After breast surgery

1. You will develop internal scar tissue. Sensations of tightness, stiffness, pulling, pain, warmth, and even itching are all signals that scar tissue is present. 

2. Scar tissue will change your posture and alignment over time.

3. Your neck and back muscles will have to WORK HARDER to balance the pull from the scar tissue.

4. You could end up with neck, back, or shoulder pain, develop headaches or migraines, or even experience pain in places that seem totally unrelated!

5. Changes in alignment are perceived by the brain as a warning sign of danger, and the “fight or flight” system is triggered (aka “survival mode”). This can lead to emotional issues such as anxiety, depression, or brain fog. 

6. All of your normal feelings and emotions surrounding your surgery will cause physical changes in your healing tissues.

7. Most importantly, you can PREVENT, STOP, OR EVEN REVERSE this negative spiral with gentle, self-treatment techniques from the comfort of your own home!

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1. “Scar tissue” is a layman’s term for tissue that gets hard and tight after surgery. Surgery is itself an injury to your tissue, though precisely performed and caused in the interest of solving a much larger and potentially more lethal problem. Injury triggers inflammation, and inflammation can cause your tissues to become hard and tight.  The scientific name for the connective tissue found under the skin all throughout your body is FASCIA - and fascia surrounds and encompasses everything under the skin in the same way that air surrounds everything in a given room.

2. As the fascia becomes tighter and tighter, it will begin to crush pain-sensitive structures and also pull bones out of their normal alignment. Changes in joint position lead to abnormal friction, inflammation and pain, all of which we call arthritis. (Psstt: Joints don’t just “go bad.”) 

3. As the forces from the front of your chest are pulling you forwards over time, the muscles in the back of the neck and entire spine are playing tug-o-war trying their best to keep you from falling forward, resulting in strain and pain.

4. Depending on your unique structural makeup and history of past injuries, these forces may be transferred to the fascia around your brain causing headaches or brain fog, to your jaw, to your pelvis and pelvic floor, or to the development of “frozen shoulder.” It is possible that ANY pain or dysfunction you may experience could be traced back to your breast surgery.

5. “Fight, flight, or freeze response”, “vagal response”, “nervous system reset”, “emotional regulation/dysregulation”: words like these are found in ad after ad on social media, and are signs that we are getting better at identifying and acknowledging the effects that physical changes in the body have on the nervous system. When something is out of alignment, that part sends messages to the brain to indicate a problem, and over time this can lead to feelings of anxiety, depression, and irritability. 

6. Traumatic experiences stimulate many emotions, some of which a person may suppress and ignore. Certainly, a cancer diagnosis is traumatic. However, even chronic, daily thoughts and emotions about one’s body (the ones which eventually led to the decision to have elective breast surgery) are a kind of emotional stress that causes the body to release certain hormones, like adrenaline, which also stimulate the contraction and restriction of fascia.  These emotional holding patterns must be released in addition to the physical, surgically induced restrictions, in order for full healing to occur. 

7. Thankfully, there is something you can do! YOU are your best ally! You can learn to unlock the healing wisdom already present in your body by employing a few basic principles and techniques to prevent this sequence of events and release the straitjacket of restricted fascia and allow your healing journey to continue! Love yourself enough to learn these techniques. YOU ARE WORTH IT!

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CHECK BACK SOON FOR A NEW SELF-TREATMENT COURSE!!

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