E33 - Myofascia and The Extracellular Matrix - The Tiny Stuff That Hold You Together
Each day I try to live my life in a state of curious and health. My mind allows me to learn about various topics that excite me and my body tries to personify that mindset into a healthy life. I am sure that I have said this hundreds of times, but one surefire way to enliven your life is to enliven your mind. Choose to fill the mind up with knowledge and you will upgrade your sense of self to new levels. Discover and look at the tiny "ordinary" moments around you and see that these moments are truly extradorinaiy beyond measure.
In this weeks episode I want to dive into the world of the fasica... mainly the myofascia. While also touching on how it relates the ECM or Extracellular Matrix.
Rate, Review, and Subscribe on:
iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, SoundCloud
Take control of your mind and body. We humans are a crazy creatures endowed with crazy powers. None more powerful that our ability to think and move. Our mobile bodies allow for our mind to be mobile. Our mobile bodies allow us to share what is inside our mind and put our imagination into reality. Movement breaks down into the bones, muscles, tendons, ligaments, and the nervous system. However, this list is missing a major player in the game... the fascia. Fascia is the connective tissue that connects every part of the body together. It connects bones to bones, muscles to muscles, muscles to bone so on and so on. So yes the tendons and ligaments are fascia, but for this episode I want to talk more about the myofascia. This is the fascia that surrounds, supports, and binds the muscles together. Let's learn about it to appreciate it, understand it, and control it.
Why am I focusing on the myofascial? Because I am a yoga and mobility teacher. My mission to take the mind/motivational aspects of Beautiful Dust Specks and combine with body/movement practices of yoga/mobility/fitness. When we have pain or tight muscles we are actually experiencing tight fascia. Each morning we wake up and breath deep with a stretch. We do this because we do not move much when we sleep and this causes our fasica to get "fuzzy" as a famous YouTube video describes by Dr. Gill Hedley. The fuzz is wound up and bound up myofasica and we are slowly breaking it up as we move around. The problems come into play when we don't move around.
Modern biomechanical research says that the fascia seems to behave and adapt to our lifestyles. Just like anything else which effects and messes with this wonderful body, we need to take care of it in order for it to be the best we can be. The fascia will harden and wind up in places when the joint is not moved and it can also become over mobile in places where it is used to much. This creates a bit of a snowballing effect where the body will loosen one spot from overuse and the tighten down another spot to stabilize the bad spot. This creates imbalances in our joints and can lead to injury.
However, these negatives seem to be a bummer which may cause us to lose sight of the wonders of what is going on. You are composed of 10,000 Trillion cells that integrate and work seamlessly as a system to keep you living, breathing, thinking, moving, and being a living awesome you. This wondrous body made of cells that make up tissues that make us organs that make up system which make up you - the organism. A couple of weeks ago one of my students asked me what holds us together if all of the cells have the same outer charge on the cell membrane. At the time I did not know the answer, but now I do... the ECM.
The extracellular matrix is a crazy integrate system of support, cushioning, and stabilizing for every part of your body. The space between the stars is interstellar space and know we know that the space between your cells is intercellular space. Always remember that the true reality of the complexity of you is not comprehensible and we will never truly be able to grasp to epic reality that is us, but we can try. The body must be able to stick together so that it can move and communicate with the surrounding cells and systems. This requires the cells to secrete the ECM to connect all of the parts together. This mainly is done with collagen and the body does it well.
The connective matrix comes in all shapes and sizes while also being more dynamic that your could image. The myofascia is the one we are talking about today in greater detail. This stuff can hard, can contract, can protect, and can relax based on what is happening to the body. Every time I research and write on topics like these I am always drawn to comic books. The way I look at those wonderful characters now center on the idea that they are just ramped up versions of what we can already do. Not all of them of course, but the cool ones that I relate to. I always enjoyed the ones like Wolverine or Spider-man. Now I look back and think that I liked them because they were the most human with the most human powers. For example, Wolverine is known for his claws, but his true power is that he heals. We heal everyday. We get cut, hit, fall, broken, out of line and our body will fix us. We have super powers.
Our myofascia allows our muscles to move the bones and muscle moving bones creates movement. Movement that we humans express very well. But many of us are losing that movement by not getting out there and expressing what we have. If you are experiencing tight bodies it is because you are not using that muscle and therefore the myo is crushing you by literally binding up harder and harder until it becomes more and more difficult to move. The great news is that this is simply a choice and we can choose to move. We can choose to get on a lacrosse ball and do yoga and go for a run and lift some weights and eat good food. We can choose all of this and our body will adapt towards the good. The challenge is first to choose that you are going to choose to make a difference while also choosing to not judge where you are at right now.
You are more epic that you could ever imagine. Express that epic imagination and movement. If you want or need help reach out to me and I can help you. If you want a good starting point try my YouTube video that will show you a quick 10 minute AM and PM flow. Peace out you Beautiful Dust Specks.