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The fibrosis can be softened by using lymphatic
drainage massage with fingertips or gently
rolling a tennis ball over the area of hardness (which is far faster
than your fingertips). Once
you break up the fibrosis with the tennis ball, use the Manual
Lymphatic Drainage (MLD)
massage technique to redirect the fluid back to the healthy lymph
nodes and eventually to
the heart and out the kidneys. The tennis ball works like a pot
scrubber to break up the
hard crunchy tissue and the MLD massage works to flush the stuff down
the drain (back to
the heart).
Imagine stirring up corn starch when cooking. You put a small amount
in a small container
and then you add a little liquid and stir it up with a spoon. At
first stirring it feels like you are trying to move cement it
is so hard. After several stirring motions you finally get it moving and eventually will turn the entire contents into fluid. If you go away
and let this set on the counter without stirring for awhile,
it will harden up again and you have to go through this
process again. The fibrosis or hardness in your body acts the same way.
First thing in the morning use the tennis ball to break up the
fibrosis until it is soft. Then
perform your full MLD massage. As Steven Covey says “begin with the
end in mind”. By
starting with the neck exercises and deep breathing (this gets the
drain prepared to accept
the fluid to be flushed out of the body). Next you will go to the
lymph node group (groin or
armpit) that you want the fluid to move toward and prepare or clean
that group out. Finally
you will tell the fluid from the limb to move to that now open lymph
node group or drain to
wash the fluid back into the lymphatic vessels and finally into the
heart.
Determine how long it takes for your skin to harden up again. After
your first MLD massage
and tennis ball work of the day make sure the skin is completely
soft. Check every hour to
determine how long it takes to harden up again, if you do the massage
about 30 minutes
before that time you ideally will NOT need the tennis ball, because
it should still be fluid. So
do the MLD massage at that point. I.E. if you harden up at 3 hours,
do the massage every
2-1/2 hours. The goal is to keep the skin soft and moving and not let
anything harden up.
Therefore the more often you do the massage the less you should need
the tennis ball.
If needed, use channel foam to help keep the tissue soft between MLD
and tennis ball
sessions.
© Loraine Lovejoy-Evans, MPT, DPT
Carlsborg/Sequim, WA
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