Caring for Your Fascia

Fascia in the news

Fascia has been a popular topic in the somatic world lately, so whether you’ve been to a yoga or massage studio, or to a gym, you’ve likely been hearing something about it.  It is commonly explained as the “connective tissue” that keeps your muscles and organs in place. But connecting and containing things is only a tiny aspect of what it does and is. In my next series of posts, I want to share something of my quest to understand my fascia—a quest that is leading me to a revised awareness of what bodies are as well as a revised way of understanding how bodies move.

The first chapter of my 2018 book, Body Mandala, is about fascia—what I understood about it at that time.  This post is a slight re-working of material from that chapter.  It’s where I began—somewhat in the middle of the story—so I invite you to begin there as well. 

Changing how we work out

With news about the nature of fascia spreading as it has done in the last two decades, we have begun to see the fitness industry making some changes. Isolation of muscle groups, repetitive joint actions, and training as hard as possible have begun to look pretty old school. This doesn’t mean that conventional exercises that target strength, coordination and flexibility have no merit, but rather that conditioning fascia requires a different approach to training.

Fascia is responsible for your body’s resilience

Fascia’s natural endowment is to bounce. When you see a happy child with her whole body engaged in play, you’re looking at healthy fascia. You see springiness, rebound, and responsiveness. Another hallmark of healthy fascia is movement that curves and glides You will recognize this in yourself on days when life seems smooth and graceful. But after being in bed with a flu for a while, moving around again feels stiff and awkward. That’s the downside of fascia: immobility changes it chemically, making it thicken and harden.  The less mobile you are, the more brick-like you become.

Healthy Fascia rebounds and adapts

Movement is the pump

Similar to a sea sponge, fascia thrives when water pumps into and out of it. The means of hydration is movement. When you sit for long periods, when your gait is more plodding than vibrant, your fascia literally dries out, stiffening along lines of use. So, the more repetitive and restricted the choreography of your daily life, the more you reduce your capacity to adapt to unexpected movement demands like tripping over a curb or a cat.

We reverse immobility by moving, of course.  But we must move in ways that have been shown  to squeeze fluids into and out of our fascial sponges.  One of these ways is to engage in unfamiliar movements. For example, if you’re a cyclist you’ll benefit from joining a rock-climbing gym or taking a salsa class.  Such activities take your legs, hips and spine in wildly different directions from the repetitive forward motion dictated by your bike, while pumping fluids into underserved areas of your fascial body.

If your thing is weightlifting, learn to tap dance—think Gregory Hines. It won’t be easy: you’ll have to transition from the familiar sensation of compressive strength to a different kind of strength that emerges out of spaciousness, bounce and rhythmic variety.

Programs like the Feldenkrais Method that involve slow micromovements hydrate deep crannies of our bodies, places we skip over in the rush of daily life. This type of engagement with your body not only benefits your fascia but also boosts your body awareness.

Can it be that our fascial bodies are untapped reserves of self-expression, healing and wisdom?

 © 2025 Mary Bond

Adapted from Chapter 1, “Fascia, Organ of Embodiment,” Body Mandala.