Note:
Each of us has areas of the body which we “shut off” for various personal reasons, including childhood trauma, embarrassment, injury, or neglect. These areas may be numb – hyposensitive – resulting in a lack of sensitivity, or the response may be heightened – hypersensitive – resulting in a “ticklish” sensation (nerve endings which detect no recognizable pattern from touch and are surprised, producing the familiar hysteria and giggling). Hyposensitive or hypersensitive areas can be brought into a balanced body picture through touch, proprioceptive warm-ups, and body scanning which relax muscle tissues, increase blood flow, and generally equalize attention to include all sensations.
Body scanning is also a component of Vipassana Meditation. For information about this form, write the Vipassana Meditation Center, Box 24, Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts 01370.
Body scanning
20 minutes
Lying in constructive rest, or seated comfortably with your spine vertical: bring your awareness to the top of your head.
❍ Observe, with eyes closed, any sensation you feel on the top of your head. It might be a tingling, a vibration, an itch, a pain. It might be a feeling of pressure, heat or cold, the touch of air on your skin.
❍ Continue to observe any sensation you feel on the top of your head. (The repetition of the language helps to focus your attention.) If you feel nothing, just wait (while perception of your nerve endings gets more sensitive).
❍ Bring awareness to your face and scalp. Observe any sensation without judgment; the task is to feel what is really happening in your body, without evaluating whether it is good or bad, pleasant or unpleasant. Experience your body just as it is at this moment in time.
❍ Move your mind’s eye to your neck. Remember to give equal attention to any sensation which you feel on your neck – tingling, the touch of cloth on the skin, your hair as it brushes the surface.
❍ Continue to the right arm, the left arm, the back surface of the body, the front surface of the body, the pelvis, the right hip and thigh, the right lower leg and foot, the left hip and thigh, the left lower leg and foot. Bring your awareness to the soles of the feet.
❍ Finish by observing your breath as it falls in and out of the nose and the mouth, moves the ribs, and stimulates the skin of the lower back and belly.
❍ Slowly open your eyes; allow yourself to remain aware of sensation as you include vision.
Body painting
20 minutes
Lying comfortably on the floor, image a color of your choice which covers the surface you lie on.
❍ Begin very slowly to paint your entire body with this color by moving your body surface in contact with the floor.
❍ Be sure to touch every area of the body. Include: between the toes, scalp, eye sockets, behind the ears, under the chin, all surfaces of the pelvis, backs of the knees, wrists, armpits.
❍ You may use another body part which is already painted to stroke hard to reach areas. Take as long as you need; do a final body scan to ensure every surface is covered in paint.
❍ Begin a proprioceptive warm-up by following any impulses your body has for movement – a stretch of the arm or wriggling of the toes. Whatever feels good is “right.”
❍ Move nonrepetitively following the impulses of the muscles and joints to stretch and move.
❍ Pause. Imagine yourself as a painted sculpture. Rest.
Collage: Rosalyn Driscoll “Dawn Pilgrimage”
* Gerard Tortora and Nicholas Anagnostakos, Principles of Anatomy and Physiology, pp. 344-345. For further information see Deane Juhan’s “Skin as Sense Organ,” “Touch as Food,” and “Muscle as Sense Organ” in fob’s Body, A Handbook for Bodywork.
DAY
4
THE CELL
The cell is the fundamental unit of the body. The abilities of the cell to reproduce, to metabolize, and to respond to its environment, are basic to human life: creativity, processing, and responsiveness to change.
Cells have common properties but vary according to function in the body. Each cell is composed largely of water, the basic substance of the body. Water is contained within the cytoplasm of the cell which is concerned with metabolic activities such as the use of foodstuffs and respiration. The cell membrane differentiates the cytoplasm from the surrounding external environment and creates a semipermeable boundary governing exchange of nutrients and waste materials, and responding to stimulation. The nucleus supervises cell activity. The forty-six chromosomes in each human cell contain the genetic code for the individual body and for the specific functioning of each cell. Each nucleus, therefore, contains a master plan of the whole body. Individual cells have different functions; for example, a muscle cell contracts, a nerve cell transfers electrochemical signals, a fiber-producing cell produces connective tissue fibers. A collection of like cells of similar structure and function is called a tissue. Groups of coordinated tissues form structures (organs), which comprise a body system. For example, bone cells form bone tissue, which makes bones, which create the skeletal system.
The cell is the functional unit common to all body systems. For our study, we will differentiate seven body systems as defined by Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen: skeletal, muscular, nervous, endocrine, organ, fluid, and connective tissue. Although we can look at each system individually, it is important to remember that the body functions as an interrelated whole and that the systems balance and support each other.
The human body develops from the union of two cells, the sperm and the ovum. The fertilized ovum divides repeatedly to create many cells. Within a day or so of fertilization, the ovum differentiates into embryonic tissue layers: the ectoderm, endoderm, and mesoderm in that order. The ectoderm is the origin of all nervous system components and the skin; the endoderm, of the digestive tract and organs; the mesoderm, of the connective tissues (blood, bone, muscle, ligament, tendon, fascia, and cartilage). Thus, the skin begins from the same embryonic tissue layer as nerve tissue; the blood originates with connective tissue. Cells vary in their adaptability to change or healing, and in their rate of reproduction. For example, some skin cells reproduce through cell division daily, while a nerve cell may remain for a lifetime and heals slowly if at all. The skin is the external membrane of the body, a highly sensitive boundary between our body and our environment. Sixty to seventy per cent of lean body weight is water, and the skin literally keeps us from drying up. Two-thirds of this water is within the cells (intracellular) and one-third is between the cells (extracellular). The skin also maintains body temperature (through sweat), contains receptors of various sorts, and provides a responsive, protective covering. It forms orifices such as the mouth, the nose and the anus, leading to the passageways of the digestive system and the respiratory system which can be seen as extensions of the external environment.
Exchange
While attending workshops about experiential anatomy, I would sometimes get stuck. I put a barrier to learning around absorbing new information because I felt threatened by change and by opening to a group. One particularly tense day, the teacher talked about the cell. She described osmosis and the movement of fluids through the cell membrane. She looked around the room and said, “Remember, change is only a membrane away.” The tightness of my skin dissolved. Once relaxed, I could allow information to come and go, keep what was useful, and express my own ideas. By releasing my outer membrane, I could allow exchange.
❖