BodyTalk San Diego

Summary of notes taken at the Structural Integration Seminar held in Encinitas on the beginning of 2009. Errors in transcription are possible due to the nature of note-taking and my limited knowledge.

After finishing our Structural Integration class in March, I was again in absolute awe of the miracle of life. My wonder and curiosity have been only increased during these 2 decades of studies of human body and movement. I have been teaching and practicing yoga since 1989. And I started my journey with the Body Talk System in 2002.

And the reason of my fascination is because the Structural Integration work just confirms my faith in the pure Supreme Consciousness that fashioned our ever-evolving body with this ingenious variety and flexibility shown in the somatic design and development.

However amazed and grateful for being able to live and experience this biological success that is to be a human being, when I read the news, I have confusing feelings of ambivalence as to whether humankind can or even should continue on this planet.

In the last articles we talked about the theory of evolution and the new vision of Noetic Biology, where we, as a species, need to move beyond our current dedication to collective greed – and the ignorance and alienation that comes from it – into a more cooperative and humane relationship with ourselves, each other and our environment.

The only hope is the development of a “holistic” view. Tomas Myers says it passionately: “This is a vital important front on which to fight the battle for a more human use of human beings and a better integration with the world around us”.
Check a lot more information at www.anatomytrains.com

And he continues, “the traditional mechanistic view of anatomy, as useful as it has been, has objectified rather than humanized our relationship with our insides”.

As such, Structural Integration jumps ahead the science to propose a new point of view, one that is still being literally fleshed out and refined.

Moving back to the standard anatomy analysis – which Myers termed as “isolated muscle theory” – almost every text presents muscle function by isolating an individual muscle of the skeleton. This traditional muscular analysis divides the “muscle” from its connection above and below, shorn of its neurological and vascular connections, (…).”
This traditional presentation defines the muscle’s function solely by what happens in approximating the proximal and distal attachment points.
This overwhelmingly accepted view is that muscles attach from bone to bone and that their sole function is to approximate the two ends together, or to resist their being stretched apart.

The absolute dominance of the isolated muscle presentation as the first and the last word in muscular anatomy – along with the naïve and reductionist conviction that the complexity of human movement and stability can be derived by summing up the action of these individual muscles) leaves the current generation of therapists unlikely to think in any other way.

In order to progress, contemporary therapist need to think “out of the box” of this isolated muscle concept. We will see a lot of research supporting this kind of systemic thinking.

Ex: Leonardo Da Vinci, drawing without the pervasive prejudice of the mechanism muscle bone view point, drew some remarkably “structural integration”-like figures in his anatomical notebook.

Early in the 20th century by means of Einstein, Bohr and others physics moved into a relativistic universe, a language of relationship rather than linear cause and effect, which Jung in turn applied to psychology and many others to different areas.

It is not very useful just to say: “everything is connected with everything else” and leave it at that. Even though this is ultimately true, such a premise leaves the practitioner in a nebulous, even vacuous world with nothing to guide him but pure “intuition”.

MYOFASCIA

The word myofascial connotes the bundled together, inseparable nature of the muscle tissue (myo) and its accompanying web of connective tissue (fascia).
In any case, the word myofascial is a terminological innovation only, since it has always been impossible, under whatever name, to contact muscle tissue at any time or place without also contacting and affecting the accompanying connective or fascial tissue.
Fig 6

According with Grey’s Anatomy: “Connective tissues play several essential roles in the body, both STRUCTURAL, since many of the extracellular elements possess special mechanical properties, and DEFENSIVE, a role which as a cellular basis. They also often possess important trophic and morphogenetic roles in organizing and influencing the growth and differentiation of the surrounding tissues”.

EXTRACELLULAR MATRIX

Dr James Oschamn refers to the ECM as the living matrix, pointing out that “the living matrix is continuous and dynamic “supermolecular” webwork extending into every nook and cranny of the body; a nuclear matrix within a cellular matrix within a connective tissue matrix.
In essence when you touch a human body, you are touching an intimately connected system composed of virtually all the molecules within the body linked together”.

FASCIAL TENSEGRITYM

Tensegrity was first used by architect and inventor Buckminster Fuller from the phrase “tension integrity” to describe a principle for designing lightweight integrated structures that deliver great stability with minimal material.

“Fascia supports and lifts weight. Weight goes up, not down. Bones do not carry weight”. Ida Rolf

“TENSEGRITY IS GOD’S GEOMETRY” B.Fuller

Different than a “ground up” structure of stacking compressive elements as bricks in the house, tensegrity uses materials that are strong in both compression and tension.

Remember last time you were camping and you put up a tent. You start with all the structures: ropes, straps, tubes or rods and the fabric of the tent itself. They are all laying on the floor, flat.
Then, you begin to create some tension and compression (tensegrity), with the straps and rods and finally the fabric and behold! You have a structure up from the floor.
Every moving animal structure, including our own, must be independent, or able to hang together whether standing on your feet, on your head or flying through the air.

An amazing wide variety of natural systems including carbon atoms, water molecules, proteins, viruses, cells, tissues and even humans and other living creatures are constructed using… tensegrity!

All structures are compromised between stability and mobility and biological structures are placed in the middle of this spectrum, dancing between a wide range of needs for rigidity and mobility, which can change from second to second.

In the body: fascia serves to maintain appropriate spatial relationship between the skeletal elements.
If we could completely relax the muscles we would be left with a true tensegrity structure.
If everything (muscles, bones, ligaments, energies, etc.) were totally healthy in the body, the compressive forces would zero each other.

There is no way scientifically speaking that bones could support the weight of the body without a tensegrity structure.

With tensegrity included as part of our thinking, it pushes us to re-think our entire approach on how bodies initiates movement, develop, grow, move, stabilize, respond to stress and repair damage.

FASCIAL UNTANGLING

“Our own physical body possesses a wisdom which we who inhabit the body lack. We give it orders which make no sense.” Henry Miller

It is scientifically proved that the body’s response to trauma, or inappropriate pressure, by compensating in the fascial system. And this “adjustment” can be expressed in various ways; hardening soft tissues, cutting energy supply, stopping growth, creating different tissues, mutating cells, etc.

If we come from the premises that scars, adhesions, cysts, tumors, calcifications and deteriorations in the body can be explained as adaptations of the fascia and extracellular matrix to new information we can begin to understand our body’s own language. We can learn to tap into that body’s wisdom and assist the to establish a healthier communication within our fascia.

Structural Integration is though a unique type of therapy that is integrating all of the structures within the bodymind to each other.
“Untangling” is a state of movement and as well as release of the fascial tissues.

By releasing areas of tension and restriction that have been held tight, we will be allowing relationships of all the systems and parts of the body mind to heal and function at optimum levels within themselves and with each other.

Structural Integration is all about the relationship between body parts.
Structural Integration is not only energy medicine… it is physical energy medicine !

If you would like to try a Body Talk session combined with Structural Integration adjustments contact Myriam at (760) 525-0883.