Fascia and its role in Rolfing Structural Integration

Fascia is everywhere.  It connects absolutely everything inside us by way of a multi-planed layering system that wraps, webs, surrounds and weaves through our bodies, separating and connecting, supporting and allowing movement. The fascia is highly innervated, with more nerve endings than muscles, and is in constant dialogue with the central nervous system about where the body is in space. This is called proprioception, and is the way we know, for example, when we are standing firmly on the ground, and when we are about to fall.

“Each muscle, each visceral organ is encased in its own fascial wrapping.  These wrappings in turn form part of a ubiquitous web that supports as well as enwraps, connects as well as separates, all functional units of the body.”  –Ida P. Rolf, Ph.D.

From the superficial layer just beneath our skin to the deepest wrapping around our bones, fascia holds our bodies in place.  Sometimes it is thin and wispy, sometimes it is thick and fibrous.

Fascia facilitates the many layers of muscles in our bodies to slide over each other, allowing for smooth uninhibited flexion and extension.  Healthy fascia is pliable and hydrated, allowing muscles, tendons and ligaments to move freely and easily.

But when fascia is stressed from injury, trauma or from postural habits and imbalanced repetitive movement, it becomes short, dense, and dehydrated, gluing muscles together and inhibiting movement.  Shortened fascia compresses joints and puts stress on tendons and ligaments.  This can result in injury and pain.

Structural Integration strives to achieve balance in tone within the myofascial system and to coax fascia back to a soft, pliable state with the cooperation and interactivity of the nervous and endocrine systems.  The result is greater flexibility, resilience and less pain and vulnerability to injury.

Just as importantly, the fascial net enables us to feel our bodies as a functioning whole. No one part of us moves without involving our entire system. Relating to, sensing, and moving our bodies as the whole, spiraling matrix that it is can allow for an entirely different experience of ourselves.

“The body process is not linear, it is circular, always it is circular.  One thing goes awry, and its effects go on and on and on and on.  A body is a web, connecting everything with everything else.” –Ida P. Rolf, Ph.D.

What goes down can come up

Dr. Ida Rolf, the founder of Structural Integration, recognized that fascia is plastic in nature: it changes shape, and adapts to the way we use our bodies.

When we move and stretch regularly, our fascia lengthens, stays lubricated, allowing our muscles and the joints they control to function optimally.  Likewise, when we are sedentary for long periods of time, our fascia shortens and hardens.  We feel stiff, achy and exhausted.

Using hands, soft fists and elbows, practitioners of Structural Integration move, layer by layer through the fascial web, helping dense fascia return to a healthy, pliable state. Once fascia is allowed to ‘let go,’ muscles and joints can then function properly, allowing for flexibility and freedom of movement.

Since Dr. Rolf’s contribution to the introduction of fascia as ‘the organ of form,’  significant research has been conducted around the nature of fascia. We now understand that ‘deep tissue work’ stimulation of fascial mechanoreceptors triggers changes in the nervous and endocrine systems that result in more pliable, relaxed tissue. *

As fascia research continues to expand to include the autonomic nervous system and endocrine systems, it has since become referred to as a ‘sensory organ’.

*Robert Schleip  http://axissyllabus.org/assets/pdf/Schleip_Fascia_as_a_sensory_organ.pdf