Fascia

Is only in the last past few decades that the fascia has been seen as an organ with its own intelligence, working in communication with the whole body, with the qualities of adaptability and responsiveness.

The fascia is a crucial type of connective tissue, forming a continuous, three-dimensional web that surrounds, supports, and separates muscles, organs, blood vessels, and nerves, allowing for movement while also transmitting force and providing sensory feedback. It’s made of collagen and water, acts like a biological spring, and is essential for flexibility, strength, and overall body function, but can become restricted with inactivity or trauma, causing pain and limiting mobility. 

The fascia was studied by the founder of osteopathic medicine, Andrew Taylor Still (1828-1917), who wrote: “The fascia gives one of, if not the greatest problems to solve as to the part it takes in life or death. It belts each muscle, vein, nerve and all organs of the body. It is almost a network of nerves, cells and tubes running to and from it. It is crossed and filled with, no doubt, millions of nerve centres and fibres to carry on the work of secreting and excreting fluid, vital and destructive. By its action we live and by its failure we shrink, swell or die.”

Tensegrity is a vital phenomenon of the fascia. This term, described by Fuller (1961), derives from ‘tension’ and ‘integrity’ or ‘tensional integrity’, which represent the construction of geodesic domes, like the figure of the Needle Tower.

In a tensegrity structure, struts (compression elements) are held apart by a network of cables under tension (tensional elements). The continuity of the tensional elements provides three-dimensional support for the discontinuous compression elements. Tension and compression interact three-dimensionally in dynamic balance, enabling maximum strength while using minimum mass and energy.

If an external force is distributed through the structure, causing it to deform, it will automatically return to its original shape once the force is removed.

In their efficiency and nonlinear viscoelasticity properties, tensegrity structures, like the human body with the fascia, is able to resemble the self-stabilising mechanisms at work.

The continuity of the soft-tissues, comprised of ligaments, fascia, membranes and muscles, as tensional elements, defy gravity by providing spacing and support through balanced reciprocal tension.

The dynamic tensional network, so formed, gives living organisms the capacity to continually adapt to the demands of movement, gravity and both internal and external spatial environments. A change in one area of this dynamic unity affects the whole.

Fascial osteopathy:

Fascial osteopathic treatment can be performed with a gentle approach (such as balanced ligamentous tension techniques) and/or with a structural approach (such as soft-tissue techniques and myofascial release).

Structural approach (such as soft-tissue techniques and myofascial release techniques)

The principle of those techniques works with the tensegrity of the fascia. They create a stimulation of the inflammatory cells’ production in order to regenerate a strong and healthy connective tissue.

Balanced ligamentous tension (BLT) treatment

Balanced ligamentous tension is a gentle osteopathic approach based on the theory that ligaments maintain joints in a balanced position for normal function.

In a state of injury or ‘somatic dysfunction’, this tension becomes unequal, creating a new, pathological ‘normal’.

BLT aims to restore the original equilibrium by: 

• Resetting proprioception: helping the body’s internal sensors (proprioceptors) within the ligaments return to their natural range;

• Innate Healing: utilising the body’s self-correcting mechanisms to resolve the dysfunction once a point of balance is achieved. 

References:

• Bordoni B, Bordoni, G. (2015) ‘Reflections on osteopathic fascia treatment in the peripheral nervous system’, J Pain Res, 8:735-40. 

• Chila, A.G. and AOA (2015) ‘Foundations of Osteopathic Medicine’, in Contigliani, R., Marasco, M.L. (ed.), USA: Lippincott & Wilkins.

• Lindsay, M. and Robertson, C. (2008), Fascia – Clinical Application for Health and Human Performance, Delmar (ed).

• Paoletti, S. (2006) The Fasciae, Eastland Press (ed.).

• Stecco, C., Hammer, W., Vleeming, A., De Caro, R. (2015), Churchill Livingstone Elsevier (ed.).

• Turner, S. (2024), Balanced Lihamentous Tension in Oseopathic Practice, Handspring (ed).