If you’ve spent any amount of time living life, chances are you’ve accumulated some aches and pains along the way. But, for millions of Americans, however, pain isn’t an occasional nuisance. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, roughly 60 million U.S. adults live with chronic pain, defined as pain that lasts or recurs for more than three months. That’s nearly one in four Americans.

For decades, the response was relatively straightforward: identify what hurt whether that be the back, hip, knee, muscle, or joint and try to quiet it with an anti-inflammatory, topical pain reliever, or treatment aimed at the origin of the pain.

That’s beginning to change. For all of social media’s shortcomings, it has also given millions of people access to physicians, physical therapists, trainers, and other experts talking about mobility, strength, recovery, nervous-system regulation, and parts of the body most people rarely thought about before—with fascia one of them.

At the same time, our understanding of the body is becoming more nuanced. As I’ve previously reported, men and women don’t necessarily experience aging in the same way , and researchers are paying greater attention to how interconnected systems—including the nervous, fascial, and lymphatic systems—affect movement, recovery, and how we feel as we age.

Fascia isn’t a new discovery or a catchall explanation for chronic pain. But growing research into its role in sensation, movement, and pain signaling raises an intriguing question: Could fascia be one of the missing pieces in understanding why some pain persists and what we can do about it?

What Is The Connection Between Fascia And Chronic Pain?

Fascia was once largely viewed as the body’s wrapping material. Researchers now know this connective-tissue network is highly innervated and can participate in pain signaling. A 2025 review in Frontiers in Pain Research identified inflammation, fibrosis, and other changes in fascia that may contribute to pain, although the science is still evolving.

“Fascia is living connective tissue with extensive sensory and autonomic innervation,” explains Sean Goddard, DO, an osteopathic and regenerative medicine physician with more than two decades of experience with clinics in Knoxville, Tennessee, and Miami, Florida. “This means it can detect mechanical strain, inflammation and injury—and can itself generate pain.”

What people describe as “tight” or “stuck” fascia can have several explanations. “‘Tight’ or ‘stuck’ may reflect impaired sliding between tissue layers, protective muscle tension, altered fluid behavior, inflammation, fibrosis or changes in the extracellular matrix,” Goddard tells me. “Reduced hyaluronan-related lubrication may increase friction, impair tissue glide and contribute to stiffness or pain.”

He also cautions against taking another popular wellness term too literally. “‘Dehydrated fascia’ is less medically precise; systemic dehydration alone is unlikely to explain most fascial pain.”

Garry Lineham, co-founder of Human Garage and creator of Fascial Maneuvers, comes at the question from years of working with people experiencing pain and restricted movement. “Pain almost never starts where you feel it,” Lineham says. “A knee problem can come from the hip, a shoulder problem from the jaw, a headache from the jaw or the feet.”

None of this means fascia explains every aching back, knee, or shoulder. But it does challenge the idea that fascia is simply the material surrounding the structures traditionally blamed for pain. Increasingly, it is being investigated as an active participant in the pain process.

Why Does Your Body Feel Stiff When You’re In Pain?

Pain can change the way the body moves. “When fascia, or the ligaments, capsule and other connective tissues integrated with it is injured enough to impair stability or load transfer, the nervous system may increase muscle tension and co-contraction to protect the region,” Goddard says. He calls this a “stiffening strategy” that “reduces motion but can perpetuate stiffness, altered loading, and pain.”

Recent research into chronic low-back pain describes a similar pattern. A 2026 paper proposes that some people with persistent low-back pain adopt a stabilization strategy involving increased co-contraction, reduced movement variability, and “functional rigidity.”

Goddard says he has observed this pattern repeatedly over 20 years, but cautions against assuming stiffness proves the fascia itself is the problem. “There is currently no universally accepted clinical consensus or standardized diagnostic test for identifying fascial dysfunction,” he explains. “Palpation and assessment can identify changes in tissue texture, tenderness, mobility, stability, and movement patterns, but those findings should be interpreted as part of a broader clinical assessment rather than as definitive proof of a specific fascial lesion.”

How Stress And Trauma Affect Fascia And Pain

Not all forces that shape pain are mechanical. Physical trauma can alter fascia through inflammation, scarring, and changes in loading, while psychological stress can affect autonomic activity, breathing, muscle tension, and pain sensitivity.

Lineham describes the difference more viscerally. “An old physical injury tends to create a local restriction—the body braces one specific area and never fully releases it, even after the injury heals,” he says. “Chronic stress and emotional trauma can create “something more like a full-body brace.”

That idea overlaps with growing interest in nervous system regulation and the relationship between chronic stress and physical symptoms. A 2026 review in Frontiers in Pain Research examined what researchers call a “stress-fascia-pain axis,” including autonomic responses to stress, inflammation, fascial biomechanics, and altered pain processing, although several of the proposed connections remain emerging rather than established.

Goddard draws an important distinction. “Osteopathic medicine recognizes that lived and emotional experiences may be expressed through posture, guarding, respiration, and bodily tension—sometimes described as somatoemotional patterns,” he says. “This does not necessarily mean emotions are literally stored in fascia.”

For Lineham, the nervous system is central. “The tissue won’t let go until the nervous system feels safe enough to stop protecting it,” he says. “You can manually work on tissue all day, but if the nervous system is still signaling danger, the body will simply re-tighten afterward.”

The distinction matters: stress and trauma aren’t necessarily “trapped” in connective tissue. But the body’s protective responses can persist after an injury has healed, potentially influencing how it moves—and how it experiences pain.

Can Surgery And Scar Tissue Affect Fascia?

“Surgery disrupts multiple layers of innervated connective tissue,” shares Goddard. “Fascia participates in wound repair, and “healing may leave fibrosis, adhesions or altered tissue glide that affects movement and pain after the incision closes.”

A 2026 review of post-surgical fascial remodeling describes a fibro-inflammatory response following surgery that can increase collagen deposition and contribute to fascial stiffness and remodeling.

Lineham says those effects can sometimes persist long after the surface has healed. “A surgical scar can look completely healed on the surface and still be pulling on the fascial lines running through and around it, years later,” he eplains. “I’ve seen this affect posture, mobility, and pain in areas that seem unrelated to the original surgery.”

But that doesn’t mean scar tissue simply needs to be broken apart. “Mature scar tissue is not simply ‘broken up’ with hands, instruments or foam rollers,” Goddard says. “Instead, meaningful change occurs through gradual biological remodeling and neuromuscular adaptation.”

Goddard continues: “Progressive movement, rehabilitation and appropriately applied manual treatment may improve mobility, tissue behavior and sensitivity, but claims that scar tissue can simply be mechanically erased are misleading.”

Lineham agrees there are limits to self-treatment. “Anyone with an unstable injury, an active medical condition, or a recent surgery needs medical guidance before doing this work,” he says. “This work is meant to support medical care, never replace it.”

Is Fascia Part Of A Larger Communication System In The Body?

Fascia forms a three-dimensional continuum throughout the body, interacting with nerves, blood vessels, lymphatics, immune cells, and the musculoskeletal system. A systematic review of fascial innervation found sensory nerve fibers across multiple types of fascia.

“I think it is reasonable to consider fascia part of a body-wide communication and force-transmission network,” Goddard says. But he draws an important boundary: “I would not call it a second nervous system.”

Lineham takes the idea further. “I believe fascia is the physical substrate behind the meridian system,” he tells me. “It has roughly 250 million nerve endings and passes signals through the body almost like the brain fires synapses. That may be the modern explanation for what older traditions called qi or prana moving through the body.”

There is scientific precedent for exploring that connection. In 2002, researchers Helene Langevin and Jason Yandow examined the relationship between acupuncture points and meridians and connective-tissue planes proposing that the meridian network might correspond, at least in part, with connective-tissue planes. It remains a hypothesis, not proof that the two are anatomically identical.

Goddard, who is also trained in acupuncture sees scientifically intriguing parallels, but draws a clear boundary around what the evidence shows. “At present, science has not established that meridians or nadis are anatomically identical to fascial, neural or vascular pathways. The comparison is best presented as a clinically meaningful observation and a hypothesis for further study rather than as a proven anatomical equivalence,” he explains.

Can You Really “Release” Fascia And What Actually Helps?

“A real release isn’t forcing something loose—it’s giving the tissue permission to let go,” Lineham tells me. “Daily movement and breathwork do the most good day to day.”

Physiologically, however, “release” may be more complicated than the term suggests.

“An immediate ‘release’ probably represents a rapid neuromechanical and sensory change rather than collagen or scar tissue being physically torn apart,” says Goddard. “Manual pressure or movement may temporarily alter muscle tone, protective guarding, sensory signaling, pain sensitivity, circulation, tissue-fluid distribution and the ability of tissue layers to glide relative to one another.”

“Changes in breathing, attention, autonomic activity and the nervous system’s interpretation of threat may also contribute to the person’s experience of reduced tension or improved movement,” Goddard continues.

Responses can also vary from person to person. “Hormonal state, stress, sleep, inflammation, prior injury, medication use and individual differences in pain processing can all influence how someone responds,” he says. “A short-lived increase in soreness can occur, but severe, progressive or prolonged pain should not be assumed to represent a normal ‘release’ response.”

So, what actually helps fascia mobility?

“Regular movement, strength training, mobility work, and adequate recovery provide the foundation for healthy connective-tissue function,” Goddard says. Manual therapy, he adds, “may be a useful adjunct rather than a substitute for diagnosis or rehabilitation.”

Lineham draws a similarly clear boundary around self-care: “Sharp, sudden, or worsening pain—especially with numbness or swelling means it’s time to see a doctor, not treat it yourself.”

Goddard agrees that some symptoms warrant medical attention. “If pain persists despite appropriate noninvasive measures, repeatedly worsens, or interferes with normal function, the person should seek medical evaluation.” He also points to weakness, numbness, fever, major trauma, unexplained weight loss, bowel or bladder changes, or significant night pain.

Perhaps that’s where the conversation about fascia becomes most useful. Understanding how the body moves, guards, adapts, and responds to pain gives us a larger role in caring for the bodies we inhabit. We don’t need to outsource every ache or stiffness, nor do we need another treatment promising to “fix” us. Sometimes medical care or rehabilitation are necessary. But there is a lot we can do on our own to keep our body’s moving, breathing, building strength, and recovering.