There is a common myth that the human body is largely made up of water. What does that really mean, though? If a human gets cut open, is there ever any sign of water spilling out? Well, of course not. Gerald Pollack, in his book “The 4th Phase of Water,” offers a paradigm-shifting look into how we think about water. In a certain way, what he is saying is quite simple: the 4th phase of water is gel. Yes, like Jello (a form you can readily admit is not liquid water, though it isn’t quite solid either). The water that lives in the human body, when healthy, is in a gel-like state that has different properties and pervades both cells and the space outside of them, within what you would call the myofascial web (myo-muscle, fascia- the web of connective tissue that links every aspect of the human body). This is the cytoplasmic “extracellular matrix,” and thinkers like Thomas Cowan are even connecting cancer research to this new way of thinking about structured water.
At Functional Patterns, we train the body as one system, stimulating the tissues of the body in a way that keeps fluids and pressure moving to keep this structured water healthy. The founder, Naudi Aguilar, has led a global network of specialists in developing a vision of human movement that has helped us progressively open up restricted parts of the body while simultaneously improving their biomechanical efficiency. Over time, these changes can be drastic: someone starts with biomechanical patterns that have regular and severe pain signals. Several months of FP training later, they are seen with an explosive ability to sprint through space without any pain signals (see @fp.evidence for the practice-based evidence that demonstrates these before-and-after transformations). Pollack’s research also connects the receiving of sunlight, particularly infrared frequencies and heat, to the expansion and development of this “4th phase water” in the body, which carries a negative charge and has a layered hexagonal lattice structure that filters out all but the electrons in it. This can bring up so many questions about the health of a human body and how to maintain it, as well as our common understanding of what it means to stay healthy and hydrated.
His keen observational evidence from microscopic water experiments gives a window into this world of structured water, though the implications are almost humorously simple and something many humans have already known through their own experience: that receiving regular and reasonable amounts of sunlight, grounding our feet/skin to the earth, and eating healthy foods maintain the healthy structured water of the human body in a way that helps it maintain balance and homeostasis. I believe Functional Patterns is contributing a deeper capacity to this understanding: that addressing the structural imbalances of your myofascial system and biomechanics (how one prefers to move through space / distribute force) is a vital part of restructuring the gel-like water that pervades the various systems in the human body.