The 📝Myofascial Release Glossary collects the terms used when 📝Myofascial Release and fascia release work appear in a Somatic Realignment Therapy session note or post-session protocol, defined in plain language for clients.
Glossary
A
- 📝Adhesion — a place where tissue layers have stuck together and lost their ability to slide past one another.
B
- 📝Barrier — the first point of resistance the practitioner meets when pressing or stretching into tissue, where the work waits rather than pushes.
C
- 📝Creep — the slow lengthening fascia shows when a gentle load is held long enough.
- 📝Cross-Hand Release — two hands placed a few inches apart and eased in opposite directions to lengthen the fascia between them.
D
- 📝Densification — fascia that has thickened and lost pliability, felt as stiff or sticky tissue that responds to slow pressure.
F
- 📝Fascia — the continuous connective-tissue web that wraps and links muscle, bone, nerve, and organ.
- 📝Fascial Line — a chain of muscle and fascia that carries pull across several joints, so tension in one place can be felt somewhere else.
- 📝Fascial Unwinding — slow, spontaneous movement that can arise as held fascia releases, which the practitioner follows rather than directs.
- 📝Foam Rolling — self-applied 📝sustained pressure with a roller or ball to encourage glide between sessions.
G
- 📝Glide — the easy sliding of one tissue layer over another that this work aims to restore.
- 📝Ground Substance — the fluid part of fascia that thins with movement and warmth and thickens with stillness.
H
- 📝Hydration (Tissue) — how much fluid the fascia is holding, which movement, pressure, and rest all influence.
M
- 📝Melt — the sensation of tissue softening under sustained pressure.
- 📝Myofascia — muscle and its surrounding fascia considered as one unit.
P
- 📝Pin and Stretch — holding one point of tissue still while the limb moves, so the fascia lengthens through the held point.
- 📝Plantar Fascia — the thick band of fascia along the sole of the foot, often worked with a ball.
R
- 📝Referred Pain — feeling a release or ache somewhere other than where the pressure is applied, common along fascial lines; also called referred sensation.
- 📝Release — the moment tissue softens or lengthens under sustained contact, often felt as a give or a spreading warmth.
- 📝Restriction — a place where fascia has lost glide and now limits motion or pulls on nearby structures.
S
- 📝Skin Rolling — lifting and rolling the skin and 📝superficial fascia to feel for and ease restriction.
- 📝Superficial Fascia — the fascial layer just beneath the skin.
- 📝Sustained Pressure — holding a compression or stretch for one to five minutes so the tissue, not force, produces the change.
T
- 📝Tensegrity — a model of the body as a tension network in which bones float in a web of soft tissue, so a pull anywhere changes the whole shape.
- 📝Thixotropy — the tendency of fascia to become more fluid with movement and warmth and more gel-like with stillness.
- 📝Time Under Tension — the length of a hold, the main variable the practitioner adjusts in this work.
- 📝Trigger Point Therapy — focused pressure on tender points in taut muscle bands, often paired with fascial work when a knot sits inside a restricted line.