I'm Judith, and this is the Starline Equine Bodywork podcast. This is a podcast about all of the things that I've learned and continue to learn in my career with horses. For the better part of a decade, I've been a full time equine bodywork practitioner, educator, and author. My obsession how horses really work and how to get the most from our relationship with them in training and in sport. My passion helping horse owners and body workers and aspiring body workers get going.
Unpack the latest science, research and experiences behind what we do with horses to support their potential and optimize their performance. The phrase fascia remembers trauma is often used in alternative medicine, bodywork, somatic therapy, and it's digested the body's facial tissue or that connective tissue network that surrounds muscles and organs and bones can store emotional or physical trauma, impacting health and movement. Oh my goodness, that statement.
Does it ever make me want to explore the scientific arguments for and against this idea grounded in current evidence? So as I prepared for this episode, that's exactly what I did. I came up with arguments that support facial remembering trauma and ones that go against that notion. And I'm going to present all of them to you here today. And then I want you to let me know what your thoughts on this topic are. So fascia has mechanics sensitive properties.
And because of that we can make an argument that supports the fact that fascia remembers trauma. Now fascia is a dynamic tissue that responds to mechanical stress, including trauma, by remodeling itself. Physical or emotional stress may alter facial tissue, which could lead to restrictions, or tension that store. I use the term in quotation marks the effects of trauma.
So some evidence for that would be that fashion contains mechanical receptors like Golgi tendon organs or Ruffini endings that respond to pressure and to stretch, which influences tissue remodeling. So chronic stress or injury can cause collagen fibers in fascia to shorten or densify, creating adhesions or scar tissue. Now, studies show that facial tissue can become stiffer under chronic stress, potentially due to altered fibroblast activity in the actual facial tissue.
This could be interpreted as the tissue holding the effects of trauma. Now, myofascial release therapies like Rolfing or bone work have shown to have benefits in reducing pain and improving mobility in patients with chronic pain, suggesting that addressing fascial restrictions may release stored tension.
So the interpretation of that for people, for proponents that argue that these changes in facial structure reflect a memory, again in quotation marks of trauma, as the tissue adapts to physical or emotional stressors in ways that, persist over time. So that argument, I guess, can be made. Now, another argument to suggest that fascia can store trauma is that there is a somatic connec ction to emotions.
So the claim being that emotional trauma can manifest physically in the body, including that facial tissue due to the interplay between the nervous system and the connective tissue. It can be evidenced by the poly vagal theory, which suggests that emotional trauma activates that autonomic nervous system and leads to muscle tension. Altered posture, which of course affects facial tension. Fascia as a connective tissue is influenced by those changes.
So studies on psychosomatic disorders show that chronic stress or trauma can actually lead to physical symptoms like tension in muscles or pain, which is potentially mediated by changes in the fascia itself. Bodywork practices such as well, say, cranial sacral therapy, report anecdotal improvements in emotional well-being after facial manipulation through through control studies from the Up Ledger Institute. This is one of those places who does, cranial sacral therapy.
So they have done through controlled studies, proof of this. Now, people who advocate and claim that fascia is a part of that body's interconnected system and may encode emotional trauma through physical changes. So these changes can be addressed through manual therapies, kind of backs up that thought process. Now a third reason we could claim that fascia can store trauma is because there are nerve endings that may interact with the nervous system to store trauma related signals.
So fascia is innervated by sensory nerves, including nociceptors. Or are pre pain detectors in our body. And stress and chronic activation of these nerves due to trauma could lead to a sensitized facial tissue. Animal studies have been done. And they do show that stress induced changes in connective tissue can persist, potentially due to these neuro inflammatory responses and findings.
Do support the idea that fascia could play a role in retaining the physiological effects of emotional trauma, as well as physical trauma, acting as a bridge between that emotional and physical experience. But there are a lot of arguments against fascia remembering trauma. Let's start with the fact that there's a lack of direct evidence for fascia having memory storage. There's no actual scientific evidence that fashion itself has the capacity to remember, and I use that term in quotation marks.
Also, trauma in a way, that is distinct maybe from other tissues in the nervous system. So memory as an understood scientific thing is a function of the brain, which involves neurons, networks and synaptic plasticity. And no studies are able to demonstrate that Fascia has the mechanisms for storing these specific memories or emotions while it can undergo structural change. Because it's collagen is I'm talking about things like fibrosis due to injuries.
These are more biomechanical responses and not evidence of quote unquote memory claims that actually stores and muscle trauma rely on anecdotal reports from bodywork practitioners and kind of lack that rigorous, experimental, valid radiation. So there's no grounding in empirical data. Another reason why we could argue against facial holding trauma is essentially just an overemphasis on fascist rule.
To begin with, the effects attributed to fascia are more likely due to the nervous system or other tissues, and not specific to fascia as a connective tissue. The nervous system, particularly the brain and the spinal cord, is basically the primary mediator of trauma responses, including emotional and physical effects and changes in posture or tension are more directly tied to a neuromuscular pattern than our facial memory.
Studies on chronic pain have shown that, central sensitization or an altered brain processing plays a larger role than peripheral tissue. Tissue changes in maintaining pain after trauma. So facial changes like it happens are common across many tissues, skin and muscles, and not unique to fascia itself, which undermines the claim of its special role. Special in quotation marks. Again, there's limited evidence for therapy claims about the role of trauma and fascia.
The benefits of facial therapies are not well supported by studies that can actually make any proof of the claim of stored trauma, and everything is merely specular. Dev. Systematic reviews of myofascial release, and similar therapies show mixed results with small effect sizes and methodological methodological flaws in many studies.
I feel like I'm going to get some hate in my DMs saying it, but placebo effects are real in human studies, and patient expectations likely contribute to reported benefits of some forms of body work, as can be seen in studies of manual therapies. And there are no controlled studies that directly link facial manipulation to the release of emotional trauma and most evidence is anecdotal or based on practitioner observations alone.
So the idea that fascia remembers trauma sits at the intersection of biomechanics, neuroscience, and psychology. Proponents point to fascist responsiveness to stress, its neural connections, and anecdotal therapeutic outcomes to argue that it can retain effects of trauma in a physical form. But critics counter these effects and say it's better explained by the nervous system that fascia lacks the capacity for memory, and the therapeutic claims lack rigorous evidence.
So there's a lot to be said for, and there's a lot to be said against. But the effects attributed to fascia, in my opinion, are likely part of a broader physiological response involving the nervous system, the muscles and other tissues fascias. Role in health. The study of it is still very ongoing, and future studies are needed to actually clarify its contributions to chronic pain, stress and trauma. Well, that's my conclusion, but what do you guys think? Message me on Instagram.
I'd love to hear your thoughts.