2nd International World Fascial Congress October 27-30th, 2009

http://www.fasciacongress.org/2009/index.htm

The second conference at Vrije Universiteit will continue the high level of scientific presentations set in the first conference. The Amsterdam Congress will be a four day schedule followed by an additional day of post-conference clinical workshops. This will add new dimensions – presentation of the clinical practices, both in lecture/demonstrations and in small group sessions, and integration with academic faculty conducting rehabilitation research. Vrije University has a main auditorium seating 900 and numerous smaller rooms for concurrent sessions.

The Fascia Research Congress 2009 in Amsterdam will be hosted by Faculteit Bewegingswetenschappen (Faculty of Human Movement Sciences) at Vrije Universiteit.

The Scientific Chair of the conference is Peter Huijing, PhD, a physiologist and keynote presenter from the first fascia research conference who is the recipient of the prestigious Muybridge Award for his work on fascial connections and force transmission within muscle tissue. The Administrative Chair is Peter Hollander, PhD who was dean of the School of Movement Sciences from 1998 to 2007 and has been active in sports related exercise physiology with an emphasis on swimming.

IMPORTANT UPCOMING DATES:
Research Abstract Submission Deadline…February 15, 2009.

Fascia Background

Fascia has both generalized and specialized functions in the human organism. As such, it is the subject of a wide range of scientific research with many specializations of focus and emphasis. 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, academicians, 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 and 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.