Fascinating fascia

Fascia

I’m totally fascinated with fascia. I attended a workshop with Gil Headly’s the fall of 2017 and it changed my life. Wow, one lecture, changing ones life. I know that this is a wide big subject fascia, and there is still so much we have to learn. Gil Headly’s is a doctor in anatomy and is on the cutting edge of learning about this amazing part of our body. He leads workshops in anatomy using cadavers and has a way of honoring the person whom he is working with. He teaches that our bodies tell a story of there lives. Anyway back to fascia, it surrounds, supports, and protects everything in our body. Cells, muscle fibers, everything. This substance is mostly water. It is so beautiful looking like a jellyfish in water, yet I have seen pictures of it lifting 50 pounds without hardly stretching. It’s strong. It’s supple, it protects us, supports. In fact it surrounds all out bones, so thinking our bones are what support us is not quite right. It’s the fascia that surrounds the bones, so the bones are actually floating. It is what gives us shape, without it our muscles would resemble hamburger. I have seen a picture of a body ... then the bones and muscle removed from the skin and transdermal fascia. The image made me cry as it is our shape and as a massage therapist it is what I massage. Why did I cry? I am so sad when I hear (or think about myself) with contempt about how big our butts are or big bellies are as the fascia creates our shape. There is also much evidence that points to how much our nervous system is connected with the fascia. Back in the day when we (science community)  did anatomy the fascia was only considered packing material and was dumped to get to the real anatomy... muscles bones and tendons so fascia was never really studied. The other thing is that studying anatomy on cadavers you don’t see so much of the magic of fascia. The fascia is mostly made of water so it didn’t show up like it does when its in a live body... fluid. With the advent of small cameras and our exciting new way of imaging there is a doctor in France Dr. Guimberteau who has made a movie called scrolling under the skin which you can find some of on you tube. In a live person, a small camera on the end of a scope he was able to show the incredible RIVER under our skin. Dr. Langevin out of Harvard has studied the effects of acupuncture to the fascia and found the fascia grabs the acupuncture needle. There is now a global fascia congress made up of doctors, scientist and experts that meet to share information. So we are truly on the cutting edge of research of this fabulous part of our body. I’m excited, I’m fascinated. I cannot wait to learn more. I think its magic.