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 made of tough collagen fibers 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 fascia. 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 fascia wraps around muscles and organs to help them stay in place and keep their shape.

When in a healthy relaxed state this fibrous tissue has a wavy appearance. As it becomes dysfunction it can get pulled taunt in places.

Fascia can get bound up and cause muscular pain. Conditions like plantar fasciitis are caused by bound up fascia. When this connective tissue 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.

what is 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.

When I was in massage school my anatomy teacher told use to think of a grapefruit when we think of fascia. The tough white material that separates the sections of the grapefruit are like fascia. It divides and supports the section in the fruit just as fascia helps support your muscles and organs.

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.