Fascinating Fascia
The human body is incredible – blow your mind incredible. A description I read recently by John F. Barnes grabbed my attention:
“The human being is a beautiful, conscious, vibrant, liquid-crystalline matrix.”
Hang on, liquid-crystalline matrix?
The liquid-crystalline matrix that John Barnes refers to is the little understood fascial system – a continuous net of collagen fibres and gelatinous liquid ground substance that transmits information to the nervous system from every cell in our body. It covers and interpenetrates everything inside our body including our internal organs, nerves, arteries and veins, bone and muscle. In this way it provides a supportive framework for everything inside us.
However it’s more magical than that. I love this description from John Barnes:
“The fascial system functions as a fiber-optic network that bathes each cell with information, energy, light, sound, nutrition, oxygen, biochemicals and hormones and flushes out toxins at an enormous speed. The brain and nerves are an important but much slower form of communication. The ion-transfer mechanism of nerve impulses is too slow to account for the massive amount of information necessary for our body-mind to function. Therefore, it is the fascia, your liquid-crystalline matrix, that is the major and most important communication system of our body.”
Wowsers!
Plasticity is also a key feature of fascia – it has an extraordinary ability to respond to the demands placed on it. For example, the common slump where the head goes forward, and the back rounds can be caused by many factors including long periods of time sitting in front of the computer, on your phone, short-sightedness and even depression. This habitual slumping will cause fascial restrictions through the upper shoulders and neck, and also through the front of the chest.
This is where Myofascial Release (MFR) techniques can assist in regaining your natural posture, by releasing those restrictions allowing the fascia to reform in a way that allows greater freedom of movement.
Read the full article from John Barnes here > https://www.massagemag.com/
