Most of my Structural Integration clients come to me because of chronic pain. It may be a mild discomfort in the shoulders or neck that comes and goes. It might be a constant tightness in the low back that must be babied for fear of spasms. Sometimes their pain is so severe that it is debilitating. As each previously attempted treatment failed to give lasting relief, their frustration turned to resignation. Pain management, not resolution, becomes their goal. As a professional, these are the cases that I find especially rewarding. Through Structural Integration, these clients often gain a new lease on life – rediscovering what they thought was lost.

We All Have Chronic Patterns

Chronic patterns of tension and tightness are not the problem. We all have them. They support us and help us in everything we do. These chronic patterns develop based on how we use our body. A helpful analogy for understanding their slow growth process is the shaping of a bonsai tree. The gardener will wrap a branch with metal wire and bend it in a desired direction.  After several months, this metal splint can be removed, and the branch will stay bent. The very cell of the branch, every fiber of the wood, has grown to support the branch in that state. The same happens within us. If we sit, stand, and act the same way, day in and day out, our body’s structure grows to support that use. Ultimately, we shape our chronic patterns.

What Puts the Pain in Chronic Patterns?

When our chronic tension patterns develop in an open and aligned state, they help to support and strengthen us. If they develop in a compressed and misaligned state, they weaken and destabilize us. Misaligned joints wear out faster. Chronically tensed muscles become knotted and grow trigger points. Nerves may get impinged, causing numbness or shooting pain. Breath becomes shallower and circulation is hindered. Our overall health and vitality suffers. These dysfunctional patterns grow within us, year after year, because of poor posture, a lack of bodily awareness, and confusion about proper body mechanics. It may take a decade for these patterns to become painful, but by the time they do, they are part of our very structure.

This Thing Called Structure

In Structural Integration, structure is a broad term used to describe our fascial web and its balancing relationship to our skeleton. The fascial web is an intricately woven fibrous web, made mostly of a protein called collagen, running throughout our entire body. In a sense, it is the leather in our bodies; designed to hold long term. The fascial web organizes our tissues, keeps things in place, and connects everything to everything else. Any strain that has resided within your body for more than a few months is now held in place by the fascial web. Your posture, your habituated movement patterns, and yes, your chronic pain are all maintained by your fascial web.

Structural Integration’s effectiveness at resolving chronic pain comes from its ability to loosen and rebalance the entire structure. Our chronic pain is always related to and maintained by a single, full body, structural pattern. For example, chronic neck pain is often caused by a misalignment of the spine. A misaligned spine implies problems in the pelvis. And problems in the pelvis suggest uneven support from the legs and feet. The pain in the neck is a symptom of the way the fascial web is misaligning the skeleton in gravity. It cannot be resolved by addressing the neck alone. The solution must be in the context of the body as a whole. Otherwise the underlying misalignment that causes the neck pain will remain, eventually resulting in a return of the symptoms. In Structural Integration, no matter what tissue we are working on, it is always in the context of the whole.

Taking the Pain Out of Chronic Pain

Structural Integration is a series of bodywork sessions (10-16, depending on the style) designed to free up, lengthen, and align the fascial web.  In each session we first look at your posture and movement patterns so as to assess how you organize today, how you’ve progressed, and how to further customize that days’ work.  Using deep, slow, fascial manipulation, we continue the unwinding process, melting restrictions and helping you find a softer way of being.  Each session builds on the last, accumulating structural change, awareness, and understanding.

The physical changes we make through Structural Integration give you the opportunity to feel and use your body differently. However, if you don’t train the awareness and control of that potential, your habituated way of doing things will return and you will regrow your pattern. Therefore, each session also accumulates homework; stretching, strengthening, and awareness building exercises.  The more you invest into your homework, the more you will support the changes between sessions.  Awareness is the beginning of change. You will discover new ways of using your body that are less taxing – ways that are based on a new pattern.

Keeping Pain Out of Our Chronic Patterns

Imagine that you have completed the Structural Integration series. It has been a powerful growth process and you have learned a great deal about your body and how to use it. Things have improved a great deal and you have a new lease on life. What now? Will this last? Yes, but only if you keep growing it into your body. Your homework is to continue your homework.  Some people manage this on their own, others benefit from occasional tune-ups to help them stay focused and adjust the homework. By a year’s end, the changes gained will be integrated into the very fiber of your structure. You will have a new, pain-free, chronic pattern.

Eli, Your Structural Integration sessions are amazing! Through this series, I’ve unexpectedly rid myself of a burning muscle pain in my upper chest/shoulder area that I’ve had for 15 years – from 35 years of playing a musical instrument in a crouched position. I even feel that breathing is easier.

My original goal of a better posture was reached early in the series and we went far beyond those goals. I’ve developed a sense of how to hold myself that feels so correct – a lasting body awareness and new habits.

Thanks so much. Ron Bentley

Ron Bentley – Associate Vice President, Berklee College of Music