Strolling under the skin by Dr Jean Guimberteau
This 25-minute DVD contains some of the most fascinating images of living fascia ever developed. Dr. Jean Claude Guimberteau is a plastic and hand surgeon who has been researching the body’s ‘sliding system’ that allows fascial planes to move on each other. The beauty and excitement of this film is that is living fascia in a living person, and so beautifully filmed that no one — lay or practitioner — can see this video unmoved. The sheer poetry of the images is enough, but you also learn how the collagen, ground substance water and fat work together to make the ‘sliding system’ — the body’s interconnected system of loose connective tissue.
Consider a membranous envelope that glistens with a slick lubricating fluid. A continuous envelope that extends from head to toe, front to back, surrounding every organ, every blood vessel, every nerve, every bone, and every muscle. An envelope that changes thickness as it extends from region to region. Its purpose: to support and lubricate. An example of its function: to prevent a muscle from catching on its neighbouring muscles as it contracts.
Anatomists have conceptually broken this continuous sheath of tissue into small pieces, ignoring its continuity, and give the same structure different names as it passes from one part of the body to the next. The tendency of anatomists to break fascia down into little pieces, only serves to confuse and disorient us. It is the continuity of this lubricating, supportive, fascial envelope that enables us to better understand the fundamental principle –Unity in Function.
Microscopically, fascia is composed of collagen and elastin. Collagen is arranged in tiny micro-tubules. Form follows function. Tubules must transport something. That something is generally considered to be “tissue fluids.”
Blood vessels, nerves and meridians travel within the fascia to arrive at their designated end organs. In turn, fascia itself receives a profound number of nerve endings. The fascia is a fundamental structure in which the circulatory system and nervous system converge.
Clips of this DVD can be seen on U-tube.
“All… nerves go to and terminate in that great system, the fascia.” – AT Still MD