The Gifts of FasciaOnce you've experienced the
aha moments that accompany practices that release the body's fascia, there's no going back. You know it. A subtle shift. A feeling of letting go. Maybe you haven't been able to describe it in words. It's an experience that needs to be felt. But you know it. You may have felt it in a hip opener or a backbend. The moment your body goes from
resisting to releasing. It's the thing that keeps us coming back to our yoga mats; it's all about fascia.
Anatomy expert and author of
Anatomy Trains, Tom Myers, when describing fascia tells us that, basically, our cells "are glued together with snot, which is everywhere, and is more or less watery (hydrated) depending on where it is in the body and what condition it's in."
The wonderful thing about the journey to understanding fascia is that you don't need to have an acute understanding of the ins and outs of anatomy in order to see how it operates within your body. I recently attended a fitness class at the gym titled 'fascial fitness'. Long journeys along foam rollers were intercepted by oscillating movements that left me feeling spacious and
free-despite the pop music in the background and lack of savasana at the end of the class.
As the research on fascia evolves, we learn new ways of
unravelling deeply held tensions in this connective tissue, which greatly impacts our mobility as we age, as well as affecting our mind. And although we yogis often hear the word
fascia associated with yin yoga, Western science is continuing to discover new ways of releasing and rehydrating through different forms of movement.
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