Anatomy Trains in Motion

How Fascia Connects, Supports, and Strengthens Your Whole Body

You’ve probably heard a Pilates instructor mention fascia—the stretchy, fibrous tissue that wraps around your muscles and glides beneath your skin. But what you might not know is that fascia doesn’t just hold things in place—it communicates, coordinates, and transmits force throughout your entire body.

This web of connective tissue is the focus of Anatomy Trains, a groundbreaking model of movement anatomy developed by Thomas Myers. It maps how fascia links muscles into long, functional lines—called “myofascial meridians”—that work together across your body. At SOMA, we love this approach because it explains what we already feel in mindful movement: everything is connected.

Let’s dive into what fascia does, how it supports your body, and why understanding your anatomy trains can improve how you move, breathe, and build strength.

What Is Fascia?

Fascia is a type of connective tissue that surrounds and interweaves with every muscle, bone, nerve, and organ. You can think of it like a body-wide bodysuit: stretchy, resilient, and alive with sensory information. It provides structure and support for your soft tissue, keeps muscles aligned, and helps absorb and distribute tension.

Unlike individual muscles, fascia forms continuous pathways that link distant parts of the body. This is what allows you to, say, reach through your fingertips in a stretch and feel something change in your foot or your hip.

In this way, fascia acts less like packing material and more like a communication network, allowing your body to move as a single, fluid system.

The Concept of Anatomy Trains

In traditional anatomy, muscles are studied in isolation. But in real-life movement, nothing works alone. Anatomy Trains maps how fascia connects muscles into functional chains, each responsible for supporting specific types of movement.

Some of the major myofascial lines include:

• Superficial Back Line (from the soles of your feet to your eyebrows)

• Superficial Front Line (connecting your shins, abs, chest, and scalp)

• Lateral Line (running along the outside of your body from foot to ear)

• Spiral Line (wrapping diagonally to support rotation and counterbalance)

When you move well, these lines coordinate and distribute force, making movement feel smooth, strong, and efficient.

Fascia and Force Transmission

Here’s where things get really interesting: fascia doesn’t just contain muscles—it helps them work together to generate and transmit force. When one part of your body moves, fascia transmits tension along these connected lines, allowing for whole-body coordination.

Imagine a tug-of-war: if one person pulls, the force is transmitted along the rope. In the body, fascia is that rope. When it’s hydrated, elastic, and well-organized, it creates tensegrity—a balance of tension and integrity—that allows you to move efficiently and absorb load without overusing isolated muscles or joints.

This is why fascial fitness is so important: healthy fascia improves your strength, power, and resilience, not by building bulk, but by creating smarter pathways for energy to travel.

Fascia Loves Multi-Planar Movement—So Does Pilates

One of the best ways to keep your fascial system healthy is to move in many directions, not just forward and back. Fascia loves variety, especially multi-planar movement—twisting, side bending, spiraling, lengthening, and combining different forces across planes.

Pilates is rich in these kinds of movements. From spinal rotation on the Reformer to side bends on the Ladder Barrel, to corkscrew motions on the Mat and hanging work on the Cadillac, the method constantly challenges your body in new orientations. You're never just working in one direction or one pattern. Instead, you're rotating, reaching, and adjusting—building elasticity and resilience across your whole fascial web.

This diversity of movement helps hydrate fascia, stimulate proprioceptors, and build three-dimensional strength. It also makes every session feel fresh and alive—because your body thrives on the novelty and complexity that fascial tissue craves.

How Pilates Enhances the Fascial System

At SOMA, we use Pilates not just to tone muscles—but to organize fascia. The springs, breathwork, and emphasis on continuous, lengthened movement all stimulate the fascial lines. Exercises like Swan, Short Spine, and Mermaid engage multiple myofascial trains at once, creating integrated strength and whole-body stretch.

As you become more aware of these connections, your movements feel longer, lighter, and more connected. You stop bracing and start coordinating. You’re not just strong—you’re smart strong.

Final Thoughts

Your body isn’t a stack of parts. It’s a woven, sensing, communicating whole—and fascia is the fabric that holds it all together. By training the myofascial lines and exploring movement in multiple planes, we’re not just improving posture or flexibility. We’re enhancing the body's communication system, fine-tuning how force is managed, and creating a deeper sense of ease and strength.

Next time you’re in class, try this: pick one movement and feel how it starts in one part of your body and travels through another. That’s your fascia talking. And it’s worth listening to.