Why would your Yoga Therapist or Rolfer treat your lower back issues by studying and retraining your feet? Or treat a headache by moving your pelvis? It all makes sense when you see how the fascial connections work.
Fascia is the most recently discovered organ of the body. It is a single, interconnected web of living tissue that wraps from the top of your head to the soles of your feet and encases and interpenetrate our organs, nerves and bones. It both separates and supports these structures.
As a living tissue it is delicate, fluid filled and it receives and transmits information, therefore is best observed in living bodies.
Because anatomists earned their knowledge studying cadavers, they totally missed the value of the fascia. In a dead body the fascia would appear shrunk and brittle. Anatomists viewed it as an inert wrapping substance, like glad wrap, and so its vital importance in our health remained undiscovered for so long.
Even now, as you sit, notice your body and where the parts of the body are in relation to each other in space. How do you know your shoulder is above your hip? Your fascia helps with whole body proprioception. It gives you a map of YOU!
Our fascia needs movement to stay bouncy, hydrated and gliding. Sticking to the same old posture and daily movements, even one’s gym workout, won’t be enough to support great fascial health. So get playful, creative, take a new route, a different way and see how you feel!
From this perspective we can start to see how emotions and posture are the language of the fascia. But I’ll save that for another blog.
Fascia on our feet
Plantar fascia is known to get inflamed if we pound our feet on flat, hard surfaces or lack upward support.
Cervical Fascia
The Blue lines are the fascia running around the outer and inner structures of the neck.
Some references:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK493232/
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphys.2019.00336/full
https://healyourposture.com/blog/2017/4/23/fascia-and-fitness
https://safetyinhealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/2056-5917-1-S1-A2
This is a fabulous video on the stretchiness variabilities of different fascia https://youtu.be/v8XQ-ZscSsA