Body Alive

Rudolf Nureyev photographed

by Richard Avedon 1961

(Follies of God)

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@MajaSenda :: ©Ikko Narahara

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Anthony Goldsmith

James Nares - Sans Titre

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“The body is itself a kind of place - not a solid object - but a terrain through which things pass, and in which they sometimes settle and sediment.

Sometimes they are transformed by the passage. And sometimes they reshape the doorway itself.”

Growing up, we say, as though we were trees, as though altitude was all that there was to be gained, but so much of the process is growing whole as the fragments are gathered, the patterns found. Human infants are born with craniums made up of four plates that have not yet knit together into a solid dome so that their heads can compress to fit through the birth canal, so that the brain within can then expand. The seams of these plates are intricate, like fingers interlaced, like the meander of arctic rivers across tundra.

The skull quadruples in size in the first few years, and if the bones knit together too soon, they restrict the growth of the brain; and if they don’t knit at all the brain remains unprotected. Open enough to grow and closed enough to hold together is what a life must also be. We collage ourselves into being, finding the pieces of a worldview and people to love and reasons to live and then integrate them into a whole, a life consistent with its beliefs and desires, at least if we’re lucky.

–Recollections of My Nonexistence

[animal skull found on a hike]

Recollections of My Nonexistence

(Antonin Artaud, La Révolution surréaliste, 1st january 1925)

In Libro Veritas :: @InlibroV

Takeshi Sumi

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The soul is the greening life force of the flesh, for the body grows and prospers through her, just as the earth becomes fruitful when it is moistened. The soul humidifies the body so it does not dry out, just like the rain which soaks into the earth.

~ Hildegard of Bingen

Myofascialogie en France & Belgique & Québec Bien Être,Douleurs Chroniques

Jean Francois Brabant ·

Why the "isolated muscle" model is outdated: what fascia science reveals

What surprises me even today is that several approaches continue to want to isolate one muscle to strengthen or reduce tension, whereas modern science demonstrates that the human body functions as a continuous fascial network, not as 640 separate muscles.

The research of the last 20 years is very clear:

Endoscopic work by Dr. Jean-Claude Guimberteau has demonstrated that the fascia is an uninterrupted three-dimensional mesh that connects every muscle, organ and structure of the body.

Réf. : Guimberteau JC., Architecture of Human Living Fascia, 2015.

Research in mechanotransduction shows that when a tension appears in a region, it spreads throughout the fascial network.

Réf. : Schleip R. et al., Fascia: The Tensional Network of the Human Body, 2012.

Ref. : Huijing P. Journal of Biomechanics, 2009.

This explains why tension in the hip can affect your knee, ankle, or even the diaphragm.

Anatomically we separate muscles to draw them.

But functionally, they are woven into the same fascial envelope, sharing strength, tension and fluid.

Réf. : Thomas Myers, Anatomy Trains, 2014.

This phenomenon of “fascial densification” is described in several recent publications.

Réf. : Stecco C., Functional Atlas of the Human Fascial System, 2015.

Founder of Myofascial Release, John F. Barnes added that hardened fascia can develop considerable internal forces (up to 2,000 pounds per square inch, according to his clinical findings).

This is a Barnes clinical estimate, not an instrumental measure - but it does illustrate the intensity of the internal forces of a solidified fascia.

Since the body works according to a model of tension (balance between tension and compression), any local intervention necessarily influences the entire system.

Réf. : Levin S., Biotensegrity: The Structural Basis of Life, 2006.

Isolating a muscle does not reflect the biomechanical reality of the human body.

The new scientific understanding leads to a clear conclusion:

It’s much more effective to treat and train the fascia as a whole, rather than trying to isolate a muscle independently from others.

This is exactly what Myofascialology offers:

work on the quality of the fascia, its fluidity, its mobility and its ability to transmit force harmoniously... rather than trying to build one muscle at a time.

Segmented anatomy is a thing of the past.

The global facial model has become the modern reference for understanding, treating and accompanying the human body.

Jean François Brabant

Photo from Ken Burns excellent PBS series “The War”

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THE WALL WITHIN: “Delivered at the commencement of the National Salute II in Washington, D.C. on November 10, 1984, as part of the official activities prior to the dedication of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial (“The Wall) as a national monument.

It honors the personal list of love and loss that each American has marked in his/her heart. Poem entered into the Congressional, January 30, 1985.” Johnny’s Song: Poetry of a Vietnam Veteran. Steve Mason.

 (May 1986). Bantam Books.

Most real men hanging tough in their early forties would like the rest of us to think they could really handle one more war and two more women. But I know better. You have no more lies to tell. I have no more dreams to believe. I have seen it in your face I am sure you have noticed it in mine; at the unutterable, unalterable truth of our war. The eye sees what the mind believes. And all that I know of war, all that I have heard of peace, has me looking over my shoulder for that one bullet which still has my name on it– circling round and round the globe waiting and circling circling and waiting until I break from cover and it takes its best, last shot. In the absence of Time, the accuracy of guilt is assured. It is a cosmic marksman. [MORE]

FULL POEM HERE.  TAKE A MOMENT TO READ IT. 

 LIKE NOTHING EVER HAPPENED I didn’t know love couldn’t break  down the walls of everything Come singing home to daughters  of the blind blue eyes I didn’t know that it couldn’t crumble  the walls of Auschwitz and Buchenwald That our fathers couldn’t burn down  the stink in a day That World War II couldn’t come home  to roost That our fathers couldn’t come out  the same men in love with our red-lipped mothers I didn’t know that the smell of dying japs  even over a whole century of air   in bombers above the small island country  would stink in our fathers’ pores That the army was the only traveling  they would ever do  never come home the same men That the pain in back of their eyes  was lost in the folds of family I didn’t know that a heart could go out  and still keep beating Stare at TV for long hours  knowing your wife would never believe  what you saw  The filth in the eyes of men at war I didn’t know time could stop at World War II  never grow in tomatoes in future summers I didn’t know our fathers died there  even if they never lay there  on the fields with their breathing gone out That my father 35 years later  on the porch in the midwest  could say in dark-eyed stupor of evening  “I could re-enlist and kill kill kill!” I didn’t know  these men flooded our land  down the highway of three decades  with war banging their brains  silent unseen and tortured  like grain milled down by stone I didn’t know  we were the daughters of night guns That our blood fathers were killers That the hearts were torn out of us  in World War II Came to graze in ice cream parlors quiet cricket streets years later like nothing ever happened    –Natalie Goldberg