Thread by @moveorperish

A Short Introduction to Biotensegrity & Fascia.

Discover they shape your posture and determine how well you move.

Reading Time: 2 minutes 🧵

Biotensegrity presents a contemporary concept that allows us to understand how living organisms, including the human body functions.

To understand its meaning, we must examine another interesting field of work:

Architecture.

The term tensegrity was coined by the Architect Richard Buckminster Fuller and was inspired by a work of his student Kenneth Snelson.

It is a portmanteau made of:

TENSION + INTEGRITY

The term tensegrity explains how a certain structure can maintain shape without solid elements touching each other.

The tensegrital structure or system is defined by solid elements that flow in a more or less invisible web of balanced tensions.

In architecture, this web is made of stretched cables, as you can see below:

The main advantages of this design are:

1. Low maintenance energy
2. Elastic adaptability
3. Omnidirectional redistribution of tension

Inspired by the work of Fuller and Snelson, the orthopedic surgeon Stephen M Levin transitioned the principles of Tensegrity onto living organisms.

Biotensegrity was born.

Here the "invisible" web that holds everything together is composed of fascia, muscles, tendons, and ligaments, aka the tension elements.

The compression elements are bone and cartilage.

To understand how this concept works, I highly recommend taking a look at Tom Flemmons' models:

The one element that everybody is talking about today, but was still very obscure only years ago, is fascia.

Fascia is the unifying medium that permeates our body from a superficial to a visceral degree.

It is an informational matrix which includes receptors of all kinds incl.

- Nociceptors
-Proprioceptors
- Mechonareceptors
- Thermoreceptors
- Chemoreceptors

And by that offers a vast amount of relevance in understanding, moving, and healing the human body.

Not only because the fascial tissue responds to emotions, supports breathing and shapes our posture.

The quality of fascia is defined by responsive resilience and an absence of restrictions or adhesions.

Movement directly supports this in many different ways.

By working on spiraling motions, structural reconfiguration, and the dynamic redistribution of tone, we can tap into this field of self-exploration.

I will describe these methods in detail next time.

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This account exists to help you:

- move pain-free
- move well till old age
- break free from sedentary life

Have a great weekend,
Jakob - MoD