Our built-in touch sensitivity

Quickly go check out this clip to see how music makes this non-Newtonian fluid move and dance. Can you imagine what it would look like if it were played a lullaby or sang an aria?

Here’s another little clip just showing how oobleck - made with just cornstarch and water - responds to force, which determines whether it’s going to be a solid or fluid.

Fascia is the same! It is non-Newtonian and has the same sort of fluidic viscosity as the oobleck. It also stiffens with force but becomes compliant and gooey as force is removed. Despite its high level of viscosity, it also has the tensile strength of stainless steel. It’s essentially really really strong snot, and it’s EVERYWHERE in your body. Not just around muscles, but through them on every scale-level down to nano.

Think about how your body stiffens as if you’re walking into a breeze that becomes a forceful gust of wind. Conversely, think about how when you’re lying on soft, warm sand you melt right into it.

Our ability to change the quality of movement (and even energy) is also due to this highly sensitive and responsive gel-like fabric. We can feel light and buoyant or grounded and heavy and everything in between. If you’re thinking, “but what about muscles?” right now, I get it. They’re a part of the picture, but the smaller picture.

Fascia is the conductor of the orchestra, not muscles - not even the brain in this context. Because of the way fascia is both completely interconnected and also innervated to sense external factors, it responds based on the information it takes in from the outside and self-senses and self-regulates. Think about walking into the wind and sinking into the sand again - that’s your fascia stiffening, telling your muscles to resist and activate, or to become compliant, allowing your muscles to stand down. Fascia is the communication network for the muscles that are within it.

It’s also important to recognize that it is not well supplied with cells. This is why it’s called the ‘extra-cellular network’ - it is outside of the cellular network, and cells talk to the brain! Instead, it behaves like a small world network - think of a school of fish or a flock of starlings in murmuration - constantly keeping the balance of tension and compression while instantaneously forming and reforming around your movements. It is quantum!

It might be safe to say that fascia is our first line of communication from our environment inwards to our homeostatic systems, while the nervous system is listening and filling the brain in, which in turn responds appropriately - and there’s the subconscious feedback loop.

SO...

The next time you go to dig your fingers into your masseter muscle or do your Mcloskey massages, consider the quality of your touch.

Do you want your fascia to react as if it’s listening to dubstep or a lullaby? Do you want it to stiffen or become compliant? How can you help the energy to flow?

The next time you go to sing, consider the same things.

The fascia is feeling what you’re doing - it’s responding to it. Are you listening to its responses? That’s a conscious feedback loop to really nurture.