Iām honestly in awe of all this information and overwhelmed in the best way. You put so much work into this. Iām going to print it and read it carefully over the weekend šš»ā¤ļø
I discovered many year ago, through a treatment for an old injury, that it was the fascia causing the grief in my knee and not the meniscus. It was a treatment from a woman who practices and teaches Ortho-biology.
My current Osteopath also treats at the fascia level.
And my chiropractor has training on the importance of fascia.
It's extraordinary.
And I have talked with another practitioner who believes it's fascia, when twisted and injury untreated, that can cause people to hunch over later in life.
You were lucky to find practitioners who actually see this layer, Christine! So many still donāt, or dismiss fascia as some vague bodywork thing. And yes, old injuries almost never stay local. The body starts protecting, compensating, twisting around them and years later the workaround can become the posture.
Ortho-Bionomy by an experienced practitioner is a surprisingly school of treatment, as well as osteopathy. Facial tissue was substantially understood by both well before 2007! I had helpful myofacial treatments in the late 1990s. It's only western medicine that is so slow to see more than mechanisms, and then it loudly claims credit for "newly discovered!" LOL!!
The clinical lineage you mention is real. Osteopathy, Rolfing, John Barnes's myofascial release, Jean-Pierre Barral's visceral work, all of them were working with fascia hands-on long before 2007, and they deserve credit. But all of those traditions are themselves Western. Still founded osteopathy in Missouri. Rolf was in New York. Barnes is American. Barral is French. And the research that finally documented fascia mechanistically came from Stecco in Padua, Schleip in Germany, Langevin at Harvard, Wilke in Frankfurt, the 2018 NYU interstitium paper, the 2007 Harvard congress. All of that is Western academic medicine catching up to its own marginalized clinical traditions. The split here is not Western versus other cultures. It is mainstream biomedicine versus the manual therapy work being done inside the same Western tradition the whole time. Other medical systems had intuitions about connecting tissue, but the actual mechanistic research came from Western researchers. no other medical tradition has mapped or researched fascia as seriously as Western science has. That is the honest history.
Thank you for this fascinating and informative article! I find it very interesting that as we discover how the body is intimately connected through fascia, we are all also connected to each other as energy bodies. I'm more and more fascinated every day of my life as I learn more about our universe.
That is really great to know. As you say, academic medicine catching up to its own marginalized clinical traditions.
I was watching an episode of Nature Lost Vault on YouTube speaking to medicine becoming more pharma based on the Flexner Report funded by the Carnegie Foundation. It shut down a college where medicine was not influenced (or ownef) by big pharma.
so good! so happy to see fascia gaining so much attention of late. something TCM has always known ā having its own organ system within the five element theory (triple warmer/burner). understanding its inter connectivity and piezoelectricity. and itās fire element season so such a well timed article. learning about fascia was life changing for me. incredibly thoughtful share!
Thank you so much for reading and for the kind words! The piezoelectric properties of collagen are fascinating and I am planning to go deeper on that mechanism in a later piece in the series
Fascinating and so very helpful. You have a wonderful way of helping all this complex information land and become meaningful. Thank you for your generosity in sharing all of this.
Using a silicone exercise band for variable resistance training is a great fascia workout. Excellent and quick results for our muscles, joints, and skin!
Beautiful! I am moved to tears of awe. My 30 years of practicing acupuncture and the last 20 of practicing with the knowledge and method of Kiiko Matsumoto has shown me over and over the facial rivers of connection, the levels and layers of our tension and release in the body. The results are so often immediate and long lasting. I also explore the hormonal context and the metabolic, for example the excess estrogen and PUFA contributions to chronic pain in my clients.
Your article offers so much validation to my work. Thank you. Thank you. It truly connects so many results I see. An article on facia that connects. Poetic. šā¤ļøāØ
Thank you, Bruce! Iām going to get into the practical side later in the series - I wanted to build the framework first so the āwhat to doā part actually makes sense :)
This is so complex and yet certain practitioners, massage therapists and good physical therapists in particular, have understood this underlying concept (no pun intended) as a factor of their practice, although maybe not to this extent. I have had multiple therapists (LMT and PT) comment on the state of my fascia during treatments and request that I come well hydrated as it makes manipulating the tissues smoother. I have had some prescribe various exercises such as abdominal massage, foam rolling, as a treatment to loosen āadhesionsā in the fascia. Iām looking forward to this series and learning more about the important role of fascia in the body.
One of the first things that comes to mind is KNEES. My right lateral knee sometimes bothers me (patella doesnāt track well). But my pelvic floor PT taught me how to utilize silicone cupping in areas that feel tight, so Iāll work on that area now myself it loosens up completely.
so much knee pain has a fascial component! And I love silicone cupping for this kind of thing. I use mine all the time on heavy sitting days to relieve tension through my spine and hips
I had almost the same experience as you re foot trauma. I was walking up from a swim, barefoot, and on a narrow sand track when I stepped with full weight onto a stick. It was quite painful and I looked expecting to see blood but the stick hadn't pierced the skin.
A couple of days later I was in my backyard pool with my daughter
She asked me what the lump on underside of my foot arch was.
I couldn't give her an answer but a few days later I was seeing my gp about something else and asked him. He looked at it and said he didn't but wouldn't worry about it. Then a well or so later I noticed a lump in exactly the same place on my other foot.....alarm bells went off. I did a quick internet search and found what looked I identical to mine and it was ledderhose disease.
To cut the story short I ended up seeing a doctor in Hamburg Germany and recieved radiation on both feet and a protocol to give a participating doctor back in Australia on my return. The German doctor palpated my hands as well and determined that I had duprytrens disease in them but it was too early to treat. After I got home and had the 2nd round of radiation on my feet, my hands started to progress rapidly and I had them treated too.
I've not had any progression in either my feet or hands since.
Thank you for sharing such a personal story, John! Iām glad you eventually found someone who recognized what was happening and that treatment stopped the progression!
As a body worker and movement teacher this information is not only helpful but supportive to what I had suspected for so long about the fascia. Iām excited to read the rest. Thank you!
This is a fantastic explanation of what fascia is and does. I work w a trainer who is very dialed in on fascia and myofascial release, and your article explains the science behind what sheās doing to and for me in the gym. Looking forward to the rest of the series. Thanks for doing this!
And, I am hoping some of your follow up will help in what to do with the aftermath of surgeries.
I've had 3 endometriosis excision and 3 spine (2 emergency decompressions for cauda equina syndrome, 1 fusion) that I feel like have put strange holes and adhesions absolutely everywhere. Not to mention the disconnection of nerves, slowing of my digestion, and pain. I've learned to walk again but nothing feels right still and have stiffness, every morning.
Thank you for sharing this, Jessie. your body has been through a lot. The endometriosis excisions leave adhesions in the visceral fascia around the pelvic organs, which may explain the digestive slowing you are describing. The spinal surgeries affect the dural and paraspinal fascia, and the cauda equina involvement adds the nerve-fascia layer on top. All of these are territories the series will cover from different angles.
One honest note: some of what feels stuck may be densification, which can respond well to the right inputs. some of it may be fibrosis, adhesions, nerve injury, or permanent anatomical change from the surgeries, which mechanical work may not fully reverse. The framework is to work with what is workable and keep the surrounding tissue as fluid, warm, and well-supplied as possible around what is not.
The morning stiffness may be the most responsive piece to start with. Some of that can be hyaluronan aggregating overnight in tissue that has been through repeated trauma. Salted mineral water first thing, ten minutes of slow movement through your available range, and a warm bath at night may do more than you expect. Not the whole answer for what you are dealing with, but a good place to start while the next pieces come out.
Thank you! Yes, movement is so helpful, I am actually looking forward to getting back into reasonable shape, especially swimming, and adore my epsom salt baths. Because our skin is a giant organ too, right?
Yes, of course. Swimming is so, so good for you, especially for the spine and posture! This is exactly the kind of reasonable movement your body needs. And yes to Epsom salt baths. A warm mineral bath changes the whole state of the tissue: heat, buoyancy, less guarding, better circulation, softer fascia.
What do you think is the best way to hydrate fascia in the morning to prepare for exercise? Is jt just to start moving the body? I do some zone 2 cardio pretty soon after I wake up, but I always feel so stiff for the first 20 minutes or so. Presumably because my fascia stiffened overnight from inactivity like you mentioned. So just wondering if thereās a more efficient warmup for fascia I could be doing. Thanks so much for all your content!!
Hi Jackson, thank you. Zone 2 cardio is nice, but itās very slow for waking up fascia. I prefer to do it after a short dynamic warmup.
First, drink something warm: salted warm water, broth, warm water/orange juice with gelatin. You wake up dehydrated and cold, so this helps bring internal temp up and gives the tissue fluid to work with.
Then do 10 minutes of slow, multi-directional movement: spinal waves, cat-cow, hip circles, shoulder circles in every direction, side bends, rotations etc. Think of wringing out a sponge from every angle. Youāre restoring slide between the fascial layers before you load them.
A warm shower before all of this can help too.
Iāll go deeper into the mechanism in the next piece in the fascia series.
Iām honestly in awe of all this information and overwhelmed in the best way. You put so much work into this. Iām going to print it and read it carefully over the weekend šš»ā¤ļø
Thank you, Anna!
I discovered many year ago, through a treatment for an old injury, that it was the fascia causing the grief in my knee and not the meniscus. It was a treatment from a woman who practices and teaches Ortho-biology.
My current Osteopath also treats at the fascia level.
And my chiropractor has training on the importance of fascia.
It's extraordinary.
And I have talked with another practitioner who believes it's fascia, when twisted and injury untreated, that can cause people to hunch over later in life.
You were lucky to find practitioners who actually see this layer, Christine! So many still donāt, or dismiss fascia as some vague bodywork thing. And yes, old injuries almost never stay local. The body starts protecting, compensating, twisting around them and years later the workaround can become the posture.
Thanks for this. Itās fascinating. Hah! Fascianating! Iām really looking forward to the rest of the series.
Ortho-Bionomy by an experienced practitioner is a surprisingly school of treatment, as well as osteopathy. Facial tissue was substantially understood by both well before 2007! I had helpful myofacial treatments in the late 1990s. It's only western medicine that is so slow to see more than mechanisms, and then it loudly claims credit for "newly discovered!" LOL!!
The clinical lineage you mention is real. Osteopathy, Rolfing, John Barnes's myofascial release, Jean-Pierre Barral's visceral work, all of them were working with fascia hands-on long before 2007, and they deserve credit. But all of those traditions are themselves Western. Still founded osteopathy in Missouri. Rolf was in New York. Barnes is American. Barral is French. And the research that finally documented fascia mechanistically came from Stecco in Padua, Schleip in Germany, Langevin at Harvard, Wilke in Frankfurt, the 2018 NYU interstitium paper, the 2007 Harvard congress. All of that is Western academic medicine catching up to its own marginalized clinical traditions. The split here is not Western versus other cultures. It is mainstream biomedicine versus the manual therapy work being done inside the same Western tradition the whole time. Other medical systems had intuitions about connecting tissue, but the actual mechanistic research came from Western researchers. no other medical tradition has mapped or researched fascia as seriously as Western science has. That is the honest history.
Thank you for this fascinating and informative article! I find it very interesting that as we discover how the body is intimately connected through fascia, we are all also connected to each other as energy bodies. I'm more and more fascinated every day of my life as I learn more about our universe.
I was unaware of that much history. I appreciate your taking the time and effort to map this our for us. Thank you!
šš»š¤
That is really great to know. As you say, academic medicine catching up to its own marginalized clinical traditions.
I was watching an episode of Nature Lost Vault on YouTube speaking to medicine becoming more pharma based on the Flexner Report funded by the Carnegie Foundation. It shut down a college where medicine was not influenced (or ownef) by big pharma.
"effective'! "surprisingly effective"!! my bad!
It's frustrating that Substack doesn't have an edit feature for comments. I had a big fumble a while back. People inferred correctly, thankfully.
Very typical isn't it.
And, as long as people know about it, that's most important.
so good! so happy to see fascia gaining so much attention of late. something TCM has always known ā having its own organ system within the five element theory (triple warmer/burner). understanding its inter connectivity and piezoelectricity. and itās fire element season so such a well timed article. learning about fascia was life changing for me. incredibly thoughtful share!
Thank you so much for reading and for the kind words! The piezoelectric properties of collagen are fascinating and I am planning to go deeper on that mechanism in a later piece in the series
Fascinating and so very helpful. You have a wonderful way of helping all this complex information land and become meaningful. Thank you for your generosity in sharing all of this.
Using a silicone exercise band for variable resistance training is a great fascia workout. Excellent and quick results for our muscles, joints, and skin!
Beautiful! I am moved to tears of awe. My 30 years of practicing acupuncture and the last 20 of practicing with the knowledge and method of Kiiko Matsumoto has shown me over and over the facial rivers of connection, the levels and layers of our tension and release in the body. The results are so often immediate and long lasting. I also explore the hormonal context and the metabolic, for example the excess estrogen and PUFA contributions to chronic pain in my clients.
Your article offers so much validation to my work. Thank you. Thank you. It truly connects so many results I see. An article on facia that connects. Poetic. šā¤ļøāØ
Fascia is contractile and innervated with sympathetic nerves, wow--that's a game changer! Thanks so much, VV, looking forward to learning more.
šš»š¤
Thanks for this awesome article.
Check out Human Garage fascial manuevers, they are really good, I have been doing them for a couple of years now.
Start with 15 minute full body stress reset : self care fascial manuevers , it is on YT
Thank you, Bruce! Iām going to get into the practical side later in the series - I wanted to build the framework first so the āwhat to doā part actually makes sense :)
I have Robert Schleip's book on fascia and have read his wife's one as well but still prefer Human Garage's fascial manuevers
wow, just wow!!
This is so complex and yet certain practitioners, massage therapists and good physical therapists in particular, have understood this underlying concept (no pun intended) as a factor of their practice, although maybe not to this extent. I have had multiple therapists (LMT and PT) comment on the state of my fascia during treatments and request that I come well hydrated as it makes manipulating the tissues smoother. I have had some prescribe various exercises such as abdominal massage, foam rolling, as a treatment to loosen āadhesionsā in the fascia. Iām looking forward to this series and learning more about the important role of fascia in the body.
One of the first things that comes to mind is KNEES. My right lateral knee sometimes bothers me (patella doesnāt track well). But my pelvic floor PT taught me how to utilize silicone cupping in areas that feel tight, so Iāll work on that area now myself it loosens up completely.
so much knee pain has a fascial component! And I love silicone cupping for this kind of thing. I use mine all the time on heavy sitting days to relieve tension through my spine and hips
I had almost the same experience as you re foot trauma. I was walking up from a swim, barefoot, and on a narrow sand track when I stepped with full weight onto a stick. It was quite painful and I looked expecting to see blood but the stick hadn't pierced the skin.
A couple of days later I was in my backyard pool with my daughter
She asked me what the lump on underside of my foot arch was.
I couldn't give her an answer but a few days later I was seeing my gp about something else and asked him. He looked at it and said he didn't but wouldn't worry about it. Then a well or so later I noticed a lump in exactly the same place on my other foot.....alarm bells went off. I did a quick internet search and found what looked I identical to mine and it was ledderhose disease.
To cut the story short I ended up seeing a doctor in Hamburg Germany and recieved radiation on both feet and a protocol to give a participating doctor back in Australia on my return. The German doctor palpated my hands as well and determined that I had duprytrens disease in them but it was too early to treat. After I got home and had the 2nd round of radiation on my feet, my hands started to progress rapidly and I had them treated too.
I've not had any progression in either my feet or hands since.
Thank you for sharing such a personal story, John! Iām glad you eventually found someone who recognized what was happening and that treatment stopped the progression!
As a body worker and movement teacher this information is not only helpful but supportive to what I had suspected for so long about the fascia. Iām excited to read the rest. Thank you!
Hi Holly, thank you for reading! I already have two more pieces on fascia for you to read: one on hydration and the other on pain.
This is a fantastic explanation of what fascia is and does. I work w a trainer who is very dialed in on fascia and myofascial release, and your article explains the science behind what sheās doing to and for me in the gym. Looking forward to the rest of the series. Thanks for doing this!
Thank you for this. I have so many issues that I believe are tied to my fascia.
And, I am hoping some of your follow up will help in what to do with the aftermath of surgeries.
I've had 3 endometriosis excision and 3 spine (2 emergency decompressions for cauda equina syndrome, 1 fusion) that I feel like have put strange holes and adhesions absolutely everywhere. Not to mention the disconnection of nerves, slowing of my digestion, and pain. I've learned to walk again but nothing feels right still and have stiffness, every morning.
Thank you for sharing this, Jessie. your body has been through a lot. The endometriosis excisions leave adhesions in the visceral fascia around the pelvic organs, which may explain the digestive slowing you are describing. The spinal surgeries affect the dural and paraspinal fascia, and the cauda equina involvement adds the nerve-fascia layer on top. All of these are territories the series will cover from different angles.
One honest note: some of what feels stuck may be densification, which can respond well to the right inputs. some of it may be fibrosis, adhesions, nerve injury, or permanent anatomical change from the surgeries, which mechanical work may not fully reverse. The framework is to work with what is workable and keep the surrounding tissue as fluid, warm, and well-supplied as possible around what is not.
The morning stiffness may be the most responsive piece to start with. Some of that can be hyaluronan aggregating overnight in tissue that has been through repeated trauma. Salted mineral water first thing, ten minutes of slow movement through your available range, and a warm bath at night may do more than you expect. Not the whole answer for what you are dealing with, but a good place to start while the next pieces come out.
Thank you! Yes, movement is so helpful, I am actually looking forward to getting back into reasonable shape, especially swimming, and adore my epsom salt baths. Because our skin is a giant organ too, right?
Yes, of course. Swimming is so, so good for you, especially for the spine and posture! This is exactly the kind of reasonable movement your body needs. And yes to Epsom salt baths. A warm mineral bath changes the whole state of the tissue: heat, buoyancy, less guarding, better circulation, softer fascia.
Enjoy it!
What do you think is the best way to hydrate fascia in the morning to prepare for exercise? Is jt just to start moving the body? I do some zone 2 cardio pretty soon after I wake up, but I always feel so stiff for the first 20 minutes or so. Presumably because my fascia stiffened overnight from inactivity like you mentioned. So just wondering if thereās a more efficient warmup for fascia I could be doing. Thanks so much for all your content!!
Hi Jackson, thank you. Zone 2 cardio is nice, but itās very slow for waking up fascia. I prefer to do it after a short dynamic warmup.
First, drink something warm: salted warm water, broth, warm water/orange juice with gelatin. You wake up dehydrated and cold, so this helps bring internal temp up and gives the tissue fluid to work with.
Then do 10 minutes of slow, multi-directional movement: spinal waves, cat-cow, hip circles, shoulder circles in every direction, side bends, rotations etc. Think of wringing out a sponge from every angle. Youāre restoring slide between the fascial layers before you load them.
A warm shower before all of this can help too.
Iāll go deeper into the mechanism in the next piece in the fascia series.