Happy Blog or The magic of Fascia and it’s
reactive nature
I
often wonder how much less complicated my life might be if I stopped asking
questions.
At
the end of last year, together with Laurie Booth, we created a concept called The
Myolastic Project whose whole ‘raison d’etre’ is to ask questions.
We
set up classes and workshops in Brighton to look in particular at the research
and information coming out of the Fascia (connective tissue) research labs using
movement to create an experiential way to interpret the science. After each
class or workshop we evaluate what has emerged from this form of questioning
and come up with a new question for the next class. The project evolves and has
led us up along some very interesting paths. For my own part I have learnt
about the thought processes developed by dancers to perceive their world,
opened up lines of research into human and fascia evolution and experienced the
body’s magnetism and it’s facility to store energy.
The
one thing I do know for sure is that after 6 months of this project instead of
getting answers to our questions we just keep thinking of new questions to ask!
The
last couple of months I have turned my attention to spirals, The lock, load,
Release and Flow ‘Myolastic’ concept and the new Anatomy Trains book. Anyone in
my Pilates classes and all those attending the Myolastic classes will know we
have been spinning round and locking energy in and reaching out along those
lines of myofascial tension.
Has
it made a difference?
An
interesting self observation is that over the last 6 months of personally doing
the lock, load, concept I have experienced a marked increase in reaction to
these movements.
The
question, which I keep coming back to is; why is the reaction getting more powerful?
Is
it familiarity, is it muscle strength, is it an increase in fascial storage
capacity, are we training a reaction rather than an action (a muscle
contraction is an example of an action), will it continue to get stronger until
the amount of effort is very small compared with the output response. Will we
forget the response as easily as we learnt it.????
What
do we know about the Fascial system, which will help to answer some of these
questions?
Fascia
is a body wide tensional energy storage and transmission system, it responds to
load and reforms over time in response to that load.
It
is a reactive system.
What
do I mean by reactive? I ‘Googled’ the word ‘reaction’ and got some interesting
results:
1.
Something done, felt, or thought in response
to a situation or event.
2.
A force exerted in opposition to an applied force:
the law of action and reaction
3.
A person’s ability to respond physically and
mentally to external stimuli.
4.
A reverse or opposing action.
Word origin:mid 17th century: from react + -ion, originally suggested by medieval Latin reactio(n-), from react-
'done again'.
So when we say Fascia is a reactive system do we
mean that:
1.
It can feel something in response to a movement
event.
2.
If a force is directed into it, an equal force in
the opposite direction will happen.
3.
External stimuli cause the Fascial system to respond
4.
and finally that it reverses or opposes an action.
I
think that experientially we can say that all of the above is true.
So
can we train our fascia to become more reactive? The Fascial Fitness catapult
principle as set out by Divo Müller and Robert Schleip in 2011 would suggest
that it may be trainable, (see
earlier blog for more information on the catapult principle).
It’s
very exciting to think that we have found a way to demonstrate to ourselves
that the reaction can be increased but to what end? How will this experiential
exercise help us maintain a healthy body and youthful fascia or is that exactly
what it is doing but we have no way of measuring it. Has the reaction always been there and we have only just
awakened our senses to it or has the storage capacity of our Fascial net
actually improved. More questions to which I do not have answers.
However
at last a question I can answer:
What
does this reaction feel like to me?
It
could be described as ‘magical’, my body reacts without any conscious
instruction to reverse the action or lock I have imposed upon it. Each week the
reaction gets stronger, faster and lasts for longer. There is no effort or
energy required to evoke the reaction and it feels like the most natural thing
in the world. It’s fun and pleasurable.
It
makes me happy.
Tracey
Mellor
March
2014
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