Is Fascia bull sh&t? Or what?

Recently, in case you missed it Adam Meakins -the Sports Physio, recently went on a click bait rampage against fascia, his biggest beef? That fascia doesn’t store emotions.

Of course he did in his signature fine form of rubbing most (us for sure) the wrong way.

I agree that fascia does not “store emotions” in the way that phrase is often used.

A lot of the language around fascia has been wildly overinflated, and desperately needs to be cleaned up.

But I also think we have to be careful not to swing so far the other way that we pretend fascia is irrelevant.

Fascia is not just inert packing material. It is innervated, vascularized, mechanically sensitive, and capable of contributing to nociceptive input. A systematic review on fascial innervation found that different fasciae contain different types and densities of nerve endings, including free nerve endings, Pacini corpuscles, and Ruffini corpuscles, and that innervation can be increased in pathological fascia. (PubMed)

So no, fascia does not “store emotions.”

But pain itself is not purely mechanical either. Pain is defined as both a sensory and emotional experience, which means that when a highly innervated tissue contributes to nociception, it is absolutely part of a system that can influence threat, protection, guarding, and emotional salience.

And this is where the nuance matters.

Not all tissues are equally innervated. Skin, periosteum, joint capsules, ligaments, deep fascia, tendon attachments, and neurovascular interfaces are not the same as the mid-belly of a muscle or a relatively low-sensitivity connective tissue layer. Deep fascia in particular has been described as richly innervated and capable of producing pain responses when mechanically, chemically, or electrically stimulated. (ScienceDirect)

That does not mean we are “releasing emotions from fascia.”

It means we are stimulating a biologically active, neurologically connected tissue system.

To me, this is where the conversation needs to shift.

Less-“We are releasing fascia.”

More- “We are stimulating receptors and creating neuromodulatory change.”

Manual therapy, foam rolling, and other tissue-based inputs may not be lengthening fascia in the dramatic mechanical way people used to claim. Fair. But that does not mean nothing meaningful is happening.

Mechanical stimulation of sensitive tissues can influence nociceptive input, autonomic tone, muscle guarding, pain modulation, and the way the nervous system interprets threat. That can change pain, movement, and even the texture or tone that both the therapist and patient feel.

So yes, let’s retire the mystical fascia language.

But let’s not replace it with an equally lazy (Adam Meakins)dismissal.

Fascia is not magic.

Fascia is not emotional Tupperware.

But it is a highly relevant sensory and neurophysiological tissue, and that deserves a much better conversation than “it stores trauma” on one side and “it does nothing” on the other.