I’ve been wanting to share this web article since I found it a couple weeks ago. The images are incredible – please go look now before reading any further – you can find them here.

Guess what!? Fascia researcher Jean-Claude Guimberteau compares our inner form to the complex, chaotic branchings within forest structures. He says (in a thick French accent):

“Very often people think that chaos makes no sense. But in fact if you look to a tree in your garden. Try to find a sort of order along the branches.  There is no order as humans consider order.  The branch repartition is chaotic.  It’s a disordered pattern. But it’s a tree. And it’s a perfect tree.  
 

We have to accept how our body is made with a similar architecture.”

Raise your hand if you have felt a little bit like this lately. Lot going on these days, no? 

We found this stark and stunning representation of the human nervous system while getting prepared for upcoming workshop season and couldn’t resist sharing it with you! 

I could not appreciate my good fortune. My first year at Bastyr University a classmate and massage therapist introduced me to craniosacral therapy. A few weeks into medical school her teacher offered a seminar, which several of us took–we students couldn’t get enough.

(Photo Credit: Cira Crowell)

I like to think of reconnecting to our felt sense as a re-wilding of the body: shutting off and turning away from mechanized ways of knowing and interacting, and reconnecting with ourselves and each other more organically.  

Jean-Claude Guimberteau, surgeon and fascial researcher, posits that the fascia is not just connective but that it is constitutive. His research led him to the idea that fascia is the constitutive component of the human form. 

Ahoy Somonauts! Some of you may be wondering what exactly a Somonaut is . . . Well, it's a term one of our compatriots, Gil Hedley, coined, it means "explorers of the body." Gil - the original Somonaut - has amazing fascial dissection seminars available for free viewing online at gilhedley.com 

I love this article on the Long Thoracic Nerve.  It's so clear and it helped me to understand why some of the approaches I'd found for treating shoulder issues were so helpful. Somewhere along the line I began exploring treating the lateral ribs, just anterior and inferior to the lateral border of the scapula (or just below the armpit). I began working in both the intercostal spaces and on the serratus anterior and lat.

The most recent issue of Massage and Bodywork Magazine is focusing on Fibromyalgia and pain sensitivity conditions. They are correct in emphasizing the benefits of gentle and informed hands-on work for these patients. I have linked here an article that is specifically focusing on Myofascial Release for these conditions.  The article gives a great explanation of the interaction between the fascia and the nervous system . . .

In the days after I posted the tumblr article discussing Lynda Barry's influence on some of my approaches to teaching, I came across this article in the New York Times about medical schools’ use of art as a way to cultivate students’ perceptive skills. I have long been fascinated with blending art and medicine in multiple ways and it's fun to see examples like this.