Reviving Our Fascia
Here is the outline of the lecture from class for those of you who benefit from a reading based learning style approach. Enjoy!
The final quadrant of our overview of the 4 functions of Fascia as supported by Robert Schleip’s work in Fascial Fitness is the function of Revive.
4) Fascial Function: Revive
• Our Fascia is the pathway that our body uses to revive it’s cellular structure. We can support this capacity of the fascia to Revive, and we can actually revive the fascia itself through our work on the mat. Let’s take a closer look at how this Reviving capacity of the fascia functions, and then we’ll look at ways to support it.
Reviving our fascia works through the classic sponge analogy— squeezing out the toxins and soaking in the nutrients. Although this may seem a little over-simplified, after you look at the science of fascia, hydrostatic pressure, capillaries and plasma cells, the lymph ducts, blood vessels, osmosis, and more you eventually come back to this same conclusion. Our internal nutrients and fluids are exchanged through a very similar pressure to squeezing out a sponge, and then soaking in like a sponge, so this simple concept proves to be pretty valuable and spot on.
But we’ve got to earn that understanding right? It’s true, when you start to look at this process in detail you develop a relationship with the material that really allows you to practice it and eventually teach it from a real place inside. If you enjoy moving and having a body, which we all do for the most part as yoga teachers, you will only enjoy it more the more you learn about it.
Our Body’s Fluid Exchange
So our fascia is the delivery person that supports a healthy exchange of “blood cells, proteins, electrolytes, nutrients, gases, and wastes” between our nutrient rich capillaries and our 38 trillion cells in need.
The fluids in our body are being exchanged between 3 main compartments:
Your cells (60% of body’s water),
Your Facia, (30% of the body’s water),
and your plasma (10%).
Their Spatial Relationship
The fluids are exchanged between the capillaries to the fascia to the cells, and then back again. You can visualize the spatial relationship of these 3 fluid compartments like this:
First you’ve got the fascial sponge backdrop upon which everything is suspended. Within that fascial zone you have groups of tissue cells, like muscle cells. Running throughout this fascia and cellular matrix are capillaries, carrying “blood cells, proteins, electrolytes, nutrients, gases, and wastes”.
This exchange is the work we are seeking to support on our yoga mat. Robert Schleip, author of fascial fitness, describes the process: “Mechanical Pressure and shear motion” Like rolling and massaging in our yoga class, “leads to a liquid exchange in the fascia. Fascia loves pressure, specifically variable pressure. The tissue is literally squeezed like a sponge, transporting metabolites and lymph away, and then partly refills with new and fresh water from the blood plasma in the small capillaries.”
Capillary Action Close Up:
Capillaries are tiny blood vessels connecting arteries to veins. These blood vessels carry oxygen and nutrients to individual cells throughout the body.
They are the only blood vessels where substances can be exchanged between the blood and body cells. They are so tiny, that blood cells move through them in single file lines!
The Exchange at Work
This image should show the whole thing at work: So the capillary bed is bringing in fresh plasma with water content, as well as other nutrients and gases, and that plasm is exuded from the capillary due to a difference in pressure. Those plasma cells are further squeezed according to a filtration process, and their water content is released into the fascia and then enters the cells via the same pressure exchange.
This pressurized exchange continues in the opposite direction as the capillary continues across it’s path— cells and fascia exude their waste, as well as CO2, which is absorbed through the capillary wall and taken out via the veins. Whatever water content is not absorbed by fascia or cells is carried out by the lymphatic ducts.
This incredibly efficient pressurized fluid exchange is a type of osmosis, we might remember this from science class if you ever did a celery experiment like this one pictured. The capillary walls of the celery allow the fluid to be exchanged, resulting in a colored piece of celery. This pressurized exchange occurs automatically, but can be supported through specialized movements, like massage and rolling, on our yoga mat.
By Assisting this Fluid Renewal Process we can:
Stimulate our metabolism
Improve our fluid supply to the fascia and associated organs (cells)
Reduce our muscle tightness
Increase our mobility
Invigorate and Regenerate our Fascia
Massaging
we can start our class with a foot massage
we can invite students to include manual massage by squeezing different areas of the body with the hands
example:
self neck massage
massaging down the arms- different degrees of pressure
We can also massage our bodies by pressing against the floor
rocking forehead on mat
windshield wipers
gomukhasana exploration
foam rolling and tennis balls
• Rolling
is a fun and simple way to create a larger volume of fluid exchange within the body, as it involves large swaths of tissue moving within a full integrated body, instead of individual parts moving separately.
Incorporating various types of rolls into your yoga class can give you a feeling of the full body movements we seek to incorporate into all of our asanas and transitional movements.
As a full body movement, rolling is incredible for universal core integration and toning of all fascial lines of the body. It is one of the first movements that we learn, and we literally cannot roll without a functional core as a baby. As grownups, slow, controlled rolling can help us reintegrate our limbs back into the universal core, naturally rewiring the connections from leg to hip to core and arm through shoulder into back, chest, and core.
As we look to learn more about rolling, we find ourselves training from a developmental perspective, as babies show us the building blocks of rolling based movements.
Let’s try it. This is a basic rolling pattern based on how a baby learns to roll, we did this at the beginning of Sunday’s Class.
Teach through rolling pattern
knees rock to one side, then back to middle, notice the connections into hip and core
allow arms to slowly extend over head, notice how you are able to rock a little further to the side
once you make it to the side, “protozoa pulsation” hug arms and legs in, gently extend
Baby Video:
this process is actually quite elaborate within the body, as it starts to develop full body movement patterns involving the four fascial lines that we will look at in the coming weeks:
the front line gently tones when we are on our back
knees rocking starts to develop the spiral line
the lateral lines pattern when we are resting on our side
front line and the back line work in the protozoa pulse
and the backline activates once we make it onto the belly.
• You can incorporate rolling in a lot of different ways in your class:
side body rocks
interoception at the beginning of class
they make great transitions!
bridge, slowly press into the foot to roll to side or belly
rainbow roll to seated
roll from belly to seated (from Sunday’s Class)
• The final way is more technical, and I find it more awkward, but it is useful for you to understand
This is a great way to test functional strength of the arms and legs one at a time, and how they relate front body and back body coordination
PT rolling patterns: See Slides