BodyStories. Andrea Olsen

the white bed of Kaibob limestone crumbling under our feet – an estimated 225 million years in the making. On the first night, we camped facing the smooth Redwall – limestone 300 million years old; on the second night we slept at the site of an old Anasazi ruin, facing what was called the Great Unconformity – an eroded era of ancient rock, formed before life was present on the earth, now missing from the geological “book” of the canyon walls. On the third day, as we lay in the hot sun on the banks of the Colorado River, my friend pointed to the black metamorphic rock which lined the edge of the water, and said, “That’s Vishnu shist. Two billion years.” Then he added, “Now that’s old.”

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       During a conversation with a college biology professor, I said, “I encourage students to study the human body.” He responded, “I remind them that humans aren’t the only species on earth.”

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       I was traveling in East Africa. We were in Amboselli National Park in Kenya, on a game drive at dusk. We had stopped to watch elephants walking parallel to us in the trees. As if on cue, the elephants turned and made a path directly towards our van. They formed a straight line, with the mother and father on either end protecting two babies of different ages between them. As they progressed systematically, we backed up our van, and they passed a few feet in front of us without ever breaking stride. Their eyes looked ancient, the skin sagged off huge bodies, and the trunks uprooted turf and searched for minerals in the soil and rock. They had been around for a long time. I imagined them saying, “Move over.”

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      We were in Tanzania, gazing from a dusty overlook towards Olduvai Gorge. We were amidst a small gathering of tourists from around the world all wearing safari hats and sipping sodas. It was here that noted Kenyan paleoanthropologists Mary and L.S.B. Leakey discovered fossil hominids – an Australopithecine skull, “Zinjanthropus” in 1959, and fragments from Homo habilis in 1961 – dated 1-2 million years old. Nearby, Mary found footprints preserved in volcanic ash determining that as early as 3.7 million years ago, upright, bipedal forms of the species Homo erectus lived in Eastern Africa. We listened to our guide translate this earliest history of the human heritage into various languages. There was a sense of Africa as common origin.

      Just as we carry the saline solution of the ocean in our blood, our structure holds the possibilities of earlier forms of body symmetry. We can move asymmetrically, as in our early morning yawning and stretching, allowing our skin and proprioceptors to be our primary sense organs before the cerebral cortex (the newest portion of the brain) directs our awareness. Contact Improvisation and Authentic Movement are techniques which focus on stimulating and responding to all surfaces and structures of the body equally. We can move in radial symmetry, like the starfish, or the Leonardo da Vinci drawing of “geometric man” with body parts radiating from the solar plexus. Cartwheels demonstrate this symmetry. Martial arts also organize movement around the “belly brain” (autonomic nervous system) focusing on the tant’ien (in tai chi) or the hara (in karate) for “centered” energy. We can move in bilateral symmetry, undulating our segmented spine like fishes or whales. Kundalini yoga and many primitive dance forms use this powerful source of head to tail integration. Although our outer form is organized bilaterally, many of our internal organs (such as the heart, liver and intestines) retain their asymmetrical form. The skin, our largest organ, remains a primary receptor for receiving stimuli from the environment. Our vertical posture dominates our contemporary lives, but the structure of our bodies lies in our evolutionary past.

      As we tell the evolutionary story, we are reminded that there is more to the universe than the human mind can grasp, and that we seek models to try to understand our existence – scientific, religious, and artistic models among others. We can relate what we know from a scientific perspective (primarily from fossil record) about the origin of life and the development of the species, but fact goes hand in hand with mystery. When a new discovery is made, the whole picture shifts. Thus, our information is constantly changing, and the insights we have as individuals are part of the discovery. ❖

      TO DO

       Killer whale, from a decorative hanging of American Eskimo art

Body symmetries

       20 minutes

      Lying on the floor on your belly, arms and legs spread in an X: Slowly lift one arm about an inch off the floor, feel its weight, and let it return to the floor. Repeat with a leg, your head, then the pelvis. Let all of your weight rest into the floor.

      ❍ Asymmetry: Imagine that you are suspended in water. Begin moving slowly, brushing all surfaces of your body against the floor or another body part as though stimulated by the water. You are free from gravity. Continue moving nondirectionally, following impulses for movement and responding to sensations. This form of body symmetry is called asymmetry. An example would be a single-celled amoeba suspended in the water today. In this symmetry, no one part of the body surface has priority over another part.