What is fascia?

Fascia is this amazing connective tissue that attaches to every muscle, bone, organ, and tissue in your body.

The fascia has a huge impact on our structure as it is involved in resistance, power, flexibility, elasticity and posture.
On a basic level, fascia is made up of two parts: collagen (structural) and elastin (stretchy).

When you have restrictions and limitations, due to poor posture, age and injuries, the collagen component of the fascia solidifies, ‘gluing’ our tissues together, hence that tight feeling in your muscles.

If you stretch this area briefly you will only lengthen at the end ranges of the muscles as you are working only on the elastin but if you work with the concept of fascial stretching you are not only working on the elastin component but you can also lengthen the collagenous component of the tissue making the stretches far more effective, deeper, and longer lasting.

This is exactly what we want to achieve when teaching a stretch class!

Layers of Fascia

Your fascia can be broken down into four main layers: superficial, deep, visceral, and parietal.

Superficial fascia is a layer that is right under your skin and can vary in thickness according to where it is. It’s thicker in the main part of your body like your stomach, chest, and it gets thinner in places further away from the centre of your body, like your hands and feet.
Deep fascia surrounds your entire musculoskeletal system, covering bones, muscles, nerves, and blood vessels. It can be broken into two subtypes:

Aponuerotic fascia:
A thick pearly white tissue that separates easily form your body.

Epimysial fasia:
A thinner fascia which is more tightly connected to your muscles.

Viseral fasia:
A fascia layer that goes around certain organs that settle into your body’s open spaces, including the lungs, heart, and stomach.‌

Pariental fasia:
A fascia layer that covers the surface of the sacrum, coccyx, and pelvis.
To summarise, we have fascia running through our entire body… through organs, tissues and muscles and it contains more nerve endings than any other tissue making it incredibly sensitive to change, both physically and emotionally.

Contents
–  What is fascia?
–  Movement, Recoil and Tension
–  Intro to Fascia Lines
–  Superficial Back line
–  Superficial Front line
–  Spiral Line
–  Lateral Line
–  Deep front Line
–  Arm Lines
–  A Fascia Flow Routine