sportEX/SMA CONFERENCE PREVIEW 2006

ANATOMY TRAINS: MYOFASCIAL MERIDIANS FOR MANUAL THERAPISTS

by Thomas Myers, soft tissue practitioner

The 'Anatomy Trains' is a revolutionary map for analysing whole-body soft-tissue pat- terns,

and developing strategies for

unwinding these patterns via fascial, myofascial, and movement-oriented work. Anatomy Trains offers a language that most hands-on therapists, regardless of

their

modality, can use to communicate clearly to colleagues and clients how the neuro- myofascial web is configured by their ‘acture’ (a word Feldenkrais coined to indi- cate consistent patterns of stance in move- ment).

The fascial web is one seamless network, formed from the reticular webbing that arises around the end of the second week of embryological development, folded and refolded in the complex origami that turns a bolus of cells into a human being. When this image is fully internalised, new insights begin to form concerning the interaction of nerves, muscles, fluids, and connective tissues.

Because we Westerners started our study of anatomy – back in the Renaissance – using the blades of the hunter and the butcher, we have naturally focused on the structure and function of individual parts. This has led inexorably to modern understanding of muscle function that could be named the ‘isolated-muscle theory’. Its operating assumption is: "If this were the only mus- cle on the intact skeleton, what would it do to the bones?" In text after text, each muscle is analysed only in terms of its action from origin to insertion. Though occasionally the fixation or eccentric func- tion of a muscle is included in the descrip- tion, most often the muscle is defined as if working in isolation on an otherwise denuded skeleton.

In fact, no muscle ever works in isolation. In the body, even the idea that there are individual muscles is misleading.

Without

pushing this metaphor too far, it is more www.sportex.net

accurate to say that there are about six hundred pockets of electrical jelly (muscle) suspended within a single overall fascial bag, which in turn surrounds and suspends the individual bones of the skeleton.

The Anatomy Trains is the ‘anatomy of con- nection’.

It defines the long lines of simi-

lar ‘grain’ of the myofascial tissue within this fascial network. To define some terms, Anatomy Trains is a system of myofascial meridians. Each Anatomy Train line is one myofascial meridian. Each myofascial meridian (which have some overlap, by the way, with the Oriental meridians, but are based totally on Western anatomy) consists of a series of myofascial continuities. Myofascial continuities are contiguous muscles or fascial structures that lead in a more-or-less straight line from one to the other.

The reason why knowing this system is important is that structural strain –

We are excited to announce that Thomas Myers along with Dr Leon Chaitow, are the key note speakers at this year’s sportEX conference held in association with the Sports Massage Association. As the author of Anatomy Trains many of you will be familiar with Tom Myer’s work, for those of you who are not we hope that the following article provides a taster of what is to come. For more information on all the pre- senters and presentations see the following page.

whether it comes from injury, surgery, habits of movement, or posture – is trans- mitted along these lines (as in a ‘tensegri- ty’ structure), such that injury in one part of the body – say a whiplash – can end up lodged in another related area.

Likewise,

treatment is sometimes most effective when applied at some distance from the site of pain and dysfunction: plantar fascitis will sometimes yield to easing of

tight ham-

strings, and the hamstrings will sometimes yield to a sub-occiipital release, and so on.

So, in the simplest terms, the Anatomy Trains system shows how the muscles are strung together longitudinally to form a supporting tensile network around the skeleton. What we look for is an even tone or ‘span’ along these meridian lines, because isolated areas of high tone and slackness will produce compensatory strain patterns that pull the skeleton out of line and lead to pain. The Anatomy Trains is a map to these common pathways for strain.

The Anatomy Trains concept moves beyond mechanical 'cause and effect' actions of muscles to the integrative relational con- nections of real-life functional movement. An understanding of the Anatomy Trains will transform your concepts of myofascial anatomy and expand your comprehension of your clients' posture and movement and the compensatory strain patterns that lead to many pain syndromes.

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