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.
DAY
1
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
DAY
2
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.
One of the most thoroughly neglected areas of body education is the awareness of what is happening inside: the dialogue between inner and outer experience in relation to the whole person. We spend much of our time involved in outer perception through the specialized sense organs of sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch. We are generally less involved in developing our capacities for inner sensing which is the ability of the nervous system to monitor inner states of the body. How and why do we progressively close down our capacity for body listening? As children we are necessarily involved in our relationship to the outer environment for survival. An early aspect of body awareness is about control. One is supposed to gain control over the body as soon as possible to avoid doing anything embarrassing or terrible in a social context. After control comes manipulation through training techniques: ballet, gymnastics, sports or work tasks. The goal is to manipulate our body in certain patterns for coordination, efficiency, aesthetic pleasure or competition. Throughout is our layered relationship to sexuality usually the repression or redirection of sexual energy in conjunction with religious and cultural convention. There is confusion around all of the digestive functions, from eating to stomach growls to elimination, and a generalized “hush” about what is going on in the organs and the emotional centers of the body. Throughout our lives, but especially during adolescence, conformity to outer images of what the body is supposed to be, defined by social, cultural and religious norms, makes a division between our inner impulses and our outward manifestations. Less and less attention is given to what is coming from inside. We often need instruction on developing a healthy dialogue with our physical being. As young adults, much of the time is spent trying to “do” something to ourselves, to look better, get stronger, be thinner, work harder. And as mature adults and senior citizens, we are encouraged to deny or mask the aging process, to glorify youth rather than appreciate the beauty inherent at every age.
Painting: Robert Ferris “November Light”
Running
My strongest movement memory as a child is running through the fields in