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What is Fascia?

What is Fascia?

Watch as Chris Phillips, Principal of the Cotswold Academy explains what Fascia is and why it is important...


What is Fascia?

Fascia is a thin layer of nerve rich connective tissue that encases and supports all of our organs, muscles, bones, nerves and blood vessels providing internal structure that stabilises attaches and separates.

Simply put, fascia is the body’s connective tissue. It is a head to toe, inside to out, all-encompassing and interwoven system of fibrous connective tissue found throughout the body. Your fascia provides a framework that helps support and protect individual muscle groups, organs, and the entire body as a unit.

For those of you who are visual learners, you can imagine your skin is like the rind of an orange. So, if your skin is the outer layer of the orange peel, the thicker, white, fibrous layer that lies almost immediately beneath the peel would be your fascia. Just as that thicker layer surrounds the inside of the orange, the same holds true to your fascia. We all have a layer of fascia directly beneath the skin that completely envelopes the body, giving another protective barrier between the skin and the deeper soft tissue. There are 4 types of fascia; superficial, deep, meningeal and visceral.

What happens when fascia gets tight?

Healthy fascia is flexible and smooth. When it it has trauma, is stressed or over/underworked it can become tight.

If this fascia is tight it limits the functionality of the muscles that lie below the surrounding area. The muscles are unable to contract and relax optimally so we look at stretching the connective tissue. 

How to work with fascia

Clearly working with fascia is important but how and why should we adapt the way we work. Chris shares his insight into how we can start to correct fascial imbalance and enable the fascia to relax and change shape with our work. Interestingly speed is key!


Watch as Chris explores working with fascia...