The Traveling Web (Part 1) - Fascia Grabbed Me.

Fascia: The stuff we are made of. Beautiful strands of elastin and collagen combining with ground substance allowing us to move through our lives. Covering all cells in the body, entwining through us at levels we never though possible, fascia travels through us like a web. It makes our form continuous to the point where there is no full stop within our make-up, there isn't even room for a comma. It binds us together.

As an integral part of the body it has not been talked of much here in the U.K but I think that over the next few years it will be the one aspect of Body-Work that will be talked of more than any other. Why? Because without understanding it, without considering it within the treatment plan and without giving home care advice that incorporates fascia I don't personally believe you will see the results that you are after within your massage sessions.

Fascia has often been called 'The Endless Web' (Schultz and Feitis) and and Tom Myers calls his way of looking at it as 'Anatomy Trains', so calling this mini blog series 'The Travelling Web' seemed to be quite fitting.

I started hearing about fascia at Westminster Uni when a fellow student said that the only reason he was doing the degree there was because he wanted to study fascia. I hadn't heard of it and he said it was a new theory on connective tissue. To be honest, the way people talked about it was like a deep secret that was only shared with a few chosen ones. Hallowed halls with hushed voices came to mind and I'm not one to go with that kind of thing. If it's worth talking about, then lets learn it and do it, but don't form a kleek out of it! Well, that was six years ago and as I didn't last more than ten weeks there I never found out if he ever did do the two classes that promised to cover it.

I did hear of it two years after that when I was taking twelve weeks off work and went to a massage workshop and met Rachel Fairweather, (Director for the Jing Institute of Massage). Rachel took the mysticism out of the fascia in about two minutes and within five we where moving it with indirect stretches. No more hushed walls and rhythmic chants from dedicated followers.

I realised that I had been very slow on the uptake of the knowledge that was swimming in my brain; nothing linked up at that time and what I had missed was that 'Rolfing' (also known as 'Structural Integration') was fascia release. Rolfing is a direct form of treatment and I'm going to go into the history of Dr. I. Rolf in the next blog. However, what Dr. I. Rolf found was that by stretching and elongating the body out of it's fixed and habitual restrictions the body released and functioned at a higher level.

Over the next few blogs we will look into:

• The history of fascia release
• What causes fascia to get stuck
• How we can get it to a healthier functional level.
  
  
  I'll pop another post up this week so we can get going on this travelling web, but there are a few books that I would really advise you to read if you are interested in further reading and they are the books that I have referenced through out this mini series:
  

  
  
  The Endless Web: Schultz and Feitis
  
  
  Rolfing and Physical Reality: Dr I. Rolf
  
  
  Fascial Release For Structural Balance: T. Myers, J. Earls, A Williams
  
  
  Anatomy Trains: Myofascial Meridians for Manual and Movement Therapists: T. Myers
  
  
  Bone, Breath and Gesture: v.1: Practices of Embodiment: Vol 1 [Paperback]: D. H. Johnson.