My name is: Bonnie Crotzer.

I live in: NY (and sometimes Santa Barbara).

I’m known for:

Remodeling the fascial structures inside bodies. I also teach people how to do this for themselves for their own lightness of being and overall health. Also known for dancing as much as possible and loving Eastern Medicine.

I’m talking about:

Fascia Flossing, a solo or assisted method of working with a person’s fascia or connective tissue. It involves actively engaging myofascial tissue (which is a mix of muscle and fascia) while it is being elongated in different positions, vectors and rotations. The result is a substantial tissue change without significant discomfort and leads to an architectural reconfiguration of the structural fibers, which, therefore, can be a more permanent change.

You can find it at:

thefloss.com or @fasciadepartment on IG.

If you become a member of The Floss, you gain access to 100+ on-demand Fascia Flossing videos and weekly online classes (on Mondays & Thursdays).

Before I started practicing this, I was:

A professional ballet dancer and taught many movement practices, mostly yoga for many years.

My interest was sparked when: 

I read Bob Cooley’s first book and had the opportunity to experience what fascia felt like in my body. I did one exercise out of Bob’s book and was confounded as to why more people weren’t talking about fascia.

The idea behind it is:

Fascia is the body’s scaffolding, a matrix of hydrated, semi-crystalline collagen fibers in varying strengths and interweaving patterns that wraps around our organs, bones, tendons, ligaments, brain matter and more. It can either limit us or support our ability to move freely and be comfortable.

Classical myofascial therapies use an external force to work to change the tissue (like hands, a scrapping tool, a roller etc.). Fascia Flossing works from the inside-out, changing the structural fascia that is deeper and hard to change from the outside. It’s important to change the structural fascia because it determines the status of the superficial fascia (and that, in turn, impacts the health of the skin).

Fascia Flossing is also different from our traditional ways of addressing fascia because: 1) We are not passive. We engage the area we are targeting while we elongate. This causes an aggregate change of the fascia. 2) We don’t hold a pose; we pulse the movement. Keeping it moving through reps brings circulation, oxygenation and you are less likely to overstretch and cause micro tearing (which makes us tighter in the end!).

My favorite lesser-known details are:

Fascia conducts and transports electricity (intelligent electricity or life-force) at the speed of light. Information via the forces transmitted through the fascia is signaling the body and the cells faster than the nervous system is able.

Fascia is the most alive (liquid) crystal there is—can you image that you are made of about 30% liquid crystal? 

Fascia takes on the shape of whatever it is wrapping while maintaining separation—for example, between organs—and creating continuous connectivity throughout the body. Fascia is the solid proof that everything in the body is very much connected.

Recent research has even shown that past traumas, both physical and mental, are stored within fascia, causing its natural form to be disrupted and hardened to hold the body in a distressed state (think tense shoulders or worry lines in the forehead). 

Thus, working directly with fascia can result in positive emotional or psychological changes including relaxation of our tensions, tendencies and habitual reactions that keep us stuck in unhealthy patterns. Change your body and your mind changes, for the better.

Fascia is integral to our movement and health because:

Fascia is like water—it’s everywhere and we can’t live without it. And if we don’t take care of it, it can slow us down, make us stiff and limit optimal functionality of all systems. But we shouldn’t look at it as just something to fix. It’s mystical, magical and still a huge a mystery. We do know that it tells the history of our unique life story in an anatomical-fascial-footprint. What stories lie in your fascia?

Fascia is meant to add stiffness to the body. It holds us together and determines our bones and muscles’ ability to perform for us. Research indicates that—left alone—fascia can harden and impair movement and circulation, including within the lymphatic system. It even impacts our organs, as fascial lines connect muscle tissue to organ development and health, along patterns that Eastern medicine calls “meridians.” Improving the health of fascia in my lateral quad, for example, improved my digestion and my jaw positioning. 

The words I live by are:

There is too much magic in this world to simply follow the rules or believe our bodies are machines. Break molds, touch your soul and someone else’s—let it rip!

One truth that is so important, but people don’t always realize is:

The body is constantly being discovered and rediscovered. Your best advocate is yourself. Only you know your body, and everything you need is inside you, even if it needs some excavating.