The Definition of Fascia is as Follows:

"The fascia is any tissue that contains features capable of responding to mechanical stimuli. This includes everything from your tongue tongue to your blood & bones.

The fascial continuum is the result of the evolution of the perfect synergy among different tissues, liquids, and solids. They are capable of supporting, dividing, penetrating, feeding, and connecting all the districts of the body…

The continuum constantly transmits and receives mechano-metabolic information. This can influence the shape and function of the entire body."

- Foundation of Osteopathic Research and Clinical Endorsement (Bordoni et al., 2021)

• Lymph flow & drainage

• Muscular force production & tension distribution

• Structural adaption to stress

• Repair of every system and cell in the body

• The Immune System

• Emotional Stability

• Chronic pain

• Chronic inflammation

• Chronic health conditions such as osteoporosis

• Body dysmorphia

• Chronic fatigue

• Digestive issues

FASCIA & YOUR MECHANICS/MOVEMENT

Recently, health practitioners have been taking a special interest in fascia.

Fascial tissues are like a body-wide web that helps distribute tension and information across different tissues. This ensures that the entire body works together smoothly in real-time.

These layers of fascia are crucial for normal movement. They allow muscles, nerves, and blood vessels to glide over each other easily and enables organs to move and adjust as your body moves.

Fascia is also adaptable. It can change its structure in response to physical stress to better suit its environment (Bordoni et al., 2021).

Fascia surrounds every organ, muscle, bone, cell, nerve, joint, tissue, tendon and ligament in your body. Therefore, when fascia is not working correctly, quality of life declines.

Incorrect daily movement patterns can result in dysfunctional fascia. This can then cause an emotional alteration of the person. Body position stimulates emotional centres of the nervous system, and myo-fascial alterations lead to postural alterations.

This means the our posture affects our mood and it is our fascia that largely determines our posture. To take this even further, it is our movement patterns that determine the health and structure of our fascia.

Fascia participates in several key bodily functions. It helps with proprioception, which is your ability to sense your body's position in space.

Fascia also allows you to perceive pain or tissue damage aka nociception. Additionally, fascia aids in interoception, your awareness of the internal state of your body (Bordoni et al., 2021).

Incorrect fascial movement can inflame the fascia.

Health issues such as fibrosis occur when connective tissue becomes disorganised and dry.

This can result from chronic inflammation, abnormal stress on the tissues, or lack of movement.

Essentially, it’s like the fascia is turning into calcified or scar-like tissue.

This alteration can start a cycle of ongoing inflammation and heightened pain sensitivity. Connective tissue is particularly sensitive to pain triggers, even more so than muscle tissue. This means that even small irritations can cause significant pain.

Fascia can directly cause pain because it contains pain receptors. These receptors turn mechanical pressure into painful signals in the tissue that surrounds. If the pressure is off because of imbalances, these receptors can trigger pain.

They can also produce substances that inflame the surrounding area. The fascial system includes layers like the epineurium and perineurium, which have tiny nerves known as 'nervi nervorum'.

When these nerves come into contact with inflammation-causing molecules, they can lead to pain. This creates a cycle that might be at the root of chronic pain. This is something that modern day health care often fails to address.

All the fascial layers need hyaluronic acid, called hyaluronan, and various other lubricants to slip one on the other. Decreased quantity of lubrication compromises the sliding of connective tissues.

Healthcare providers consider quality of life measures such as fatigue in fascial conditions.

The fascial system plays a roll in chronic fatigue. Particularly if the disorder has persisted for several years. When the fascia becomes fibrotic, or if the tissue layers don't move smoothly, bodily movements can become difficult.

These movements may be unstable and produce more anaerobic chemicals. The central nervous system interprets these chemicals as fatigue. A common example of this is fibromyalgia.

Fibromyalgia causes poor lymphatic drainage and various symptoms related to the fascia. Fibromyalgia is not merely a condition that affects the fascia but rather a disorder driven by dysfunctional fascia.

Achieving a high quality of life includes increasing energy. The best way to increase energy is to support cellular health and to correct movement patterns.

Functional Patterns focus on enhancing your fascia to improve every aspect of your health. Fascia is crucial in preventing, managing, and even reversing chronic health conditions such as chronic pain, fibromyalgia, osteoporosis, chronic fatigue, and various immune conditions.

Our techniques and protocols aim to balance, rehydrate, and restore elasticity to your fascia. Functional Patterns movements correct fascial dysfunctions. The movements we implement foster positive adaptations in your body's health, vitality, and structure.

Research indicates that chronic inflammation, incorrect mechanical stress, and lack of correct movement are primary causes of fascial dysfunction. The body adapts to its conditions. If it frequently encounters dysfunctional movements, it may respond negatively, leading to pain, fatigue, and chronic diseases.

What Is Functional vs Dysfunctional Movement & Mechanical Stress?

To put it very simply, the body has evolved to move in a certain way. Functional Patterns is a method based upon standing, walking, running and throwing.

When you perform these movements correctly, fascia thrives. The problem is that not many people know how to perform these foundational movements well.

Functional patterns has broken down the gait cycle into its most basic components. We then to encode correct gait patterns into peoples movements through precision and repetition.

People have fairly recently developed many popular ways of moving, exercising and gaining muscle that are highly dysfunctional. These movements include the barbell deadlift and back squat.

This correlates with the increase in chronic pain, fatigue and early-onset chronic disease. A good way to tell if a movement is dysfunctional or not is the ‘gait cycle test’.

If movement does not directly make you run faster, it is likely dysfunctional. For example, back squatting 100kg will make your legs bigger, but those gains do not directly correlate to the track field. The muscles do not integrate, and the movement negatively impacts the spine.