Isn’t it fascinating what all can happen when an egg and a sperm combine? It all begins with a single cell, which divides again and again, and then before you know it, we have roughly billions of them in our body.
Epithelial cells, cellular connective tissue cells, muscular cells, nerve cells become a functional united mass of tissue which are our organs, nervous system, the circulatory system and the musculoskeletal system.
And suddenly, we become something that we call human – a mass that combines body and mind.
A phenomena of our fascinating existence is how we, for the most part, can unconsciously move through space.
Our bodies are a compromise between mobility and stability. We are neither as sturdy as a house, nor as mobile as the wind.
To achieve the integrity and mobility of the human body, our creator thought up something quite special.
The extraordinary tension network of fascia.
To teach yin yoga without looking into the world of fascinating fascia - the yin tissue that is the primary physical focus in yin yoga - is like visiting Paris without viewing the Eiffel Tower.
This article describes the correlation and impact of stress on fascia tissue and how yin yoga is considered an alternative "modern" therapy due to it's physiotherapeutic approach of long held traction to work preventatively against the natural effects of stress on our bodies.
Imagine a room. Then imagine that in this room there are very dense spider webs, spun three-dimensionally in every direction, intertwining and attached to all four walls, the ceiling and the floor.
Granted, this would be a horror scene for many of us.
Next, imagine yourself entering this room and making contact with one of these webs. The resulting vibration would be felt and measured in each network and fibre. If we coloured every fibre of the web that has been affected by the contact red, the whole room would be illuminated by red spider’s webs.
The spider’s webs are the fascia in our body.
Our fascial network only began getting attention from researchers in 2003. Beforehand it had led a very shadowy existence. The fascial tissue was widely considered to be simply filling material for our bodies and nothing more.
In 2007, that all changed with the first Fascia Congress held at the Harvard Medical School in Boston headed up by leading scientists, physicians and clinical practitioners from all over the world.