Fascia Research Congress 2012
October 28, 2009
For Immediate Release
BC’s Registered Massage Therapists
Welcome the World Fascia Research Congress To Vancouver in 2012
On behalf of the Board of Directors of the Massage Therapists’ Association of British Columbia (MTABC), we are pleased to welcome the 2012 World Fascia Research Congress to Vancouver.
“This announcement in Amsterdam, Netherlands today is a recognition of the excellence, quality and commitment of BC’s Registered Massage Therapists (RMTs). Over 700 BC RMTs participated in the 2007 Congress replays, reflecting the impact that this research has on massage therapy” said Damon Marchand, MTABC President.
Our 2012 event will be the third Fascia Congress. The first congress took place in Boston, Massachusetts at Harvard Medical School in 2007. The second Fascia Congress is occurring this week at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. The Vancouver Congress will be the largest, with a delegate registration expected to be over 1,000.
The theme for the 2012 Fascia Congress will be the practical application of research to practice.
“We know that the profession of massage therapy is excited about this research and about this Congress. We look forward to welcoming leading researchers, clinicians and educators from around the world to Vancouver” said Marchand.
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For further information:
Brenda Locke, Executive Director
604-873-4467
locke@massagetherapy.bc.ca
Backgrounder
Fascia Background:
Fascia has both general and special functions in the human organism. As such, it is the subject of a wide range of scientific research. Similarly, fascia and its properties are of central importance to clinicians practicing in various conventional therapies and in the wide range of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) modalities.
Recent scientific research in the field of the human fasciae has resulted in several significant findings. Combined, the results from the worldwide research activities constitute a body of significant and important data. It is our shared vision that it is time to gather together all the latest and best scientific information about the body’s connective tissue matrix.
Future conferences will continue to provide collegial settings for the mutual benefit and collaboration of basic scientists, academics, and professionals engaged in the many clinical practices where fascia is an important consideration.
About Fascia:
Fascia is the soft tissue component of the connective tissue system that permeates the human body. It forms a whole-body continuous three-dimensional matrix of structural support. Fascia interpenetrates and surrounds all organs, muscles, bones and nerve fibers, creating a unique environment for body systems functioning. The scope of our definition of an interest in fascia extends to all fibrous connective tissues, including aponeuroses, ligaments, tendons, retinaculae, joint capsules, organ and vessel tunics, the epineurium, the meninges, the periostea, and all the endomysial and intermuscular fibers of the myofasciae.
There is a substantial body of research on connective tissue generally focused on specialized genetic and molecular aspects of the extracellular matrix. However, the study of fascia and its function as an organ of support has been largely neglected and overlooked for many years. Since fascia serves both global, generalized functions and local, specialized functions, it is a substrate that crosses several scientific, medical, and therapeutic disciplines, both in conventional and complementary/alternative modalities.
Among the different kinds of tissues that are involved in musculoskeletal dynamics, fascia has received comparatively little scientific attention. Fascia, or dense fibrous connective tissues, nevertheless potentially plays a major and still poorly understood role in joint stability, in general movement coordination, as well as in back pain and many other pathologies. One reason why fascia has not received adequate scientific attention in the past decades is that this tissue is so pervasive and interconnected that it easily frustrates the common ambition of researchers to divide it into a discrete number of subunits, which can be classified and separately described. In anatomic displays the fascia is generally removed, so the viewer can see the organs nerves and vessels but fails to appreciate the fascia, which connects, and separates, these structures.
Clinician Perspective on Fascia:
There is increasing interest in certain therapeutic communities in the role that fascia plays in musculoskeletal strain disorders such as low-back instability and postural strain patterns of all types, fibromyalgia, pelvic pain, and respiratory dysfunction, chronic stress injures, as well as in wound healing, trauma recovery and repair. The Fascia Research Congress seeks to present recent findings that advance knowledge of biomechanical and adaptive properties of fascia that may account for clinical observations in health and dysfunction.
The expanding worldwide scientific research on the human fascial tissues forms a body of knowledge pertinent to a wide range of professionals engaged in conventional and CAM modalities, who serve individuals afflicted with specific pathologies or injuries of fascial tissue. The latest research will further the mechanistic understanding of many manual therapies and CAM modalities which contact, mechanically manipulate, penetrate, or otherwise involve fascial tissues.
Canadians now have online access to the world’s largest library of systematic reviews of health care treatments.
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