The miracle of the body

“The body constantly seeks perfection”.

Todd Garcia, Master Dissector

If you would have told me 3 years ago I would have spent good money to go to boulder for 4 days to dissect a body for yoga education, I would have told you that’s crazy. Fast forward to this last week, and here I am, on the other side of a 4 day dissection training with Yoga Medicine trying to process what actually went down 8 hours a day for 4 days straight, and how that relates to my view on the body, life and the yoga practice.

I went in thinking it would just be watching the dissector director do all the things for us, not realizing until a few weeks before that I would be dissecting with a group of other yoga teachers. So many questions ran through my mind…what will that look like? How do you even begin to wrap your head around doing the actual cutting? Needless to say, I was pretty intimidated, but kept reminding myself…being curious and not afraid was the best path forward and the only way I was gonna get through 4 days.

We had 2 donors…which looked nothing alike. Both female and in their 70s. Both of them had challenges we had to navigate, but the donor table that I ended up sticking with was a women that reminded me very much of my great grandmother. Frail body, brittle bones, arthritis in the hands and feet, osteoporosis and scoliosis. She really gave us a perspective that the body is constantly trying to find perfection…and even though she had aliments, chronic disease in her body, lots of dental work, a knee replacement and 2 big toe replacements she lived in a body that was constantly trying to repattern the tissue to support her the best it could. She had little to no muscle tissue and lots of adhesions of the fascia to the muscle, organ or bones. It was a reminder that the body is a miracle. It intuitively does what it needs to do in order to survive.

Now on the other side, it’s still a little surreal, but it was so different than what I thought it was going to be. Each day we went layer, by layer, honoring the donor as much as we could through the process. Constantly giving a little nod of gratitude that this human, when alive, decided they wanted to donate their body so that we could learn from them. Even now I’m still figuring out what to do with all of this…but I have learned a few things that will already make my teaching different.

1.        Myofascia work is even more important to my practice than before (and if you have taken classes with me in the last year, you know it was a pretty big deal before!). Especially now that I’ve seen the lymphatic nodes in the body…how they congregate together in certain spots and the impact of stimulation of the nodes through self manipulation and MFR.

2.        The fascia is beautiful. It layers not just around the macro of the body, but the micro as well. Each muscle encased in it’s own layer and then at times within a bigger grouping (like the hamstrings).

3.        I have so much to learn about anatomy still…and this was just the start of diving deeper than I got to go in my 300 hour teacher training, where we covered a lot…but now I got to see it, touch it and understand it’s role in the bigger picture.

4.        Breath. Oh the breath. Seeing the capacity the lungs have and how they interact with the heart is truly spectacular. Seeing how important deep breath is to engage the lungs down into the diaphragm vs chest breathing…it’s all designed to work together. With each inhale, the push of the lungs down supports stimulation of the stomach and other organs. As Todd said after we had looked at the lungs expansion in the body…and seeing where the heart is in relation to the lungs- they literally “hug the heart” on a full breath. You better believe we’ll be doing even more breath cues in class.

5.        This concept of the tissues “gliding” in movement means so much more now. When you see the layers of skin, fat, fascia, muscle and how it connects to various movements in the body…gliding of the tissue is health of the tissue. The scapula moving along the back of the body to aid arm extension and flexion, shoulder rotation…if the tissue is dehydrated or there is injury or disease- like arthritis and osteoporosis- the range of movement decreases and body becomes tight and stiff. Practices like yoga and strength training help not only with muscle but bone health and supporting this concept of “gliding” for the tissue.

There is so much more I could share, but for now…I’ll leave you with this. Life is precious. Having the ability to learn from others even in death gives you such a different perspective on the shortness of it all…and once life has left the body…it’s just this beautiful vessel that has given it’s all. Take care of your body. Go have FUN and live your best life, because once it’s gone, we don’t get another shot. Embrace the pain and the joy…love deeply…care for each other and most importantly…remember to take deep breaths.

I’ll see you on the mat,

Brooke