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february / march 2018yogajournal.com.sgPHOTOS: RICK CUMMINGS; BODY ILLUSTRATION: MICHELE GRAHAM; INSET ILLUSTRATION: PROF. P. MOTTA/ DEPT. OF ANATOMY/UNIVERSITY “LA SAPIENZA”, ROME/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARYrti ll
ANATOMYHow fascia shapes us
IF I ASKED YOU what a heart is like, chances are
you’d say it’s like a pump. The lungs are often
described as “bellows,” the kidneys “a filter,” the
brain “a computer.” We tend to view the body in
mechanical terms because we live in an
industrial age—and because the body has been
described as a “soft machine” ever since the
scientist René Descartes coined the term in the
early 17th century.
So it comes as no surprise that most anatomy
books show you body parts—this muscle, that
ligament—as if we’re assembled part by part like
a car or an iPhone. But instead of timing belts and
motherboards, we have hamstrings and biceps.
An anatomy atlas is a helpful tool for learning, but
the error comes when we start thinking that
humans are actually built that way. What is
actually going on under your skin is so different
from what’s in those pictures.
Your body is much more like a plant than a
machine. We are grown from a tiny seed—a
single cell, or fertilized ovum, about the size of
a pin prick—not glued together in parts. This
seed contains sufficient instructions (given the
proper nourishment) to create a helpless,
squalling baby, who turns into an energetic
toddler, a feckless teenager, and then finally a
mature adult.
By the time we’re adults, we consist of
approximately 70 trillion cells, all surrounded by a
fluid fascial network—a kind of sticky yet greasy
fabric that both holds us firmly together, yet
constantly and miraculously adjusts to
accommodate our every movement.
The traditional biomechanical theory of the
musculoskeletal system says that muscles attach
to bones via tendons that cross the joints andDeepening your anatomical perspective refines your kinesthetic sense
by helping you feel into your entire body—which is greater than the sum of
its anatomical parts. The connective-tissue net, known popularly as fascia,
weaves those parts into one integrated whole. By Tom Myerspull bones toward each other, restricted by
other “machine parts” called ligaments. But all
these anatomical terms, and the separations
they imply, are false. No ligaments exist on their
own; instead they blend into the periosteum—
vascular connective tissue that serves as cling-
wrap around the bones—and the surrounding
muscles and fascial sheets. What this means is
that you weren’t assembled in different places
and glued together—rather, all your parts grew
up together within the glue.
For example, the triceps are wedded by
fascial fabric to their neighboring muscles north,
south, east, and west, as well as to the ligaments
deep in both the shoulder and elbow. If you
contract the triceps in Plank Pose, all these other
structures will have an effect and be affected.
Your whole body engages in the action—not just
your triceps, pectoral, and abdominal muscles.
The takeaway for yoga? When you do poses,
it is useful to put your attention anywhere and
everywhere in your body—not just the
obviously stretched and singing bits. A release in
your foot can help your hip; a change of your
hand position can ease your neck.Fascial function
The fluid fascial network that lives between each
cell in your body consists of bungee cord–like
fibers made mostly from collagen, including
reticulin, and elastin. These fibers run
everywhere—denser in certain areas such as
tendons and cartilage, and looser in others like
breasts or the pancreas.
The other half of the fascial network is a gel-
like web of variable mucopolysaccharides, ormucus. Basically, your cells are glued together
with snot, which is everywhere, and is more or
less watery (hydrated) depending on where it is
in the body and what condition it’s in.
All the circulation in your body has to pass
through these fibrous and mucousy webs.
Generally speaking, the denser the fibers and the
drier the mucous, the less the fascial web allows
molecules to flow through it—nourishment in
one direction and waste in the other. Yoga helps
both stretch and ease the fiber webbing, as well
as hydrate the gel, making it more permeable.
New research shows that this web of proteins
runs down through the membranes of each cell
and connects both aspects of the connective-
tissue web through the cytoskeleton to the cell
nucleus. This means that when you’re doing
yoga stretches, you are actually pulling on your
cells’ DNA and changing how it expresses itself.
Thus, the mechanical environment around your
cells can alter the way your genes function.
We’ve known for a while that the chemical
environment (hormones, diet, stress
catecholamines, and more) can do this, but these
new connections explain some of the deeper
changes we see when people start practicing
regularly.
More on that mechanical environment:
Cells are never more than four deep from your
capillaries, which excrete food, oxygen,
messenger molecules (neuropeptides like
endorphins), and more. Tension in your body—
slumping your shoulders forward, for example—
prompts the fibroblasts (the most common cells
found in connective tissue) to make more fibers
that will arrange themselves along the line of
stress. These bulked-up fascial fibers will form a...continued on page 22