Yoga: Fascia, Anatomy and Movement: Fascia, Form and Functional Movement

Laboratory for Anatomical Enlightenment in Boulder, Colorado,

There is, however, a much more valuable and powerful distinction available, once we appreciate the myofascial body and its structure, which lies in recognising elasticity as paramount. Elasticity is the source of our energy storage capacity. Once we understand it – and there are a lot of misconceptions around it – we have an immeasurably valuable r

It is argued here that pandiculation might preserve the integrative role of the myofascial system by (a) developing and maintaining appropriate physiological fascial interconnections and (b) modulating the pre-stress state of the myofascial system by regularly activating the tonic musculature.”9 Is this perhaps Nature’s way of maintaining the funct

Katie’s body is containing and managing the internal changes of breathing. At the same time it is organising the external balance between gravity (drawing her toward the centre of the earth) and ground reaction force (her body instinctively resists, away from it). Thus her ability to “draw in” to her sense of her centre and at the same time reach a

The breath and bones and body wall of the torso are not separate anywhere. Mediated by the soft tissues and septae, their relationships and ability to glide, stretch, expand and squeeze and release are the foundation of our functional movements, that is, the moves we make to do the poses and the internal organisation that follows naturally.

Simple examples of this are found in various parts and functions of the body, from breathing to giving birth, from emptying the bladder to the movement of food through the gut via peristalsis. Although it operates along a tube, the method is an ancient rhythmical ability to expand and squeeze the tissues. They rest in the “middle state”, so that gl

the “internal-net” is being recognised as global in terms of the body’s world.

The most we can say about the joints in our body is that they are floating fulcrums which forces percolate through. If muscles and tendons are acting like levers, they are not simple levers [see Ch. 7] because the fascial net which wraps everything transmits forces across the joints as well.”

Her muscles, bones and connective tissues are maintaining a versatile and continuous management, within a tensional network that houses compression elements in ways that levers do not adequately describe. Her muscle tonus is even throughout but no one muscle is responsible for this unified balance and global organisation.

What we speak of in terms of developing subtle awareness, or sensory literacy, or refinement of movement seems to be accounted for in these connective tissues, one way or another.