Are Too Many Soft Furnishings and Flat Surfaces in Modern Life Causing us Stiffness, Rigidity and Pain?
How Healthy Fascia Requires Frequent Pressurisation and Deformation
This is an article about fascia and connective tissue health. For background on this, see my previous articles on this theme:
Everywhere we look, the modern world seems to be almost designed to be as bad for our health as possible, in particular, by encouraging us to cut ourselves off from the very environments we evolved to survive and thrive in, and replacing them with a “hypernovel” one which our biology was never designed for. This includes cutting ourselves off from:
good nutrition, through junk food and Big Agriculture farming methods;
the health giving and rhythm restoring rays of the Sun, through slathering ourselves with chemicals to block them out, and hiding away in our houses;
the electrical field and electrons of the Earth due to rubber soles of our shoes and flooring of artificial materials;
the Schumann frequencies of the Earth due to the interference of all the artificial EMF signals from electrical and electronic devices we have saturated our living spaces with;
the self-healing powers of our own biology, due to pharmacological interventions which freeze us in states of partial chronic illness;
the support of a “village” of a below-the-Dunbar-Number of extended family members, due to the atomization and divisiveness of modern society.
At the same time we are bathed in a soup of unnatural toxic chemicals which our bodies and brains don’t know how to detoxify from, and are bombarded with unnatural stimulus such as social media and pornography, that hijack and disrupt our biology.
In this article, we will consider another potential such issue, namely that all the soft furnishings and flat surfaces we use in modern life are cutting us off from restorative pressurisation, and natural deformations, of our fascia and connective tissue, required to keep us mobile, upright and pain free.
The reason I began to ponder this was due to my “Block Therapy” fascia decompression self-care practice, which basically involves placing a specially designed block of wood under various parts of the body while diaphragmatically breathing, applying principles that pressure eventually overcomes pain, and that it stimulates “fibroblasts” - specialized cells which go around constantly re-structuring connective tissue - into positive corrective action.
The profound success I have had with this was what really got me thinking about whether all the soft furnishing, cushioned chairs, sprung beds, and flat and even surfaces we have these days is having a detrimental effect on the health of our fascia and connective tissue. Is this divorcing us from the hard and uneven surfaces environments our ancestors evolved to thrive in?
Indeed, this may be akin to all the soft food we have in our diets these days, which some say is having a devastating effect on our teeth, shape of faces and hence massive impacts on breathing and posture, starting in infancy. We are designed to eat hard foods, to really have to chew and apply pressure to our teeth, even as babies. See the Dr Mike Mew video “Growing Your Face” below for a good explanation of this issue, especially where he demonstrates the impacts on posture and the postural collapse this causes.
Similarly, this video made me think that all this softness and flatness in our furniture, flooring etc. may, ironically, be making our bodies rigid, stiff, and painful, through our fascia not getting the pressure and deformation stimulation it needs to activate the fibroblasts and hence stay healthy, again with the adverse effects starting in infancy.
Indeed, the fact we are no longer getting natural pressure and deformations into our bodies through our every day experience, and that this is having a detrimental effect, is demonstrated precisely by the need to add pressure back into our lives through therapies like massage, Rolfing, and Block Therapy, in order avoid or address movement and pain issues!
If we look back to paleo times, we might have had a few skins to sleep on, but mostly would be sitting and laying on hard, uneven surfaces, so paleo humans were applying pressure and stimulating deformations to the fascia just by resting. Watching dogs and other mammals too, they are quite happy lying on the hard ground outdoors, especially if the ground has been warmed by the sun. Indeed, the collage of cats lying on a Block Therapy block above demonstrates that animals seem to intuitively know about this!
When I first started musing about this, a friend pointed me to the work of Katy Bowman of “Nutritious Movement”, who had already been down this line of inquiry, and was well ahead of me on this. Here are some relevant excerpts from her article “Pressure-Deforming Movements”:
“Movement can be defined as ‘any motion that creates a change in shape of a body or parts of a body’ and need not be bound to an intention or caloric expenditure, or limited to physical fitness variables. Movement is not defined by a physiological outcome, but by a transition in geometry. The human body can move and be moved in numerous ways beyond those that utilize skeletal muscle: for instance, horripilation, or ‘goose bumps’, in response to cold; the pressure-deformation of parts interfacing with sitting and sleeping surfaces; or loads to the tongue and jaw during breastfeeding or chewing. Yet these movements are currently unrepresented without a definition of movement outside of physical activity.”
“In our sedentary culture, and more specifically, in our culture that has us coated any surface we're likely to interface with in pillows and cushions, we're finding the need to schedule pressure-deformation supplements—massage, body/ball rolling, cobblestone mats—to replace the movement-nutrients that come from moving your body atop/over/through objects that move a lot more smaller parts when you interact with them.”
“We've made our habitat flat, smooth and cushioned, and thus eliminating hundreds of movements. We've reduced our body contact points to our feet (mostly), hands (a little), and our knees (hardly ever). All of that movement gone missing, that we have to add back in separately. If you couldn't see how foam or ball rolling relates to natural movement, maybe you'll be able to now: you're putting back, in isolation, the movement that the natural world requires of you when you move through it.”
Katy provides suggestions for adding pressure deforming movements back into our everyday lives, especially getting out in nature, where flat and soft surfaces are very rare. Indeed, eventually, what Katy found was so profound, this led her to remove most of the furniture from her house, and to sleep on the floor!
For further information about the role of fascia in health and chronic conditions, consider taking our online course “Body Memories and Fascia (Connective Tissue)”:
This is an eye-opener, Gary. I have wondered at my cat's - sometimes choice to sit on something uneven and hard, over her cozy cat-bed.) This makes a lot of sense to me. Thank you.
woo hoo, i have almost no furniture and can't remember what it was like. One day i would love an armchair or couch, and a strong table. but almost always sleep on floor...