THE WELLNESS SALON
Musings on wellness from Donna Simmons, Feldenkrais ® Practitioner
For better or worse, I live in a part of the world where the automobile fine is ubiquitous, and where its care and feeding is elevated to an art form. Aside from the oddity of so much wealth being assigned to a thing whose sole function is typically restricted to the transport of one person to and from work, I am struck by how much attention we pay in general to the machines in our life (cars, computers, coffee makers); how much energy we expend on their care and the understanding their idiosyncrasies, their needs.
Of course, we do this because we want them to last, although the lifespan of a car is typically no more than 10 years, 25 tops, and our computers/tablets/smart phones are replaced every time “they” “update” the operating system. So what about the machine that matters to us most (hint: the one that we are inextricably connected to, joined at the brain, as it were)?
How much do we really understand about its care and feeding? How it’s put together? What makes it work? Admittedly, the construction of the human body is many orders of magnitude more complex than the most sophisticated car or computer, but I would venture to guess that, on a relative scale, many of us have a comprehension level about all things mechanical (outside of ourselves) that far exceeds our individual knowledge of the mechanics of the human machine. And yet, we certainly want our bodies to last…
This is not an insoluble problem. In earlier times, knowledge of the inner working of the human machine was limited to those who had access to cadavers. Thank goodness this is no longer true. Nearly everyone has access to the vast body of knowledge regarding the construction of the human form, knowledge that has been accumulated over the past 100 years. Still, even an encyclopedic knowledge of the Latin names of the various layers of muscle, fasciae, nerves and circulatory systems that overlay our skeletal frame is not enough. A practical knowledge of how our body is constructed is one that permits us to make adjustments in behavior to improve the quality of our life.
Dear friends,
Here are some words to help create a picture…
Namaste, Donna
Bone Poem
Tell me again about the slick bones
of the skull: occipital, frontal, temporal, parietal,
and the forgiving groove of the fontanels grown
stone-hard and stubborn. Tell me about
cervical and thoracic vertebrae rising
from the lover’s lumbar curve, about clavicles
and sternum, and floating ribs falling south.
Tell me about humerus, twisting dance of radius
and ulna, how all twenty-eight phalanges
swing open on the hand’s silent hinges.
Tell me about cane-shaped femurs, the fluted
pipe of tibia, and slender, clasping fibula,
tarsals wide and sure, and calcaneum, the calculus
of our unending path. Tell me about the smooth bowl
of the pelvis with its high and wide iliac crests,
the sacrifice of sacrum, and coccyx, memory of tail.
Tell me again about the bony tools of the ear,
how hammer, stirrup, and anvil return to us
the sounds of our small, miraculous lives.
– Heather Davis
Originally published in JAMA 2003;290:1682 Poetry and Medicine Section Editor: Charlene Breedlove, Assoc. Editor. (Thank you Eric.) For excellent anatomical illustrations see: Netter : Atlas of Human Anatomy. For fun and interesting explanations along with illustrations see: Goldberg: Clinical Anatomy Made Ridiculously Simple.