“Here’s the thing about the Fuzz: You can see it now.
The Fuzz yields to my fingertips. Sometimes I come across a stronger or thicker strand that doesn’t yield to my fingertips – that represents older fuzz sometimes, or maybe that represents the nerve. But each night when you go to sleep, the interfaces between your muscles grow ‘fuzz’, potentially – and in the morning when you wake up and stretch the fuzz melts; we melt the fuzz. That stiff feeling you have [in the morning] is the solidifying of your tissues, the sliding surfaces aren’t sliding anymore. There’s Fuzz growing in-between them.
You need to stretch.
Every cat in the world gets up in the morning and stretches its body and melts the fuzz in the same way that the fuzz melted when I passed my finger through it.
When you are moving it’s as if you are passing your finger through the fuzz, just like I did on the cadaver form here.
So you have to stretch and move and use your body; in order to melt that fuzz that is building up between the sliding surfaces of your musculature. The sliding surfaces, those shiny white surfaces, of the rectus femoris sliding against the vastus medialis. So, these sliding surfaces are all over your body and the fuzz is all over your body and as you move you melt the fuzz.
Now, what happens if you get an injury? Ah-ha! My Shoulder! [He grabs his shoulder] My shoulder is stiff now, I’m holding my shoulder. I go to bed, I wake up in the morning, I don’t stretch my shoulder – I’m afraid, it hurts. So, I’m wandering around like this, [demonstrates walking with his arm stuck to his side] – last night’s fuzz doesn’t get melted. I go to bed; I sleep some more. Now I have two nights fuzz built up. Now, two nights fuzz is more fuzz than one nights’ fuzz. What if I have a weeks’ fuzz or a months’ fuzz? Now those fuzz fibers start lining up and intertwining and intertangling and all of a sudden you have thicker fibers forming. You start to have an inhibition of the potential for movement there, It’s no longer simply a matter of going ooh-ahh stretch. Now you need some work. Now you might need to do a more systematic exploration of that place to restore the original movement that you lost; usually this is the case – we have a temporary injury then we restore movement but sometimes we call this ageing. The buildup of fuzz amongst the sliding surfaces of our bodies so that our motions become limited, that limit cycles become introduced into our normal full range of motion and we start to walk around like this [he mimics frozen robotic movement]. We’re all fuzzed over, our bodies are literally solidifying. We’re reducing our range of motion in the individual areas of our body and over our entire body in general.
So, I believe that one of the great benefits of body work – whether it be massage or structural therapies or physical therapy or any kind of hands on therapy – These types of therapies introduce movement manually to tissues that have become fuzzed over through lack of movement, whether the lack of movement is because of an injury and a person is protecting that injury or because of personality expression. There was many years I just walked around like this: I was very still and monk like. So, then I became more dynamic in my personality when I realized what I was doing to myself and the kind of life that I wanted. So, you can grow fuzz by choice or by accident or whatever and yet here, now that you have heard the fuzz speech, you know that you can take responsibility for melting the fuzz and if there is too much fuzz in your body and it’s frozen up, you might want to seek help in order to introduce movement so that the new cycle is a little more movement and a little more movement and a little more movement instead of a little less movement and a little less movement and a little less movement.
Fuzz represents time. The easier it is for me to pass my finger through the fuzz, the less amount of time it’s been there. If I’ve got to whip out my scalpel, to dig my way through one otherwise sliding surface and another, you know that that’s been building up for a long time. So you can actually see time in fuzz.
That’s The Fuzz Speech.”
Gil Hedley, 2009

As the old Bedouin proverb has it: “Water still: poison!  Water moving: life!”
 
If we turn to the nerves’ reaction, rolling can certainly be ‘sensationful’. This is a negative if it is so painful it causes muscle contraction and cellular retraction, so I am not a fan of painful rolling. I prefer my clients stay in the pleasurable realm, or on the ‘hedonic point’ (poised between pleasure and pain).
 
Use rolling to awaken areas of ‘sensori-motor amnesia’ – to bring sensation into places that you (or the client) are not moving in daily life.
 
We tend to miss our own amnesiac areas, for the very simple reason that cannot feel them so we don’t know where they are. Here we can be of help to our clients to make sure they are rolling the bits that need rolling, not just repetitiously rolling the obvious and available bits
 
A slow motion move is better than a static pressure.
 
Not everyone can afford bodywork, so using a tool can be a cheap and cheerful way of getting some of the same effects. When you do, I offer the following advice:
 
1) Move slowly. Fast rolling is less effective at ‘squeezing the sponge’, and can result in creating useless muscle tension, bruising, and perhaps receptor damage.  The deeper you are going, the more slowly you should move.
 
2) Look for ‘unknown’ places. Doing the same rolling program continually has rapidly diminishing returns.  Keep rolling different places in your body, and look for the places you haven’t touched yet, and get in there. For example:  Lying on your side and rolling the inner side of your upper thigh over the roller.  Rolling the front and back of your armpit. Your back has many. Many layers and can be usefully rolled at deeper levels but will not respond to the same-old-same-old.
 
Rolling that is mindful, slow, and perceptive is way more useful than painful rolling that is done quickly while texting, listening to music, and eyeing the hottie on the other side of the gym.
 
–Tom Myers, April 27, 2015

Emile Claus, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Ajahn Chah learned that it was better to create the right environment for practice than to try to turn people who didn’t want to practice into practitioners. He had a simile. He said: “If you created a nice pasture and cows came in, they would eat the grass. If animals went into the pasture and didn’t eat the grass, then you knew they weren’t cows.” That was his way of saying that if you create a good place for practice, real practitioners will practice. Other types of people won’t practice, and there’s no point in trying to change them.
 
Ajahn Chah definitely encouraged people and told them they could do it if they tried. They had the teachings, and they were in a good environment. So if they tried, they could succeed."
 
This reflection by Luang Por Pasanno is from the book, Beginning Our Day, Volume One, (pdf) pp.81-82.

Now, my classes are only for those with a willingness to commit, a purpose, and a positive attitude.
If you wanted to be considered for class, you responded to me with:
what you want to work toward and
what you are willing to do to get there."

I am working towards improved mobility (which decreases pain and improves range of motion and ease getting through the day). I am working towards being stronger functionally. And most fundamentally, it all starts with breathwork. I am committed to doing the work as I age and it becomes harder to retain. I am committing to daily quality movement of at least an hour with the exception of 1 rest day. I am committing to 10 minutes (to start) a day for 6 days of meditation/breathwork."

I want wants to work on overall strength & flexibility. I'm willing to come to class and work definitely, and possibly do to daily "homework."

I want to increase my flexibility - I want to touch my toes! I'd like to increase my range of motion in my neck & shoulders if that's possible.”

Continue to build on what we have been working on -building joint strength, building strength in weaker points, practicing breath and embodiment. I will continue to make class a priority and will take the lessons I learn in class into my movement during the week. “Bend knees, make a hip crease, juice those oranges!”

My goal is to improve core strength and balance.”

I want to decrease my back pain by improving my posture and ability to breath. I am willing to practice for 10 minutes a day, 5 days a week, outside of attending class weekly” as a starting point and hope to add more time and other additional types of movement and exercise if/when possible.”

I would be willing to commit to trying at least 10 minutes of yoga at home daily, or maybe finding a specific movement or two to commit to doing daily (whichever makes more sense) to build a habit, and then build on it from there.”

I am willing to commit to daily exercise based on the last class we attend to carry the lessons forward.  I am thinking about moving the exercycle back inside to facilitate moving the joints better.”