From performer to a Fascia Pioneer blazing the trail for her Tune Up Fitness Community, we are excited to shine a light on thought leader, author, and program creator, Jill Miller.
For over 30 years, Jill has been discovering and educating, making significant contributions to the fields of self care, fitness, and ways we can improve our physical and emotional resilience.
Interview led by Meg, Tune Up Fitness’s Brand Engagement Manager, with over 25 years of dance experience, starting in Dallas, Texas, and has now traveled the nation performing and teaching. After years of repetitive dance movements, Meg’s pain in her shoulders, hands, and feet was relieved by the Roll Model® Method. This new knowledge inspired Meg to complete more Tune Up Fitness courses; she continued to take Body By Breath and Yoga Tune Up® Teacher Certification to share it with her students and reawaken her love for anatomy.
From functional movement to embodied anatomy and beyond, Jill has transformed the way to approach recovery, precovery, and training for embodiment. She co-founded Tune Up Fitness Worldwide and created the self care fitness formats Yoga Tune Up® and The Roll Model® Method. She is the author of the internationally bestselling book The Roll Model: A Step by Step Guide to Erase Pain, Improve Mobility, and Live Better in Your Body and Body by Breath: The Science and Practice of Physical and Emotional Resilience. Jill is also a contributing author on the topic of self myofascial release in the medical textbook Fascia, Function and Medical Applications used in Universities across the globe. Her groundbreaking dedication to fascia has not only revolutionized self care routines, but has also contributed to clinical applications, advancing our understanding of fascia and how the body heals and functions.
Learn more about Jill and fascia in the Teacher Highlight Interview below.
Meg: What is fascia?
Jill Miller: Fascia is one of your body’s connective tissues. It stitches your entire body together from foot to face, cell to skin, and everything in between. The fascia is also living. It has loads of its own cells and even has hundreds of millions of nerve endings in it. Fascia is the tissue that interconnects your body to itself.
“Listening to my dad talk about the body, disease, and anatomy gave me great comfort and fueled my love of biology.”
Meg: When did you first learn about fascia?
Jill Miller: I first heard the term fascia from my dad, a medical doctor. I used to love listening to him do “callout” with other physicians, a process where a doctor who is finished with their rounds shares all patient info with the next doctor on duty. Listening to my dad talk about the body, disease, and anatomy gave me great comfort and fueled my love of biology. The first time I heard fascia described for movement and massage was from my longtime yoga and bodywork mentor, Glenn Black. I met him in 1992, and he shared his orthopedic medical massage style known as Bodytuning® with me.
Meg: What are the top three things to do for fascia health?
Jill Miller: Here are the top three things to do to keep your fascia healthy.
- Vary your position. Don’t stay stuck in the same shapes all day because your fascia will accommodate that, and it will grow stiffer in that shape. That means that when you try to do other things like walking if you’re sitting all day, your hips are going to be really stiff.
- Load your body. When you load your body, you tell your fascial tissues that they must also be strong and resilient. As our bodies age, it isn’t just bone that we lose; we also become more brittle in our connective tissue. So, loading our connective tissue really helps with overall muscle balance and bone density. So if you don’t load your tissues, especially as you age, they’re gonna become more brittle and more likely to tear.
- Support your fascial tissues with self myofasical release or self massage. When you roll your fascia tissues this helps de glue the areas that have become stiff from lack of movement or injury. This overall increases your range of motion, freedom of movement, and comfort in your body.
Meg: What is the most surprising fact that people don’t know about fascia?
Jill Miller: I think people are surprised to learn how many cells reside in fascia and how many cells traffic through fascia. The biological elements that comprise fascia are numerous! I get the sense that most people view fascia as a wrapping tissue that surrounds muscles and is relatively inert – but that is not the case at all. It is a verdant tissue that is ever changing, growing, shrinking, and remodeling, and it conveys an incalculable amount of sensory information to the brain. Your fascia is durable and enduring. Consider your body as an endlessly developing terrain that you discover, uncover, and recover with every breath you take.
Meg: What is a Deep Fascia massage, and how do I know if I am doing it?
Jill Miller: Your fascia is organized like a strata, almost like a lasagna. You’ve got the superficial layers on top, transitional layers, and loose fascia between. Then you have deep fascia. You also have fascia that’s interwoven within your muscles. When you use a ball or tool to target a deep fascia, you roll and glide through multiple layers of fascia to get to “the spot.”
Meg: Can you exclusively massage deep fascia?
Jill Miller: When you’re doing any type of rolling in order to get “the spot,” you’re also rolling across many other layers of fascia. So you’re probably targeting “the spot” anytime you’re going to go for something that’s deep in you, but know that you’re getting all these other layers at the same time. The best practice whenever you’re doing any type of rolling is to breathe, move slowly, and always listen to your body’s feedback. It doesn’t have to hurt to work, soft can be supreme in your touch, even if you’re trying to go deep.
Meg: I recently learned I have Plantar Fasciitis, how do I stretch my Plantar Fascia?
Jill Miller: The plantar fascia is one of the most famous fascias in the human body. It’s fame is because, at one point or another, many people have had an inflammation of it called plantar fasciitis. If you get plantar fasciitis, the best practice is to actually not stretch it or excessively massage it because that can create even more inflammation in the tissue. Best practice when you have plantar fasciitis is to actually strengthen the muscles that connect to this dense band of tissue on the foot rather than continue to stretch and irritate, as that can prolong that inflammatory cycle.
Meg: What fascia covers the fascicle, and how many layers of fascia are there?
Jill Miller: You have fascia covering and supporting every single layer of your muscle: these fascia layers are collectively called myofascia. In fact, every single muscle cell you have is wrapped in a layer of fascial tissue called the endomysium. When the endomysium and their muscle cells are collected together, they’re wrapped in yet another layer of fascia. This layer is called the perimysium. The perimysium comprises what’s known as the fascicle. When multiple fascicles come together, they’re wrapped in yet another layer of connective tissue and that’s called the epimysium. Endomysium, perimysium, and epimysium. These are the layers of fascia that are the myofascia within and around your muscles.
Meg: One piece of advice to professionals using hard tools?
Jill Miller: To professionals using hard tools for rolling, I’m here to tell you that hard tools are anathema to a therapeutic response. When you use a hard tool on your body, the muscle bracing response is your body’s way of kicking back at you.
When you dive into tissue with a hard ball, you feel pain, you feel tension. You feel your body’s own resistance. That is the central nervous system trying to protect you. It’s trying to create a guard so that a hard ball or tool can’t enter your body. So, the best practice is not to use hard tools. Use tools that are more compliant with your body tissue so that you’re not rolling against your own tension and creating a battle between the tool and the central nervous system. Use a tool that will conform to your form, a tool that helps you to have a therapeutic response that sets you up for true recovery.
Meg: What is your No. 1 tip for teachers?
Jill Miller: Be a pioneer of your own body and experience, never lose interest in being an endless explorer. Share that enthusiasm with your students and trust that what intrigues you can light a spark in them.
There’s a wealth of knowledge waiting to be discovered in the fascia world, and our tuneupfitness.com site is your gateway to it. We offer a plethora of articles that cover fascia and other offerings.
Do you have blazing questions about fascia and self care? We’re here to help. Please leave your queries in the comments below. There’s so much to learn about your own inner space, and we’re excited to explore it with you. Welcome to the fascinating world of fascia!
Learn more from Jill through her MOVE BREATHE ROLL online classes and trainings.
YouTube: Tune Up Fitness
Instagram : @thejillmiller
Facebook: Jill Miller
