It took me over 40 years to understand my body (and it will probably take the rest of my life to really, really, really comprehend and worship its tremendous intelligence and superpowers). What I learned at school is different to what I know now. My understanding of the body was rather technical or mechanical. There was the supporting apparatus of the skeleton surrounded by muscles for strength and flexibility. Somewhere in between were my organs and a pump called ‘heart.’ This was my very basic understanding of my body.
That changed when somebody mentioned in a Bowspring class that bones do not directly touch each other. Instead, they are covered by a membrane of connective tissue, and they are floating in a viscous liquid, or net of fascia, held together by tendons, muscles, and skin. That was mind-blowing! My body wasn’t supposed to be one of those rolling skeleton models where all the bones are screwed together? My heart wasn’t pumping like a machine? My brain was not some kind of super computer?
The image of bones floating in jelly-like liquid was very promising because it also meant that I could change the shape of my body. Not just by losing weight or gaining muscle power. No. But also by changing the arrangement of the bones within the viscous liquid. By expanding the space, the bones are taking up. Yes, I can change, I can change, I can change.
Shouldn’t you learn that at school? Did you? I did not. Many years of education never explicitly taught me this information that bones don’t touch each other, that there is space between them and that this space would even be necessary for healthy movements and preserving the joints. It’s not that somebody ever told me that bones would stick together, but I’ve seen the same image over and over again in the pictures of anatomy books and on natural-sized anatomical skeleton models. They suggest the idea of a skeleton being stable on its own. They put in my mind the idea that bones are the most important thing in my body; responsible for my body shape, stability, and movement. I don’t want to diminish the importance of bones. I am just saying that the image I have of the use and interplay of all the parts in my body is different now to what I perceived before.
At school, I learned to understand the body in a much more technical way e.g., how the cardiovascular system functions like a pump or well-oiled engine. This is the analogy of how humans are supposed to function in society: like a reliable machine, hard-working, without breaking down or having feelings at all (unless the feelings are profitable for the job).
My body is not a machine. My body is an astonishing miracle of life. In my body, bones are not screwed together like the springs and metal ribbons found in clockwork. I like the idea of bones floating in space. I like the possibility to expand these spaces and to even grow an inch taller. I like feeling organic instead of mechanic. I like being alive and free flowing. That has tremendous power.
© Barbara Neubauer 2021-09-03