THE BIOLOGICAL CODE
Every Human has a Code.
To set the stage. so that reading this article doesn't feel like You’re driving through the fog with your high beams on, Humans are more than a multitude of molecules neatly packed and packaged into a synchronized set of systems that harmoniously function in a fashion that allow You to explore, create, learn, play, love, work, laugh and live.
That is to say You are more than just a Physical Body which happens to include a highly-developed brain.
However, Your body is a piece of You and has developed through millions of years of Evolution starting from a single and simple algal cell in the ocean.
These millions of years of Evolution have given rise to a Biological system that is so intuitively designed that it would be safe to consider it bulletproof. It is structured in a way that seamlessly integrates with all the inputs around You on a consistent, second to second basis, so that You have the capacity to perform any task You face in the most efficient way possible. This system revolves around one central concept - maintaining a balance called Homeostasis.
This System is Your Body.
And Your Body has a code.
This code is what maintains an optimal level of Homeostasis.
The problems you experience, the resistance You face and the dis-ease that manifests is a matter of imbalance.
An imbalance in the Code.
These imbalances have risen as a result of Cultural Evolution since Pre-classical Antiquity, forming the beginnings of the Principles that would later lead to Industrialization.
While we could look at every single imbalance and try to address them one by one, I’ve done the work for You. I have, and still continue to, strip down all the most effective and efficient mechanisms, tools, tactics and techniques down to the Central concepts they target.
With over 15 years of searching for answers, 2 University Degrees, 1 internship, multiple workshops, certificate courses, programs, webinars, interviews with professionals in their fields, coaching and countless hours immersing Myself in books, research videos, journal articles, podcasts, blog posts and Inner Work I’ve unlocked the code for the Human System to increase Your Vitality and the Feeling of what it means to be Alive.
This Biological Code is the most efficient Path to stripping You back to Evolutionary Design. Evolutionary Design is the Foundational Bedrock for Your Body to be able to perform optimally and functionally and allow You to experience the greatest degree of Choice, Creativity and Expression. In turn this allows You to fulfill Your Purpose and Be who You want to Be without limitations.
Once You have a Foundation it is within Your hands to Amplify any Aspect You Choose in any Direction You want to go.
In this way Homeostatic balance is tuneable.
A way to increase the stability in the balance point once balance is achieved.
This is not woo-ey or voodoo witchcraft, nor is it hard-cut logic and reason only backed by randomized, double-blind clinical trials. It is a blending of both to create a third realm of knowledge that comes from the marriage between the two. Beyond Thinking and Beyond Feeling it is about cultivating a Knowing and bringing Tangibility to the Abstract.
And what You are about to read is by no means an endpoint. After following Mechanisms of Action all the way down to their Source point I have discovered a pattern that leads to a handful of Key Players that consistently and reliably pop up to produce the same outcome; a greater degree of balance.
As You will see this website is a working model and with every new bit of information the Code will update to form a better fit.
So without further ado, here is The Biological Code.
FIGURE 1. THIS IS A 20,000 FOOT VIEW, LOOKING AT YOUR HUMAN HISTORY AS IF YOU WER TO LOOK AT EARTH FROM SPACE.
Prior to Industrialization Humans lived with deep and intimate ties to the planet. We slept on the ground, our physiological cycles were driven by the sun and the seasons, we ate fresh foods straight from the earth and drank clean, mineral-rich water out of streams and springs. We breathed clean air, were exposed to temperature fluctuations, variations in natural light, bonded in tribes, sang and danced, worked intimately with the earthly designs that structure the ecosystems of our planet and followed innate desires to interact and communicate with all aspects of the world that surrounded us. In this sense we had the Code nailed.
We also happened to be in the middle of the food chain, at the mercy of spontaneous and intense changes in weather, experienced food shortages,and battled famine, predation, parasites & infection. We faced trauma without effective tools for psychological healing, debilitating injury without the capacity to ensure fluid recovery, hostility from within and without the tribe, outcast, and as long as You weren’t on death's door importance was placed on survival of the population or the family name, instead of the individual.
In this context we were always on the lookout, often attuned, aware and vigilant of our surroundings and more or less in a consistent state of Survival and Self-Preservation, even if it only remained in the background.
Being in alignment with our physical world through the lens of survival left us in perfect synchrony with our planet and allowed Humans to maintain robust Health and a powerful Life Force. However the fact that our ability to survive was always being challenged by nature or other members of our tribe, clan or society meant a lot of our energy was being dumped into staying alive, rather than enhancing the life we already had.
Of course we are painting in broad strokes here but this was a time of Survival and Synchrony.
As we move towards post-civilization and into a period where trade, economy, religion and politics start to play a larger role, Humans begin to lay a foundation which will become the Industrial Way of Living.
The principles of Industrialization were solidly laid during the Age of Classical Antiquity and have continued to shape society well into our Current Time Period. In comparison to the Ancestral period, Industrialization brought an incredible amount of good in a very short period of time. The logical and linear way of being calculatively gave rise to consistent and reliable productivity, efficiency, innovation and communication through reason. This way of perceiving our surroundings led to a rapid increase and spread of technological advancements, invention, distribution of food and wealth, the practice of trauma care and the supply of services and goods. Life became comfortable and convenient. We had opportunities to explore, culture our curiosity and grow because machines, technology and the efficiency of production allowed us to create self-perpetuating systems that could be run from arms length and with minimal input.
With this came the classic problems we see today, obesity, diabetes, atherosclerosis, metabolic syndrome, joint problems, chronic inflammation etc.. All of this stemmed from an ecological mismatch between our environment and ourselves. In our attempt to remove the threat of survival and create safety and security through environmental independence we accidentally desynchronized ourselves instead and unwittingly created another need for survival, Survival within our Society’s structure.
In order to maintain our own Livelihood we had to make sure that the society we built, based on the framework of factory design, maintained its composition. Without doing so we would revert to what we had before only with a lot more extra variables to deal with. So it was imperative that every Individual played their role and ensured that society’s structure was maintained. If You didn’t play your part You would slowly find yourself disassociated from the rest of your clan and You would be left on your own. Because the world was rapidly adopting one standardized way of communicating, trading, growing and ultimately living, if anyone broke away from the model they usually didn’t fare too well or had a hard time reintegrating. So ensuring You maintained a valuable purpose within an industrial society became a matter of survival which, simultaneously straddled a feeling of security. So long as You played your cards right.
In this sense we were not only in a state of Dyssynchrony but we also maintained our Survival drive, keeping our fight or flight system engaged. Now instead of the single threat of survival affecting our Health we are getting a one-two punch as we are desynchronized as well.
This double whammy creates confusion and a lack of understanding on what core ideas to focus on when you're trying to promote your health or get rid of dis-ease. Not only that but there’s new concepts, mechanisms, biohacks and technologies being consistently churned out by anyone and everyone, with the value ranging from old, repackaged material and band-aid solutions to revolutionary concepts that radically shift the industry’s way of operating.
Knowing where to put your attention can become a bit of a guessing game let alone what to do, when and how to do it and in what combination to get the best benefit.
This is why I’ve put together for You the 7 core concepts to focus on to drive balance within the body and reset Yourself back to the Evolutionary Human within the safety of our modern world.
FIGURE 2: THE CODE'S 7 PRINCIPLES
The code is founded on 7 principles.
In the Industrial Era the dis-ease we experience and the problems we try to solve can be lumped into a single category called Aging. Rather than defined by chronological terms aging, biological age can be defined as an inability to maintain homeostasis. This leads to a progressive decline in physiological function. So the body will sacrifice function for a new balance point.
The Biological Aging process is driven by 3 factors.
Reductive / Oxidative Damage Accumulation
Imbalance in these factors over the long term triggers the aging process and propels dis-ease. The elimination of these also defines the Status of Health in the Industrial Human, if we can eliminate the chronic imbalance in these 3 factors we return to a point of balanced operation.
Once we’ve rectified a chronic state of imbalance to a optimal state of balance we can create stability within the balance we’ve achieved. From here we can begin to increase what already naturally exists under the right conditions.
Stability is driven by the degree to which we can maintain harmony through these 5 elements
Biological Rhythmicity
Body Integration
Breath Cycles
Flow States
Expression of Love & Joy
The greater degree to which we can create congruence within ourselves and our surroundings the more alive we will feel and become.
This is Vitality.
I know what you’re thinking, that sounds like some pretty good grounds to be classified as hippie-dippie woo-woo chatter.
But before we lose our marbles, including your prized Cat’s eye You won at the Fair, know that all of this is backed by Science and research, it just so happens that these are massive topics to tackle so You will see them infused throughout the website with the Science to back it.
That being said, the Biological Code is the bridge between both of these points. By creating balance in the 7 Foundational Principles of the Code you automatically begin to decrease the 3 factors that drive the Aging Process and increase the 5 elements that increase Vitality and Life.
These 7 Principles naturally arise when we are Synchronized and are no longer experiencing Survival Response in the absence of security. It is our Home-base, Bedrock, our Factory Settings if You will. When these Principles are balanced we are in our Native State of Equilibrium with a natural ability to handle a lot of stressors without incurring significant damage while still maintaining an adequate adaptive response.
The 7 Foundational Principles of the Code are:
EZ Water
Immune Signaling
Clean Memory
Gas Exchange
Autonomic Control
A Healthy Fat Mass
Joint IAR
Each one is described below.
EZ Water
Still in its infancy the potential of EZ Water to restructure the understanding of how the body performs and maintains essential cellular and system-wide functions is revolutionary. Discovered by Dr. Gerald Pollack and explained in his book The Fourth Phase of Water the building of EZ water within the Cell and Systems of the body is continuously popping up from the shadows and shedding light on how Biohacks, Longevity Practices, Optimization Techniques and compounds are exerting their Health Benefits In comparison to regular water, EZ water is organized. Because it’s organized it has unique properties that allow it to store more energy, carry information and exclude particles that would otherwise, in unstructured conditions, pass right through. Even Albumin, one of the body’s smallest proteins, remains outside the exclusion zone. This new configuration turns water from a passive medium that life exists in, to a medium that actually drives Life itself. Because we are almost entirely made up of water, these implications are massive.
When balanced, EZ Water has the capacity to (see the list here https://eng3corp.com/studies/) repair Damaged DNA, Enhance Immunity, improve Cognition, Increase HRV, Reduce Oxidative Stress and even attenuate Microbial Populations in the gut (see the full list of studies here). However its biggest impact by far is on Protein Folding.
All of your body’s processes are controlled by Proteins. Proteins have a wide range of functions from acting as signaling molecules, producing hormones, carrying out enzyme activity & facilitating nutrient transport to regulating pH balance and ensuring fluid retention across the body. The function of the cell is entirely dependent on the function of the proteins and the function of the proteins is entirely dependent on the structure of the water.
This is because proteins are only functional when properly folded. Exclusion Zone water is inherently more energetically dense because it carries more electrons. This creates a configuration where the water forms a hexagonal, gel-like structure. The structure of the water surrounds the protein and when there are enough layers energy is spontaneously transferred to the protein to allow for folding to occur.
The protein then becomes functional meaning the Cells and Systems that make up your body have adequate resources to perform any function regardless of the situation. Allowing You to maintain Homeostasis and Balance.
When imbalanced the structured water becomes limited as a resource. If structured water is the rate-limiting step the ability to maintain DNA repair and protein function fails and so the body begins to compensate, readjust homeostasis and live less optimally.
Immune Populations & Inflammation Signaling
Inflammatory response is the body’s innate healing mechanism. When the body needs resources to heal, protection from foreign invaders or elimination of toxic materials a localized inflammatory response occurs to deal with the issue at the source. This contains the target, allows the body to delegate resources to that one specific region, and systematically neutralizes the threat and replaces it with healing protocols that are indigenous to your cells.
The process is a two-step reaction:
- The acute Inflammation Stage. - Pro-Inflammatory
Here cells in danger release chemokines, cytokines, histamines, prostaglandins, or in the case of the ECM Matrikines, alongside other signaling molecules like NF-kB and TNF-alpha to call out for help. This allows blood vessels to dilate while simultaneously leaking fluid into the area causing swelling, redness and heat, isolating the site of repair. It also brings forward Pro-inflammatory Neutrophils and Macrophages which initiate a clean-up response by releasing molecules that act as small bombs and grenades to break down damaged or foreign materials into chunks that are small enough to swallow and allow for removal.
- The Pro-Resolving Stage - Anti -Inflammatory
Once the threat is removed and all the damaged tissue has been eaten there’s a switch. Pro-inflammatory danger signals turn to Pro-resolving signals like lipoxins, resolvins, protectins, maresins, proteins and peptides as well as some gases like H2S and neuromodulators like acetylcholine. All of these signals support cleanup instead of break down. New neutrophils stop entering the tissue and chemokine and cytokine signaling molecules are stopped. This turns off the Fire Alarm and communicates over dispatch “Everything is okay''. Neutrophils on site undergo apoptosis (cell-death) to stop releasing the grenades and are subsequently eaten by the Macrophages. The Macrophages then transform from Classical Activation (Team Defense and Grenades) to Alternative Activation (Shamans & Medical Team) which allows them to switch from warriors to healers, repairing tissues. After they finish the initial clean-up, they leave, inform the adaptive immune system so it can make updates and make room for tissue repair to occur and things to return smoothly back to homeostasis.
This response is designed to work in discrete conditions that perfectly match the intensity of the situation.
When balanced everything operates fluidly. Resources always on site, it’s like having a full crew at the ready. Dangers, threats and toxins are easily handled and resolved and the body always has space to be adaptive if the situation progresses towards more risk. Balanced these microcycles of inflammatory response live in a harmonic loop of initiation and resolution.
Imbalanced and the cycle is either overactive or underactive.
When overactive the cycle is never able to enter Pro-Resolving Stage because Pro-inflammatory signals are always being emitted by neighboring cells that get caught in the crossfire. As grenade release remains enthusiastic Macrophages break down tissue that never needed to be broken down in the first place, similar to friendly-fire. As these tissues get hit, they release Pro-inflammatory signals exponentially feeding the storm and beginning to create a cascade that brings in more neutrophils and macrophages, triggering more inflammation and creating a never-ending cycle.
When underactive your immune system can’t mount an appreciable inflammatory response and the body struggles to find the resources to heal. So it ends up being at the mercy to whatever it’s fighting leaving you weak, drained and fatigued.
Thus the more balance You have in your Immune signaling the more efficiently and effectively You can mount appropriate immune responses. This leads to a greater capacity to heal and increases your resilience to stressors. Not only making You more resilient, but increasing your vitality as well.
Clean Memory
Your memories are much more than something You remember and recall. They are a gargantuan storehouse of information. Your memory is like one colossal library that contains all the books that have ever been published in the world. Except the books are Your memories and they belong to Your World instead of The Whole World.
This is important because it becomes your reference and creates your reality. The library itself is an amalgamation of various parts of Your Brain. Every millisecond of your life your library has millions of librarians pulling in new memories that are worth putting in the library and scanning your surroundings to see if it already matches one of Your old memories. These Librarians are your Hippocampus and Amygdala combined.
If your librarians find a match they pull it out of the library for You so You can emotionally prepare for the situation. If there’s no memory, your librarians decide whether or not the current situation is valuable enough to go on the shelves of in the various vaults of Your Brain. If it is You get a New Memory, if it’s not You experience it, let it go, and move on.
To make a new memory or recall an old one it has to be relevant to You. The relevance is dictated by the Amygdala or “the Feeling Center” . While the Hippocampus is responsible for tracking the details of the event or your external environment, the Amygdala attaches emotion and sensation, tracking your internal environment and how you feel. The stronger the feeling of your internal environment, the more relevant the memory. This creates new neural networks that allow the episode to get stored or recalled.
In short: The stronger the feeling → The more likely it becomes a Memory
This is why there are 2 things that control whether your librarians make a match or not.
- How similar the match is between the external environment of your current experience and Your memories of the past. (What You see, smell, hear, taste, etc.) - Hippoampus.
- How similar the match is between Your internal environment caused by your current experience and Your memories of the past. (What You feel, what parts of your body twist, tingle, open, close, etc.). - Amygdala
A match is only good when it supports Us. That is to say when We can recognize it as a memory and treat it as independent of Our situation. Instead of looking at our reality through the lens of Our memory We feel it for what it is. This is balanced Amygdala activity. If You can’t do this You get imbalance and Imbalance can feel “good” or ”bad”.
In an imbalanced situation if your memory feels good, you’ll probably pursue it trying to accentuate the aspects that felt good in the past, if your memory felt bad, you’ll probably try to avoid it by repressing the past memory and the experience of the current situation you’re in.
In either case there’s an Imbalance because both create expectation and set the stage for potential small or large T trauma.
When You accentuate the good You change the experience to what it was in the past. This takes away from what new feelings the situation could give You because it removes the novelty of the new experience. If the current situation doesn’t meet the expectation of the past memory your reality can shatter, potentially creating trauma and filing a “feel bad” memory in Your library if the feeling of “shattering” is repressed.
For example if every time You bake with Your Grandma You have a food fight and laugh until your cheeks hurt but then You bake with someone else’s Grandma and You get anger instead of laugher when You super soak her with Muffin Batter in your classic finisher move, You might find yourself in an uncomfortable position.
When You repress the “bad” it prevents You from living out your current experience because You think it's bad, but it’s really the past experience creating that feeling. As a psychological bonus every experience that is similar to the past “bad” memory gets stacked as a new trauma, which is why the more times You have to repress a memory the stronger it gets.
For example everyone knows the person who just won’t jump off the diving board. They’ll koala bear the plank with a four-limb death grip rather than take the plunge. That’s because they’re not in the current experience, they're falling back to an experience from the past that they never lived out and they’re fighting as hard as they can to repress it.
These imbalances can lead to chronic HPA Axis dysfunction, Overactive Inflammatory Response, Excessive Oxidative stress and Faulty Recruitment Patterns to drive You towards dis-ease.
When balanced we have a clean memory. This takes the memory of the event and places it out of the present and into the past. In Fight or Flight it’s similar to taking the Lion out of the Room and putting it in the Zoo. Or taking last year's Superbowl Party as a picture to your work’s New Year’s Celebration rather than bringing your actions from the Superbowl Party itself.
When we are in balance we are in our native territory. This is one of Joy and Learning. Learning occurs with newness or novelty. When we experience novelty the brain gets flooded with the feel good chemical dopamine When this happens we become curious about the novelty. We then explore it and see how it fits into our existing schema (our thought framework). This rearrangement process of how we define learning was introduced by Frederic Bartlett as Schema theory. This ultimate Trifecta triangle of Novelty, Learning and Joy is what allowed us to ancestrally adapt to new environments and give us the upper arm in terms of evolutionary fitness. When we learn something we experience Joy and learning is facilitated by the new. So if we can separate the past from the present we are consistently immersing ourselves in a new experience and introducing novel sensations. This allows us to be in a constant state of joy and experiential learning. Sometimes it changes our world completely like those light bulb - Eureka! - moments and other times it just feels cozy and warm like somebody is wrapping You in a blanket straight out of the dryer.
Either way You are joyfully balanced in the present moment instead of recalling sensations, feelings and “facts” from “good” or “bad” memories in the past.
Gas Exchange and Cellular Metabolism
The body is primarily composed of 3 elements and arguably 1 particle. The elements are Carbon (C), Hydrogen (H) and Oxygen (O) or CHO for short. The particle is an Electron (e-). The element Nitrogen also plays a role in the formation of protein but it pales in comparison to the amount of Carbon and Oxygen we have in our body at any given time. Likewise photons are an important particle but they don’t play as pivotal a role in the interactions with CHO. The electrons have a negative charge and the Hydrogens, also called protons, have a positive charge unless attached to another molecule.
The Cell’s metabolism is primarily existent upon these 4 pieces of matter, (CHO and Electrons).
The Cell’s metabolism drives all the chemical reactions that generate Life. It provides the Energetic currency and the essential components that allow the necessary processes behind molecular building and breakdown to take place. It is what drives cellular function. If your cell’s function is balanced, you have balanced systems, balanced systems lead to a balanced body.
It is no coincidence that Carbon Dioxide (CO2) and Oxygen (O2) happen to be entirely constructed from CHO and e- and also happen to have complete control of the Health and Function of your Cellular Metabolism. Both gases are essential.
Oxygen is the Energizer. It is the requirement to make energy. We have to breathe to survive. Why? Because Oxygen is the element that accepts all the Protons (H+) at the end of the Transport Chain. Through a magical Turbine called ATP Synthases your body pumps these Protons through a membrane wall and Oxygen waits for them on the other side like Your Mom waiting with arms spread wide at the Airport when You get back Home from Summer Camp. Yes, your Summer Camp happened to be in the Cayman Islands. This allows for a whooping 850% increase in Energy (ATP) production in comparison to metabolism without Oxygen.
This energy facilitates all the building, breakdown, construction, detoxification, literally everything related to Matter, inside your body.
So what makes Carbon so special?
Carbon Dioxide is the Master Regulator. Not only is it the way we get rid of carbon in Our Bodys in the same way we breathe off fat, but more importantly it controls system wide pH. This controls whether our metabolic processes and products remain functional and how much Oxygen actually gets inside the Cell.
As carbon-based molecules get broken down they release Carbon Dioxide. CO2 naturally diffuses through the membrane of the mitochondria to combine with 2 Hydrogens and forms Carbonic Acid which then rapidly dissociates to Bicarbonate and 1 Hydrogen which it can revert back to Carbonic Acid when necessary. This flip-flopping between Bicarbonate and Carbonic Acid acts as a buffer system to control the pH inside the Cell and to control pH outside the Cell in the Circulatory System.
Two things happen with an increase in CO2:
- There is an increased ability to maintain pH because of an increase in buffering ability. More CO2 leads to more conjugate base (bicarbonate) which increases the stability of the pH.
- The rise of CO2 in the arterial blood drops the pH and releases Oxygen from Your Red Blood Cells through the Bohr Effect. This drives more Oxygen into your Cells by allowing Hemoglobin to release its tight grasp, letting Oxygen move from your blood to your Cells.
Think of CO2 like The Doorman. The more CO2 the wider the door opens and the more Oxygen can get in. The less CO2, the tighter the door closes and the less Oxygen can get in.
So the more CO2 You have the greater Your ability to maintain stable pH to support metabolic processes and the more Oxygen You can supply to continue making energetic currency. It’s a Win-Win.
This is why regulating Breath and Gas Exchange is so important.
When imbalanced it becomes a Lose-Lose. We breathe off CO2 and lose O2 in the process. Down Regulating metabolism, destabilizing pH, impairing protein function and slowing energy production. All this leads to a decrease in Your Cells ability to function.
When balanced the Sky becomes the limit. Not only do we support Metabolic Processes and increase Energy, but balance reaches a greater point of stability increasing Your Lifeforce and Vitality alongside it.
Autonomic Control
Your Autonomic nervous System is responsible for all the physiologically involuntary actions of Your body, including breathing, muscle contraction, blood pressure, heart rate, digestion, hormone release and cognitive operation. Through a complex, interwoven web of glial cells, neurons, synapses and neurotransmitters, messages are communicated along these nerve lines. Similar to the way fungal mycelium spreads across the soil your nerves innervate through your body relaying messages back and forth between the Central Nervous System (CNS), (Your Brain and Spinal Cord) and the multiple pit-stops between your Centerline (CNS) and your the outer edges of your body’s periphery, (the furthest reaches of your skin).
The Autonomic nervous system splits into 3 sub-categories, the Sympathetic, the Parasympathetic and the Enteric. The most well-understood influence of control is through Sympathetic Response, also known as Flight or Fight. The Fight or Flight is activated through Amygdala Activation and turning on the HPA Axis. This releases Epinephrine to mainline your system with Adrenaline and kickstart a cascade of physiological functions through hormonal and cellular signaling. Increasing your heart rate, blood pressure, breath frequency, muscle contraction etc. to get You out of whatever situation you're in at lightning speed. In fact this system is so efficient it happens before the Visual Cortex of your brain can even process what is happening leaving your reasoning at the wayside to instinct. Later Cortisol drip feeds through the HPA Axis to keep You safe and Your Sympathetic Response on.
In contrast, the Parasympathetic response is also known as the Rest and Digest. In partnership with the Sympathetic System it works in tandem to bring You into a relaxed state of Being. Originating from the brainstem and the Sacral Spinal Cord the Parasympathetic response can be activated by facial, pharyngeal, oculomotor and the splanchnic nerves in Your pelvis. However, it’s most well understood method of activation is through Vagal Nerve Stimulation. When the Vagus nerve is stimulated it releases the molecular messenger Acetylcholine which acts on receptor sites as a neuromodulator. This relaxes the tissue it innervates, calming You down and bringing You back to center. This is why socializing, laughing, humming, singing, cold exposure, meditation, breathing and play all feel so darn good.
The oddball, and the system the Scientific Community is still trying to wrap their head around is the Enteric Nervous System (ENS). An interdependent, autonomous system the Enteric Nervous System exists primarily in the gut but extends from your esophagus to your anal sphincter. Spoken with a Swedish accent that last sentence sounds much less scientific, (You probably just tried it didn’t You.) The ENS is technically defined as an extension of the Parasympathetic Branch, but it’s a whole lot more than that.
Second to the Brain, the Enteric Nervous System is composed of the largest accumulation of nerve cells within the human body “matching the brain in structure, function and chemical coding.” The ENS works in synchrony with Your Organs, Smooth Muscle, Immune Cells, Hormone Signaling pathways and your Gut Flora to modulate the inner workings of your body and maintain Homeostasis and Vitality. With its relationships extending over such a broad range of vital networks it would only need the ability to control the mouth to exist entirely on its own as a mini independent ecosystem. This is why the home of your gut bacteria is called your “microbiome” and not a bacterial warehouse. With its own nervous system, set of pacemaker cells like your heart and its independent ability to digest it could also be considered a mini You.
This beautifully blended and masterfully crafted set of characteristics is critical because it allows the ENS to function as the Gatekeeper. The Gatekeeper has an immense amount of responsibility because it is the primary filter between the outside world and your inside world. What makes it through the intestinal walls make it into You and with it the way your body is going to react and function. All of the processes of digestion, absorption, and elimination is controlled by your ENS and the relationship it has with your gut bacteria. It’s power to effectively take in nutrients and keep out potential dangers is the primary way by which it influences all the other Principles and it has one chief method of communicating this. Through the Gut -Brain Axis, aka The Vagal Nerve.
In all fairness the Gut-Brain Axis actually consists of the Brain, Spinal Cord, HPA Axis, and the entire Autonomic Nervous System, but the Vagus Nerve is something special. It’s bidirectional communication network allows the ENS to take in the signals from the outside (whatever’s ingested) world and link them with the emotional and cognitive networks of the brain to fine-tune it’s actions and produce the most appropriate outcomes. This relationship is what allows for adjustments in immune activation, hormonal signaling, intestinal permeability and sensorimotor activity.
If You thought it was complex with 2 You can probably hear Your Brain sizzle as it gets all scrambled like the eggs You had with Your morning toast when there’s 3.
In short: Autonomic Control is regulated by 3 systems. Your Sympathetic (SNS), Parasympathetic (PSNS) and Your Enteric (ENS). Your SNS and PSNS are always attempting to maintain balance between each other. Their relationship is similar to the gas and brake pedal on your car. The Sympathetic is your Gas Pedal or “Go” and your Parasympathetic is your brake pedal or “Whoa”. The only difference between your nervous system and your Sunday drive is that when you're driving to the grocery store You use the same foot to operate both pedals. Your Autonomic Nervous System is like Colin McRae, flying at 100 mph feathering each with both feet to win the World Rally Championship (pedals at the 2 minute mark). The Sympathetic or Parasympathetic response is controlled by the balance between the pedals at any given time. Too much brake and You're too slow around the corner losing the Championship, too much Gas and you spin your wheels, staying stuck where You are and burning off all your rubber. This is why the right response, at the right intensity at the right time is what dictates balance instead of just one or the other.
On the flip side your Enteric Nervous System has the power to overrule, or be overruled by both Your SNS and PSNS. That’s why eating foods that digest well and taste good make You feel good. It’s the same reason that when You eat with people You love in a calm state You are likely to absorb nutrients well and feel nourished rather than bloated, gassy and full of cramps.
Hence the importance of a balanced ANS.
Balanced it keeps everything under smooth operation. Imbalanced and your body goes from comfortably juggling 3 balls to trying to juggle 17.
Healthy Fat Mass and Your Buffer System
Having Fat is critical. Fat is so important that if all the Scientists, Practitioners, Doctors, Bodyworkers and Biohackers were to place bets on all the tissues of the body during an organized debate for Top Tissue to influence Health, Fat would so easily wax the floor it would probably come out with a 1/1 betting ratio. More than a Backup System for excess Energy Fat controls Hormone Production, Sex Hormone Regulation , Metabolic Efficiency, Heat Production and EZ Water Formation, the Construction of Deuterium Depleted Water, Immune Signalling, Emergency Detox Storage and acts as a Stem Cell Pool for Muscle, WAT and BAT Progenitor Cells. Under the optimal ratios, (8-12% Men, 18-25% Women), and in a Healthy State Fat has an adequate ability to perform all these functions with ease. This is balance. The problem arises when the state of the Fat becomes Imbalanced.
Imbalanced Fat shows up in 2 ways:
- Too much Old Fat:
In this case imbalanced Fat is a bit of a Chicken and the Egg Scenario. When Fat is imbalanced it drives more Fat gain, when You gain more fat Your ability to maintain Homeostasis decreases increasing inflammation, dehydration and Redox Stress - all products of Imbalance. Imbalanced Fat is also called Old Fat. When Your Fat is functioning properly the Fat droplets within the Fat Cell soak up any peroxidized lipids and proteins that are causing excessive damage. And if Your body remains in an imbalanced state it can’t create enough space in Your Detox Pathways to get rid of the reactive molecules stored in the Fat Droplets. When the reactive molecules remain in Your Fat Tissue they eventually overfill and begin leaking out causing damage. This triggers SASP (Senescence-Associated Secretory Phenotype) and it’s the switch to Old Fat. SASP causes an explosion of inflammatory signals creating Inflammatory Cascades. Kind of like when You poke a Spider and it releases a thousand baby spiders off its back to spread all over the floor. This then leads to a whole host of Inflammatory problems that carry You down the Yellow Brick Road of dis-ease at an exponential rate.
- Too Little Fat:
The other end of the spectrum is too little fat. When You don’t have enough fat Your body starts to shift into Hibernation Mode. Anything that is not essential for survival gets shut down and put on the shelf until things improve. This means a drop in Muscle Recovery and Synthesis, Sex Hormone Production, a downregulation in Thyroid, disrupted Sleep Cycles, Impaired Cognitive Function, Muscle Degradation and a reduction in Metabolism and Metabolic Adaptation. In essence the body dips into a state of Survival instead of Thrival and as a result impacts the other 7 Principles along with it.
In summary, your fat is the Motherboard of your Tissue Operation. Imbalanced and You get System Meltdown. Balanced and You have a smooth sailing ship that cuts across the High Seas with Clear Communication and Impeccable Instruction.
Joint IAR
Quite possibly the most overlooked Principle but the most readily felt is mobility. Mobility is Your ability to move Freely and Easily over a Full Range of Motion. Movement is the key medium that allows for Full Body Functional Maintenance and System Integration. It’s responsible for moving all of Your Bodily Fluids, facilitating excretion, assimilation, oxygenation and detoxification. It maintains your vestibular system , allows You to navigate your environment and facilitates Your relationships and social dynamics. It engages Learning, enhances cognition nurtures engagement with Your Life’s Purpose, Promotes Emotional Self-Regulation and encourages Creative Expression.The way You explore, experience and interact with the World is enabled by the way You move in it and in the Law of Reciprocity Movement is the medium by which You choose to Express your Existence and Connect to Your Purpose.
So what keeps You Moving?
The amount of Space You have access to, and the Chief Operating Officer of Your Body’s Movement Industry and Department of Space is the Position of your Joints.
When Your joints are Balanced they’re seated in a position called the Instantaneous Axis of Rotation (IAR). Each joint has their own IAR and like a hovercraft floating in space Your Joints float in position without any contact between the bones that surround it. Your Joint’s IAR is the position where it has the most movement options. The more stabilized Space in the IAR the greater the Range of Movements you have access to and the less resistance You are moving against. This means everything functions with such ease it’s more satisfying than taking a hot Knife fresh out the kitchen sink and cutting a warm slice of butter.
When imbalanced your Joints move out of their IAR which leads to Joint dysfunction and altered Movement Mechanics. This can come as a result from muscular imbalances, faulty recruitment and firing sequences, excess fascia, fascial adhesions or compensatory movement patterns. When one of these triggers occurs in repetition the rest usually jump along for the ride. This leads to Activation of Sympathetic Response, Allostatic Overload and Hormone Depletion through overactivation of the Adrenals. It impacts Muscle Recovery, Sleep Patterns, Energy levels, Organ function, Cognition, Breath Mechanics and Hydration Status. No stone in your body is left unturned, through the Mechanical Makeup of the Biotensegrity Model every part of your body feels the change of vibration when Your Biomechanics are altered. From the tip of your toenail to the deepest depths of your spinal cord.
However when balanced Your Body operates with a synchrony that would make the London Symphony drop their jaws in awe. The harmonized integration of all the rhythmic inner workings of Your Body flow so fluid and free that it makes Planetary Orbit around the sun look like a baby deer trying to find its first legs.The Biomechanical Balance of Your Joints is more than the Doorway to your Mobility, it's the Threshold to your Health and when balanced your Potential is limitless.
So that’s that.
But why these? What makes these 7 so special?
All 7 Principles are responsible for a unique role that cannot be replaced by any other Principle. Yet each exists in complete interdependence to the other. Remove one and the whole system begins to crumble as the effects spiderweb out to impact the Principles that remain.
It’s like the Avengers Team but way more Badass because You’re the whole squad. By tweaking, fine tuning and growing the balance in any one system You inherently begin to right the balance in all of the other Systems. In the short term this can create confusion because Righting can manifest as the emergence of an imbalance in another system. But as it reveals itself from the shadows You can bring Your Awareness and Attention to them knocking them out One by One as they bubble to the Surface.
Just like the Carbonation release popping on the top of your sparkling water, (or for You Biohacker’s out there Your Molecular Hydrogen), Your Imbalances will rise to the glasses rim in their own order. The Order of Operations to address Your imbalances is Self-regulating because the way that they present themselves is custom to You and Your Current Position in Life. It’s an intuitive, inherited foolproof Method å la Mother Nature’s Billion Year Project of Evolutionary Design. And like everything she has created it’s Sustainable and Self-Perpetuating towards greater and greater Vitality.
Over the Long term this leads to exceptional increase in stability at the balance point. It’s like slowly fortifying the bottom of your Seesaw with blocks of wood from the fulcrum out. With each block the effort to maintain balance gets less and less and soon You have a seesaw so stable You can build it into a stage. Once it’s built You can use this stage to host Your Dinner & Dance Parties, Advocate Your Art, Build a School, Invent the next New Thing, Construct an Architectural Masterpiece - the World is Your Oyster and the way You choose to Express Your Service becomes easy, innate and effortless. With balanced Health You set the Stage for Vitality and Your Stage of Vitality provides a Platform from which Your Expression can gush forth in a surge of rich, nourishing, fully-flavored flow that is exquisitely unique to You.
The Code is the deconstruction of the whole, breaking it down to its constituent parts, knowing, understanding and building a relationship with every intricately designed piece, then putting it back together in perfect Harmony to Magically Mobilize Your Innately Infused Expression and Catalyze the most Beautiful Creation this Planet has ever seen.
You.
So how do You begin creating this for Yourself?
Read on Young Grasshopper.
FIGURE 3. FOUR SYSTEMS THAT GIVE THE GREATEST VALUE OVER THE 7 PRINCIPLES
When we know the 7 principles we wield a lot of power in deciding what methods, hacks, approaches, strategies and practices including diet, exercise, recovery and lifestyle are actually going to be the most effective at righting our natural balance point.
But what if we don't want to look at methods like HBOT, REHIT, and Plant Medicine one-by-one. What if we want to begin focusing on systems to stack the odds and time in our favor and begin putting our attention in the areas that matter the most?
Then it’s these 4 systems You want to look at.
Fascial, Circulatory, Digestive and Neural
These are the only 4 Systems of the body that have a direct impact on all 7 Principles.
Let Me show You.
There are 12 Systems within the body defined by Western Medicine. These are the Integumentary, Muscular, Skeletal, Fascial, Lymphatic, Respiratory, Circulatory, Digestive, Nervous, Endocrine, Urinary and Reproductive Systems.
These Systems are created to begin the dissection of the whole into the parts that make it up. In actuality the Body is a singular entity and to achieve the best results is to treat it as such. In theory this is great but from a logical standpoint separated from experience the complexity can be overwhelming and having these systems offers the opportunity of a good place to start.
This is what has led to the emphasis on systems like the Cardiovascular, Muscular and Digestive Systems in the Health and Fitness industry over the last couple decades.
But before we even start deconstructing further and trying to pick and choose, it’s best to see where we can actually reconstruct to find overlap. I’ve expertly sculpted this in My State-of-the-Art, World-Class Google Drawings Processor to expand your mind through an artistically inspired Table of Figures.
TABLE 1: SYSTEMS REORGANIZED
I’m sure the delivery is riveting.
Artistic competence aside when we restructure the Systems to create less segregation it simplifies the areas we have to focus on so we can start to leverage Pareto’s Principle to our advantage.
Without wading too deep into the waters of deduction the final 4 systems are the only 4 systems that directly influence all 7 Principles:
The Integumentary System misses a good 2 or 3.
The Skeletal System misses another 2 or 3.
The Muscular system minimally impacts system wide Immune Signaling.
The Lymphatic System is covered by the combination of Circulation and The Fascial System.
The Respiratory fails to meet Joint IAR directly.
The Endocrine System has such a strong influence on the reproductive organs they can nest but together they can be covered by Neural Response and the extensive reach of the Digestive System.
The Digestive System can be elusive on a Clean Memory and Regulated Gas Exchange but the precursors for proper Brain Chemistry and the Power of the ENS on Autonomic Control cover that pretty readily. In combination with the fact that the Digestive System is the bridge between the Outer World and Our Inner World and that we need to eat to exist makes the Digestive System a No-Brainer for top System Choice.
In one small deconstruction and reconstruction project we’ve shrunk our Field of view from 12 to 4. By focusing on these Systems and implementing the right tactics and techniques that target them will give You the biggest Bang for your Buck in beginning to change Your Life and loosen the tethers that wrap Your Potential. The more You can target all 4 systems instead of one with any given approach, the greater the impact and the larger the benefit across a holistic scale. The key is spending enough time reading Your body rather than the method itself so You can allow the language of experience to unravel.
Great Information right? But now what? I know what You’re thinking, that’s all fine and dandy but I still don’t have much of a starting point.
I know the question You're going to ask. What next? What if You only want to narrow it down to One. What if You could amass the 80/20 Rule into one System, One Focus, One Kingpin, One Focal Point and quite possibly could even be considered the“Heart of the Matter”.
As Gary Keller would say “What would be The One Thing?”
The One Thing that would Revolutionize Your whole Body and take You from 0 to 1 instead of 1 → n.
There’s only One System that can do that.
That System is Your Fascial System.
And I’m about to tell You why.
FIGURE 4. THE FASCIAL SYSTEM AS THE LYNCH-PIN
Your Fascial System is the only System that wraps every tissue in Your Body. Let that sink in for a minute. I’m going to repeat it because it’s so important.
FASCIA IS THE ONLY SYSTEM THAT WRAPS EVERY. TIS.SUE. IN. YOUR. BO.DY.
Stunting words sounds better when they’re single syllables.
To really understand and visualize the power of Your Fascia You would need to dip a body in a selective solvent that would dissolve everything except Your Fascia. Thomas Myers shows this with a dissection of the femur (17 min mark) in his Presentation to Google. But to really grasp how the fascia wraps every single cell (42 min mark) you would have to see it in its entirety. It wraps your blood vessels, bones, nerves, brain, organs, fat cells, muscle cells, lymph nodes, everything. The only cells that are not in direct contact are free flowing cells like Red Blood Cells, but the indirect relationship even puts that up for debate.
If You could see the Fascia as the only tissue remaining in a Body You would actually still see the shape and form of a Human rather than the sequential layering that is traditionally seen in textbooks with skin stacking on muscle stacking on bone. Because of its ability to maintain the integrity of the entire body through varying degrees of tension it acts much like a thumb puppet. If You disengage the fascial system the structure of your body falls apart and along with it its function. This is what makes it the most influential System on the 7 Principles, “the Fascial System is the Biological Fabric that holds us together” and it’s what allows each Principle to exist.
WHAT IS FASCIA MADE OF?
Fascia is primarily made up of the ExtraCellular Matrix (ECM), which can be broken down to two parts, ground substance and fibers. Ground Substance makes up the majority of the matrix and is comprised of water and and essential sugar molecules like glycosaminoglycans, proteoglycans, & glycoproteins. The primary role of the essential sugars is to attract and hold onto the water to allow for variation in the density of the matrix. The more water the lower the density and more fluid the ECM gets, the less water the greater the density and the more gelatinous it becomes. The fibers are the second part of the equation and consist of Collagen and Elastin, collagen being the most abundant fiber. The fibers make up the structural integrity of the ECM. Like the lines of a fishing net they are the mesh that hold everything together, the gaps in between are what would be filled with Ground Substance,
The rest of the fascia is made up of the cells that make the ECM or exist within it. The vast majority is made up of Fasciacytes, which under mechanical shear forces produce the ground substance of the ECM, and Fibroblasts which to quote Thomas Myers act like miniature slugs always on the move leaving a consistent ooze in their wake. (35:30 min mark) Except instead of it being a snail-trail it’s a trail of collagenous fibers that is constantly reshaping your physical form to meet the demands You place upon it.
The other cells make up less than 25% of the small percentage that is not ECM. We are talking a fraction of a fraction at this point. These cells are cells that make up the tissues within your body like Your nerves and Your endothelium. To add to the mix You have cells that make up Your Fat and Immune system like Adipocytes, Mast Cells and Macrophages as well as cells like Telocytes which play a role in stem cell coordination. Other cells specific to the local hangout of the tissue (like osteoclasts for bone, myoblasts for muscle etc,) are also included but dependant on the tissue type there’s a bit more flexibility.
With so many components going into its structure You're probably wondering what the primary functions of the Fascia are.
So without further ado, drumroll please.
FASCIAL FUNCTION
Historically Fascia has been labeled as a tissue responsible for movement. But that really does make it sound a lot less than what it actually is. The fascia isn’t just a structural framework that holds your body together in a criss-cross pattern of scaffolding. It’s a living, breathing, pulsing network that is always reinforcing, altering, reorienting, degrading, modifying, transforming, building and reshaping You by intuitive design. To do this it needs to be able to sense, perceive, communicate and organize within itself to orchestrate the harmonization of not only Your Body as a Whole but all the Systems that make it up as well. So while this topic may have a child-proofed, twist-top lid, it’s for good reason because this Can of Worms is pressurized and I’m about to open it up and coat the walls in Silly String. In other words I’m going to walk You through the vast array of functional responsibilities Your Fascia has and what this means in terms of far-reaching implications on the way Your Homeostatic Balance is maintained.
The Responsibilities of Fascia can be split into 3 categories: Embodiment, Spatial Awareness and External Integration.
These can be further subdivided into 3 classes each, I will summarize the function of each one in a paragraph or two. In summary it looks like this:
Big Words, I know. But I am going to break them down for You simply in the list below.
Each Subcategory could be a book on it’s own. In fact they could be a Digital Archive that would Rival the New York Public Library and get Amazon ‘s Nod of Approval. But to keep You from getting Square Eyeballs I’m going to keep this brief. Put on Your Swim Caps, clip on Your nipple, I mean nostril clamps and strap on Your Life Jackets because we are about to rock this little rowboat.
SENSORY
Spatial Awareness allows You to perfectly sense the World around You and organize it to tune the perception You have of Your Surroundings. It’s the way Your Body is constantly working in synchrony with Your Mind to recreate the Mental Maps in Your Brain. The degree of Your sensitivity determines the detail and complexity of Your Map. As You increase Your sensitivity the amount of information You are able to assimilate becomes more pronounced and the ability to recognize patterns within complexity becomes proportionally simpler. This is a prime example why sensing goes far beyond the 5 senses and extends well into a level of senses that are too numerous to count. For example, people who are electrosensitive are able to much more clearly gauge the energetic flux within a room, or those who are emotionally sensitive tend to connect with people very well because they have cultivated their innate ability to be empathic. As with everything sensory perception can be learned, nurtured and grown in a balanced way to support and nourish Your being.
The way You perceive things are broken down into 3 categories:
Exteroception - The Awareness of Stimuli coming from outside of Yourself. This is atypically defined to the 5 senses of touch, taste, smell, sight, and sound. Categorized into a group called exteroreceptors they are made up of mechano-, chemo-, thermo- and photoreceptors which work with Your Fascia to turn stimuli outside of You into imagery inside of You which in turn creates a layer of Understanding.
Proprioception - The Awareness of Position and Movement in Space. This type of Awareness is in part classified by the Proprioceptors. These are primarily different forms of Mechanoreceptors which consistently communicate between the Zones of Intero- and Exteroception through varying degrees of pressure, vibration, touch and tension to provide a layer of Feeling and Movement.
Interoception - The Awareness of Bodily Sensations and the Inner Self. It is the way Your body “senses, interprets, integrates and regulates signals within itself”. The receptors here are unending but are primarily somatosensory meaning they operate under the perception of touch. Just as your body has touch receptors on the outside You have them all over You on the inside and it’s regulated by receptors varying from thermoreceptors that detect temperature to baroreceptors that detect the difference in pressure in Your Endothelium. Together these senses are woven into one another to begin creating A layer of Intuition.
CONSCIOUSNESS
DISCLAIMER: This is the most Woo-Topic You will see in this Article. It will challenge You if You consider Yourself to be a Person who needs to know how things work before believing them, if You consider Yourself a logical, reasoning, Left-Brained person or if You only tend to apply concepts that are material rather than theoretical. It does require a certain Trust factor (in Yourself). But don’t worry, the purpose of this website is to unpack this Hairball into its individual strands so that You can actually choke it down by spending quality time with the abstract to turn it into something tangible.
Embodiment is the ability to Express with Intention and Flow. It is the Bridge between Your Sensory Processes and Your External Integration. It is Your own Personal Flavor unique to You. Even if You were to give someone all the components that make You up, with all the pieces ready for pre-assembly, nobody else could replicate Your Flavor, even Your Twin. Without getting too far into the weeds of Pseudoscience and Western Medicine’s Category of Quackery Your Body is the extension that unifies Your Soul’s Expression between the Energetic Realm and the Material Realm. Off topic but for clarification purposes Quantum Physics defines the Energetic Realm as a Space where things are only perceived as Energy and the Material Realm as a Space where things are primarily perceived as Matter. So Consciousness is a full-body experience instead of being exclusively relegated to the Prefrontal Cortex of the Brain.
Embodiment can be classified into 3 categories.
Distinction of Separation - The realization that the Consciousness and the Body are separate. This can be a tough one to wrap the head around because any Physical Part of You is considered Your Body, including the Brain. Your Body is consistently making maps through a sensory flow of information but when You create a relationship with Your Body that emphasizes experience rather than control it allows You to separate and enjoy the ride of Your Body’s innate processes. This offers the opportunity to be fully aware of the Body’s actions, reactions and rhythms but to not feel into it unless You Choose to. Allowing You to interject, tweak and refine where You see fit. The Fascia facilitates the synchronization of these processes when the body moves from top-down, Left Brain-Led Behaviour to Bottom-Up, Right Brain-Led Operation . This is also accompanied with the feeling of things just naturally happening on their own, known as Flow States or “Being in the Zone”.
Safety - The Experience of Feeling Safe. The feeling of Safety is a bidirectional Flow of Information heavily influenced by the state of your Fascia. While the concept is understudied, the Fascia is rippling the scientific waters with its potential to communicate messages faster than nerve transmission through Fascial membrane deformation. This means the way the Fascia is aligning the Systems in Your Body and the way it reacts to sensory input dictates whether or not You feel safe. When You are feeling safe the Body is comfortable with experiencing things that do not fit into Your current Paradigm, Schema or Belief System. This opens the door to insight through experience and allows for rapid transformations in learning and growth to create new levels of understanding.
Congruent Experience - To be Conscious of the Experience of Aligning and have the combination of Thinking, Feeling & Doing become Being. This is the concept of presence. Presence is the Home of Your Fascia and it gets richer and more profound the more sensory You are. This is where everything comes together to perfectly fit together and weave itself into the fabric of the Space around You. It’s as close as it gets to Oneness or experiencing deep connection similar to what many people feel during Out-of-Body Experiences or Plant Medicine Journeys. It’s the lining up of everything across Time and Space to eliminate all separation. If one thing is out of balance the entirety goes cold turkey, but if You nail it You can experience what it’s like to live completely limitless.
The feeling is like bringing everything together to the Front Porch before You leave out the door for Your trip to Hawaii. Not yet departing the tension is immense but as You take Your first step and come into touch with the moment You’re in it instead of outside of it. This is the same for Your Expression. When the time comes to execute, and You're inside the experience, it’s effortless, smooth and a perfect fit. In this way You are working consciously with the Unconscious experience. Weaving the perfect blend of Emotion, Cognition and Action into one Big Hurray of Being. And as the System that pervades every piece of Your Body, Fascia is the not only the theatre that allows it all to happen but the conductor that coordinates it all as it occurs.
MOVEMENT
External Integration is the ability to Move with Biomechanical Ease. This means the transition of what You want to do from Your Internal Desires translates perfectly to the way You Perform them in Your External Environment. This works on small scales where pick up a pencil off the floor in the exact way You wanted to and on large scales, where You train and learn to perform spectacular Athletic Feats like big, floaty corked 1080’s off XXL’s at Aspen’s Ski Resort or the most intricate penmanship to create an artistic Masterpiece that will Sparkle and Shine on the walls of Musée d’Orsay. It is the Act of Expression, taking Your Inner World and putting it into the Outer World,
External Integration comes together through 3 subclasses.
External Forces & Vertical Arrangement - This is an Arrangement of Fascia that resists compression against external forces like gravity, provides rebound, and is active during rest. This classic example is the muscles within the Vertical Chain and Thomas Myers Superficial and Arm Lines. This portion of the Fascial System needs to be engaged when not moving, as in sitting or standing.
Fascial Continuity - The linking of Fascial lines through one continuous Fascia mesh. This property of Fascia brings everything together. Changes in tension transmit and receive mechano-metabolic information like a fly creating vibrations as it gets caught in a spider web. Anything in Your Body that is associated with water, pressure or tension converges at the Fascia in one coordinated fashion to come together and enact your expression. This is most obviously seen in Thomas Myers Deep Frontal Line but given that it is a Fascial line and not the Fascial Whole the Deep Frontal Line is best described as a Model within the Model of Fascia Continuity itself.
Torque Access & Spiral Arrangement - This is an arrangement of Fascia that is engaged during movement. It links the body through rotation and its spiral orientation is what allows it to decompress the body while facilitating extension. Its activation also opens the door to torque access and generates stability and mobility in concert. This is most obviously seen in the Spiral Muscle chains and Thomas Myers Spiral, Lateral and Functional Lines. It can also be seen in Deep Muscles and stabilizers like the muscles of the Erector Spinae.
As a side note it may seem odd to say Fascia is one continuous net and then place it within the confines of categories. As You have probably already figured out Fascia’s nature prevents it from being relegated to one category or structure. Even the lines proposed by Thomas Myers or Robert Schleip are loose definitions that are in place so We can begin to understand how Fascia works. In reality Fascia is a single unit, existing as a continuum from one space to the next with its Function varying in intensity along a spectrum rather than actually being chunked into specific functional groups. This means that Fascia overlaps even in the above subcategories, though the chunking is what allows us to begin making the connections logically before they become experiential. When we do this we simultaneously create a space where we can begin to untangle the language of our Fascia so we can actually feel what it’s like to truly understand the implications it has.
That being said, with these 9 functions of the Fascia coming together to link sensation, embodiment and external integration its impact on the 7 principles becomes intuitive. Not only does it become the Keystone for Health and Vitality but Fascia also becomes the instrument by which we express and experience, tying all the facets of life into one just as it unites all 7 Principles within Your Body.
You’ll notice a theme of Bridging as You begin to explore what it actually means to work with Your Fascia.
For example if we look at the relationship of the categories:
In Sensory You take in and assemble the pieces of sensation to restructure Your schema for the best fit → so that through Consciousness You can create a clear Bridge between Your Experiences (sensory) and Your Desires (Integration) → Finally in Integration You Perform the Act, using Movement to put forth Your Expression.
You’ll notice the theme of “In - Bridge - Out” consistently across all levels large and small. For example Proprioception is the bridge between intero- and exteroception, Consciousness is the bridge between Sensory and Movement. This Bridging concept is actually a circle and it makes for a nice framework from which You can view things.
Looking at our original example, Once You have performed Your Act of Expression through Integration a new ensemble of sensation is initiated, arguably simultaneously, to lead into the next cycle of Sensory input.
The fact that You can see it across multiple levels is also what makes it a Truth.
A Truth is scalable, and when it spans multiple levels of experience it fits the bill.
Just like the concept of a Bridge exists within the subcategories and categories of Fascia, we can expand our view to one level larger and see that Fascia is the bridge between our Understanding of the Material World and Our Understanding of the Energetic World. We know things like Acupuncture, Infoceuticals, EMF’s, and Neural Therapy work but their mechanisms of action are still not completely understood and therefore their impact potential is capped.
Through the lens of Fascia we can begin to piece together how practices like TCM, Ayurveda and Plant Medicine actually exhibit their effects beyond biochemical parameters. We can begin to comprehend how energetic constitution, emotional energy, social interactions, mental operations and cognitive creativity all impact and are impacted by our Health. Fascia gives us a structure where we can begin to understand energy from beyond a perspective that is rooted in biochemical pathways and lets us step into an area that is largely unknown. It provides a platform to stand on, working with energy and incorporating it into practical application that can not only be felt but understood. It opens the door to Quantum Biology and a whole New Field of Opportunity, Possibility and with it a complete 180 of what it means to Be and Feel Free.
Beyond movement the health of Your Fascia is in the way You Digest, Metabolize, Think, Feel, Behave and Act plus the culmination of all these things at once to create experience. For the reason Fascia is not just movement, is the same reason we need to take care of it through our Emotion, Nutrition, Activity, Thoughts, Relationships and Recovery. Fascia is not a thing we need to take care of for our Health it is the thing that our Health needs in order to be taken care of.
In summary, Fascia is what creates the diversity of experience. Without Fascia You lose experience and without experience there is an absence of Life. This is why Living can not be separated from Expression, Expression polarizes Experience and is what makes Life so full of Flavor.
It is also why living with Purpose, in Service to You Highest Self is the Key to Health.
Living through Your Purpose means Your Expression is fully and completely You and Your Experience will reflect Your Expression so You always feel congruent with the Life You Choose to Lead.
This way of Living is automatically fitted to a life of Presence, making Homeostasis easier to balance. You can then draw on less resources as You work collaboratively with Your Body to listen for what You need as You begin to learn its language.
The more quality time spent listening, interacting and experiencing, the stronger Your relationship with Yourself becomes, and the easier it will be to understand What Your needs are in the moment and How those needs can be met. Or, if You don’t know How to meet Your current needs, You will know What You need to do to begin discovering How You can meet them. Steadily You will Close the Gap between what has happened and what is happening inside Your Body, enhancing Your ability to steer Your Health rather than have Your Health try and steer itself.
Over time less resources are needed for righting Homeostasis and slowly Homeostasis moves towards greater stability and more energy is left over. With energy left over it spills into more options for Expression and increases Your Level of Vitality.
In other words, it increases the Degree to which You are Alive.
IN CLOSING
Does this make Fascia the One Answer, the only thing You need to focus on?
No. there’s other pieces of other systems that You will need to work in as You see fit. In some cases it will be generalized and in others highly specific.
But if You had to choose One Thing to revolutionize Your Health and Unlock Your Vitality, the One thing that will give You 80% of the result with 20% of the effort, dare I say 90/10, this is it.
Fascia goes beyond the Key that unlocks the door to Your Health. It reaches further than the search for the missing puzzle piece because Fascia is the puzzle itself. And as You allow each of the pieces to line up Your World is going to radically rearrange in a Flash of Light that will illuminate Your Inner Understanding and Breathe Life into the Vitality You always knew You had.
Except this time it will be something You actually Feel.
