how and you may not know, I'm kind of just speaking but I'm curious how that could potentially affect fascia too. Like is that emotional trauma? So you know, like when we feel stressed, we get that pain in the back of our shoulders and, you know, in our muscles I'm doing air quotes for those listening right and you're like it's not the muscle knots, it's the fascia knots. And I'm curious, you know, if there's ever any research on emotional trauma versus fascia pain and fascia knots and overall issues in that area?

Julia Blackwell:

Yeah, great question. There definitely is some research on that. So our fascia is filled with free nerve endings and those things called proprioceptors that I mentioned just briefly towards the beginning of this conversation, which are these little receptors that are constantly taking in data about both our external and internal environment. It's just one consistent feedback loop. So it's essentially how we make sense of where our body is in space. It's letting us know where we need to move our body, how much force to use, how much effort to use, but it's also taking a lot of stock of what our internal environment is saying. So if we're stressed, if we've experienced trauma really you know they've done a lot of studies, mostly on people with PTSD but all of that feedback that those proprioceptors are getting, the fascia is going to respond according to what that feedback is. And so if anything in our external or internal environment is saying that there's a threat, so you know that could be a real physical thing, like falling off your mountain bike, or it could be an internal thing of being, you know, dreading going to work or being chronically anxious any of those types of things fascia is going to respond to that. So they've most consistently seen that fascia starts to become dense, it thickens, it thickens. So just like we were kind of talking about with the vacuum seal bag, if fascia starts to thicken and become really dense, it's going to be hard for nerves to fire effectively, it's hard for muscles to glide easily, it's going to be hard for our lymphatic system to flow.

Julia Blackwell:

There's all these repercussions for fascia responding to, essentially, a threat that never passes, because with anxiety, ptsd, things like that, that fear, that state of fear, the brain doesn't always understand when that threat has fully passed. And so we have specific cells within our fascia that can contract independently of muscle and it's not going to be as strong of a contraction. You know, we've all flexed our bicep and we can feel that muscle contraction, right, but you may not feel your fascia contracting, but it can. It can get stuck in that contracted state and then that will create that density over time. So really, every thought, feeling, emotion, experience you've ever had has passed through your fascial system, has been logged by those proprioceptors and then it has responded accordingly. So one of my old mentors used to say fascia is like the paper that your life story is written on. So all all of those things that have happened to you in your life.

Julia Blackwell:

They live in your body and then when we don't do much to address them or we don't know how, uh, those types of things build up and they very commonly lead to not just pain but, like you were inferring, some real health side effects, things that you think are completely physical or unrelated. We're like, oh well, I'm just having stomach aches or I'm just having these symptoms like autoimmune things, but the reality is that could actually be from emotions and trauma that are living in our fascia. Still that energy hasn't been released. You know, nothing can flow. The energy, the blood flow, the water, all of the emotion, whatever it is, is just stuck.

Nika Lawrie:

Yeah, yeah, I think. Yeah, I mean releasing that energy is so key to all parts of health. It's, you know, it's really understanding, you know letting things good in and kind of letting that out, and I think that works for basically every part of our health emotionally, physically, spiritually, however you want to approach it. But yeah, it's a big thing. Julia, I have one more question for you, but before I get to that question so I guess I have three more questions for you, but one key question Is there anything else that we haven't touched on that you would like to share? And then, where can people find you and connect with you and get your resources?

Julia Blackwell:

Wow. Well, we've shared a lot, so nothing is coming to mind of like, oh, oh, my gosh, we have to talk about this. Okay, good, oh, you know, maybe I'll say this. So we've talked a lot about how to release fascia with the compression and active movement. To expand on that just a little bit, I mostly teach people how to do that type of fascia release work with tools like foam rollers and massage balls. So they're likely tools that you already have. You maybe just don't know how to use them, or they're collecting dust in a closet somewhere, or you have access to them at the gym. Those tools are so valuable.

Julia Blackwell:

The problem is that most people teach you that you're just going to roll around on the ball or roll around on the roller, and there's a much more strategic way to utilize that active movement and really get the full effect of releasing fascia if you just do it a slightly different way. So, kind of in that same vein, I have a online video library called Roller Remedy that shows you how to release any area in the body. I think there's over 45 techniques from head to toe in there, as well as pain-specific programs that are following a lot of the pain patterns that I alluded to. So if you're not sure how to tackle your neck pain, your elbow pain, your sciatica, your plantar fasciitis, really most things that people have I have programs in there as well. So I have a free seven-day trial of that roller remedy program. If you go to movementbyjuliacom slash podcast, I have a special seven-day trial that you guys can try if you want to see how it feels and see what the difference can be when you release fascia correctly and in the correct areas.

Nika Lawrie:

That's huge. I'll make sure I link to that in the show notes too, just to make it. And I noticed for those who are listening on the podcast, behind Julia is a wall full of foam rollers and the balls too.

Nika Lawrie:

Yeah, so I'm glad you, I'm glad you mentioned that. Definitely so, Julia. My, my last question for you today what is something and you've kind of already touched on this with your story, but if you have a different one, that's, that's great too but what is something that you've experienced that was really life-changing, that you've either learned or experienced it can be either that you would like to pass on to others to help inspire them.

Julia Blackwell:

Well, I certainly would say I'm just going to keep hammering this home. If you've been experiencing something that it seems like nothing has been able to help and you feel really hopeless, I totally understand. I've been there. But there are ways to find a real solution and it may simply be that you're in the wrong place. So I really encourage you to make a move.

Julia Blackwell:

You know, living life with pain and discomfort is a really lonely place to be. I spent a lot of my life feeling like I was trapped in a box and, while I still have some limitations, I've also been able to solve my own bouts of knee pain, low back pain, neck pain in a matter of days. Because I know this work, I've been able to really come out of my shell and do things that younger me would have not even dreamed of, because of the way I've been able to let so much of this physical and emotional trauma go through vascular release as well. So I just encourage people to keep on it. There is a solution. It's just again, maybe you're not in the right spot at this moment.

Nika Lawrie:

Yeah Well, I love all the information you've shared today and I love your story. It really is beautiful to come from pain at birth and kind of struggle with this your whole life and to really do whatever you can to work through it. But not only do that for yourself, but now you're helping other people. That is such a beautiful thing to do and inspiring, and I just want to thank you and commend to you for doing that work. So it's beautiful. Thank you so much. Yeah Well, julia, thank you for coming on the show. I really appreciate it.

Julia Blackwell:

Thank you.

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