My name is:

Christopher Chen.

I live in:

New York.

I’m known for being: 

An acupuncturist. 

I’m talking about: 

The idea that our fascia is the matrix through which we experience the self. When we make the distinction between our thoughts and our feelings, our feelings are the associated phenomena that we have when we experience being embodied. Ideally, all feelings relate to direct experiences in the body, whereas thoughts are often ideas that our minds create in order to rationalize and explain the feelings that we are experiencing. From this understanding, we can look at fascia as the network through which feeling and feedback is being experienced inside the body. In this understanding, we can interpret the functionality of the fascial planes as a direct extension of consciousness throughout the body.

Before I started doing this work, I was:

A yoga and qigong instructor, as well as a snowboarder and a rock climber.

My interest was sparked when:  

I broke my back at the age of 21. And I learned how stretching and mobilizing my lower body was the most essential part of my healing process.

The idea behind it is: 

When the fascia is bound up and dysfunctional, pain and lack of mobility result in the body. In order to avoid being stuck in pain, it is important to hydrate and mobilize the fascia. 

My favorite lesser-known detail is:

Though these elements are often neglected, our thoughts, consciousness and awareness of our body has a huge impact on the well-being and health of fascial tissue. When we breathe, touch and consciously pay attention to an area, the fascia in that area benefits, relaxes, rehydrates and becomes healthier, as a result.

Fascia is integral to our movement and health because:

Because it connects everything in our body that allows us to move, live, breath, experience, etc. 

The words I live by are:

All we are is a series of tubes that likes to be filled and emptied at various intervals and somehow it creates a meaningful experience. 

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

The only resource we are born with is time, and that time can be leveraged, but, in the end, it is finite. We can spend our time trying to avoid the inevitable, however, to me, it is much more interesting to spend that time connecting with those we love and participating in happiness as much as possible.