More blogs will follow on the 4th International Fascia Research Congress in Washington, but right now I am just glad to be home. I am increasingly allergic to hotels – the chairs, the sealed windows – and I found the whole event both exhilarating and quite tiring. I must have known at least 300 of the participants – students, teachers, collaborators and friends. I was so often buttonholed that names and faces blurred into schmooze. I began to feel like a kid’s teddy bear from which crochet hooks had pulled all the stuffing.
So many of these had great contributions to share, a few had an agenda, a few were seldom-seen friends, some of those visibly older. But ever so many warmed my heart by telling me my book or a talk had been their entry point that had changed their work or led them to this conference.
I was nevertheless grateful to leave the heady world of theory – no one hardly touched each other during the whole conference! – and I was so eager to return to the rhythmic Maine world – tossing this year’s wood into the back of the pick-up, bailing boats that had gathered rain while I was away, rowing across the cove to rescue an escaped float. I hugged my wife and squeezed me old Mum, but didn’t really get to rest my hands on someone with healing intent until tonight. Now maybe I can unpack my suitcase and get to the email.
Although the research on fascia is exciting and the progress in the field is heartening, I was left with a more dulcet feeling: Science gives us hints, not proofs. What can be measured, what can be inferred as cause and effect, is always so much less than the lived, embodied experience. There is no escape – and thank goodness – from life or death.
I respect – and am delighted to be surprised or corrected by – good science. I was more taken by the visionaries – for this conference Dr Guimberteau and Dr van der Wal, and I will have more to say in the coming weeks about “Quo vademus?” – Where are we going?
–Tom Myers, September 24th 2015
