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New Organ Takes Shape
Written By: Chad Garner - Yoga Highlands | Issue: 2018/05 - May
In a move similar to Christopher Columbus, scientists recently discovered a new organ in the body.
Despite the fact there were people standing on the beach waving to Columbus (they were called the Lucayan-Arawak natives of the Caribbean), Columbus dubbed it the New World. Let this set the stage for what is happening in science today.
The headlines of the new organ include its possible role in imbalances such as the spread of cancer and inflammation. But what about its role in balance and longevity? The media has yet to highlight all of the incredible functions of this organ, now called the Interstitium (enter-sti-shium).
While sitting at Emory University last summer with other health professionals, we looked at images of human dissection. Gil Hedley, expert anatomist, passionately curated his findings of what he called the “peri-fascia.” I performed a week-long dissection of the layers of the interstitium with him in 2004.
There is value in looking deeply into the human body. We get in touch with our inner workings and our humanity, and that enhances the healing process. There is a gorgeous photographic book by French surgeon Jean-Claude Guimberteau, where he reveals the living matrix of the Interstitium as a responsive fiber network that stretches and connects throughout the body as architecture.
Thomas Myers, one of our teachers of Structural Integration and a fascial anatomist, has authored books, articles, and courses in this very fabric of the body. His book, “Anatomy Trains,” describes in detail the extra-cellular integrins and interstitial relationship. There are conferences, scientists, and movement therapists that meet world-wide to explore what is called Bio-Tensegrity.
One hundred years ago Dr. Ida P. Rolf, a PhD in Biochemistry from Columbia University, devoted her life’s work, Rolfing Structural Integration, to helping people stand taller and move with less effort. She taught others about the role of fascia as the organ of shape and communication in regulating postural health.
People have been working with this fiber network for a century or maybe longer. And what is hopeful is this, we as a society can change how we see and the answers can be right there before us. And that is a blessing.
