Hello everyone, This week we will discover that In order to be able to understand fascia at all as an organ or system, we can no longer think in terms of anatomy but rather in terms of this body wide interconnected fascial architecture. Fascia is architecture, it is about relationships, It is about connecting and separating, and shaping space that takes care of the relationships.

The body is not anatomy, It is a process in time. The body is a performance.

Fascia more commonly known as connective tissue, is the soft tissue that runs through the entire body, it can be appreciated as the matrix substrate of our body or as ‘the fabric’ (the texture) in which all organs are embroidered.

Fascia is also considered to be our most important sensory organ and plays a major role in the perception of posture and movement affecting our proprioception and coordination. The architecture of connective tissue (fascia) is the functional (morphological) substrate for proprioception in the locomotor system.

In order to be able to understand fascia at all as an organ or system, one should no longer think in terms of anatomy but rather in terms of this body wide interconnected fascial architecture.

We are not anatomy, we are not only spacial beings like a machine. It is ever more clear that ‘the muscle’ is an outdated and un-physiological concept and that the understanding of the fascia as a body-wide regulatory system will yield the next generation of effective hands-on interventions.

The units of muscle organization is the motor unit and that on the other hand the cortical brain is not organized in muscles, ligaments or other anatomical structures, but in is organized in motion: “The brain knows nothing about the muscles”.

Fascia is about the functional relationship of the connective tissue with neighbouring organs and tissues: it is about integrity and continuity, qualities that in fact are disturbed and ignored by the anatomical approach and way of thinking.

Fascia is architecture, it is about relationships, It is about connecting and separating, and shaping space that takes care of the relationships.

Architecture is not the alternative to anatomy, architecture is complementary to anatomy. Take a bridge. A bridge is built of elements, and the way the elements are constructed determines the architecture. The architecture is the mechanical relationship between the elements. The bridge can be disassembled back into its component elements and then reconstructed at a new location using a new configuration of the same parts to create a different architecture that serves a new purpose.

So architecture is the complementary dimension of muscle and ligament anatomy. The body is not a construction of parts and elements. Anatomy is not the organizational principle of the body. The organizational principle of our bodies and of every living thing is entirety, is wholeness, and the wholeness is sub-organized in parts, in elements. So the whole is not built up from the anatomical parts but the anatomy is a kind of organization of the wholeness and the organization can follow architectural, mechanical principles, it can follow bio-mechanical gradients. So that is a different way to look at the structure or to look at the anatomy of it. We have to think in terms of architectural units rather than discrete anatomy.

The body is a process in time. The body is a performance !

Join us next week for:
"Centring in Gravity"

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