[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]A recent tweet by a man calling himself the Grumpy Physio (I bet his patients just LOVE him) tells me that I am wasting my time in dissection and that the answer to pain and movement is in the living tissues.

Well that’s me put in my place then and this website is now closed. As if….

He is of course right in as much as the whole point of any learning is the application of the knowledge to help those that can still be helped. It’s a common idea from people who have limited exposure to an integral anatomy dissection, that somehow dead, preserved tissue can tell us nothing.

The issue that Mr Grumpy has missed is that even with an open mind, there is still a view point from which all assessment starts and from which assumptions are made. His original Tweet “Fascia is no more important than anything else” suggested not that he knows lots about everything else, but that he knows very little about the importance of fascia.

Hence the dissection work. The starting point for most therapeutic approaches will be named anatomy. No matter how much you move on from this, unless the anatomy is put in to perspective, the frame of reference will always be limited and wrong. Named anatomy tells us nothing about function, movement, pain or how to fix it.

A couple of  hundred years ago some Scotsmen decided to give Latin and Greek names to things that had previously been numbered and thereby said  “this is a big muscle on the medial side and there is another one on the other side” So Vastus Lateralis and Medialis were born. The origins and insertions became convenient points to cut them off and start another name, but have absolutely no logic most of the time. Muscles don’t attach to specific points or originate from others and the study of these specified named structures and the importance subsequently placed on them, has restricted the ability of the therapist to see body wide movement and has limited the study of them to an agonist and antagonist model, something not only limiting but against the entire laws of physics.

The tired argument that examining preserved dead tissue teaches us nothing, comes from those who continue to study the dead tissue in the same order and way that it has been done for a thousand years.

I don’t. I am not an anatomist or at least not a traditional one, but an inquisitor. My desire and intent is to go way beyond the traditional views. I want to show the old models as lacking, not to shore them up and validate ideas that don’t hold up. The connecting element to functional movement is fascia. It is the tissue that connects our ancient models and allows us to understand dysfunction.

Is it more important than other tissues? Well it’s a stupid question to posit in the first place, but certainly there is value in studying this very little studied tissue. Stiffness in fascia is like stiffness in opinion. They both lead to an inability to see the world around you in a wider context.

So here is my challenge. If you come on a dissection with me and DON’T learn something different about human functional movement, I will give you your money back. Terms and conditions apply naturally![/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]