Julia Blackwell is a fascia release practitioner, educator, and creator of The Fascia Remedy.
Julia was born with severe nerve damage to her right shoulder and grew up going through the broken Western medicine system. After 23 years of being told her condition would never improve and feeling no lasting relief from any treatments, she was introduced to a unique type of fascia release bodywork in 2010. In just 3 months of this fascia specific work, she saw more improvement in the feel and function of her arm than she had in 16 years of traditional treatments!
This experience catapulted Julia into learning everything she could about fascia, the critical roles it plays in our movement and overall health, and how to restore it. After learning multiple modalities and working with clients for 12 years, she formulated her own approach for bodywork & foam rolling work called The Fascia Remedy. Using this methodology, she’s been able to solve her own bouts of low back, knee, and neck pain in a matter of days, as well as help others quickly alleviate pain, restore movement, and perform at their best.
Julia has captivated a community of thousands with her unique bodywork, her fresh take on foam rolling, and her approach to discovering the root source of their pain. Her combination of fascia release, postural alignment, and mindset magic has earned her the nickname “The Pain Relief Wizard” from her community of both professional athletes and everyday movers.
A Denver local, spends her free time adventuring with her dogs, rock climbing, and hiking Colorado’s tallest peaks.
Listen to this episode of The MOVEMENT Movement with Julia Blackwell about how to fix your fascia.
Here are some of the beneficial topics covered on this week’s show:
– How most pain issues stem from fascial problems and often where the pain is felt is not the source of the problem.
– Why imbalance in posture can indicate fascial tension and misalignment in the body.
– How proper alignment and posture are important in identifying fascial tension and pain.
– Why it’s important to keep your fascia moving and hydrated.
– How improving the health of your fascia can positively impact your nerves, blood vessels, organs, lymphatic system, detoxification, immune system, and blood flow.
Connect with Julia:
Guest Contact Info
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@movementbyjulia
Facebook
facebook.com/movementbyjulia
LinkedIn
linkedin.com/in/movementbyjulia
Links Mentioned:
movementbyjulia.com
Connect with Steven:
Website
Twitter
@XeroShoes
Instagram
@xeroshoes
Facebook
facebook.com/xeroshoes
Episode Transcript
Steven Sashen:
What if there is a part of your body that is critical to your health and you don’t even know what it is? Well, you’re going to find out about that possibly on today’s episode of the Movement Movement Podcast, the podcast for people who want to know the truth about what it takes to have a happy, healthy, strong body starting feet first, those things that under your legs that are actually your foundation. We also break down the propaganda, the mythology, sometimes the flat out lies you’ve been told about what it takes to run, walk, hike, do yoga, CrossFit, whatever it is you like to do, and to do those things enjoyably and effectively and efficiently. And did I say enjoyably? Wait, I know I did, because it’s a trick question because look, if you’re not having fun, you’re not going to do it, so make sure you’re having a good time doing what you’re doing.
I am Steven Sashen from XeroShoes.com and.eu and.co.uk. And we call this the Movement Movement podcast because we, and that includes you. It’s really easy, more about that in a second. We are creating a movement about natural movement, letting your body do what it’s made to do instead of getting in the way. And how you can help is really easy to spread the word. So if you want, go to our website, www.jointhemovementmovement.com. Nothing you need to do to join. There’s no secret handshake, no special dance. We do at 7 o’clock every morning, although that’d be really fun. But it’s just where you can find all the previous episodes, all the ways you’re going to engage with us on social media, all the places you can find the podcast. If you don’t like the one you’re getting it from now.
I don’t know why you wouldn’t, but you never know. So in short, give us a thumbs up and give us a review. Hit the like button on Facebook. Hit the bell icon on YouTube to get notified about upcoming episodes. You can also subscribe on our website to get upcoming episode notifications. The bottom line, if you want to be part of the tribe, just subscribe. So let’s jump in. Julia. Hey, welcome. Tell people who you are, what you’re doing here, et cetera, et cetera.
Julia:
Hey, Steven. Thanks so much for having me on. I am your friendly neighborhood fascia release expert in Golden Colorado. I do both in-person fascia release bodywork, but I also instruct people how they can release fascia on their own with tools like foam rollers.
Steven Sashen:
Now, I just like that if no one knows what fascia is/are, if we use it in the plural inappropriately, that some of those sentences sound really weird.
Julia:
I’m sure.
Steven Sashen:
Release your fascia. If you don’t know what fascia means, I can’t even imagine what people are imagining in their head in that situation. So why don’t we start there? And of course, at some point you’re going to tell your story of how this happened, but why don’t you describe what fascia is, and because again, most people have no idea this is actually a part of their anatomy?
Julia:
Yeah, a hundred percent. I find the thing possibly you’ve heard of before is myofascial release. If you’re accustomed to the foam roller or a massage therapist may have told you that, but I am real picky. I really prefer the term fascia over myofascial because it’s one big interconnected system. So fascia is the biological fabric that organizes all of the material and water in your body. It’s what holds us into your shape, your structure and your texture that you see in front of you. My favorite analogy is that it’s like plastic wrap that wraps around every single thing. So every muscle fiber, every muscle group, every bone, organ, nerve, blood vessel, literally everything is plastic bags within plastic bags within plastic bags.
Steven Sashen:
Recyclable, recyclable.
Julia:
Yes. Creating a three-dimensional plastic wrap suit, if you will. So if it were to magically disappear out of your body, you would go tumbling to the ground and a pile of bone fragments and goo.
Steven Sashen:
I don’t know if you’d be tumbling, you would just collapse. It would be a little wicked witch of the west ish. But that would also be pretty entertaining to see if that was possible. So why do you think it is that this is a concept, let alone a thing that almost so few people know about?
Julia:
Well, the sad reality is for the longest time when they were dissecting cadavers for research, they would find this spider webby, the plastic wrappy type of material everywhere, and they’re like, “What is this garbage? Get it out of here so that I can see the muscle or the nerve,” and they would throw it in the trash. So we are very behind as far as researching this material goes. But in the last 30 or so years, it’s really starting to get to the forefront of the topic of conversation which is-
Steven Sashen:
Well, in the last few it’s really accelerated. I think it was an episode of Radio Lab, perhaps, where it was the guy who was the first one to rehydrate that material and go, “What the hell is this? It’s everywhere.” And the name that they’re using in the medical world is interstitium and they’re talking about it like it’s a whole separate organ. I mean, they still aren’t even sure what the hell it’s doing and how it’s doing it. So there’s nothing more entertaining than the idea of people discovering a nude part of your body that is most of your body and is, like you said, responsible for 40% of the fluid in your body and people had no idea. I mean, that’s just mind-blowing.
Julia:
… yeah, and the fun part is honestly, the more we learn about it, the more mysterious it gets. It’s like we keep discovering these new roles that it’s playing that we had no idea, so I think it’s only going to get more interesting.
Steven Sashen:
Well, my other favorite part is that when it just started becoming obvious that this was this communication network through your whole body, then all of a lot of, let’s say, less educated, traditional Chinese medicine, less educated Ayurvedic medicine people were saying, “Oh my God, this explains everything we’re doing.” And the more educated versions of those people we’re going, “Whoa, slow down, Sparky. It may be related in certain ways, but we don’t even know what those are yet, so let’s not get ahead of our skis,” an analogy that I’ve been using a lot lately, even though I don’t ski. So let’s back up before we talk about how people can discover what you’re talking about. Let’s hear the how you got here part because this is a not, I’m saying this in the most entertaining way I can, a not non-interesting story.
Julia:
Oh, thank you. Normally you can make the joke when you ask someone how they started and they’re like, “Well, when I was born,” but that’s the literal introduction to myself-
Steven Sashen:
No, no, no. Look, I literally do this when people say, “How did Xero Shoes begin?” I say, when a mommy loves a daddy very much-
Julia:
… exactly. That’s the joke, but it really did. So when I was born, I was almost a 10 pound baby, and in the process of being born, I got stuck. So when they pulled me out, they tore and stretched all of the nerves in my right shoulder making my right arm essentially useless until I had a nerve re graft surgery, but ultimately they did a surgery. They sent me on my way, wish me the best of luck. And the rest of my life growing up I went to so many practitioners and doctor’s appointments and what I call the standard western medicine runaround, and didn’t get any further answers or possible avenues that I could go down for the limited mobility and the tightness I was still feeling so much in the right arm. So it’s like being a broken product on a conveyor belt. No matter who you go to, you’re just continually rubber-stamped, just defective.
So I will say that it was an interesting time growing up because so many of those things that people tell you over and over again really start to plant themselves in your brain, and you also believe that there’s nothing that can be done about this problem. So while deep down, I didn’t think there was anything, I still try just about everything you could think of. I bought all of the fancy tools and gadgets. I laid on probably a hundred tables for treatment by experts, but nothing seemed to make a lasting difference. Then I moved out to Boulder, Colorado, your hometown.
Steven Sashen:
Well, my hometown’s Bethesda Maryland, but-
Julia:
Oh, is it? Okay.
Steven Sashen:
… but I moved to Boulder 30 years ago and I’m 61, so it’s getting there.
Julia:
It’s getting to be a hometown. Yes, I met someone who did a form of fascia release and I had never heard of fascia, which is hilarious because I have an Exercise Physiology degree. I think they might’ve mentioned it for a hot second, but it was a very passing comment and it was mostly structured around, “Oh, this is the thing that is attaching your ligaments to bones.” And so I was very interested but had no expectations for it, but it completely blew my mind. Within the first few sessions I was like, “Whoa, this is different. This is not like anything else that I’ve done before.” And I saw more results in the feel and function of my arm in three months than I had in some 20 some years doing your typical treatments, let’s call it.
So it was a really life-changing moment and completely changed the trajectory of my life and my career. So I became very obsessed with fascia, went on to learn multiple more modalities, including that one that really just turned the light on for me there and have since created my own methodology, and I continue to do all sorts of fascia research. Anything that comes out, I’m excited to hear about it.
Steven Sashen:
Well, we are going to dive into both those aspects in a sec, but 10 pounds, holy crap. I can’t imagine for you, but I really can’t imagine your mom. I’m hoping she’s like nine feet tall and it was effortless, but clearly not the case.
Julia:
She’s five four and she’s tinier than me.
Steven Sashen:
So the part that I’m, I was four pounds, two ounces, so to hear about 10 pounds, I don’t think I got to be 10 pounds until I was 13 years old, I think. So that just blows my mind. So why don’t we start with something that maybe people can experience, and I know I’m putting you on the spot because we haven’t talked about this before. But if somebody wants to just get some idea of either what the fascial system is, if there’s something that they can perceive or something they could do that will give them that hint. I mean, some little something. If you’re in an elevator, you’ve got 30 seconds with Oprah, she says, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Show me something.” What are you going to tell Oprah to do?
Julia:
Well, an easy way you can feel at least the connection of fascia is if you were to stand up tall, reach your left arm straight down towards the floor as far as you can, so your shoulders reaching away from your ear and then tilt your head to the right. So tilt it to the opposite side. You’ll likely feel a stretch all through the neck, down through the shoulder, and possibly even through the arm.
And the more you pull your fingers back as you stretch down towards the floor, the more you’re going to feel that entire line pulling and stretching, because we don’t have 10 hours to talk about the medical system and the things that they have wrong, but we keep thinking that the body is so simple that it’s just one muscle is the problem, or there’s this one joint that’s the problem, but that’s not really how the body works. The body is connected through this web of plastic wrap with your fascia, and so this whole point, this whole line going from your neck down to the arm is an interconnected piece and we’ve got to be able to look at the whole thing.
Steven Sashen:
You reminded me of something that happened. Do you know what prolotherapy is?
Julia:
Oh, no, I don’t.
Steven Sashen:
Prolotherapy, basically the easiest form is they’ll take a needle and just poke into the parts of a ligament or tendon that have gotten lax or have some tendinopathy or something. And the idea is that you’re selectively re injuring that spot. Now, you’re actually going to be injecting some little saline solution, just something to basically irritate that thing because when you get injured, your body will do as much as it can to heal to get you back functioning, but not necessarily getting you back to where you were before. Anyway, my friend, Dr. Tom Raven is the guy who taught Prolo to everybody. He’s working on my shoulder, sticking a big needle in my shoulder because I had a bunch of shoulder things from being a gymnast, and something radiated down my hand and I went, “Oh man, you hit a nerve.” He went, “No, I didn’t.”
I said, “What is?” He goes, “That’s not a nerve.” I said, “Well, then how is it that I’m feeling that in my hand?” He goes, “Well, if you remember when you were a fetus, there was a time when you just had little hand buds coming out of your shoulders, and then those extended and became arms, and so there’s a thing that’s still connecting all of those things.” And he didn’t say it was fascia, but that’s a giant part of what we’re talking about. But just that image of remembering developmentally things extended out of the middle in ways that are still connected. They’re not just disjointed like you were saying, but that was my first visceral experience of it, which just shocked me, but then made total sense.
Julia:
Oh yeah, that’s a cool one.
Steven Sashen:
Isn’t it wild? Just get a picture of that one. It’s like, “Here’s how you became something.” So you had this amazing experience. You’d learn these other modalities. We’ve just giving someone a way of feeling that thing that we think of as just some muscular something until you realize that it makes no sense that it would just be muscular to go from your middle finger all the way to the top of your head, which is that fun part that I was just feeling with a few things, a few spots that are more active than others. So what are the things that people come to you for that are primarily fascial in their cause? And that also makes me think, somebody walk in and you go, “Yeah, this is not necessarily the right thing for you. Go see, fill in the blank,” but what are you doing with human beings? And let’s dive into some things so people can understand that and get at least a picture in their mind, if not something else that they can do so they can experience this more.
Julia:
Sure. I work with a pretty eclectic mix of people these days. So still far and away the most common thing is pain. Any pain you have in the body I would say is 95% of the time is a fascial problem because fascia wraps around everything, it’s going to therefore influence the position and function of everything. So if a muscle is hurting, a joint is hurting your experience, any type of chronic pain or something that’s bugging you on your runs, it’s almost always a fascial problem. So that’s what I work on with people the most, but I certainly work with people who are struggling with mobility which, of course, is very near and dear to my heart. That’s a big part of my journey. And I’ve got a handful of people who really just get it, and they’re all about the performance element. So the more hydrated and supple your fascia is, the better we can absorb shock, the better all of our other systems function, and so we’re getting more of that elevated high performance part of it. But I will say the vast majority is pain.
Steven Sashen:
Got it. So somebody comes in, they’ve got a pain in there somewhere. Do you find that the issue is there or that it’s somewhere else that’s just being felt in whatever spot they’re noticing the issue?
Julia:
Yeah. Where we feel pain is almost never the problem. So even though all of our fascial system is one unit, it’s connected, it’s also this series of pulleys that need to be equal in order to retain balance in our body. So most of the time with pain, where you end up feeling pain is where something is overstretched or something is overworking, and we have to go find that crumpled up ball of plastic wrap, if you will, that’s somewhere else, and it’s throwing the whole pulley system out of balance. So the fun joke is that I’m some kind of a wizard where I’ll step on one thing or I’ll work on one thing, we haven’t even gotten into that. That’s how I work on people. I actually step on them, but I’ll work on one area of fascia through the specific way of compressing and moving through something and they’re like, “Wow, now my back doesn’t hurt, or now my shoulder doesn’t hurt.” I had no idea that that was the thing, but it’s all about the balance and finding the root cause instead of going after the symptom.
Steven Sashen:
Sorry, now I can’t get out of my head this idea that you’re stepping on people and, of course, if you do it in high heels, you can probably charge more.
Julia:
Oh, yes. No, I have a hilarious collection of socks. I surely own a hundred pairs that are constantly being recycled, but-
Steven Sashen:
How many are tie-dye?
Julia:
… ooh, at least five.
Steven Sashen:
Okay. Because back in the days when I was wearing socks, all I had was tie-dye because that way you don’t have to worry about the matching.
Julia:
Oh, that’s true. I do love animals, so I would say 70% of my socks are some type of animal, and it’s really entertaining. Every once in a while someone will come in that they don’t know exactly what I do. They’ve just heard that they need to come see me, and they walk in and I’m wearing some hamster socks and I’m like, “This person probably thinks I’m insane, but we’ll get there.”
Steven Sashen:
To be clear, I’m assuming these are socks with hamster images, not socks made of hamsters?
Julia:
Correct. That would be extra crazy.
Steven Sashen:
Just want to validate and verify that for the PETA people. So when there is this crumpled up bit of plastic wrap or plastic bag somewhere, how are you finding that? And is there some self-diagnostic thing somebody might do to go, “Oh, check that out?”
Julia:
Well, one of the biggest things I look at is posture in general alignment with someone, because fascia is likely the thing that’s pulling bones out of alignment and creating really poor posture. So looking in the mirror, if you notice that one shoulder’s elevated or one hip is elevated, if both of your feet turn out to the side like duck feet, you can do a little bit of that self-analysis on yourself. That can give you an idea, “Okay, all of my load joints should be stacked both vertically and horizontally.” If you drew a straight line down through the shoulders, hips, knees, ankles, and then vertically or horizontally through them, they ideally make roughly 90 degree angles. So anything that looks off, if you look a little twisted, that’s a way you can look for yourself. But truly, if you have any kind of pain or you don’t have the mobility that you used to, it’s pretty easy to assume that you’ve got something fascially speaking going on that needs to be released.
Steven Sashen:
So let’s say I’m going to pick shoulder pain for lack of a better something, and I go, “Okay, so that’s indicating there’s something fascial.” Now, before somebody comes to have you attack them with your feet, what might they do to palpate somewhere or do some movement to highlight where that fascial tension may be?
Julia:
Sure. So my motto is essentially healthy fascia doesn’t hurt. So if you start palpating around in the bicep, in the tricep, in the pec, you may find, “Ooh, this feels really tender or sore when I’m adding some compression to it,” that’s another way you’re going to know something is going on there. Usually with shoulder things, I mean it really depends.
Steven Sashen:
I shouldn’t have picked shoulder because that one is so complicated. There could be-
Julia:
That one is a little complicated.
Steven Sashen:
… a billion that could be causing that one.
Julia:
So everybody’s a little bit different because we all have our own unique patterns. We all have our own unique experiences that we’re carrying with us in our body, but there are definitely ones that are very common for most pain. So back pain, for example, everyone thinks, “Oh, my hamstrings are really tight. Oh, my back hurts.” And it’s usually coming from fascial restriction in the quads and in the adductors occasionally the IT bands, but it’s these places that aren’t actually near the spot. If that’s why you still have back pain after stretching the ever living crap out of your glutes and hamstrings is, that’s not what’s happening.
Steven Sashen:
So one of the reasons that I decided to have you on the podcast is because you are doing something even within this whole domain of fascial stuff, you’re doing some things that are different in ways that I frankly agree with, but more importantly, you’re not doing what many people think of as the normal stuff. So most people will get on a foam roller and just roll back and forth, roll back and forth, roll back and forth, and then wonder why they’re still rolling back and forth, rolling back and forth, rolling back and forth. So let’s dive into what happens. Somebody comes to see you, and even if they’re using a foam roller, you are addressing this, and I only know one or two other people who are doing anything similar. So talk about what you’re doing differently than the average fascial person or person who just bought a foam roller at Dick’s Sporting Goods.
Julia:
Yeah. Here’s the thing. Fascia has a lot of different roles that we’ve discovered. One of them is a protector, it’s what protects us from impact and damage. It absorbs shock. It prevents us from every time we bang our elbow against a doorframe from crazy changes to be happening in our body. And so because fascia is playing this protector role, it doesn’t change easily. You have to come at fascia in a very specific way, and most people are missing the combination of what it takes to really get fascia to change, otherwise it’s actually going to resist the change that you’re actively trying to make.
So it’s like a speaking fascia’s language. So first, there needs to be an element of compression. Fascia loves compression, and instead of rolling around on your foam roller aimlessly and wildly, we want to stay on one area and compress it. The second element is there needs to be some type of cross-fibering happening. So that just means you are going perpendicular to the way muscle or fascial fibers run. There’s a really specific cell, I want to say it’s been only five, six years since it was discovered. It’s called a fascia site very well named, right?
Steven Sashen:
Who knew?
Julia:
And a fascia site only gets activated with a shearing motion, that cross firing motion. And once it’s activated, it starts the production of hyaluronic acid, which is what helps really deeply hydrate us. It’s like full body grease for our joints and our muscles, and allows glide to happen much more easily. And that’s not going to happen with rolling with the grain of your muscle. So let’s say we’ll take your quads, for example, if you’re rolling up and down from the knee to the hip, going with the grain of the muscle, we’re getting very little cross vibrating and shearing in. And then the last component is some type of an active movement is very important when talking to fascia. Fascia has its own communication system that can communicate outside of the nervous system. They certainly talk-
Steven Sashen:
I’ve got to pause right there because for me just that idea sounds crazy. Literally, the people who started figuring this out not that long ago thought it was crazy. So let’s change the plastic bag metaphor to something a little more three-dimensional, because literally what’s happening in the fascia is just it’s a fluid filled thing where there’s information going all around the body, and people, again, are still just figuring that out. But just to clarify, it’s not like just stretching a bag. There are things going on there in this three-dimensional fluid conduit something system. So once we have the 3D idea that changes some of the way to envision what’s going on and what you might be doing. So sorry, that was just an interjection when you were starting to get into the movement component.
Julia:
… no, that is really important. I use plastic wrap because it’s of good visual that people can understand, but your fascia is largely water, and water conducts electricity. So signals are traveling very fast. I believe nerves travel at about 150 miles an hour, and signals are going through your fascial system at something like 750 miles an hour. It’s just happening way faster, and it’s communicating throughout the whole body in just a different, very amazing way.
Steven Sashen:
Well, hold on. I never heard that one before, and so I’m thinking and going, “How does that make sense?” And the one way it makes sense is going to sound weird, is so nervous impulses travel of course down the axon of the nerve, but then when they’re going from nerve to nerve, there’s a electrochemical process that does take time. But if you think about a fluid filled like a six lane highway just to simplify it and it’s fluid filled, if you compress one end of it, there’s an instantaneous effect on the other end because of the way… I mean, that’s the part that if you think about it, is just crazy.
We’re oblivious to this. This is not part of the way we think about the human body in general. And then something like, “Okay, that’s…” I mean, I was almost thinking of it like electrons, where the idea that electrons are moving through a wire is not necessarily the case. You just put a new electron on one end of the wire and one on the other end shoots out. So it’s a similar thing on the fluid side, and so painting that picture adds an interesting twist to the whole idea of movement. I want to come back to the cross-fiber stuff too in a second, but let’s continue on the movement thing because I keep interrupting.
Julia:
I know there’s so many fun tangents we can go down.
Steven Sashen:
It’s so interesting.
Julia:
But one of the elements of that communication is that we have so many proprioceptors in our fascia, so there’s 10 times as many in our fascia than there are in our actual muscle. And so we’re really lighting up that proprioceptive element when we do active movement. So we’re re stimulating, we’re reigniting all of these proprioceptors in the area that we’re working on, and we’re also telling our brain that, “Hey, it’s safe to access this range of motion in a way that we’re not going to get with a passive treatment.” So I’ve been naming all these things, so let’s bring them together.
So if you’re going to compress cross-fiber and active move on your foam roller, it’s going to look like, we will stick with the quad example. Instead of rolling up and down from the knee of the hip, pick one spot that feels tender and sore because healthy fascia doesn’t hurt, and then slowly bend your heels back from the knees and straighten out. So it’s like a little bit of a hamstring curl. Do that a few times, keep your knees bent and your heels back for a moment, and then rock your heels from side to side to go across the quad instead of with it. And we’re combining all of those things together, and it makes your hydration and the release effect to go through the roof with so much greater than you would have if you just rolled around on your roller.
Steven Sashen:
And let’s be clear, this will not be pleasant.
Julia:
Correct. Now, here’s the thing though. And I talking-
Steven Sashen:
I just have to pause.
Julia:
… I was talking on another podcast a few months back, and this lady was like, “Oh, I did one of your videos.” And I was like, “What in the hell is going on?” This was so intense. But the thing is we’re not normally talking with fascia in this way and asking it to change and move in this way, and so it’s going to feel intense at first. But two things. One, I think you’re going to be surprised how quick it decreases in intensity because we’re improving the health of your fascia the right way and so much more quickly.
But two, we want the nervous system to be on board with the changes that we want to make. So if the intensity is at an eight, nine or 10 out of 10, we’re not going to have our body accept that change very well. So there’s no bonus points for pushing through something needlessly painful where you’re scrunching your face, you’re not able to breathe, you’re moving really quickly through that movement. We’re actually not going to get as far as we would if we can bring the intensity down to say a six or a seven.
Steven Sashen:
So what’s interesting to me about this is I’ve mentioned Feldenkrais work on the podcast a number of times, and for people who haven’t heard the gist is it’s what you just said. It’s reminding your brain that it has been limiting your bodily movement, your range of motion unnecessarily, and you fake your brain out to do this. So the first time I had a session with someone doing this, and this is actually the guy who brought Moshe Feldenkrais to America, it’s a guy named Tom Hanna, and he had diagnosed it. Basically my right lat was all hypertonic and way too tense. I don’t know why. I’ve just got a thumbs up on the video, but that’s really annoying. I’ve got to make that crap stop because I didn’t even do a thumbs up sign. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. New-
Julia:
I know when you said your lat was tight and it gave a thumbs up, I was like, “Oh no. Who’s making a thumbs up for that?”
Steven Sashen:
… no, it’s something in the new Mac operating system that does that, and I haven’t learned how to turn it off yet. But anyway, so he had me do just this simple motion where I didn’t even realize that, let’s say I could only lift my arm a certain amount where suddenly my arm was all the way, way above my head with more range of motion than ever before. And then it’s like, “Hey, notice that.” And it was literally a physical version of an epiphany, and it’s like, “Oh, my God.” And then your brain goes, “Oh, I can do that? Okay, that’s cool.” And I see that I think about that in the barefoot running world where people say, “Oh, well, I switched from some big high-heeled shoe to your shoes, and I got Achilles tendonitis.”
I said, “No, no. What happened is you hadn’t made the transition in a way that reminded your brain that you could use your Achilles fully because in the higher heeled shoe you had trained your brain to only use it a certain amount because it wasn’t going to move any further, and so it realized, ‘Oh, I don’t need to do that. Great, I won’t do it anymore.'” But the idea that you’re sending similar kinds of signals, maybe even the same, but similar kinds of signals at the very least to your brain so that the… There’s two parts to the fascial thing that we’re describing. One is literally impacting the physical structure of the fascia, and the other is that, like you said, this neurological conversation between what’s going on in that spot in your body and your brain to remind your brain, “Oh no, it’s cool. Whatever happened before that’s done. You can chill out now and go back to normal.” That’s, for me at least, a mind-blowing layering of ideas that frankly, that’s not a conversation you’re going to hear every day.
Julia:
Yes, that re-patterning, that’s what I call it. That re-patterning element is really important, and you won’t get it from a passive thing where someone else is forcing you into a position and you lay there and you’re thinking about what you have to do for the rest of today. You’re just letting someone else move this part around. It doesn’t connect that new range of motion that you could have access to or how to use your muscles in this new way. You have to move yourself for that to integrate in your brain.
Steven Sashen:
That’s really, really interesting. So someone comes to see you, what happens then? Because so far we haven’t talked about doing this stuff with somebody in their socks, doing something around you to you.
Julia:
So the way that I am getting that combination of fascia release to happen is through using my feet, I will find the spot that feels the most dense or the most textually odd and compress it, and then talk someone through the range of motion themselves. So they’re still the one that’s doing the range of motion. I’m just providing the compression and a little bit of the cross-fibering element to ensure that we’re getting all of the components in one sitting. And then truthfully, I let someone else tell me how we’re doing. So I have all of these ideas of what might be happening in their body based on their alignment, based on how they’re moving. But ultimately, our body is super smart. It knows what it needs. So I’ll work on a couple of areas, have people walk it out, check back in with the pain they were feeling, and things usually change in that session for the most part, at least 90% of the time.
And then we’re using the information that their body is giving us to help interpret what they need in the future as well and what’s helping their pain the most. Because I’m still surprised. I’ve been doing this for 11 years, and every once in a while I really think I know exactly what’s happening in that pulley system, and it doesn’t seem to quite land, and we do something seemingly random, and that’s the thing. So I really do believe that ultimately our body is going to let us know what we need the most. So I do the same thing when I work with people. I work with people virtually. I have some programs to teach people how to foam roll for themselves because I also believe that you can figure it out yourself. It just takes a little bit more time and intention, but it’s the same thing. It’s like, “Well, let’s follow the basic patterns that normally happen for a certain type of pain or restriction you’re feeling,” but then see what your body tells you. You may find that releasing something different is the key for you.
Steven Sashen:
So basically A, you’re a human foam roller-
Julia:
Yep.
Steven Sashen:
… which I think would make a great business card, and it would certainly make dinner party conversations much more interesting. But B, backing up to this whole foot thing, was it your idea or did someone teach you this thing of feet versus hands or any other part of your body, frankly?
Julia:
Yeah, the initial body work that I experienced was a stepping modality. So that was the one I experienced and was like, “Whoa, this is so much more effective,” partially because of the weight that you can add, you can add so much more compression than you can with your hands and your upper body, but we’re also grabbing so much more of the fascia through a bigger surface like the foot than we would get with a thumb or an elbow.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, that’s interesting. That makes sense. And I do have to tell you, in the early days when all we had was do it yourself sandal making kit, and all my videos were like, “Here’s my feet making sandals,” I got a surprising number of emails. Or then I’d get voicemails that were like, “Can you make more videos of your feet, please?”
Julia:
Of course.
Steven Sashen:
And I did not do that. I did not need the money that badly. So that’s very interesting. And do people know that when they’re coming in the door that you’re going to be stepping on them basically?
Julia:
These days, yeah. 99% of the time they do. I just had someone a couple weeks back though that just came in from a referral and was like, “I know this is great. I’ve heard nothing but good things, but she also didn’t tell me really what we were doing,” and I was like, “Oh, okay.”
Steven Sashen:
So FIY, so in the early days where people, I mean, I can only imagine, there were some people were like, “Hey, wait, wait, what?”
Julia:
Sure. The fun part, because I have a competitive nature and I love just winning people over is I would let them be really weirded out by it. And so they started walking between each technique and they’d be like, “Wait, I’m confused. Why is this getting better? We haven’t even worked on the spot yet,” and it was very satisfying to get people excited about being stepped on.
Steven Sashen:
Well, I will confess this one too. I was dating a woman way back when who getting massages was one of the things we would do. And invariably, she would end up saying things that, well, like, “Oh, remember when they put those cucumbers on your eyes at the end of the massage?” I’m like, “No, I didn’t get any cucumbers.” “Remember when they were stepping on your back?” And it’s like, “No, nobody stepped on my back.” It was always one thing, but it was, especially those two are the ones that I remember the most because I did not have someone stepping on my back, and that sounded something like I wanted that.
Julia:
Dang. I very rarely, I’m stepping on people’s back. It’s crazy. Low back pain, especially it’s not your back friends.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, yeah.
Julia:
It very rarely do I get in there, and it’s more so in an attempt to balance things after the parts that are really tight have released, and I want ultimately everyone to have very squishy, malleable, hydrated fascia, and so we’ll start working into some of those other areas. But yes, it’s not uncommon because it’s not the problem.
Steven Sashen:
No. Well, and again, this was just for massage, not for something that was just-
Julia:
Yeah, that’s true.
Steven Sashen:
… but I will confess one time when I walked into one of the places that did step on you, it’s like a Japanese spa in New York, and they had this big rig over the massage table. I was going, “Okay, that’s kinky.” And then it was like, “Oh, it’s just so they can hold themselves up when they step on you, that’s not so kinky.”
Julia:
Oh, my gosh. I have a big balancing pole that I use, so I’m not always putting my whole weight on people. I am using some blocks for leverage, and I’m mainly using one foot, but I have a big pole that I use for balance, and I’ve heard all of the jokes between stepping on people and the big pole that I’m balancing-
Steven Sashen:
Well, I was going to say your father wanted you to stay off the pole, and here you are.
Julia:
… I know. Here we are.
Steven Sashen:
But that could actually make another good business card. I haven’t worked out the exact title, but just anything with the word pole in it would be good.
Julia:
Oh, no, that sounds like a nightmare. That’s going to bring all of the wrong people to my business right now.
Steven Sashen:
When I was doing comedy for a living, I had a business card. I picked it up from the print shop that was on the ground floor of the building I lived in Greenwich Village in New York, and my card said, “Steven Sashen, comedian, actor, jello mold.” And the person standing behind me said, and I’m not doing the voice for no reason. It was a gay man who said, “Ooh, jello mold. What’s that?” And because I couldn’t resist the joke, said, “That’s just something I do on the weekends.” He goes, “Really?” I said, “No, no.” He goes, “How much?” “No, I’m kidding,” and I couldn’t talk him out of the fact that I wasn’t actually a jello mold sometimes. So again, I did not do that one either because I didn’t need the money.
Julia:
Fair.
Steven Sashen:
So I mean, I’m totally, again, fascinated by the whole thing. I’m trying to think where else do we want to go with people’s either understanding or their own self-exploration about how to work with fascial things? I feel like I’m overlooking at something.
Julia:
I’ve learned so much about fascia from Thomas Myers in all of his research on Anatomy Trains, that’s helped me quite a bit understand more deeply the pulley system and where things are more interconnected than others. I love him, but I’m also a science nerd, so it may depend on what you like to watch and learn about, but he’s one of my favorite people to continue to learn from for sure.
Steven Sashen:
We can mention that in the show notes for people who want to dive in and science nerd out. So anything else other than the, “Hey, let’s point people to you so they can find out more about what you’re doing. If they’re having…” Again, not only anything painful going on, but anything where they want to improve performance by letting your body move more. I don’t even want to say correctly, but that’s the best word I thought of at the time because-
Julia:
Yeah. Just the reminder that since the fascial system wraps around your nerves and your blood vessels and your organs, if you can improve the health of your fascia, you’re going to improve the health of all of these other systems simultaneously. Your lymphatic system lives in your superficial fascia. So any kinks in your fascia itself is going to affect your ability to detox, your ability to have a good immune system, the ability for blood flow to reach all the right areas, things that you may not think are fascia, say your hands fall asleep at night, or you have a pinched nerve. Those are actually fascia related things. You just have to find the area.
So highly recommend to go exploring and start learning the texture of your own fascia. It’s totally changed my life, and I’ve seen it change the lives of hundreds and hundreds of people I’ve worked on over the years that we’re told just like me, that there was nothing they could do about their problem or that they assume it’s a product of getting old, something like that. And it’s really more accessible than you think, so I am happy to help anyone on that journey who is looking for pain relief or better mobility or like you said, just improving their performance even more with what they’re doing now.
Steven Sashen:
… and so how will humans find you?
Julia:
Well, I am the most active on Instagram, which my handle is @MovementbyJulia, J-U-L-I-A. Or you can head over to my website, movementbyjulia.com. I’ve got a free video series you can sign up for called Unlock Your Hips, where you can dive into my style of foam rolling and feel the difference for yourself.
Steven Sashen:
Awesome. Well, I do hope people take you up on this because like I said, I only know, I think actually only one other person who does anything remotely similar to what you’re talking about, and I’ve experienced that, so that’s again why I wanted you on here because I knew the value of this, and so you’re getting my personal endorsement even though we haven’t worked together yet. But since you’re down the street, we’re going to have to make that happen. And so again, do check out what Julia’s up to and let us both know how that goes.
And also, just a quick reminder, check us out on our website, www.jointhemovementmovement.com, and that’s where you’re finding previous episodes and all the ways you can find us on social media and all of the ways you can find the podcast on other places that have podcasts. And if you have any requests or suggestions, anyone you think should be on the show, I’m still hoping that there’s someone who thinks I have cranial rectal reorientation syndrome, who I can get up here to have a chat with. That would be really fun, but not for them. But you can drop me an email, move, M-O-V-E, @jointhemovement movement.com. And until then, go out, have some fun and live life feet first.