About Fascia
What is Fascia?Very simply, it is the primary material from which we are made.
It comprises of a global network of communication, and is found ubiquitously - or everywhere inside of us. It envelopes, protects and penetrates our muscles, ligaments tendons organs and bones.
There isn't a single millimetre of the body that isn’t joined with or made of fascia. It changes density and function depending on where it is found, and its texture ranges from thick, stable and rigid, to soft, thin and watery.
Fascia is a sensing organ, and our main organ of proprioception, which is how we modulate where our body is in space as we move. It manages force transmission through the body at all times constantly negotiating the ways and speeds in which we move and the loads we carry. It's a container, and a communicator.
If you are a visual person, this video will allow you to see through the eyes of French Hand Surgeon, Jeanne-Claude Gimberteau.
Having obtained permission pre-surgery to place a small camera under the skin of his anaesthetised patient, he filmed in real time, the complex web of this liquid crystaline matrix in the video Strolling Under The Skin.
WARNING: this is living tissue, so if you'd rather not see that, or prefer to read a more detailed and academic description of fascia, click here for a paper co-written by my teacher, Clinical Anatomist John Sharkey and colleague and Advanced Neuromuscular Therapist, Mark Flannigan.