It is no exaggeration to say that fascia is EVERYWHERE in our body. But what is it?!
Do you know when you peel the skin off a chicken breast and you see a filmy kind of skin? This is the chicken's fascia. Healthy fascia is fluid and film like and works as layers throughout and within the body.
It is a connective tissue that wraps around our muscles, our organs and our bones. It connects muscles to bones ( tendons are fascia), bones to bones (ligaments are fascia) and cushions our vertebrae (discs are fascia too!). It is as much just under the skin as it is deep in our very core.
The fascia is one of three whole systems in the body (the other two being the neural system (nerves) and our fluid system (veins and arteries)). By this I mean that if we took everything in your body away except the fascia, but left that standing as if in life then we would still see YOU. We would see your shape, your posture, your unique facial expressions, all your individual variances.
What is so incredulous about this is that even though it is so endless throughout our body, until relatively recently, traditional anatomical training considered fascia to be of little importance! During dissections, the fascia was taken off and thrown away. Infact the cleaner the dissection (i.e. the more fascia thrown away), the more revered the dissectionist! Muscle function was studied to discover where muscles moved bones and where groups of muscles worked together as an organisation for specific actions. But the role of fascia in these actions was never considered.
In actual fact as Ida Rolf (probably the original fascia-nista!) stated "it's all connected through the fascia". It is fascia that moulds us in to the shapes that we make. So for example if we sit cross legged then we will start to mould the positioning of our muscles. The quads, hamstrings and adductors in the thigh in theory should move freely and work efficiently in a group when we then, say, walk. But if, say, we have spent a majority of our time repeatedly sitting cross legged then the muscles won't have that freedom because the fascia has effectively been sticking together between and around the muscles in order to mould them into that often repeated crossed leg position (when you then stand your hip most likely on that side is slightly hinged and then thigh slightly turned in).
To help make that picture clearer, imagine the fascia layers as being like layers of cling film, bound around each muscle and then bound around all the muscles. You know how layers of cling film become difficult to separate from one another once you have bound it tightly? That's like fascia! We bind our fascia into our most common shapes.
In order for the muscles to function as they're theoretically meant to, the layers of fascia need to slide and glide with movement. But the repeated crossed leg positioning gives the fascia a patterning memory and it becomes a comfort default position. The layers tend to stick more together in this position and so the muscles get stuck, because of the fascia, into this positioning and then it is much harder for them to organise as they are meant to, when asked to move.
This is also why we need to be careful with repetitive actions - any repetitive actions, but especially unbalanced and poorly aligned actions! So sitting with the same leg crossed over the other, sitting all the time (full stop!), standing with weight over to one side and a hip hinged, crumpling at the waist, leaning on once elbow at a desk, cycling with poor positioning, running with poor technique.... The list is quite literally endless. We mould into these shapes that we make.
The fact is, we are ALL going to have areas of our body where in some way our fascia is restricting and affecting our mobility and ease of movement. We cannot get through life without this happening. It IS life. BUT.... on the flip side, we CAN work on our fascia to MINIMISE restrictions.
Part of that is by balancing out our poorer habits with better ones, by not sitting for too long in the same position, by creating a range of movements in our daily life - a lot of the things that I have already discussed in previous blogs.
We can also release fascia through movement and 'massage'* - look back to the movements that I suggested last week (Move with Intention) which provide a generalised programme for releasing commonly needed areas. With regards to the 'massage', well, that is for another day (Although you can look back to Best Foot Forward for some simple fascia release work you can do yourself on your feet)
* I use the word 'massage' loosely as fascia requires a specific kind of technique.
Til tomorrow.... :-)
CT :-) x
Related blogs:
Fascia Fascia Fascia
What Fascia Likes, What Fascia Don't Likes
How Spongy Are You?
Fascia Rock N Roll
Related blogs:
Fascia Fascia Fascia
What Fascia Likes, What Fascia Don't Likes
How Spongy Are You?
Fascia Rock N Roll
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