The Scars That Linger: Understanding Post-Surgical Blockages

We’ve seen how the body is not built from isolated muscles working independently, but from long, continuous planes of fascia that intersect, support, and transmit tension through the entire system. After any surgery — even one considered completely successful — these fascial planes undergo changes that persist long after the wound has closed. It is well known that no wound ever returns fully to its original state, and the repaired tissue often carries subtle alterations in nerves, vessels, and collagen.

These changes can create what we call blockages: areas where irritable nerves and altered collagen fibers restrict the freedom of movement along a fascial chain. Each blockage represents the body’s memory of an injury, and each person’s pattern is unique. If you think of fascia as a continuous sheet, then any distortion in one place affects how tension and movement travel through the rest of the sheet. A surgical scar, even a small one, can influence how a shoulder lifts, how the spine rotates, or how the neck holds tension.

Recent discoveries about the piezoelectric nature of collagen — meaning collagen both responds to and generates subtle forms of energy — help us understand why these changes matter. Electrical waves created by the brain, heart, and nerves cause fascia to vibrate in ways that any trained hand can learn to feel. When collagen fibers are distorted after injury, they vibrate differently, revealing areas where movement may be restricted.

Blockage-Based Care is a simple method for exploring these areas using movement, breath, touch, and moment-to-moment awareness. Instead of treating symptoms in isolation, we use the body’s own signals to trace restrictions along a chain of fascia, often discovering that a limitation in one region is linked to a distant area through one continuous plane.

For people recovering from surgery, this framework offers a clear explanation for lingering stiffness, altered movement, or persistent sensitivity — sensations that may not be caused by the original injury anymore, but by these subtle, long-standing fascial and neural changes. By learning to recognize and release blockages, individuals can support their healing process, improve movement quality, and restore more balanced function throughout the body.

Your scar tells a story.
Your fascia remembers it.
Blockage-Based Care helps you read it — and release what no longer needs to be held.