What is Fascia?

what is fascia

You may be wondering what is fascia anyway? Many types of massage therapy are based on the idea of loosening restricted fascia. Let's look at what it is and how it causes pain.

Fascia is a form of connective tissue that runs throughout the body from head to toe. It is an uninterrupted web of tissue that wraps around muscles and organs giving them support and helping them to hold their shape. It also acts as a shock absorber.

There are two layers of fascia. The first is superficial fasica. If you've ever removed the skin from a piece of chicken you've see the thin white layer of tissue between the skin and the chicken meat. This is superficial fascia. It's very strong and flexible.

Below that is the denser deep fascia. This fasica wraps around muscles and organs to help them stay in place and keep their shape.

Fascia can get bound up and cause muscular pain. Conditions like plantar fasciitis are caused by bound up fascia. When fascia gets stuck or bound, it pulls on the muscles and organs it surrounds. Because fascia is all connected it also pulls on other areas of fascia.

Bound up fascia can cause pain locally or pain in areas not near the area of dysfunction. Consider what happens when you touch a spider's web. When you touch one area of the web even ever so slightly the entire web shifts. The same thing happens in your fascia. A bound up stuck area of fascia will affect the entire web.

Now that we've answered the question, What is fascia? you can more closely look at the types of massage therapy that works with fascia like, CranioSacral Therapy, myofascial release, LooyenWork, active release technique, and structural energetic therapy.