Illustrations by Andrew Mannie

Originally published in Massage & Bodywork magazine, April/May 2004.
Copyright 2003. Associated Bodywork and Massage Professionals. All rights reserved.

Figure 1 -- The proteins that cross the cell membrane sense and make sense out of their chemical and mechanical environment.

In the last several columns, we have been discussing membranes in the cell and their relation to the body's function as a whole. We began by noting some of the newer research about trans-membrane proteins. We looked at the seaweed-like chemo-receptors that "taste" the chemicals flowing within and around the cell (popularized by psychoneuro-immunologist Candace Pert, Ph.D.). And we lifted the veil on the more newly-discovered integrins, Velcro-like proteins that tie the cell to the fibers and polysaccharide goo of the connective tissue. These proteins act as the cell's proprioceptive or spatial sense (Massage & Bodywork, December/January 2004, pages 84-92) (see Figure 1).

We then noted how each of the trillions of cells in the body specializes in one of the functions of the original cell, the ovum, or its daughter cells called stem cells. The ovum reproduces (boy, does she!), metabolizes, conducts, contracts, secretes, and supports. Every cell has to metabolize, and most cells retain their option to reproduce, but for the last four functions on the list, specialization is the order of the day.

Figure 2 -- Each cell has two jobs -- one is to survive and reproduce, but the other is the special job it takes on to serve us. It either conducts, contracts, secretes, or supports, depending on its type. For these specializations to work strong but flexible spatial relationships need to be maintained. But who's doing that?

Thus, there are four large classes of cells, one for each category. Nerve cells ace conduction (but can't do much else), muscle cells are champions of contraction, epithelial cells secrete to beat the band, and connective tissue cells manufacture all the products necessary for allowing the muscles to move us where we want to go. We noted that when cells are under any kind of stress, they are going to abandon this social function (their "job," so to speak) and concentrate on survival -- metabolism and reproduction. Ease the stress (as with good bodywork), and the cells can go back to their jobs, resulting in increased energy, vibrancy, and health (Massage & Bodywork, February/March 2004, pages 98-106) (see Figure 2).


The Barrier that Holds Us Together
Let's pull all this together and tie it to our hands-on work by understanding how the connective tissue operates as the body's "metamembrane." Let's begin with a seemingly innocent question: If the membrane forms the boundary around the cell, what forms the membrane around the whole collection of cells we call ourselves? The easy answer is, "Our skin, silly" -- but that's not quite true. Skin is a fabulous tissue for dealing with the outside world, but it does not form this metamembrane.

Skin does indeed form a seal around us, but it is dead for about 200 layers down. New, living cells keep pushing up from below, sacrificing themselves as they head for the dry surface of your body. The dead cells are what keeps exfoliating, to use the current buzzword, off your body (and why that winter vacation tan doesn't last for very many showers). No matter what skin product you use, you are only taking off a few of the topmost dead layers. You would not want to wash off all the dead layers -- that's what happens when you scrape yourself just enough to weep, but not to bleed. A good sauna with a loofah is about as close as you want to get to having living tissue on the surface of your body. Living cells die quickly on the surface anyway -- no cell is equipped to live without being surrounded by wetness.

Figure 3 -- The skin is a wonderful organ for interfacing with the air, but it's that underlying fascial layer that really keeps this fellow in shape.

Skin tissue deals well with this constant die-off, keeps our temperature fairly constant, and houses the nerves that warm to pleasure and flinch from pain. But it is not really our container, in the sense that the membrane is the container for the cell. Skin is simply not strong enough to be our metamembrane, no more than those heat tiles are the functional membrane for the Space Shuttle. Those tiles deflect the heat like nothing else, but they are delicate things, it's the metal shell they stick to that really functions as the shuttle's membrane, protecting the astronauts from the cold vacuum of space (see Figure 3).

For us, that metamembrane barrier is not the skin but the fibrous body, the living matrix of collagenous and elastic fiber and the accompanying gluey mucopolysaccharides. In similar fashion to the Space Shuttle, our delicate skin clings to the underlying connective tissue layers. There are several of these. The outermost is the dermis, the carpet-backing for the skin (epidermis = above the dermis), which always comes up with the skin if you pinch a bit of it away from the body. Without this layer, the skin would quickly ball up and fall off our bodies -- ouch! Under the dermal layer is the sub-cutaneous layer, a loose fascial network interspersed with numerous fat and infection-fighting cells.

Figure 4 -- The skin has a backing layer of fascia. Then there is a superficial fat layer that ties the skin loosely to the underlying person. The deep investing fascia acts like a leotard around the whole body. Deep to this layer are the familiar layers of the myofascia, the intermuscular septa, and the periosteum (seen here around the bone).

Beneath these two layers is the deep investing fascia, a superficial body leotard that stretches from foot to head. This layer follows the Langer lines and keeps us not only in shape, but ensures we don't end up as a puddle at our own feet. Deep to this body suit are the familiar layers of myofascia wrapped around the muscles, the bags of connective tissue around all the organs, and the specialized connective tissues of bone, cartilage, and ligament (see Figure 4).

This is the stuff between the cells that forms the proximate environment of each and every cell. The New Age mantra is "It's all connected" (actually, it was that old hippie Einstein who laid that one down). In this case, the platitude is truer than consensus "science" -- we are way more one thing than we are a collection of separate parts -- like the plantar fascia, Achilles tendon, sacrospinous ligament, or thoraco-lumbar fascia. All of this intercellular "stuff" -- including the meninges around the brain, the mesentery around the organs, and the fascial complex the muscles live in -- starts and ends as one entity, acting as our metamembrane to shape and protect all our trillions and trillions of cells.

Changing this living matrix stuff is the work of fascial manipulation -- rolfing, osteopathy, myofascial release, deep tissue work -- call it what you will, the intent is to reshape this metamembrane, and thus to ease the nutrition and functioning of the cells that live within it.


In the Zona
For the rest of the column, let's look at the origins and disposition of this fascial metamembrane. To do this, we need to return to where we started -- the miracle of individual human development from the fertilized ovum. We started looking at embryology last time, but we skipped around this part -- not out of embarrassment or decorum, but because at that time we wanted to discuss specialization. This time, we want to see how the metamembrane develops around the collection of cells we call ourselves.

The ovum, as we noted then, is a huge cell, and once each month one of them is culled out, curried up in a follicle, and then ejected out into the big bad world (specifically the fallopian tube) all alone. Is it any wonder that the primary feminine fear is that of abandonment? Here is a cell that has been housed in the ovum with all her sisters since the fifth month of pregnancy. That means ova have a three-generational experience -- they experience themselves, inside the ovum of their mother, the foetus, and inside the womb of their grandmother (the baby's mother). What a surprise it must be for the chosen one -- every two months one ovary has to give up one ovum for the chance to be fertilized -- to be taken away, given the grand princess treatment, and then ejected into the world on her own.

And then here come the sperm. Single-minded, immature, linear, and non-stop movers. Remind you of anyone? It is hard to separate ova from women and sperm from men. Why does it take 400,000,000 sperm to fertilize one egg? Because no one will stop to ask for directions. Sperm have a short and hard life. Under attack even as they grow, they hide from their host's immune system under big lily pad "nurse" cells in the testes. Once employed in the usual way, they are doubly under attack in the woman from the woman's immune system and even the pH of the vagina. The so-called "bad" spermatozoa head for the sides of the ejaculate to form a protective wall for the good swimmers, who head up through the cervix.

And then the moment of fertilization. We have, because of the martial, Darwinian point-of-view that predominates in our science, a picture of this moment that doesn't accord with reality. Our picture is that the best swimmer gets the prize, that the first Alpha-male sperm, the one with the strongest genes, gets there first and fertilizes the egg. He's the "fustest with the mostest" as that Confederate general said, and he wins the battle, pierces the armor, and impregnates the target area. It's a very militaristic view of fertilization. And it is also totally false.

Here's what really goes on: The ovum is surrounded with a gel called the zona pellucida (the translucent layer). This gel is a mucousy polysaccharide right outside the membrane of the cell -- you can see it around the outside of the membrane in the illustration on page 98. The first sperm -- that's the alpha-male, Darwinian-favored sperm -- encounters this gel layer, and his little enzymatic "warhead" (to continue the martial imagery) explodes, creating a little shell-hole or divot in the gel of the zona. He falls by the wayside, a spent arrow. How ignominious and un-Darwinian: The alpha-male sperm dies, never having made it to be the chosen one -- definitely not the Neo of this "Matrix."

In fact, it takes between 50 and 1,000 sperm finding and butting up against this zona until enough divots are created in the gel that one sperm finally makes it to the ovum's membrane proper, engages with it, and slips in (at which point the membrane electrically seals itself against others, except in the case of fraternal twins). And what happens to that sperm once it has actually made it? Its head and tail disappears, and all that's left is a tiny (but important) bit of genetic material floating within the vast sea of the huge ovum. Is it any wonder that the primary male fear is of absorption into the feminine? That is exactly what happens. You seriously want us to commit? We know what happens when we commit -- we disappear.

Anyway, this "men are sperm, women are ova" thing was just a humorous sideline (so please, fellow feminists and metrosexuals, don't jump all over me or write to the editor). The main point I was asking you to notice is that the gel (a connective tissue product) was acting as the metamembrane for the ovum. The gel continues as the metamembrane for quite some time of embryological development.

Figure 5 -- The left side is a fertilized ovum, with the zona around it. The cell's membrane and the meta-membrane of the zona enclose essentially the same area. On the right side is the same organism after the first cell division. Notice that the cell membranes now enclose a smaller portion of the organism, about half in this case, but the zona is still operating as the metamembrane -- enclosing the whole organism.

The first change is that the single cell divides into two. This essentially happens as a belt-tightening in the membrane, progressively cinching in on the ovum's membrane until it divides into two. Notice that the two cells take up the same space as the first one -- in other words, each daughter cell is about half the size of the original one. I say "about" because there is in fact a little fluid left over, between and around the daughter cells, but still inside the gel of the zona. This fluid is the beginning of the intercellular fluid, or lymph as we call it in the adult, which needs to surround and feed each and every cell (see Figure 5).

But notice also what has happened with the zona: Before, the membrane of the cell and the membrane of the zona enclosed the same space. Now, after the first division, the membranes of the individual cells surround their cell, but what membrane surrounds the whole organism? The answer is the zona. And the zona is part of the living matrix of connective tissue. So the connective tissue is the metamembrane.

Figure 6 -- On the left is the 8-cell stage (the stem cells) and on the right the 64-cell stage. Each stage is still held together by the same original metamembrane, the gel of the zona pellucida.

The zona remains the metamembrane as the mother cells continue to divide, creating an 8-cell stage, and on up to a 64- or 128-cell stage. Each set of cells is smaller than the last, so all 128 cells only take up about as much room as the original ovum, all contained within the gel of the zona (see Figure 6).

By this point the embryo has emerged from the fallopian tube and is looking for a place to implant on the uterine wall. The zona thins out about this time, and the ball of cells finally expands into a hollow ball of cells (the blastosphere), which then turns itself inside out (gastrulation) to form a bilaminar and then
a trilaminar disc. (We simply don't have space to do this in detail.)

Figure 7 -- Soon after the disappearance of the zona, the three-layered embryo lies between the amniotic balloon and the yolk sac balloon (left). To keep it from being smooshed, shaken, or stirred, connective tissue cells migrate from near the center of the middle layer into all three layers (right) and form a three-dimensional net -- the new and permanent metamembrane -- to keep internal relationships fairly constant.

The three layers of the disc are somewhat familiar to most of us -- the ecto-, meso-, and endoderm. These fundamental germ layers will diversify into the various tissues we discussed last time -- ectoderm into nerve and skin, mesoderm into bone and muscle, and endoderm into epithelial linings and inner organs (see Figure 7).

During this brief period between the melting of the zona and the beginning of the reticular net, there simply is no metamembrane. Only the thin layer of remaining glue and the Velcro-like chemical bonds between the cells hold the organism together.

But the organism is growing, and, more to the point, diversifying into the specialized cells we need to be fully ourselves (see Figure 2). Once the cells start specializing, spatial arrangement becomes crucial, spatial integrity must be maintained or the embryo has no chance of developing into a human being in an orderly manner. So some way must be found to create another metamembrane, and once again it is the fibrous and gluey products of the connective tissue cells that come to the rescue.

Near the middle of the mesoderm is a thickening that will form the notocord, the precursor to your backbone. (The intervertebral discs are leftover remnants of this notocord -- and therefore fundamental to spinal health.) On either side of this axis, in the paraxial mesoderm, a group of cells called mesenchymal cells migrate out from the center through all three layers. These cells then secrete a delicate three-dimensional spider web of reticular fibers that interconnect with each other to form a new metamembrane around all the other individual cells that are now on their way to form a new human being in all its complexity (see Figure 8a).

Figure 8b - Elements of the metamembrane include three basic types of fiber: reticulin, which are the really small webby ones in Figure 8a, elastin, the yellow bungee-looking ones, and collagen. A single strand of collagen proceeds from a fibroblast, but the single strands quickly bind into a triple helix, like the one running across the bottom of the illustration. In Figure 8b, we see the other element of the metamembrane -- which more closely resembles the original zona pellucida -- the ground substance, a variable gel-like hydrophilic colloid that glues cells and fibers together.

This reticular net will gradually be replaced by collagen and elastin (though we all retain a little embryological reticulin in our bodies) to form the unitary fascial web. It is really important to our work that we see this single net connects all the parts of our bodies, all our functions, and even all the branches of medicine. It is easy, when we start talking about the plantar fascia, sacral fascia, iliotibial tract, the acromio-clavicular ligament to forget that all these names are man-made names that we separated out from a God-created unity. All these, and any other fascial or myofascial structure you can name -- from the dura and the falciform ligament out to the fat and dermis of the skin -- are all part of one net (see Figure 8b). It formed at one time, stayed as one piece, but it was folded and refolded in the most complex piece of origami known as a human being.

You can cut this net with a surgeon's scalpel, tear it in an auto accident, or see it fray with age in the wrinkles in your mother's face. But it will never be any more or less than one single net, the metamembrane that holds you in the shape that you characteristically take. All these parts we name are just our divisive mind working to understand the whole in terms of parts.

It is this connective tissue living matrix metamembrane that occupies our attention in fascial and myofascial work and its wholeness sometimes confounds us and sometimes delights us with its unexpected connections. But it shouldn't surprise us, because wholeness is its very beginning and its very being.

Thomas Myers, Certified Advanced Rolfer, L.M.T., N.C.T.M.B., studied directly with Drs. Ida Rolf and Moshe Feldenkrais, and has practiced integrative bodywork for more than 25 years in a variety of cultural and clinical settings. Myers directs Kinesis, Inc., which develops and runs training courses internationally for manual and movement therapies. He served as a founding member of the NCBTMB and as a chair of the Rolf Institute's anatomy faculty. His articles have appeared in a number of magazines, and his book on myofascial continuities, Anatomy Trains: Myofascial Meridians for Manual and Movement Therapists, was published in 2001 by Harcourt Brace. Myers retains a strong interest in perinatal and developmental issues around movement. His practice combines structural integration, physiological rhythmic sensitivity and movement. He lives, writes and sails on the coast of Maine.