What is fascia?
Now there’s a question. And there are many vast, wondrous, exploratory answers to that…and it matters. Quite a lot to our overall sense of health. How we feel.
Let’s begin with the practical. What it is. Our fascia. Anatomist and somanaut Gil Hedley calls it ‘the fuzz’. Weblike structure that is part liquid, part solid. That slides and moves with your interiority. It is mostly collagen. Hence its matrix like appearance. And is incredibly, incredibly strong. Sometimes called connective tissue. As it is continuous throughout our body. From the fascial sutures in the skull, to the plantar fascia at the soles of our lovely feet.
There are 3 layers of fascia
1 - Superficial fascia. The insulating fatty, spongy top layer. Adipose tissue. If you lightly touch the fleshy part of your forearm with gentle pressing of fingertips, there’s the sponginess.
2 - Peri-fascia as Gil calls it. It glides and slides. It’s slippery. Like a film. Pressing a bit deeper, on that same area, you can feel it. It’s different.
3 - Deep fascia. More strappy. Where there are more regular arrays of collagen fibres. Press that bit deeper and you might feel it.
These layers all do different things for movement. Without separation. So its not a linear 3 layers. They interplay. Just like everything does in our body. Connection….can you start to see, feel, why if we are emotionally stuck, caught in an anxiety cycle or depressed, all these different states of being, will of course affect the fascia? It stagnates. It gets stuck. Then we feel stagnant, wounded, jagged, Think of a scar healing. The fascia wants to weave its way back to connecting again. CONNECTION.
To be able to integrate this all in heart coherence. Through feeling and integrating. Always an evolving process. This coming back home to ourselves, Creating a safe container to live our lives from.
Given its natural structure, fascia has an innate love to be moved. To be warmed. A thixotropic quality. Meaning it responds to heat by becoming more malleable. More lubricated. Its capacity to become more in a flow state when moved and breathed into. How a dancer moves with grace and ease. How a wild cat climbs a tree. The rippling musculature. There are no words. This somatic agency goes way beyond words and left brain analysis. Focus allows the words to fall away. Presence.
This really matters because if we feel disconnected, distracted, which is increasingly common in the past 10 years of social media prevalence, along with the many challenges of the past 2 years, how are we all in our collective, connective fascial matrix?? Somatic agency is linked to social justice. And it’s not a linear relationship. It whirls and swirls like the weblike tenacity of our own fascia.
And of course it’s ok to feel whatever we are feeling. Yet without tools for healing, we are more likely to get caught in our own traps. So healing requires responsibility. A commitment to climb our inner mountains. The idea again we return to, of pattern recognition and then to interrupt the pattern.
How amazing we can dive into the inherent wisdom and cellular intelligence of our fascia. This being just one of many entry points into our deep Self.
In people living with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS) to give an example, a varying group of heredity disorders to the connective tissue, inner support is very challenging. At a more recent yin yoga training, there was a lady with EDS, who shared bits of her experience. How certain yoga poses would risk over-stretch for her. And in one of our breath explorations done standing, found at times even standing to be fatiguing. It is nuanced and she has found many ways to help herself, acknowledging also it’s tough at times. So there’s no silver bullet.
In the current Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen immersion, a formidable movement teacher still teaching at 80, we are exploring embodiment of our muscles. To make connections, say for example, an injured part of the body, let the frontal lobe of the brain recognise it, then allow a conversation back from the injured place, to the brain. It’s felt awareness. Not intellectual pursuit.
This online course has participants from 70 countries. Imagine all that fascial matrix coming together all across the world. Connection….connective tissue…feeling…whilst I can’t see the many other participants, I can feel something amplified in how we are coming together with a common interest to explore our own bodies and sense of being.
Exploring this deeper felt conversation, with an ongoing issue in my right knee felt to unlock a flow of communication between brain and knee. A fascial melting. Lightness perfusing through the fascial matrix. Aliveness.
'The fascial matrix is inseparably interwoven with the nervous system, and it is essentially a system of biomechanical auto regulation, with tremendous impact on our health’ Tom Meyers
This is not a linear dialogue! Nor is it about big, staccato movements - which may be our pattern. Making micro movements in this somatic discovery, becomes also truly incredible for honing in on deeper ways to feel. It takes practise. A willingness to keep expanding our inner view.
Curiously, also a lady in this course of Bonnie’s shared last week (the chat function is very active!) she manages her body with EDS, by immersing in warm water and making micro movements. And with dedication, with love, with continued practise to explore in resonant ways, most of her EDS symptoms are no longer there. That has been her unique discovery.
What connection and support are you longing for? Our integrity and intuition are heightened when we turn inwards for solutions. Looking within in this embodied way takes practise. Compassion that is both fierce and tender.
Your body knows. Your fascial matrix holds memories, from how you grew in utero, to the experience of your birth, to the patterns of relating we develop, to how comfortable we feel in our own breath. Our own skin.
It’s a vast ocean to dive into. To ride those waves and sit in the caves.
All you ever need is right here, right now.
Have a play with your own hands with this short video. The difference between ‘looking at’ your hands or just going through the motions - can you be in your own hands….? Explore!
You’ve got the whole world in your hands….
