Muscles, Fascia, Systems

Thinking about muscles draws our mind to a reductionist approach. Reduction breaks something magical into component parts until the magic disappears, then studies the pieces. Muscles lend themselves to that kind of separation: the biceps, triceps, quadriceps [anatomical drawing]. They fit with linear analysis, cause-and-effect thinking, strain, willpower, and injury. If you want to think in systems--messy, complex, collaborative, communicative, integrative--then fascia becomes your framework. The fascia is the connective tissue that helped old anatomists see separate muscles, then got thrown in the trash so that the anatomist could draw the ‘important stuff.’ So they literally threw away the connective tissue.

picture coming