What is Fascia?

Structural Integration focuses on the connective tissue of the body called fascia; a three-dimensional continuum of soft, collagen containing fibrous tissue that permeates the body. It surrounds and interweaves between organs, muscles, bones. Its function is numerous and sometimes paradoxical; it connects and divides, contains and yet makes movement -  sliding, gliding - possible. It is linked to the central nervous system and carries different kinds of nerve endings called mechanoreceptors that sense the various qualities of touch (depth, pressure, pace, angle, etc.). 

Fascia is essential to the dance between stability and movement through maintaining a balance between tension and elasticity. Ida Rolf understood the body as an organism with main units (the head, thorax, pelvis, legs etc.) that are held together by the myofascial system made up of collagen, chemically speaking. Therefore, when we talk about the structure of a living body, we talk about the relationship between different parts as they fit together to make a human body. In other words, fascia is more powerful than most people think, modulating our body’s structure; one one hand it has the ability to shrink-wrap us into a lifetime of pain, dysfunction, immobility and discomfort, on the other, it can also keep us moving optimally, feeling fluid, hydrated, and ready for life.

There has been more and more research in the past 20-30 years on how fascial lines connect to each other, especially through cadaver dissections by Gil Hedley and Thomas Myers who developed Anatomy Trains. We know now that the connective tissue guides nerves, arteries and veins to each muscle and links them beyond joints, continuing into the next muscle, and the next one and so on. 

What used to be thought of as the ‘leftover’ of our bodies (other-than muscles, bones, organs), turns out to be an intelligent, active and communicative sensory organ enveloping, permeating and constituting the body. Every cell in our body is linked with and responds to the fascial environment, also called 'neuro-myo-fascial net’. It is literally what holds us together, yet it is also a fabric that inherently connects us with life; “a sensorium”. The goal of SI is to hydrate and neurally activate this sensory web and to recondition the mechanical structure of the collagen. Our cells rely on mechanical stretching to remain healthy, resilient and reproductive and to build functional movement behaviors that optimize our energy.