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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 . 71 How does the connective tissue know what shapes to make? This is a mystery not yet solved, and "DNA" is not the answer. When animals float in water, the surrounding pressure and lack of gravity require a very different BARS than we land animals need. Fish meat is generally not tough, because sinewy tissues are not so necessary in the water. On land, however, we need strong integrity to counter gravity, ground reaction force, and the other exogenous forces we put ourselves through. The favored set of structures for the BARS in the land animal is the white sinewy stuff—the 25 forms of rope-like collagen—interspersed with the viscous gels Dr. Guimberteau brought to our attention, and all in an aqueous medium (even though we live on land, we are still about two-thirds water). Even your Achilles tendon is about 60 percent water, which is fairly amazing when you consider what it must resist in terms of tensile forces. So, when you set about lifting Steve's chest so he can breathe, you can expect a lot of cascading effects—from the change of chemistry that Amy Cuddy has shown in her research, 22 to the expansion of movement, to a change in emotional affect, right up to the place where people make life-changing choices that alter their path through life. MARVELOUS CONNECTIONS Our understanding of the body is about to go through a radical shift. Everything we "know" about how our mechanics work—that we have 600 muscles that work via tendons over separate ligaments that limit joint movement—has been a good model, but it is inadequate. In fact, these are all elements of one integrated system—the BARS or fascial system. Our old vectors-and-levers understanding of how that system works is about to go out the window. We can now see how our fascia reaches into and affects all our cellular physiology and even our genetic expression. Your children will understand the mechanics of movement in a totally different way from how you learned it. What will replace our familiar and reassuring (but wrong) Newtonian biomechanics is a much more Einsteinian relativistic and uncertain world—but one where marvelous connections get made. 23 Touch is food, and we live in a starving culture. We are going to need all our skill in touch and movement, all our understanding of the neural and chemical system, and yes, the fascial system (or BARS) as well, to answer the unique challenge of the 21st century: keeping our children embodied in a virtual world. Notes 1. For more on Dr. Ida Rolf's protocol, read her landmark text, Rolfing: The Integration of Human Structures (Rochester: Healing Arts Press, 1978). 2. T. Myers, Anatomy Trains, 3rd ed. (Edinburgh: Churchill Livingstone, 2014). 3. A. T. Still, Osteopathy Research and Practice (1910). 4. C. Stecco, Functional Atlas of the Human Fascial System (Edinburgh: Churchill Livingstone, 2015); E. Singer, Fascia of the Human Body and Their Relations to the Organs They Envelop (Philadelphia: Williams and Wilkins, 1935). 5. L. Schultz, The Endless Web (Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 1996). 6. J. Wolff, Das Gesetz der Transformation der Knochen (Berlin: Hirschwald, 1892). 7. J. Oschman, Energy Medicine (Edinburgh: Churchill Livingstone, 2000). 8. It's important to realize that no matter what you practice, you will have some unexplained successes and some unexplained failures. In my experience, one often learns more from the failures. And the eye-popping successes are less to do with your wonderful method (sorry to burst your bubble); it is more likely due to your wonderful rapport. Often, simple touch and empathy is enough to reset a troubled system, all well below our conscious technique. As psychiatrist R. D. Laing said to me in 1982 in his Glaswegian brogue: "We're being very well paid, Tom, for what neighbors used to do." 9. For more on this concept, visit www.biotensegrity.com. 10. G. Scarr, Biotensegrity (Edinburgh: Handspring Publishing, 2014). 11. T. Myers, Anatomy Trains, 3rd ed. 12. For information on past and future Fascial Research Congresses, visit www.fasciacongress.org. 13. www.fasciacongress.org. 14. For more detail on the difficulties and specifics of fascial nomenclature, including how to talk to scientists and doctors, go to www.ncbi.nlm. nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3091474 for an article with Drs. Helen Langevin and Peter Huijing. 15. J. C. Guimberteau, Architecture of Human Living Fascia (Edinburgh: Handspring Publishing, 2015); P. Huijing, "Intra-, Extra-, and Intermuscular Myofascial Force Transmission of Synergists and Antagonists: Effects of Muscle Length as well as Position," International Journal of Mechanics in Medicine and Biology 2, no. 4 (2002): 3–8; J. van der Wal, "The Architecture of Connective Tissue as a Parameter for Proprioception," International Journal of Therapeutic Massage & Bodywork 2, no. 4 (2009): 9–23; C. Stecco, Functional Atlas of the Human Fascial System (Edinburgh: Churchill Livingstone, 2015). 16. www.fascial-fitness.de/en. 17. For fabulous visuals of the microscopic level of BARS, look at Drew Berry's Ted Talks or find his animations online. 18. D. Ingber, "The Architecture of Life," Scientific American (January 1998): 48–57. 19. A. Horwitz, "Integrins and Health," Scientific American (May 1997): 68–75. 20. D. Ingber, "Mechanobiology and the Diseases of Mechanotransduction," Annals of Medicine 35 (2003): 564–77. 21. R. Becker, The Body Electric (Quill, New York: William Morrow, 1985). 22. A. Cuddy et al., "The Benefit of Power Posing Before a High-Stakes Social Evaluation," Harvard Business School Working Paper No. 13–027 (September 2012). 23. S. Braybrook, The Evolution of Biomechanics (Middletown Delaware: DM Press, 2016). Thomas Myers is the author of Anatomy Trains (Elsevier, 2014) and coauthor of Fascial Release for Structural Balance (North Atlantic, 2016). Myers studied with Dr. Ida Rolf, Moshe Feldenkrais, and Buckminster Fuller, and has practiced integrative bodywork for more than 40 years. He directs Anatomy Trains, which offers online learning, professional certifications, and short courses worldwide, available at www.anatomytrains.com. UNDERSTANDING FASCIA