Superficial Back Line
Taking a Moment to Reflect
Our work with Fascia has taken many forms, and will continue to expand our knowledge of the body and movement. We’ve touched on 3 out of the 4 ways in which we support the health of our fascia. We looked at supporting its health through bouncing, sprinting and swinging movements. We learned how to open the pathways of fascial communication through the inward focus of interoception as well as with various types of mechanical pressures such as strong, active, reflective, and flowing movements. And we’ve explored how to revive our fascia, and thereby our cells, through massage, rolling and shearing work.
The last quadrant we will look at today touches on how to stretch our fascia in order to support its health an well being— and this will take us even deeper into our anatomy of the fascial lines.
We pause for a moment here, about halfway through our journey, to take a moment to reflect on the path to the Wisdom we seek. How do we know if we are on the right track? The Shiva Sutras tell us that knowledge alone can either be liberating or binding, depending on the awareness of the learner. We are told that if one is able to keep their focus inside, on their inner experience while learning, that knowledge is liberating. If one is drawn out into the various pieces, that knowledge will only serve to keep them trapped in their minds and samsara.
Here’s the quote: “For those who are fully aware of God consciousness, all the organs of cognition, organs of action and organs of the intellect lead them to that supreme state of God consciousness. For those who are not aware, these same organs deprive them completely of that God consciousness. (Spanda Kārikā 1.20)”When the Sutras say ‘fully aware of god consicousness’ they mean that one is not fully consumed by the facts of the mind, and always keep an inner eye open to their experience while learning. Learning, in this way, only serves to help us rediscover our true nature— not recreate our nature.
This fascinating perspective of the Yogic tradition is also at the heart of fascial anatomy. “The heart of healing lies in our ability to listen, to see, to perceive, more than in our application of technique. That, at least, is the premise of this book.” So here, in the quintessential anatomy text of Fascia, we see that the technique it seeks to describe is not its goal, but rather, it seeks to help us listen, see and perceive what is already a part of us. This really is the heart of what fascia has brought to the science of movement, an appreciation for the holistic experience itself, an acknowledgment of the intelligence of the body itself, of intuition and our ability to feel. As we look deeper at the anatomy of fascia, and its lines of continuity, it is easy to forget this— our goal is to re-discover, not to re-create.
I believe that Patanjali’s words will bring this perspective to a cathartic end, as he says quite clearly where all of this work is leading us: “Through self-enquiry the practitioner gains insight, but eventually all mental logic must come to an end in bliss. Following that is the comprehension that all is the Self (yoga).”
We may gain insight, but that is not our goal. Our goal is the direct experience of our true nature— not just when meditating, but when working within any sphere of our life. Our method is simple, yet profoundly challenging, to keep our attention inside, on our experience of reality, while learning about it and moving through it. We are not here to re-create the wheel, but to rediscover it within ourselves.
As we move into the fascial lines, it can be helpful to remind ourselves of this necessity, so that we can be sure our work will lead us on the path of growth.
Today we are going to continue to break fascia down into it’s parts, always with the hopes of this work leading us to a greater understand of the whole. We will begin to break the fascia down into it’s muscular tracks within our body, which can seem confusing, as we keep saying that fascia is all pervasive, and that the whole point of fascia is to unite, not divide.
Because we’ve learned, there is really no distinction between our muscles, nerves and fascia— every single muscle and nerve cell, group of those cells, and groups of groups of those cells are each wrapped and enmeshed within this fascial net. What we see, though, is that this whole becomes divided into parts as the whole body itself makes it’s way through the many parts of it’s life.
As babies when we are lying on our stomach, and want to see our mother, the very act of lifting our heavy head is what develops the fascial line along the backside of our entire body. This is actually our focus for today, the superficial back line. sitting up begins to one the front line, as well as further toning the back line. As we reach we begin to unite the arm lines, and as we crawl we add in other functional lines, as well as further toning the front line. Walking requires that we realize our spiral line just to get up, much less to take a step.
So as we begin to learn about the fascial lines, we must remember that they are here to bring us back to the origins of movement, movement before mind. These fascial lines enable us to re-discover movement in a pure way, and by doing so, begin to move more holistically on and off our mat. So we see that these lines formed from the unity of movement itself. We didn’t decide to start using our arm, or to contract our erector spinae to lift our heads— the urge created the movement.
Superficial Back Line
One of the first tracks of fascia that forms in our natural movement is the Superficial Back line. As we said earlier, the baby looking up to see it’s mother naturally inspires the formation of this track of musculature. These muscles are literally connected by a band of fascia that runs longitudinally up the body.
The SBL extends the body back- plantar flexes the foot, bends knee, extends the spine, reach up. It also decelerates forward folds- aka eccentrically contracts. It supports the body in full upright extension. Because it is ‘on’ most of the day, it is comprised of slow-twitch, endurance muscle fibers. This heavy demand requires thick, heavy sheets of fascia- plantar fascia, achilles tendon, hamstrings, the cables of the erector spinae, and ligaments of the neck.
We are born in complete flexion and the toning of the superficial back line is what allows us to eventually stand upright. It seems that we have to earn our upright posture and when left to our own devices, return to flexion as much as possible. This makes the superficial backline tremendously important to tone.
Recently, when I got my vaccine and went through a pretty hard couple of days where my body felt incredibly achey— I could feel this tendency towards flexion, and the work it took to stay upright in extension. We say things like “I just wanted to curl up die” when we feel really embarrassed, or exhausted— and this phrase come from the fact that when we stop working to live we really do curl up. The superficial back line must be earned in us.
Let’s take a look at the muscles that comprise this back line. Remember how this was initially discovered— Thomas Meyers was teaching anatomy, and to help his students remember all of the separate muscles he started began to show how one muscle connected to the other through its fascial webbing. What was meant as nothing more than an aid to memory, walked its way right up the entire body from head to toe, as these tracks of fascia were discovered.
So for example, the back line begins at the plantar fascia, the muscles on the bottom of the foot that engage to lift you up on your tip toes. As you do this, you can feel the calf muscles engage, the gastric nemius— they work together to lift you up. While in this movement, touch the back of your hamstrings, and you will see it’s easy to engage them, as they also form the track of the Superficial back line.
From here, this line moves up along the spine, with the erector muscles, and then up and over the head to the top of your eyebrows.
One way we can work with the SBL is by learning how to contract it as a whole. Many times our work on the back side is very one dimensional, like squeezing our glutes, when it could be incorporating much more of our back line.
Experiment backbend- flying cobra, lift as high as you can with upper back only, now lengthen one leg back and up and see how you lift higher— more of your SBL is engaged and the result is more support range of motion. Explanation: The SBL is a chain of muscles and fascia running in continuity with each other, in “longitudinal meridians”, described as “tracks” or “chains”. But these types of images don’t illustrate the fascia “at play” as tracks and chains are human-made inert devices.
We can keep the science and make it even more effective with a simple shift of metaphor— imagine the SBL as a river, and you can activate the entire run of the river by simply flowing with it from one end of the SBL to the other. So instead of treating the line like a static object, a shape, treat it like an experience, a flow of engagement. ‘
Another way we work with the SBL is by understanding how to lengthen it as a whole. Taking out the slack: experiment forward fold- (a) roll up yoga mat quite high, stretching plantar fascia, achilles, and calves fold forward, with the support of a chair, notice sensation in the body and depth of the pose (b) step off of roll and notice how the upper body naturally releases deeper. This shows the connectivity of our entire SBL. If it was not connected, flexing the feet wouldn’t change the hips, spine and head, but because it is the whole line is connected, taking out the slack at one end effects the rest of the chain.
Working to shorten the whole chain brings a new level of awareness, and lengthening the whole chain another level of awareness. Moving between the two brings yet another level of awareness. When we move between lengthening and contracting the entire fascial line with awareness, we can feel it in an acceleration mode and deceleration mode.
Acceleration is when the chain engages, or contracts, to shorten the chain. Like we felt in cobra. Deceleration is when the chain eccentrically contracts, contracts while lengthening, to lengthen the chain with control— like the lowering of a draw bridge.
Let’s feel this in a movement and see the unique kind of awareness and experience it yields: Experiment: Lunge (accelerator) and Hurdler (decelerator). Focus on the front leg in a short lunge. Notice that it is in a relatively shortened state. Bring arms to T and begin to send the hips back, fanning arms forward, lengthening the back line. From here begin to pull the floor towards you with your front foot and feel the back of the leg engage, the bottom of your SBL. That engagement bends your leg, which pulls the hips forward and the chain moves up the back. Push through the floor with your front foot and feel the SBL remain toned as it eccentrically lengthens. This is the experience of “Deceleration” within a fascial chain, the capacity of a muscle chain to eccentrically contract as a way of retaining control while a muscle group lengthens. In this way we can hold our awareness on the SBL in both settings— as it accelerates us into a back bend, or decelerates us into a forward bend.
Once you understand these 3 ways of interacting with the chain you can bring a light awareness to them and watch as they begin to transform your personal and professional sequencing. Example: Abhaya’s yoga class one week had a sequence that was focused on the spiral and lateral lines, this same sequence morphed in the next week as she focused on the SBL. Just keeping a light focus on these lines while you practice has a way of transforming your sequencing.
SBL: Part by Part
Fascial sheath starts at bottom of the toes. “Overly dense plantar fascia will limit foot and toe mobility, as well as limit movement in the SBL as a whole.” Tom Meyers, AT, p.46. As we saw earlier, the SBL is composed of slow twitch dense fascia, which can become even slower and denser as we limit its range of motion as we do with flat surfaces and shoes. We will take time to look closely at the foot in following weeks, but for now, we can begin unlock this first link in our SBL by decrystalzing the fascia there through a variety of pressure treatments.
Let’s see how the bottom of our SBL can affect the entire chain!
Forward bend for a checkpoint, straight legs. Notice how the arms hang, and their relationship to floor. We will retest this afterwards.
Tennis ball under foot, roll the ball lightly on the foot, looking for sensitive areas
Pause in a sensitive area, applying pressure to a point between pleasure and pain, for 20 seconds
Move to a new point in the foot and repeat.
Now forward fold and see the difference in arm hang length. This shows that the fascial chain really does operate as one, from toe to head.
Tip: To stretch the plantar fascia of the SBL throughout a yoga class, try tucking your toes whenever a posture will allow it.
Plantar and Achilles wrap around the calcaneous-It’s important to take a moment here to note why so much of this is new information for many of us, despite years of learning anatomy. Look at the difference in these two images of the heel— one is from a cutting edge digital anatomy app, there is no reference to any type of connective tissue here— it would be impossible for you to ever consider any connectivity unless you were the one doing the dissecting. Disclaimer, real body part coming up!
Here we see the the plantar fascia can barely be peeled away from its achilles counterpart and gastroc cousins— they are definitely working together, as we felt by simply standing on our tip toes.
(heel bone)- massaging the heel bone, lubricates the whole SBL (example from circling feet at the beginning of one of my classes) this can be applied to any posture- example of Janu Sirsasana.
Gastrocnemius wraps around the condyles of the femur.
when the leg is straight, this joins with the hamstrings, when the knee is bent the SBL is split in 2, sense why bending knees unloads posterior chain.
- the arms can replicate this relationship, with one arm being the hamstring and the other arm being the gastroc— as they pull apart from each other, you can feel their relationship, as the arms bend and their connection direction becomes incongruent, you see that their effect on each other lessens.
- Straight legs can often be too much pull, and serve to hyper extend the knees. Too much bend, and we find ourselves missing any stretch for the SBL below the knees, and sometime missing the experience too. The middle path is a supple bend in the knees which yields the best of both worlds— unloading your posterior chain enough to help you find a workable space within the pose, while not bending the knees so much that you lose the stretch for the lower aspects of the SBL overall. From this middle path approach you can bend and extend the legs in a productive way, maintaining a connection to the whole experience of the SBL.
- Example: walking out the legs in down dog or uttanasana