In this extensive and detailed text, Luigi Stecco, offers specific practical insights that merge appreciation of the anatomy and physiology of the multiple elements that make up myofascial biomechanical structures and how these operate in the body to produce integrated stability and movement, when operating normally. Most importantly, from a clinical perspective, he then describes a wide range of reasoned functional assessment protocols that are able to identify and localize dysfunctional fascial features, whether these involve unidirectional, bidirectional or multidirectional myofascial actions and activities.

Symptoms associated with altered motor control, reduced ranges of motion and/or pain, may result from dysfunctional fascial features, including increased local densification (tissue stiffness) and/or altered sliding functions. Importantly, such changes need to be appreciated as being largely reversible involving as they do altered function, but not necessarily pathology.

It is the well-thought-out descriptions of accurate, reproducible and practical evaluation methods, capable of leading to the identification of the locations of such changes, that makes Luigi Stecco’s work so important. Critically, numerous studies have emerged that validate the reliability of the protocols associated with Fascial Manipulation, the therapeutic method that has evolved from Stecco’s years of dedicated research.

In this beautifully illustrated work Luigi Stecco has distilled his years of research into a carefully-crafted textbook that offers insights and practical guidelines, that are of immense potential value to practitioners and therapists of all schools – and for this he deserves our praise and profound thanks.