glossary

You don't just work out, you train. You know rest is needed for peak performance but ice, cold plunges, or salt baths don't always get the job done. A lacrosse ball works on the aches and knots but with so much intensity.

Using multiple (un)Blocks for tissue release is a different kind of "rest". Almost zero effort with a less is more that delivers results without triggering a stress response.

You don't want a stress response, like cringing or holding your breath when doing healing work. Activation of your sympathetic nervous system, often known as the fight or flight response, turns down all the repair work you're trying to create.

Why? The heart is the only organ your nervous system can't steal energy from to protect you when it thinks you need to run away from a bear. It alters your biochemistry and downregulates your systems (immune, digestive, etc.) to conserve energy to keep you alive.

Our nervous system sends messages between our brain and our body, down the spinal cord, through the fascia and into nerves all over our body. 

It is best known for signals delivered to our nervous system under stress: sympathetic activation (fight, flight), freeze, and collapse (shutdown, numb). A regulated state of parasympathetic calm aliveness is the "rest/digest" happens.

Our nervous system controls a large amount of our biochemistry and how much of our capacity to heal and repair is online.

Fascia is our largest organ. A strong, continuous, system-wide network providing form and function to your entire body. 

According to Johns Hopkins Medicine: "fascia is a thin casing of connective tissue that surrounds and holds every blood vessel, organ, bone, nerve, joint, tendon, and muscle in place." 

When it is unhealthy it gets tight and stuck, impeding our range of motion, causing pain, changing our posture, and impacting the function of everything it touches.

Your body weight creates pressure in your tissues between the (un)Block and your bones. 

The pressure creates some heat while the temporary restriction of blood flow causes a surge of fresh blood and oxygen to the area after release, helping to release old, gluey hyaluronic acid in your fascia.

Holding each unwind position for at least 3 minutes works slowly and deeply (you're in control of depth, always) to unblock stuck fascia and muscle knots.