05/07/2026
This is a partial article written by John Sharkey an anatomist whom I did a human dissection course with in Cremona Italy. He explains the fascia structure and the difference between how gross anatomy, old school, and now. Fascia is everything and everywhere. It’s a three dimensional web with no beginning and no end.
Thank you John Sharkey for your work!
A manual therapist never truly contacts only skin, superficial fascia, deep fascia, muscle, ligament, or capsule in isolation. Every touch, every load, every breath, every movement distributes force throughout a continuous connective tissue continuum. The effects are omni-directional, not linear. Mechanical information spreads across the whole architecture according to pre-existing tension, hydration states, orientation of collagen, neural activity, vascular dynamics, and the history, that is over time, of adaptation within the organism. Moving our focus towards temporal medicine changes everything clinically.
Pain may not emerge from the location where symptoms are perceived. Restriction may not originate where stiffness is palpated. The body behaves more like a tensegrity-informed manifold than a machine assembled from separate parts. Local tissue behaviour reflects global organisational dynamics. The therapeutic implications are profound.
When therapists think in layers, they often attempt to “separate,” “break adhesions,” “release tissues,” or “create glide” between structures as though two disconnected surfaces are rubbing upon one another. Yet living connective tissue is continuous, hydrated, electrochemically active, and mechanically integrated. What therapists often interpret as “gliding” may instead represent relative deformation, phase adaptation, pressure redistribution, fluid dynamics, viscoelastic responsiveness, altered neural tone, or changes in force transmission across a continuous matrix. The language matters because language shapes perception, and perception shapes intervention.
A layered model encourages therapists to think mechanically,
one tissue against another. My continuity model encourages therapists to think biologically, one organism adapting moment by moment within gravity, time, memory, and environment.
This is why embryology becomes more clinically important than classical topographical anatomy alone. Embryology reminds us that the body was never assembled piece by piece. It emerged as continuity from the very beginning (thank you Dr Jaap van der Wal).
For the therapist, this changes the intention behind touch.
Sensorial touch is no longer an attempt to mechanically manipulate isolated structures. Instead, sensorial touch becomes a means of introducing information into a responsive living network. The therapist is not “fixing layers” but interacting with a dynamic system capable of self-organisation, adaptation, and re-distribution of force.
In this sense, manual therapy becomes less about separating tissues and more about influencing relationships within continuity. I get that this is revolutionary and not easy to grasp, it takes time.
