26/10/2016
Fascinating Fascia.
Since I started training with my current teacher in tai chi, wing chun kung fu and chi kung, my vocabulary and knowledge was enriched with the phenomenon of fascia, also known as connective tissue. Of course I had heard of it before, but the attention it gets in training methods (in my years of training karate, taekwondo and even in aikido the word was not mentioned once!) for basically any kind of movement is not as great as it deserves. As I’ve learned through practice and proper instructions from my teacher, the power, fluidity in combination with firm grounding that tai chi practitioners are renowned for comes for a great deal from training methods that focus on the fascial system instead of muscle power. Of course there are plenty other factors that separate a good tai chi practitioner from the other.
In this video Thomas Myers explains how a reductionist view in anatomy and kinesiology has given us the following idea. If we determine and understand the construction of the individual parts of our body (or any system) and we put the together we understand the whole. This idea has led to an underestimation of the role fascia has in our body and how we can train more effectively to keep a healthy body…and a healthy mind, which is also directly linked with supple, well hydrated and un-knotted fascial tissue.
Enjoy!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ykzrzNszpo
Here's a snippet of Thomas Myers from Anatomy Trains explaining human movement in integrated terms. It's great to see people starting to embrace the concept ...