started studying anatomy years ago as an art student, I wanted to know the structural details, how the parts fit together, and the names of everything. It seemed a good place to start. But then I got involved in the relationship between the mind and the body, and I wanted to explore the motivations behind the forms that I saw. Later, I was drawn to experiential work. I was ready to explore what it felt like to be inside the body rather than looking at it. Always, the body surprised me as a source for discovery. So,” she grinned, “the body is full of colors. You can look at each one individually, or step back and experience the whole.”
BODYWORK: SOURCES AND RESOURCES
Bodywork is a term used to refer generally to therapeutic techniques of working with the body. The twentieth century has seen a rich development of this work. In the 1930’s – 70’s individuals such as Mabel Todd, Lulu Swiegard, Ida Rolf, Nikolais Alexander, Moshe Feldenkrais, Milton Trager and others pioneered research in the field and published writings about their findings. These individuals began with their own experience of the body and explored their predilections intellectually and physically. They necessarily had to limit their point of view to an individual perspective for depth and clarity. For example, Mabel Todd in her classic book, The Thinking Body, A Study of the Balancing Forces of Dynamic Man, published in 1937, focused on the skeleton and structural alignment. Lulu Swiegard’s involvement with the effects of the nervous system on body alignment through imagery and visualization is recorded in her book, Human Movement Potential, Its Ideokinetic Facilitation, published in 1974. Ida Rolf in her text Rolfing, The Integration of Human Structures, 1977, focused on the fascia and on the integration of body and psyche. Each system was unique in itself, and a student of bodywork was required to read about each method and its innovator to ascertain the common principles. Currently, ancient traditions of body work from diverse cultural origins are becoming available to the public both through translations of writings and through hands-on practitioners. As individuals blend old forms or pioneer new work, texts have appeared which give an overview of the principles common to the field. Deane Juhan’s text, Job’s Body, A Handbook for Bodywork, provides a source rich in scientific fact and experiential principles. The insightful writings of Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, co-director of The School for Body-Mind Centering, are available through The Contact Quarterly, A Journal for Moving Ideas, and are especially illuminating concerning early developmental patterns and reflexes.
Experiential Anatomy has developed parallel to bodywork with a focus on body education. It encourages the individual to integrate information with experience. Thus, experiential anatomy enhances bodywork by providing an underlying awareness of body structure and function. The Anatomy Coloring Book, written by Wynn Kapit and Lawrence Elson is a must for both the serious and casual student of anatomy, and David Gorman’s hand-drawn, three-volume text, The Body Moveable, is a rich source for visual images and text focusing on movement. Gerard Tortora and Nicholas Anagnostakos’s Principles of Anatomy and Physiology provides an excellent resource for detailed study. These are a few of the many books and articles listed in the bibliography which I have found valuable for the interested reader. In general, what draws your attention is of interest to you. In working with your body, you are the expert. ❖
*See Margaret H’Doubler’s Dance; A Creative Art Experience.
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BASIC CONCEPTS: Change, Posture, Structure, Choice
“Who are you,” said the Caterpillar …. Alice replied rather shyly, “I – I hardly know, Sir, just at present – at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.”
Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Our bodies are dynamic entities. Our cells are reproducing, processing, and dying constantly as we live. Within a year, a month, the time it takes to read these words, we literally are not the same person we were before. Change is constant throughout the life cycle of the body.
Structure is our physical body: the bones, muscles, and other tissues which comprise our bodies. Structure is affected by our heredity and by our life experience in terms of nutrition, illness, and body use and abuse. Posture is the way we live in our structure – the energy and attitudes which moment by moment shape our bodies. Our posture affects our structure, and our structure affects our posture, and both can change. For example, if we are born with an extra vertebra or curved lower legs, our posture will be affected by our structure. If we stand with our head forward for many years, our bones will respond to the stresses of our posture. We can observe this dialogue between posture and structure by looking around a room at a group of people: we can see that we share a common structure, but the way we inhabit that structure is very different.
Both posture and structure are about choice. We choose how we live in our bodies and our life choices affect our underlying structure. A healthy body remains able to respond – responsible – to the changes in situations, people, and personal growth which occur moment by moment throughout our lives. ❖
Claiming Your Height
I lived one summer in the house of a bright, young anesthesiologist who was involved in heart transplant surgery. He was also a runner and complained to me of back problems. We worked with his alignment and noticed that his chest was retreated and that this, combined with a forward head, put stress on his lower back. As we brought his posture into vertical alignment, he took a deep breath and said, “I could never stand like this. I would threaten my colleagues and my patients.” He had unconsciously adopted a posture that was nonthreatening and noncompetitive in order to work in an environment which was both. It had given him a certain amount of emotional safety while he developed in his career, but it was now literally hurting him. The question became, was he ready to stand at his full height?
TO DO
Drawing your skeleton 15 minutes
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ATTITUDES ABOUT THE BODY
The lack of information about the human body in our years of education is startling since it is our home for our entire lifetime. It seems we either think that the body is too simple and too “physical” to warrant attention, or that it is so complex that it is reserved for medical students. In fact, it is both. It is very simple, and everyone can understand body principles and learn the names of bones, muscles, and organs. It is also the most complex living form. The study of the human body involves both mystery and fact: there is much that is known and equally as much that is left unknown. This paradox suggests that we need to value both the information and the questions about what it means to be human.
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