Lecture Part 1: Composition of Fascia
Fascia video referenced in Lecture: The Fuzz!
Lecture Notes:
Our Body’s are water, and working with our fascia helps us understand that.
Since day one of this training, we’ve talked about the space between the stars, the experience beyond the literal constellation of our posture. We saw that according to physics, we are mostly this space, 99.9% roughly. In our bodies, this is the space between our cells, and is known as fascia.
In the world of physics, this space has yet to be defined, known mostly as a theory of Higgs Field and dark matter. In our body’s, though, this space is being described primarily as the connective tissue of our body, the fascia.
This space is defined as the Extra Cellular Matrix— Extra cellular meaning that which surrounds the cells, and matrix meaning that it encompasses and integrates everything within it.
As Fascia researcher Camilla Nordin writes, “The body consists of cells and the matrix outside, between the cells, the extracellular matrix (ECM). Fascia is the ECM and the cells maintaining the ECM.”- Camilla Ranje Nordin, (https://fasciaguide.com/fascia-anatomy-physiology/embryology-of-fascia/)
Like we saw in the earlier space versus stars ration, this ‘space’ of the connective tissue is the most abundant tissue in the body (the four being muscle, nervous, epithelial and connective).
The “space” of fascia is not empty of course, but is actually 4 gallons of watery collagenous ground substance, resembling egg whites, with it's own team of worker cells keeping the tributaries flowing in the form of interstitial fluid, half of which rushes past every cell of your body everyday, “transporting nutrients, and playing a role in tissue remodeling, inflammation and lymphedema…inerstitial fluid flow is vital to maintain healthy tissue” (11, Lesondak)
The watery ground substance can be as liquified as a cup of water, thicker like a bowl of jello, or harder yet like the thick fibers under an orange peel.
This variable density is the result of the collagen component within your fascia, which makes it less like water iteself, and more like a gel, or mucus, or egg white.
Collagen is an incredible structural protein, a triple helix strand, much like you would see in a strong rope or cable, which makes it both incredibly strong yet flexible— as fascial researched David Lesondak writes, "Gram for gram, Type 1 collagen [the kind of collagen that our fascia is composed of] is stronger than steel, thus it can withstand tremendous force and still be able to bend with the wind.”
Conscious Movement keeps your fascia flowing, and without movement, it tends to crystallize, harden, and become a thick binding agent. This was originally documented by fascia researcher Gil Headly in the early 2000s, in his famous “Fuzz speech”, where he showed that fascia can become a physical fuzz, and eventually just become hardened tissue.
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So we see a very simple maxim emerge from this advanced research: Move it or lose it. Or as Movement enthusiast and pioneer Ido Portal once said “move, or one day you may not be able to.”
Gotta let it flow if you want it to grow: Our Fascia requires movement to Flow
As we've seen, our Fascial network is like a flowing river, with infinite tributaries allowing it to rush past literally every cell of our body, and it is up to us to keep that river flowing through conscious movement.
Taking a glimpse at our compositon of fascia, we see that itself is mostly water, or ground substance, and a small portion of our fascia is cellular. These are the Guardians of the river, the essential worker cells known as the Fibroblasts.
Fibroblasts are the most abundant cell in our fascia, you can picture them like inter tubes floating down a rushing river. Their job is to literally eat the old fascia, repair existing fascia and spool out new fascia.
“Fascia responds according to mechanical Supply and Demand…Fibroblasts spool out collagen or eat it, all based on signals of pressure and vibration, like a cellular public works department”
“Lack of Regular Movement or total immobility will give no stimulation which will have a negative impact on the formation of Matrix”
We also see movement as essential for cellular health as well
Cell biologist Donald Ingber showed that cells themselves must be stretched and moved in order to live and unfold according to the body's needs.
Quite literally he found that “cells that were appropriately stretched thrived, whereas cells that became too rounded [died].”
How do you stretch cells, that’s accomplished through movement. Fascia is like a spider web, movement translates through the whole body. The more the body participates in the movement, the more of the body is affected by it.
And there’s more— he showed it was actually movement and stretching of the cell that allowed them to “differentiate themselves in a tissue-specific manner…Thus Mechanical restructuring of the cell…tells the cell what to do”, which means that the cells programmed themselves according to how they were moved around by the ECM
This means that our cells are listening to our body’s movement via the fascia. These vibrations inform the cell on how to respond to it’s environment, as well as tell the cell’s how to grow.
They do this via a protein that attaches the cell to the ECM called integrins. These act like tiny ear drums, picking up the vibrations of the fascia. “It’s as if each cell in the body was plugged into the ECM so that it can also monitor the environment by listening to it”
These mechanical vibrations are caught by the integrin and brought into the nucleus of the cell, where they inform gene activation.
So a vibration through the ‘air’ of your ECM is heard by the integrin and transmitted to the nucleus of the cell.
“The Integrins Tensional pull cascades through the cellular cytoskeleton through the nuclear envelope to the nucleus whereupon different genres will activate and express themselves in response to the changes in tension.”
So movement is critical for cell health, but also for the cells to adapt and express themselves to the your current environment.