Issue link: https://www.massageandbodyworkdigital.com/i/720675
" " What we see in the book's photographs and accompanying videos is both simple and complex; chaotic, yet organized. It's fascia in its living form—much different from the often minimalistic illustrations depicted in most anatomy books or its hardened and lifeless form seen up close in cadaveric explorations. The results of Guimberteau's look at "living" fascia are forcing clinicians and researchers far and wide to think differently about this mysterious tissue. Fascia— once considered a nuisance to anatomists who would discard it in favor of getting to the "more glamorous organs, muscles, nerves, etc." 1 —is now the sweetheart of manual therapy research. A CLOSER LOOK Guimberteau, a past president of the French Society for Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, has spent four decades learning the workings of the human body. But it was his curiosity 20 years ago that propelled him to look closer at the tissue he was addressing in the operating room. With his patients' consent, Guimberteau started using a digital endoscope during surgical procedures to see and record exactly what was happening with the tissue he was working through and around. The resulting photographs and videos are groundbreaking in their depiction of the living fascial system and the body in motion. They were also what forced Guimberteau to challenge his own certainties of anatomical order and enter a world of "fractals and apparent chaos." The response to his work from clinicians, educators, and researchers was immediate. Bodyworker Thomas Myers noted that seeing Guimberteau's "new system" forced him to rethink some fundamental premises, and that not only have his ideas and teachings changed since, but so has his "touch." 2 James Oschman, PhD, says Guimberteau's work is "taking us on an unbelievably exciting voyage into a new and uncharted world" that is an adventure "as thrilling as any experienced by the great explorers of new continents." 3 And "The most important, for me, is that now we can say that the effect of manual therapy is mechanically observable, indubitable, and undeniable on both the extracellular fibrillar system, but also on mobility and cell shape." Jean-Claude Guimberteau, MD noted researcher and biotensegrity expert Stephen Levin, MD, says: "What Dr. Guimberteau describes in the constantly changing microvacuoles and microfibers is entirely consistent with the biotensegrity model and is occurring at every level of organization, at every scale and across scales … I see nothing but tensegrities in Dr. Guimberteau's marvelous endoscopic demonstrations; he has breathed life into a theoretical model." 4 Some of the insights of human fascia gleaned from Guimberteau's work include the premise that everything is connected, that there are no empty spaces, and that cells are not found in all places. Further findings show that connective tissue does more than just "connect" things—it's actually constitutive: a premise that takes us away from merely hanging tissue on the skeletal body. C h e c k o u t A B M P 's l a t e s t n e w s a n d b l o g p o s t s . Av a i l a b l e a t w w w. a b m p . c o m . 51