Though she was interested in my pain and anatomy, we met not to care for my muscles or joints, but for the fascia, or connective tissue, that surrounds them and runs like a net throughout my body. Understanding its dimensions can be a little confusing, especially since we are influenced by centuries of anatomical tradition to think less about interconnected systems and more about the separate parts that make up our bodies. Helen Langevin, director of the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, told me a story to illustrate this point: When she was in medical school in the 1980s, they would discard fascia tissue in the dissection lab, obscuring the organs it belonged to.
A helpful analogy highlights the importance of fascia in our body’s structure: If your body were an orange, fascia would be the layer of pulp under the peel, the thin outer covering of each segment, and the tiny sacs that contain the juice. However, such analogies overlook the role that fascia plays in strength, mobility, and aging. Rebecca Pratt, a professor of anatomy at Oakland University’s William Beaumont School of Medicine, wrote in a 2019 paper: “The fascial system is now being recognized as having a role in pathology, fluid movement, and proprioception (or body space awareness).” This is perhaps why we feel chronic pain or tightness after physical activity. Pratt tells me that current research is “taking the spotlight off the muscles.” Langevin says that fascia not only “holds your body together,” it “holds your body together.” It also forms a lubricating layer that allows all of your muscles and joints to move The better your range of motion and flexibility, it’s basically a long chain reaction that, if ignored, can go in a detrimental direction. Everyone is familiar with the concept of myofascial pain, recent research has started to underscore just how dense our fascia is.
What fascinates researchers most is its biomechanical implications. In his own work, Langevin studies what happens when tumors are subjected to friction created by stretching surrounding tissue layers. He and the scientists he collaborated with found that this exercise substantially slowed tumor growth. Some kinds of stretching (at the molecular level, but possibly on a larger scale) could hinder cancer growth: “For the last hundred years, our approach to understanding disease and health has been primarily biochemical,” Langevin said. “We focus on molecules, pathways. But biophysics is like how all of this — whether it’s stiff or sticky — affects biochemistry.
But back to my stiff and aching body. As far as I know, I don’t have any tumors. However, due to constantly carrying a heavy backpack around town, one of my shoulders sits about five millimeters higher than the other, and I also suffer from a feeling of tightness in my hips due to my desk job. Dabus asked me to roll a massage ball down my legs on the outer edges of my feet. “We have a band of fascia tissue that goes around the bottom of the arch of the foot and supports it like a stirrup on the other side,” he told me. “It works like a pulley system to stabilize our knees and hips.” The slow motion felt more like meditation than exercise, but I did feel a slight sense of relaxation. Then he asked me to lie down, put a foam roller under my armpits and roll from back to front. The feeling is stronger there. As I applied pressure to my pecs and then back to my shoulder blades, I felt the tension in my shoulders slowly ease.
Dabus isn’t the only one offering exercises and treatments that target fascia. The ubiquity of foam rollers and massage balls reflects the widespread adoption of exercise therapy. The Melt Method offers a series of online workshops (as well as fascia-friendly products) that aim to improve “fluid flow in connective tissue.” At the Sunny Sky Ting yoga studio in NoHo, Manhattan, Bonnie Krotzer conducts a class she calls “Fascia Flossing”—”Transform your tissues from plastic to flexible,” the sign reads.
“We’re going to use resistance, so increase or decrease it,” Crozier whispered to me before the class I was attending began, and I looked around with mild panic. Did I miss the memo? Where’s the elastic? What Crozier means is that when we stretch our muscles, we contract them. The technical term is “eccentric contraction”—think of the sensation at the bottom of a biceps curl, where your muscles are working but also lengthening. “When you stretch a muscle while contracting it, you’re not only passively stretching fascia, but your muscles are also helping to stretch,” says Langevin. Crozier guided us through a series of moves that were comfortable, relaxing, and very enjoyable, if not revolutionary for my yoga-addicted body.
Despite this focus on fascia, we still don’t have a full understanding of this complex, interconnected system. But deeper insights are imminent: For example, special ultrasound technology can examine changes in our fascia when we exercise; another measurement method – spectroscopy – can look at changes within our fascia when we are in pain or not. This research is ongoing and there’s more work to be done. “We’re really on the cusp of all this,” Langevin said.
