What is Scar Tissue
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What is Scar Tissue?
So what is a scar? We all hear about scars. We think about a scar as what we can see – the mark on our face, chest, legs, or a cut from surgery. But the truth is, what you see on the top is just the beginning. It’s just the surface.
Now every scar you see is not necessarily a problem but more often than not, it does relate to issues because that little scar you’re seeing on the surface is actually just the tip of the iceberg. You ever see that picture where you see the very tip of the iceberg and then they show you below the surface and it’s spread to beyond gigantic in size. That’s what can happen with scars within your body. The scar tissue can spread.
Scar tissue causes your tissue to stick together instead of allowing it to slip and slide and move the way it’s supposed to move. Take a c-section scar for example, when you feel that scar on the surface, that top layer actually moves and doesn’t seem to be a problem. But if you’ve reached down a little bit below or a little bit above the scar, you feel a thick, ropey stuck area within your abdomen and pelvis. That’s actually the scar tissue.
What Most People Don’t Realize About Scar Tissue
What most people don’t even realize is that scar tissue can spread – that it doesn’t just stay right underneath that incision line that you see or where you have the road rash from where you fell off your bike during some type of extreme sport on your motorcycle.
The scar tissue gets stuck and ends up spreading throughout your body three-dimensionally. Very common with c-sections is having scar tissue that sticks down to your flexor muscles or down towards your pubic bone which is limiting your ability for your hip and pelvis to move. It pulls you down in front and it can go straight three-dimensionally all the way to your back attached to the muscles and the bones in the back of your sacrum and spine.
It can even travel all the way up to your diaphragm making it hard for you to breathe and hard for you to fully extend. And you’re totally unaware of it being the cause of your pain and issues because on the surface you look healed.
You have the scar and think it can’t be affecting me now. Not true. It can be.
Anytime you have an alteration in your tissue and your connected tissue that holds you together, you’re going to have a problem at some point in time. If not immediately in the future. Somewhere in your body, there will be a problem as a result of your scar tissue.
Here’s another crazy example. When someone has breast augmentation. Believe it or not, that pull from having the scar from augmentation can eventually cause issues in your feet. That’s right – one end to the other.
Your tissue is one big piece and any kind of disruption, kink, or problem within that tissue is going to cause an issue – and not necessarily where the scar is but somewhere else in your body.
》A B O U T M A R J O R I E B R O O K
Marjorie Brook, LMT is a massage therapist, author, and international educator. For over 21 years, she has specialized in scar tissue release and massage therapy. She works from the fundamental belief that your body is intuitively aligned with the thoughts you think, the emotions that you feel, and the things that you do. She founded Brooks Seminars in 2007 after working as a decade as a nationally recognized massage therapist with a private practice on Long Island. She is the creator of the Scar Tissue Release and Integrated Therapies (S.T.R.A.I.T Method™) and offers continuing education courses on this method all over the world. Her articles have appeared in magazines such as Massage Today, American Fitness and Massage World. She’s approved by the National Certification Board for Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork, the Massage Therapy Association of Alberta and the College of Massage Therapists of British Columbia.