Fascia Research Update

What is new and relevant for manual therapists

by Robert Schleip PhD

This DVD produced in August 2011, provides an animated lecture covering the latest news from the international field of fascia research. A Rolfing instructor and Feldenkrais Teacher, Robert Schleip became fascianated by the scientific exploration of fascia and its manipulation.

This 40 minutes video presentation covered topics of:

  • The rediscovery of fascia in academic science

  • Surprising fascial force transmissions

  • Elastic recoil: from antelopes to homo sapiens

  • Fascia fitness: theoretical foundations

  • Fascial tonus regulation and the Autonomic Nervous System

  • The role of the lumbar fascia in low back pain

  • Fascia as a sensory organ

  • Delayed onset muscle soreness and fascia

  • How fibroblasts respond to different manual treatment protocols?

  • Adhesions: how much force is needed to loosen them?

Please Note: This video-DVD is formatted as a mp4 file, which is configured to play on Windows as well as Apple computers, but not on conventional DVD Players.

 
   

$22

 

 

Watch a video with Robert Schleip explaining fascia

 

Dr. Schleip recommends reading the Wikipedia entry on Fascia if you would like to learn the basics.

 

See also
About the author

Robert Schleip PhD, is an International Rolfing Instructor and Fascial Anatomy Teacher. Robert has been an enthusiastic certified Rolfer since 1978. He holds on M.A. degree in psychology and is a Certified Feldenkrais Teacher since 1988.

Schleip is named as a "born-again scientist" by Science Magazine. While he was teaching Rolfing in early 2000, he began to question the theory behind myofascial release. He found there was a lack of scientific basis in the explanation of fascia and myofascial release. So he began to research in the area of fascia and turned to the scientific literature on fascia. He discovered that some of the Rolfing and myofascial release dogma were not well founded. For example, in myofascial release theory, it assumes that if we apply enough force to an area of fascia, the fascia will lengthen and remove tension. But the science says you need to apply a ton of pressure to make these changes.

The literature also provided another insight: fascia is highly innervated, and this might explain why manipulating the tissue could release and ease pain. Dr Schleip knows that there were many gold mines waiting. So he stopped teaching bodywork and pursued a scientific career.

But it wasn't easy, 10 professors turned Schleip down before one at Ulm University gave him a chance, but no lab space. Schleip spent his first year conducting experiments in his kitchen and in a storage room he rented from a nearby pharmacy. He began to study the ability of fascial tissue to contract, a property that could play a role in stiffness and lower back pain.

He earned his Ph.D. with honors in 2006 at the age of 52, and shortly thereafter established the Fascia Research Project at Ulm University and has a lab of his own. He's continuing his work on fascial contraction which won him the Vladimir Janda Award for Musculoskeletal Medicine. He was co-initiator and organizer of the first Fascia Research Congress at the conference center of Harvard Medical School in Boston, USA in 2007, and the second fascia research congress at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in 2009.

Adapted from Science Magazine article

Visit Robert Schleip's website containing lots of articles www.somatics.de 

Visit Fascia Research Group www.fasciaresearch.de