The Importance of Fascia

By Hope Matthews and Chris Renfrow

Exercise is not a thing that we are supposed to “do.” It is movement that should be an inherent, integrated, and natural activity in our lives. To be human is to move. We are born knowing how to move our bodies. Modern humans have drifted so far away from our instinctive natural movement that we now need to schedule “exercise” into our lives.

The American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) says we need to exercise for twenty minutes a day. What does that mean? What kind of exercise? Many of us have enslaved ourselves to the gym, spending countless hours in a variety of classes and on treadmills, elliptical machines, recumbent bikes, and other pieces of equipment that have left us with pain and injury, little result, and the insurmountable feeling of going nowhere. What if there’s more to fitness than just exercise and weight loss, counting calories, or building muscles and losing fat? The missing ingredient is a type of tissue that we have overlooked—a tissue that plays a vital role in everything we do, feel, and think: It’s called fascia.

Fascia is an all-encompassing tissue, running from head to toe. It weaves its way throughout our bodies, connecting, innervating, and protecting every muscle, bone, tendon, ligament, nerve, vessel, organ, and gland. In fact, it connects every part of our bodies, right down to each and every cell. Its fibrous material varies in thickness; the Achilles tendon, for example, is similar to dense fascia, while the collagen matrix of the skin on our face is much thinner. Fascia is similar to connective tissue in that it is partly made up of collagen protein. But it’s more than that. It is a softer, flexible tissue that has the tensile strength to keep us physically together and make us whole.

The complex, dynamic nature of this tissue is just starting to be appreciated. Until very recently, fascia was thought of merely as a protector, insulator, and packing material for our muscles and organs. But a revolutionary new body of research has demonstrated that fascia is actually a communication network that transmits energy, frequency, and vibration to all organs, tissues, cells, and matter in the body in a way that’s similar to how the fiber optic cables used in computer networking and communication work. This aspect of fascia exists because of a type of gel-like collagen protein known as a liquid crystalline matrix. This dynamic matrix is the medium through which all biological material in the body communicates.

The liquid crystalline matrix of fascia stores and retains frequencies, including memories. In fact, massive amounts of memories and information are stored in the body, not just in the brain. Fascia holds our life stories, including emotional traumas that become imprinted, physicalized memories within our tissues—imprints that literally hold us back from living and moving optimally. Thoughts that have become too rigid, critical, or extreme also become imprinted on the fascia. This imprinting causes the fascia’s liquid crystalline matrix to morph into a non-pliable and energetically stagnant substance. Over time this leads to scaring of the tissue, which blocks both movement and energy. This impairment has a cascading effect across the entire body, not just involving movement and mechanics of the tissue but also energy flow, electrical conduction of impulses, and optimal hydration. The result is limited movement, pain, and increased susceptibility to disease.

There is also a quantum intelligence stored in our etheric or finer bodies outside of the dense, physical body. The entire Universe is made of and communicates on an intricate web of fascia. Ancient philosophies use terminology like subtle matter and aura to describe what is outside of the body, but there is much more to it than that. In our experience, these materials are forms of fascia and have the same communication and memory capabilities as our internal fascia. These abilities explain why and how information travels between all beings. This information is not only in our contemporary timeline, it transcends the present and dips into the past, and the future—and possibly even into alternate timelines or universes.

In summary, fascia plays a vital role in our health and well-being by physically stabilizing and aligning our posture, optimally hydrating our tissues, and distributing nourishment and hormones throughout the entire body. The discovery of its liquid crystalline matrix is the missing link to our bodies’ ability to communicate and function optimally as whole beings and as part of a greater whole known as the universe. The health of your fascia dictates whether you are skinny or fat, stiff or flexible, painful or pain-free, stuck or unstuck, healthy or unhealthy, happy or sad, present or indifferent, and connected or disconnected. Every thought you think, every emotion you feel, and every move your make impacts your fascia, which fortunately can always be morphed and changed for the better.

At the Center for Intuitive Movement Healing, we’ve developed a trademarked method called FasciaRehab that integrates many modalities in reconditioning fascia and releasing stored information on the physical cellular level as well as in the emotional body, the mental body, and even the spiritual body outside the physical planes. You can reclaim your inherent ability to see, feel, and use the properties of this internal and external material. To learn more, visit the center’s website at www.thecenterforimh.com.