Today's Impromptu Soft Tissue Re-modelling Play Session

This morning (after my morning CLASS), I decided to play around on the super soft carpet of the Sydney Stretch Therapy studio. 

I started off rolling my skull around on the carpet with knee and arm supports.  Besides mobilizing the neck (which is great), rolling the skull feels amazing on the muscles and tissues of the scalp.  There's a fair few different vectors of rotation/flexion/lateral flexion you can use for this.. but possibly too tricky to explain here (video later).  Trying to roll all over the scalp fascia and muscles, whilst maintaining slow, natural breathing into the belly. Put some of your awareness into what is happening inside the cranial bones (not inside you 'head'). I did a 2 minutes headstand at the end; just because.

Next on the menu was some hanging latissimus dorsi stretching with a heavy fascial emphasis on the angulation and the contraction type, duration and intensity.  Nice wind-up of some of the arm lines, from Tom Myer's myofascial meridians.  Deep reverse breathing to flare the ribs into the lines of the tension; and ringing the tissues out from the inside, too.  I came back to this with an additional element later - which was so good I am going to film it next Wednesday. All in all, I gave my poor lats a about 6 massive stretches each.  What a difference in posture and movement of the trunk and arms!  In my squirming, I also uncovered some tight sheets of fascia quite close to the ribs that I have never felt before...should be fun un-winding them.

Final thing I will talk about, was a passive backward bend over a hard foam roller - but with the foam roller balanced on a small step. *Don't do this unless you know you can*  I had to do this to get into the angle of extension I wanted.  Besides gravity working on the pose, I also used directed breathing to the sternum with double and triple inhales (inhale - pause - inhale more - pause - inhale more).  I got some really nice mobilization of my first three ribs and associated verterbae.  Combined with the lat stretch and I was in pretty close to ideal posture - without tension and with ease. 

Oh yeah, and did some awesome side splits practice for the first time in a while!  At 10:20pm, I am being hit by the post good neuromuscular stretching session feeling of sleepiness and body relaxation.  Time for bed.  Zzzzz...