11/18/2025
Fascia - The Fabric of your Universe
(your body)
Structured, sticky, microtubles of water that hold you together (it’s how your muscles and organs are held in place) and facilitates communication in your body. There are many ways to understand the human body, and none of them tells the whole story on its own. We inherit different languages of healing from various cultures, sciences, and traditions, each one describing the same living terrain from its own unique perspective. Some people become stuck believing there is only one correct map. But the body has never lived by a single map. It is a crossroads of systems, histories, pathways, chemistry, memory, and electricity. It takes a multilingual healer to truly see it.
In Western anatomy, fascia is the continuous fabric that surrounds, suspends, and connects all structures. Researchers such as Stecco, Langevin, and Schleip have demonstrated that fascia is richly innervated, mechanically responsive, and deeply intertwined with proprioception, interoception, and autonomic function. In Eastern medicine, the same connective web is understood through meridians, which are considered rivers of communication that run through tissue planes, muscular seams, and fascial corridors. These are two different words from two different cultures, yet they speak about the same underlying structure.
The lymphatic system, described in physiology as a fluid network for immunity and detoxification, feels like a tide that moves or stalls in response to our inner state. Myofascial adhesions are described mechanically as restrictions; however, in somatic and energetic traditions, they are experienced as blockages, stagnations, and areas where the body has held unresolved tension. Both perspectives recognize the same truth: the body needs flow, and stagnation comes with consequences.
Emotions also have multiple lenses. Neurobiology speaks of vagal tone, interoceptive signaling, stress chemistry, and autonomic shifts. Traditional Chinese Medicine associates emotional patterns with specific organ systems, describing grief as a lung condition, anger as a liver issue, and fear as a kidney concern. Ayurveda describes these tendencies through the doshas and elemental imbalances. Trauma science describes them as somatic imprints and unfinished survival responses that take shape in muscle tone and breath patterns. All of these perspectives describe how the body holds experiences and reflects what we have lived through.
Even the chakras, often dismissed as symbolic, align closely with anatomical hubs in the body. These regions correspond with nerve plexuses, glands, fascial membranes, vasculature, and the interoceptive pathways that inform emotion and meaning. When someone feels tightness in the chest, a knot in the gut, or a lump in the throat, they are not speaking figuratively. They are describing true embodied sensation shaped by physiology and emotion.
Bodyworkers live in the space where these worlds meet. We feel fascia shift under slow, patient pressure. We feel lymphatic rivers begin to move again with gentle redirection. We believe that organ mobility returns as breath and presence create space. We feel the nervous system settle from a state of vigilance into one of safety. We feel emotions rise and soften in tissue that has held them far too long. None of this is mysticism. This is what happens when touch meets anatomy and anatomy meets the story of a human life.
The issue is not that there are too many frameworks. The issue is believing that only one can be correct. Healing thrives in the integrative space where research meets intuition, where tradition meets science, where fascia meets meridian, where lymph meets energy, and where the nervous system meets the stories woven into our tissues. Bodyworkers blend these perspectives every day with remarkable outcomes, because we are not limited to a single language for understanding the human body.
We are translators of the body’s many dialects. We listen to the places where systems intersect and stories converge. We honor all the ways healing can speak.
