What's the deal with Fascia?

Fascia is connective tissue, interconnective throughout the entire body and yoga is one of the healthiest things you can do to keep Fascia keep your body healthy! And why is that important?

A beautiful weblike structure holding and suspending our entire body, fascia provides resistance and structure and creates tensegrity which in turn allows our bodies alignment, health and wellness. Ever thought about how our skeletons set up? That our bones actually are floating in our bodies? It's fascia that is literally holding us together and also transfers force throughout the body like bumpers or shock absorbers. It hydrates and heals, or it doesn't. It is affected by our movement or lack of, it even responds to our emotions. Fascia is a relatively new study of science and anatomy. In fact, its research is advancing so rapidly, that what we thought we knew 6 months ago has already been replaced with greater knowing.

Fascia needs hydration to function well. Yoga hydrates! Healthy fascia glides back and forth freely through our bodies and helps create mobility and maintain healthy alignment. It can actually create unhealthy alignment as well as poor posture habits signal to the fascia to build structure to support that! Yikes! I'm attempting to keep things simple here. Turns out, one of the best yoga aspects for fascia is slow movement. Holding poses is important to help the body with muscle memory, open spaces that are closed off and create strength. All so good! BUT, when we move slowly from one pose to another, that's where the magic happens in our fascia. Moving the body through range of motion and increasing that range over time and doing it intentionally creates fascia gliding memory. Sometimes, we can be in a bit of a hurry to move from one pose to the next. And let's admit it, it's easier to "just get there." But, what if we thought about the transition as a pose in and of itself and moved slowly as we lengthen the breath with that transit. It just does so many good things! Shall we review?? :) We get stronger when we move slower. We become intentional with the breath as it helps us slow the heck down. Our balance improves. Our fascia gets hydrated and helps with any confusion (fascia disfunction cross links) which can happen where there is inflammation, scar tissue, poor posture and injury. Oh, and the coolest thing ever is that the pain in our back may not even originate in the back at all. Releasing tension, (hydrating), say perhaps in the foot, or in the shoulder or in the knee; you get the idea, breaks congestion along the fascia chain and we experience pain relief! Oh and also, fascia houses 6x more sensory neurons than any other organ except for skin. I am seriously in love with this stuff.