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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 . 67 tendon, the medial collateral ligament— and the idea of fascia as a system pretty much dropped off the radar for most professionals in the physiotherapy, massage, chiropractic, and rehabilitation fi elds in the 20th century. So, Ida Rolf did not "invent" fascia, but she was responsible for tuning a lot of people in to the fascial story. Once I get my teeth into something, I want to know all about it, and Dr. Louis Schultz, Ida's anatomist and author of The Endless Web (North Atlantic Books, 1996) and Out in the Open (North Atlantic Books, 1999), was really my door into the fascinating world of the anatomy and physiology of fascia. His idea that we are "lifelong embryos" 5 really seized my imagination: we use the adaptive nature of our fascial system— what we now know as connective tissue "plasticity" and "remodeling"—to handle the chronic and acute forces through the shifting priorities of our days and lives. Our fascia does its physiological best to adapt to accidents, surgeries, and our own bad habits and excesses, not to mention our modern sedentary lifestyle that weighs on our ability to move well in gravity. 6 In kinesiology texts, we learn about Newton's laws of motion, inertia, vectors, and three types of levers, but is that how our biomechanics really work? God (or your mom, or Darwin—choose your source) makes joints that last longer than the fi nest metal, plastic, or ceramic joint replacements we can invent. How does that happen? In the '70s, there was very little written material about fascia. We understood it at fi rst as "the plastic wrap around the muscles" and asserted that "fascia connects everything." It was what the hunters called the "blue" or "silver" skin under the regular skin, and constituted the gristle and the sinews in common parlance—the white stuff in meat. Honestly, we ascribed all kinds of magical properties to the fascia in terms of energy and spiritual enlightenment. 7 And we all had our miraculous tales of healing—as we all do, regardless of our modality. 8 Some of these ideas really did turn out to be true. I had studied previously with Buckminster Fuller and was part of bringing his engineering concept of tensegrity to bear on fascia's role in holding up the body. 9 Understanding the dynamic balance between tension and compression (the yin and yang of biomechanics) is still crucial to taking on new holistic strategies among muscle, bone, and fascia, and tensegrity is still, to my mind, the best way to understand the dynamics of human structure. 10 UNDERSTANDING FASCIA Fascia is not new; awareness of fascia is. Dr. Andrew Taylor Still (1828–1917), "the Old Doctor" (as he was known colloquially by his students and patients), was the founder of osteopathy. Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images images@ wellcome.ac.uk. The "cotton candy" of myofascia in the muscle—a picture of the perimysium among the muscle fi bers from Rolfer Ron Thompson (above), and a picture of the epimysium around the outside of the vastus lateralis in the quadriceps (below). Images courtesy Thomas Myers.