Are You Familiar with Your Connective Tissue?

Raising Awareness in 300 words a day for 30-days: Your Body and You

We have a body suit of connective tissue from head to toes. Most of us think about our muscles and joints. We say my glutes are tight, for example. Until my yoga training, I did not know what fascia was. Cute name.

Photo by Andrea Lepcio

Fascia is the connective tissue made up of strong collagen fibers layered under the skin, over and through our muscles, and around our organs throughout the body. It is there to connect, support, and separate. It is a scaffolding that provides a framework for the entire body made up of intelligent cells that communicate directly from cell to cell, not with the brain’s involvement. We get information on how we feel from our fascia. Magic. The tensegrity of the system protects and supports both muscles and joints.

Trigger warning. I’m going to talk about dissection next. As part of my yoga training, I participated in a cadaver lab. I wanted to see all the body parts up close and personal. We worked on older bodies. What was amazing was that, for the most part, the fascia showed age, if you will, and had lost its structure and evenness, but in everybody, the muscles were plump and intact. My Master Teacher has a story of doing a dissection where they couldn’t bend the knee of the body at all. They sliced the skin and superficial fascia and could bend the knee completely.

Our fascia can become disorderly through our actions in life. I was taught Myofascial Release Techniques with balls, foam rollers, and massage to encourage the collagen fibers to reorder in the right direction. As with our need to drink water, these tissues need hydration. MFR tells the body to bring fluids to the area where we are rolling. I’ve got some excellent videos on YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC64e28um_tBHqFglKA_iQuA