by Megan Belanger, LMT, NCTMB

When you think about our bodies and the things inside that keep us upright, that help us move, certainly bones and muscles come to mind. Based on anatomy illustrations we’ve seen in science classes or books, we picture a network of bones, joints, and cartilage, with muscles/tendons attaching to those bones, and our skin covering over everything, all nice and neat and compartmentalized.

But we’re leaving out a major piece of the puzzle – the connective tissue that, well, connects everything to everything. Fascia connects your skin to the layer of fat beneath it, it connects that fat to the underlying muscles, the muscles to the bones. Fascia encompasses those muscles, it wraps around every muscle fiber, every blood vessel, lymph vessel, and nerve, it surrounds your organs and holds them in place…it is a continuous network that permeates the human body.

What was once thought of as “the stuff that wraps around more important stuff to protect it” is now being studied and increasingly thought of as a key player in posture and movement, and possibly even more. As Helene Langevin states in her 2005 article, “Connective tissue: A body-wide signaling network?”: “Connective tissue…may function as a previously unrecognized whole body communication system. Since connective tissue is intimately associated with all other tissues (e.g. lung, intestine), connective tissue signaling may coherently influence (and be influenced by) the normal or pathological function of a wide variety of organ systems. Demonstrating the existence of a connective signaling network therefore may profoundly influence our understanding of health and disease.”

Noted anatomist Gil Hedley calls it “fuzz,” and he talks about how sometimes it can get overabundant in the wrong places, particularly in between the sliding surfaces of our musculature, whether from injury or from lack of movement or both, and how we need to physically move (and receive bodywork!) in order to “melt our fuzz” so that we can restore our movement along those sliding surfaces. (If you want to get nerdy and don’t mind images of cadavers, you can find a video of his 5-minute “fuzz speech” here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FtSP-tkSug).

Want to see fascial loosening at work in your own body? In massage school, one of my instructors taught me this trick and I have given it to many clients as “homework” ever since:

Grab a golf ball (or a Superball or some other kind of small, firm ball if you don’t have a golf ball handy, but I’m a fan of the golf ball) and keep it nearby. Stand comfortably, with your feet about shoulder-width apart and flat on the floor, and then bend forward as far as you can, hands toward the ground, as if trying to touch your toes. Don’t force anything – just take note of what’s going on. How far down can you reach? How does it feel along the back side of your body? Does it feel tight in places?

Once you’ve assessed this, stand up, and if your shoes aren’t already off, take them off (socks are fine) and place the golf ball on the floor. Hold on to something for balance if you need to and place one foot on the golf ball. Now simply roll the ball around underneath your foot as a kind of self-foot massage – no rules here: put as much weight on it as feels comfortable (watch that balance!), if you find a certain spot that feels like it needs a little more attention, hang out there for a little bit. Do this for about a minute or two, and then do the same thing under the other foot for a minute or two.

Place both feet flat on the floor again and bend over and touch your toes for the second time. What do you notice? Most people notice that they gain an inch or even more as far as how far down they can bend, and they may notice that where they felt stiffness the first time now feels just a little bit looser.  Even more amazing is that some people find that self-foot massage like this can help alleviate or stave off a tension headache!

“But I only rubbed the bottoms of my feet!” you might be thinking. You did, but with all that fabulous connective fascia inside, your body—with all the differently-named bones and muscles—is one piece. The bottoms of the feet are where the Superficial Back Line of fascia begins, a meridian (one of many) of connective tissue that is pulling in the same direction, traveling up the backs of the legs, up alongside the spine, and all the way up to the top of the head. We are literally connected from head to toe.

This is where massage plays such a powerful role. The very heat and friction produced by a massage therapist’s work, including simple Swedish techniques, helps to change the consistency of that fuzz to make it more pliable and less “sticky”, and by working one area of the body (like the feet), we can effect change along fascial lines and throughout the body, hopefully helping to restore some movement and increase our clients’ comfort levels in their daily activities.

This is only Part One. More to come on the wonders of fascia, for sure. It’s hard to hold back!

Sources: Langevin, Helene M. “Connective tissue: A body-wide signaling network?” Medical Hypotheses, Volume 66, Issue 6, June 2006, pages 1074-1077.

Myers, Thomas W. Anatomy Trains: Myofascial Meridians for Manual and Movement Therapists, Second Edition. (Elsevier Limited, 2009).