Have you ever wondered how your muscles stay attached to your bones? Or why you have cellulite? It’s your fascia (pronounced fah-sha).

Like the marbling of a piece of steak, fascia webs your muscles and organs holding them in place that spans the entire body. Because it’s so widespread, keeping your fascia healthy is essential.

In its healthy state, fascia is stretchy and pliable. When your fascia is healthy, it is flexible enough to slide, glide, twist, and bend, pain-free.

But if you experience physical trauma, emotional trauma, scarring, or inflammation, the fascia loses its pliability. It becomes tight, restricted, and a source of tension to the rest of the body. When the fascia tightens, it adheres to the skin and muscle, which then causes bulges like cellulite and fat pockets.

A key element of fascia is our posture. Sitting down is already incorrect for your structural alignment, so then you’re hunched forward over your computer all day, there are all kinds of imbalances that happen. When we’re hunched, our fascia tries to compensate and support the lower back by holding a buildup of extra tissue in the stomach area. The same thing happens to our legs when we sit for prolonged periods of time—the thighs are flattened, which then creates fat pockets in the inner thighs and outer thighs, trapped by the tightened fascia.

Get up and walk more often and take more breaks from sitting in one position too long.

The daily wear and tear of life alter your fascia, even wearing tight clothing. These factors affect all the fascia in our body, and as a result, it reacts in such a way that it conforms to whatever pressure is being put on it, and so the bulges form.

The great news is you can retrain your fascia and rebuild it with a little discipline and the right tools.

When you work your fascia:

  • You bring more nutrients to tissues to make them healthier.
  • Improve vital functions such as breathing, digestion and evacuation.
  • You promote the proper balance between tension and compression (biotensegrity) so you can have more stability and move better.
  • You improve your posture.
  • Permits for joints to move more freely.
  • Relax muscles and allow them to slide properly.

Buy fascia tools and use them routinely either during exercise or even add to your bedtime routine. Many have heard of the fascia blaster but there are more gentle easier ways to increase fascia without much effort.