There's a over abundance of information on the web, much of it good and much of it questionable. Here are a few articles relating to the body and especially the fascia, and how bodywork and massage cupping can benefit this vital system.
Fascial Fitness: Training in the Neuromyofascial Web
Consciously or unconsciously, you have been working with fascia for your whole movement career—it is unavoidable. Now, however, new research is reinforcing the importance of fascia and other connective tissue in functional training (Fascia Congress 2009). Fascia is much more than “plastic wrap around the muscles.” Fascia is the organ system of stability and mechano-regulation (Varela & Frenk 1987). Understanding this may revolutionize our ideas of “fitness.” (read more...)
Fascia as a proprioceptive organ and it's relationship to chronic pain
Fascia contains mechanoreceptors and proprioceptors. In other words, every time we use a muscle, we stretch fascia that is connected to spindle cells, Ruffini and Paccini corpuscles and Golgi organs. The normal stretching of fascia thus communicates the force of the muscle contraction and the status of the muscle regarding its tone, movement, rate of change in muscle length, and position of the associated body part to the central nervous system. (read more...)
Emotions in Motion: Myofascial Interoception
There are numerous articles in the literature dealing with the myofascial system, on the physiological, pathological, macroscopic and microscopic level; yet, we still do not have a thorough knowledge of its functions, just as there is still no shared vision of how to classify it. Many professional manual practitioners are involved in its treatment and there are many emerging therapeutic approaches. What is still missing is the awareness that the body is also emotion. The myofascial continuum is able to stimulate the areas of the brain that deal with the emotional state, and manual treatment activates the interoceptive system. To optimize myofascial treatment, a psychologist should work alongside the manual practitioner, creating a multidisciplinary team that takes into account both the physical and emotional aspects. (read more...)