FIND IT FEEL IT USE IT

Every movement chapter is equipped with three distinct sections:

Find it! Gives you a map for the fascial line and helps you locate the muscles on your body. Feel it! Helps your brain understand the muscles and their relationship along the line and

how it feels to connect the muscle contractions.

Use it! As it implies, gives you a movement to use the muscles along the line.

We begin the movement chapters with the arm lines. Because the arm lines are so specifically inherent in most movement, learning them first will make every line easier to apply. Similarly, the Deep Front Line or core, is necessary for stabilizing the spine in ALL movement, therefore, we will examine the DFL second.Then work- ing our way through each of the other fascial lines will be as easy as connecting dots!

The Wings - The four Arm Lines - Superficial & Deep Front (SFAL, DFAL) and Superficial & Deep Back (SBAL, DBAL)

The Arm Lines give humans their wings. They too are involved or entangled with all the fascial lines making it difficult to discuss movement without them. All four arm lines begin (or end) at the rib- cage, hooking the arms to the body, making them important for skeletal balance and movement. Movement is possible without the arms, but much more efficient and fluid if the arms are involved.

The Guardian Angel - The Deep Front Line (DFL)

The muscles along this line are closest to your bones and are our main source of stability from the deepest level. All the other lines surround it and are even entangled with it. No line works independently of the DFL. It’s always somehow involved in move-

ment because the muscles along the DFL are directly attached to the bones and when you move your body, your bones are moving with you. This line weaves its way up the bones away from gravity keeping your spine upright and your belly flat. It is delicate and graceful. If it had its own spirit it would look much like an angel dressed in a flowing white

‘A Silken Tent’ She is in a field a silken tent At midday when a sunny summer breeze

Has dried the dew and all its ropes relent

So that in guys it gently sways with ease,

And its supporting central cedar pole, That is its pinnacle to heavenward And signifies the sureness of the soul, Seems to owe naught to any single cord,

By countless silken ties of love and thought

To everything on earth the compass round,

And only by one’s going slightly taut In the capriciousness of summer air Is of the slightest bondage made aware

Taken with kind permission from Anatomy Trains, a quote from a poem by Robert Frost describing the core...

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gown elevated above the ground and ascending gracefully toward the sky. Since the ac- tion of most of these muscles is to move away from gravity, if you are standing vertical to the ground, it makes sense that when they are contracting and working together they could quite possibly lift you up.

The Guards! - The Peripheral Lines - Superficial Front Lines (SFLs), Superficial Back Lines (SBLs), Lateral Lines (LLs)

“Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down.”

Surrounding the core are three peripheral lines - SFLs, SBLs and LLs.

Imagine a Fisher Price Weeble. I had to search for one and have found them at Toys R Us but very few. A brilliant design but very simple indeed. The weeble is perfectly balanced - 360º. No matter which way you push it, it always returns itself to an upright position. Why does this work? Simple physics. First, the weeble has no edges so it is able to roll in any direction. Second, it is evenly weighted at the bottom. The top is light so it will never roll over the bottom. And third, because the sides are a solid material - they do not bend - wherever the top goes, front, back, left, right or in circles, the bottom and all material between the top and bottom follows in a solid line or motion.

Brilliant :)

This is significant when we use the analogy of a weeble to describe the relationship be- tween these myofascial lines. The SFLs controlling forward movement, the SBLs control- ling backward movement, and the LLs controlling side or lateral movement. If all of these lines act or contract together, they simply cancel each other out - in other words they create balance and a stable anatomical body. If one line is allowed to take over and the others go on vacation, the body will fall in the direction of the working line - there will be no balance acting from the opposing lines to prevent a collapse in the skeleton. All of these lines run head-to-foot and ground you, like the weeble, mainta-

ing your structure.

The peripheral lines are the guards of the DFL - “standing guard” to protect and support its every move. We can imagine the SFLs, SBLs and the LLs all standing at attention facing the elements beyond. All the while working together and in opposition to pro- vide protection and stability to the ever so delicate DFL.

The Movement Lines - Spiral Lines (SPLs) and Functional Lines - Front Functional Lines (FFLs) and Back Functional Lines (BFLs)

Once your linear fascial lines are programmed, you are stable

and ready for rotational movements. The Spiral Lines are predominantly used in walking and the Functional Lines in the act of throwing or more explosive movements like running. Both of these lines connect your body on a diagonal.

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CHAPTER 5