Fascia is the new buzz word. For ages we have been cutting away the fascia to get to the more important aspects in the human body like the muscles, bones and organs not knowing or realising that what has been discarded was in fact the largest sense organ within the body.

 
Fascia is everywhere in the body. It surrounds and forms an intricate network within every structure. It’s a strong, flexible support system. It’s the most richly innervated tissue in the body, with very high density of sensory nerves that help our nervous system orient to our surroundings.
 
It’s like a smooth and slippery web of connective tissue that attaches, stabilizes, encloses and separates. It’s the stuff that holds us together, otherwise we would just be a puddle on the floor, almost like jelly. If you can make everything else in the body disappear (except fascia), you would look like a big piece of candyfloss.
 
Our fascia is like our antennae, constantly responding to what is going on in our environment and where we are in space. Healthy fascia is very flexible, elastic and resilient, but it can be overcome by:

• Illness
• Injury
• Inflammation
• Trauma
• Poor posture
• Surgery/scars
  

When this happens, it places lots of pressure on nerves, muscles, blood vessels and organs. This can pull your body out of alignment. Keep in mind that if one piece doesn’t do its job then the whole system could fail. This explains the interconnectedness of our body structure.  For example, that sore lower back might be from a car accident that you had 20 years ago, but since your job is to sit at a desk all day, it has finally caught up with you. Or you might have ankle pain, but it’s actually coming from your hips. You have been compensating for this hip pain with the way you walk, but your body finally can’t take it anymore.
 
So, what we want to do is to keep the contractive pattern and integrity within fascia, since we need that tension to keep the body upright and the organs, blood vessels, tendons, muscles and skeleton working. But we do need to encourage fascia fitness and freeing areas of fascia that have become ‘stuck’. 
Facia fitness and health is influenced by a number of factors including:

• Diet
• Hydration
• Exercise
• Gentle therapeutic approaches (such as Bowen Therapy)
• Managing stress levels
  

When we keep it fit and free it will slide easier and communicate better. Bowen Therapy is ideal to help with this. Why?
Bowen is great for:

• Relaxing tight muscles
• Strengthening the immune system
• Reducing inflammation
• Encouraging repair
• Promoting calmness, relaxation and balance
• Better able to deal with stressful situations
• Oxygen saturation
• Decreasing heart rate
• Promoting homeostasis
• Increasing hydration, tonus and contractile strength
• Lowering of sympathetic tone
• Affecting the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA axis)
• Affecting structural change
  

 
I will leave you with this:
“The soul of man, with all the streams of pure living water, seems to dwell in the fascia of his body.”
                                                                                                                           AT Still, MD (1899)