2. Fascia, Development of the Support System

Though it plays such an important role in defining and unifying ourselves as a network of systems, it is more aptly considered a material rather than a living tissue. It is made up of collagen and elastin molecules that spiral in a triple strand coiled rope. It can be as fine as a spider's web or as thick as matted felt. Though it is not living tissue, it is our most sensitive and informative organ. It has three jobs in our survival success: support, protection, and communication. Fascia is the linchpin in the quest for healthy movement.

Growth and development

After conception, as the cells begin to replicate, they begin the process of definition and distinction. Early in a cell’s development the possibilities are vast. It could become a skin cell, or a liver cell, these are what we call stem cells. Each time it divides, it reduces its vast potential by half. Each time it splits it narrows the possible outcomes. It continues to split and refine until it ultimately defines itself. Each split is dictated by the cell’s own internal environment and the environment of the surrounding cells. Split by split, eventually at a certain point in the division process that cell becomes sufficiently defined that it can only become itself. Liver cell is a liver cell, skin cell is a skin cell. 

One of the earliest differentiations gives us three broad types of cell: endoderm, ectoderm, and mesoderm. Ectoderm becomes brain, nervous system, and skin. Endoderm becomes the digestive system and glands. Mesoderm becomes muscle, bone, blood, and connective tissue, ie., Fascia. 

As endoderm is busy becoming the internal organs and ectoderm is busy becoming the brain, nervous system, and skin, mesoderm creates the mechanical structure we call the body: bone, muscle, fascia. It becomes the housing and vehicle for the squishy bits. 

Bone cells accumulate and pile up into a growing spiral of tiny stacked pyramids. As the bones grow, they drag along with them the cells that will become the muscles and the fascia. As this “soft tissue” gets tugged in a particular direction it proliferates, growing more cells in the direction of drag.  As the bones grow outward and the organs grow and differentiate, the fascia takes its shape by being stretched, surrounding, encasing, and differentiating the outward growing forces. Fascia has a constant draw inward into itself, like a rubber band. 

This opposition of forces, bones and organs growing outward and fascia having a constant draw inward gives fascia its first job: support. Fascia hugs and holds the organs in place with respect to its neighbors. It keeps the spleen and liver in place. Keeps the intestines and bladder from dropping out the bottom. 

It also helps keep the bones in the joints. Imagine an elastic band in a figure 8 shape. Now insert two sticks: one stick into each loop. At the crossing it forms a joint. That is how the fascia holds the bones in place. It also accounts for the stretch and release, recycling of energy we leverage when we move most efficiently.  

But what about the muscles? Muscle tissue is made of groups of fibers differentiated by none other than… more fascia! Fascia groups muscle fibers together in larger and larger collections until it encases an entire muscle. You can look at it the other way also. In your understanding of fascia you can look at it as the netting that encompasses the entire organism and then differentiates into smaller and smaller subsets. It divides as needed for the body to operate efficiently and effectively. 

How does it know what goes where? Again, it responds to need. Just like it “grew” by being dragged along by the growing bones, fascia organizes based on the forces acting on it. Rather than thinking of fascia growing around an organ, it is easier to imagine the fascial web as a preexisting potential and the organ developing within it. As the organ tissue becomes defined, so does the fascia. It always has an inward draw, but it organizes its growth in response to direction of force. In this way it “supports” the structures that grow within it. 

But it also develops in response to the needs of a body in motion. 

The human organism doesn't reinvent itself from scratch with every new embryo. It works off of a proven template (with the obvious necessary mistakes that allow for evolution and adaptation). But, basically, it works off of a template. Our body, its structure and function was shaped by our need to survive in our given environment. Air quality, water, gravity, landscape, the need to feed and fight and breed and build, all shaped the body we know of. 

In our quest for efficiency, our body grouped not just subsets of muscle fibers to streamline and refine neurological messaging to the muscles, it also defined groups of muscle into commonly used categories. Muscles that were always being used in concert with one another in response to gravity and the most efficient navigation of this body through the environment and within the given gravitational field. 

We arrived at what we now know as fascial lines. These identifiable pathways of denser fascial fibers indicate paired sets of cooperative and oppositional tension. It is the appropriate regulation of tension along these pairs that allows for efficient human movement. 

The key thing to remember is that fascia develops based on need. It grows to support the organs and structures within the human body at rest, but it also develops to support human movement. Not just the structures as they move but the most efficient expression of movement itself. 

Support is only one of a number of tasks fascia will handle for you. Along with the basics of support and differentiation, fascia is also responsible for protection; both of the structure and the functionality of the body. Perhaps most interestingly, fascia is also a primary vehicle for communication. It handles messaging in both the physical body’s response to change, load and gravity as well as communication in the constant conversation between you and the external world.