8An Introduction tothe Anatomy TrainsMyofascial Meridians

Practical Holism

The Single MuscleTheory

Whole BodyCommunicatingNetworks

The ConnectiveTissue System

The Double-BagTheory

Tensegrity

The Anatomy Trains:Rules of the Road

Summary of the Lines

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I am pleased to offer this addendum to Chris Jarmeys careful, concise, and beautifully illustrated surveyof our structural anatomy. The following essay first outlines several metaphors helpful to a holisticapproach to structural and movement therapies, and goes on to describe one map of larger functioningcontinuities within the musculo-skeletal system. These continuities, termed myofascial meridians, windlongitudinally through the soft tissues. These ideas are unfolded in greater detail in the book AnatomyTrains (Elsevier, 2001), and at www.AnatomyTrains.net.

Anatomy Trains provides a traceable basis for effective treatment at some distance from the site ofdysfunction or pain. This new view of structural patterning also has far-reaching implications fortreatment strategies, especially for long-standing postural imbalances, unsound body usage, andsequelae from injury or insult.

Practical Holism

The very structure of our language, and its cause-and-effect epistemology, requires that we understandany system by dividing it into its constituent parts, in order to define the contribution of eachidentifiable bit to the whole. A tree has roots, trunk, branches and leaves, each with an essential function.The leaves have stomata,mesophyll, and veins. The veinshave xylem and phloem bundled ina sheath. And so on down the lineof smaller and smaller buildingblocks: cells, macromolecules,atoms, and quantum forces. Thisanalytical process is fundamental toour Western comprehension of theworld. But this way of thinkingpresents one significant dangerwhen we apply it to living systemssuch as trees and ourselves: the treedid not glue a root system to a trunkand bolt on branches with leaveswired to them. It sprang from asingle seed, and is ever and alwaysa co-evolving unitary set of systeminteractions from root to leaf. Inreality, the parts are neverseparated, and are alwayscodependent.

Humans are not assembled out ofparts like a car or a computer. Bodyas machine is a useful metaphor, butlike any poetic trope, it does not tellthe whole story. In our modernperception of human movementanatomy, however, we are in dangerof making this metaphor into the beall and end all. In actual fact, ourbodies are conceived as a whole, andgrow, live, and die as a whole butour mind is a knife (see figure 8.1).

Figure 8.1: The Anatomy Trains map of myofascial connections.

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The medical idea that we are assembled from pieces aneasily-swallowed idea in this age of surgical spare parts,both mechanical and human stems from Aristotlespremises, but really took hold in the study of humans whenthe body was first anatomized by Andreas Vesalius,Albinus, and other courageous explorers of the lateRenaissance. The tool of choice, as implied in the very wordanatomy, was a blade. From the flint cleaver to the laserscalpel, the animal and human body has been divided alongfiner and finer lines. Later, Cartesian dualism described thebody as a soft machine, and students of anatomy andphysiology used reductionistic mechanism to go aboutexplaining the role of each identifiable part. The variousphysical laws of Isaac Newton further cemented our placewithin the mechanical universe. What were glorious andliberating ideas in their own time, however, have becomeimprisoning, restrictive concepts in ours (see figure 8.2).

How do our parts arise? The human body stems from asingle fertilized human ovum, which proliferates wildly.The daughter cells then specialize as outlined in Chapter 2.Each tissue cell exaggerates some function of the ovum andcells in general e.g. a muscle specializes in contraction, aneuron in conduction, epithelia in secretion, etc. andconversely other functions diminish. A nerve cell conductsextraordinarily well, but as a result of that specializationcannot easily reproduce itself. Epithelia dovery well at creating enzymes, but lose theability to significantly contract. Yet each cellstill partakes of the unique individual wholein its constant communication with itsneighbors, near and far, and in the similaritiesof chemical structure, from glucose as auniversal fuel right on down to the tangledhelix of DNA (see figure 8.3).

Before specific cuts are made, what we arepleased to call the brain never exists as anentity separate from its connective tissuesurroundings, its blood supply, and theperipheral and autonomic nerves that extendthe brain throughout the body. The bicepsbrachii can only exist as a separate structurewith a knifes intervention to divide its endsfrom various attachments, its connectionswith surrounding myofascial units such as thebrachialis, as well as its nerve and bloodsupply, without which it simply could notfunction. The idea that there are separate parts a liver, a brain, a biceps may be the waythat we think, but it is not the way physiologythinks. Figure 8.3: From the generalized ovum, cells proliferate, migrate,

and differentiate into functionally specialized tissues.

Proliferation

Migration

Stemcells

Ectoderm

Mesoderm

Endoderm

Nerve

Muscle

Connective

Epithelial

Ovum

Figure 8.2: Vesalius's woodcuts from 1548 showboth the origami layering and the directional

'grain' of the myofascial system.

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The Single Muscle Theory

This image of separate muscles muscles as parts leads to theprevalent method of analyzing muscleaction, which is employed frequently(and to good purpose) throughout thisand most other atlases: Imagine thatthe skeleton were denuded of all butthe given muscle; what would thatsingle muscle do to the skeleton actingon its own? Call this the singlemuscle theory.

In this single muscle theory, the bicepsgets defined as a radio-ulnarsupinator, an elbow flexor, and a weakflexor of the shoulder (see figure 8.4a).In the Anatomy Trains view, additionalinformation is added to this: Thebiceps brachii is an element in acontinuous fascial plane or myofascialmeridian which runs from the outsideof the thumb to the 4th rib andbeyond. The second statement doesnot negate the first, but it adds acontext for understanding the bicepsrole in stabilizing the thumb (down themyofascial line), and keeping the chestopen and the breath full (up the line)(see figure 8.4b).

This body as assembled machine ideais so pervasive and as in this book,the maps based on this perspective areso understandable and useful that itis difficult to think outside itsparameters. Thinking in wholes,attractive as it is to contemporaryholistic therapists, simply has yet tolead to useful maps. The everything isconnected to everything elsephilosophy expounded in our openingparagraphs, while actually technicallyaccurate, leaves the practitioner adriftin this sea of connections, unsure as towhether that frozen shoulder willrespond to work in the elbow, thecontralateral hip, or to a reflex point onthe ipsilateral foot. While any of thesemight work, useful maps are necessaryto organize our therapeutic choicesinto something better than a guess.

Figure 8.4: a) the biceps brachii considered as a separate muscle, b) the biceps brachii is also part of a longitudinal myofascial continuity.

a)

b)

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In short, we know the body is interconnected onmany levels, but we need better treatmentstrategies than press and pray. What can we learnwhen we shift from a symptom-oriented view ofthe body to a system-oriented one?

This myofascial meridians concept provides such amap of the structural body, a map that provides apractical transition between the individual partsthat the authors have so brilliantly cataloguedherein, and the whole of a human being, a gestaltof physics, physiology, stored experience, andcurrent awareness which defies mapping. Thisintermediate map of the bodys locomotor fabricopens up new avenues of treatment consideration,particularly for stubborn chronic conditions andglobal postural effects.

Whole Body CommunicatingNetworks

Central to this new Anatomy Trains map is thefunctional unity of the connective tissue system.There are exactly three networks within the bodywhich, magically extracted intact, would show usthe shape of the whole body, inside and out: theneural net, the vascular system, and theextracellular fibrous web created by the connectivetissue cells (see figure 8.5).

Large communities of cells need vast infrastructureto survive in crowded conditions, especially out ofthe water, resting on land, and surrounded by air.It is an astounding feat of engineering we take forgranted every day: a community of 70 trilliondiverse, humming and semi-autonomous cells,each built for undersea living, organizes itself toget up and walk around, while simultaneouslyproviding each cell with a mechanically stableenvironment, oceanic conditions of chemicalexchange, and the information it needs toparticipate meaningfully in the days work.

Every living cell needs to be within four cell layersor so of the fluid exchange provided by thevascular system. Without the ability to deliverchemistry to, and suck waste from, every singlebody region, the underserved area becomesstressed, then distressed, and will finally shrivel orburst and die, as happens i