Short video interview with Steve about Cranial Intelligence

July 27, 2010 in Book progress | by Steve Haines | Leave a comment

Some extra questions from the interview, but not on the video, that will appear in the Singing Dragon newsletter.

BCST (biodynamic craniosacral therapy) seems like something you can really only master by having hands-on practice. How does your book support this kind of learning?

We were quite shocked to learn that there are videos out trying to teach cranial work as a distance learning course. In the first instance, watching cranial work being performed is like watching paint dry and secondly, students really need constant hands on feedback to support their developing perceptual skills. In the history of cranial work there is a strong oral tradition and preference for teaching by transmission. One of the senior biodynamic cranial osteopaths (Jealous) refuses to write and reluctantly, it seems, has recorded some CD’s of him talking. We do not go as far as that, we think there is a value in articulating theory and writing down exercises that people can practice for themselves. Our book is full of meditations and protocols that we have learnt from our teaching experience can work really well to help people more clearly feel their own bodies, other peoples bodies and our common relationship to the natural world. The book is aimed to compliment study on a two year training course.

The book talks a lot about ‘potency’. What do you mean by ‘potency’, and what is its significance for BCST practice?

Potency can be thought of as the cranial word for energy. Energy means lots of things to different people and is often a very fuzzy concept that is used as a catch all to explain interactions that are not well understood. My favourite defintion of energy is that it is information moving through a field. A field here meaning a zone of influence. Potency is a term used by Sutherland, the founder of cranial work. In a slightly more precise way than the common usage of energy, it allows us to describe the felt experience of BCST practitioners of an inherent potential in nature and in the body that organises, animates, and communicates. Sutherland used the image of potency as ‘liquid light‘ and the phrase ‘the fluid within the fluid’ to describe his experience of potency. He was very clear that expressions of potency are mediated through the fluids of the body. Other words commonly used alongside potency are tingling, shimmering, light, vibration, electricity, something moving and windlike. Like the wind in a sail or the heat of the suns rays or the falling to earth of an object, we can perceive the effects of potency but its actual nature is illusive.

The book includes a practice development chapter that covers questions such as ‘Why do you want to become a Craniosacral Therapist?’ and ‘How do I earn a living as a Craniosacral Therapist?’ Why was it so important to include those questions?

Our observation, from running a teaching clinic for CSTs in London, of noticing and talking to other CSTs, of supervising students and practitioners, and being involved in teaching at four different biodynamic schools is that many people struggle to set up a practice once they qualify as a practitioner. They have life changing skills that can dramatically enhance the lives of their potential clients by helping them be in less pain, less emotional distress and have more vitality. However being a skillful therapist does not mean you will be a busy therapist. There are big issues to explore, and additional skills to learn, about being a self-employed, small business person in a competitive private health care market. Adult learners engage with training courses for many reasons, often at transistion points in their lives. The questions above are an attempt to get people to think through some of these issues at an early stage in their training. The two year training is very demanding and requires a degree of maturity, self reflection and personal growth. Our experience is that this work can help a wide range of human suffering; people in chronic pain, people who have experienced trauma, people living with serious physical illnesss and people in profound emotional distress. It is good to realise the likely territory of their future professional life and to understand the commitment it involves if they want to become a practitioner of excellence.

Guest Blog by Michael Shea: Biodynamic Operating Principles

July 23, 2010 in Biodynamics, Guest blogs | by Ged Sumner | Leave a comment

I once heard that biodynamic practice is the creative application of a set of principles. Consequently, over all the years I’ve been teaching and making numerous mistakes both clinically and in teaching Primary Respiration, I have settled on a five step process. This process is called:

  • orienting
  • synchronizing
  • attuning
  • disengaging
  • and ignition

Each of these states or stages of biodynamic perception are practiced each time a clinician’s hands are placed in a new position on a client’s body.

Let me just say a few words about orienting. Orienting means that the practitioner establishes a three dimensional sense of their body or an image as the starting point for practice. I like to direct students to sensing every square millimeter of the surface of their skin at the very beginning of a session and then periodically returning to that three dimensionality or wholeness throughout the session. So the starting point of practice is wholeness. But it is wholeness as a felt sense or image. The question is what is the image of three dimensionality. It is that of a transparent fluid body. I simply sit still and imagine that the entire contents of my body is a beautiful, clear, aquamarine ocean and my skin is clear like glass. This is also an image of an embryo, because an embryo is 98% fluid.

So this is the first principle for me in biodynamic practice, which is to establish a very real sensibility around the shape of my body being one single continuum bounded by the skin and its transparency. The study of interpersonal neurobiology demonstrates that when the practitioner can inhabit a conscious awareness of three-dimensionality, this generates a resonance for the same possibility within the client’s brain, nervous system and cardiovascular system.

Finally, orienting refers to stillness and in order to discover one’s three-dimensionality, one must also be still as Dr. Becker was fond of saying. Thus the posture of the practitioner is still and the mental thoughts of the mental practitioner begin to slow and enter a space of serenity. Otherwise, three-dimensionality remains difficult or fragmented. This is the promise and possibility of biodynamic practice. To start with wholeness and stay in wholeness as a conscious awareness throughout a session and possibly throughout one’s life. In my next posting I will talk about synchronizing.

Michael J. Shea is one of the preeminent educators and authors in the fields of somatic psychology and craniosacral therapy. He presents seminars throughout the U.S., Canada and Europe. He is the author of Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy Vols 1 and 2 and the soon to be published Vol 3. His teaching programme link is here: http://michaelsheateaching.com/

Guest blog by Katherine Ukleja: Inertial Forces and Inertial Fulcra.

July 23, 2010 in Biodynamics, Guest blogs | by Steve Haines | Leave a comment

Katherine Ukleja is one of the strongest teachers within biodynamic craniosacral therapy. This piece has just been written for the third seminar on the practitioner training at the Da Sein Institut in Switzerland. It is a great bit of writing and clearly lays out some fundamental principles. We are very happy Katherine agreed to put it on the blog. We are hoping this will be the first in a series of guest blogs by senior figures in the field. www.katherineukleja.co.uk

Inertial Forces

‘In pathology the body is present, in health the body is transparent.’

Jaap van der Wal (2008)

Glossary

  • Fulcrum: A fulcrum is a point of stillness around which motion is organized.
  • Natural Fulcra: In the human body these are points along the axial midline which organise the bilaterally-symmetrical motion of separate body systems. These fulcra are ‘automatically-shifting’, which means they rise and fall with the tide.
  • Inertial Fulcra: Inertial fulcra are introduced by external forces. They are local condensations of potency, fluids and tissues, which act as pivot points for asymmetric motion and strain patterns. These fulcra resist the inherent motion (motility) of the organism and do not move with the tide.
  • Conditional Forces: Conditional forces are the forces of our experience. Also called external, experiential and biokinetic forces.
  • Biodynamic Forces: The biodynamic forces maintain our integrity as we meet external influences. Biodynamic forces are the forces of health and creation.
  • Inertial Forces: The interplay of biodynamic and conditional forces can generate inertial forces in the body. When we talk about inertial forces we are looking at forces which oppose motion.

Forces

The interplay of biodynamic and conditional forces can generate inertial forces. When the conditional forces of our experience overwhelm our available resources, an inertial force will come into play and compromise the expression of Primary Respiration.

At an inertial fulcrum all three forces will be present and will have an effect. Remember that a fulcrum organizes motion. This has deeper implications.

  • Because a fulcrum organizes motion in physiological terms that means it organizes function.
  • There is no function without motion.
  • Because a fulcrum organizes function it also organizes form. For example: A bone is a particular shape because of the function in performs.

‘Form is the totality of all structure function relationships in the embryo at any given time.’

Blechschmidt (2005)

In physics inertia is a force which opposes motion, it is useful to think in those terms. When we talk about inertial forces we are looking at forces which oppose motion.

Fields of Action

In physics, a field is a region throughout which a force may be exerted. Examples are the gravitational, electric, and magnetic fields that surround, respectively, masses, electric charges, and magnets. Within the human body, discreet fields of action operate within the greater, unified fluid-tissue-potency field. Natural fulcra organize these fields of action. For example the skeleton, the central nervous system (CNS), the viscera, all have different functions; each system operates in a field with a separate, natural, midline fulcrum.

The bony skeleton is said to fulcrum around the sphenobasilar junction (SBJ), the CNS around the lamina terminalis of the third ventricle and so on. These fields of action can be perturbed and distorted by additional external forces. Although each anatomical system represents a distinct field, there is an underlying, cohesive blueprint, which maintains the structure and function of the organism as a whole. We call this the Original Matrix, a term coined by Dr James Jealous (2004).

The Original Matrix

In biodynamic craniosacral therapy we recognize a blueprint or template of health, which underpins our physiology. It is a manifestation of the biodynamic, universal force which Sutherland (1998) called the Breath of Life. We can sense it as a bioelectric, biomagnetic field of light, which permeates and surrounds our physical body.

This matrix has an ordering function which persists throughout the lifespan, maintaining cohesion and health.

It is responsible for the optimal function of all body systems. It holds the essence of ‘liver’, ‘skin’ or ‘temporal bone’. Unlike the metal framework of a building before it is clad, this blueprint is dynamic, always changing and evolving. The human body is not a structure it is a living process. Our morphology changes moment to moment, hence our body shape is radically different in infancy, childhood, adulthood and old age. At all stages, the cohesion and healthy function of our evolving form is maintained by this matrix.

This concept of a dynamic blueprint is beautifully illustrated by a quote from the eminent embryologist Jaap van der Wal:

‘Transparency in a lens is a lifelong activity. It is not as feature, as in glass. Lack of transparency is pathology.’

Jaap van der Wal (2008).

The activity he is describing is the motion of microscopic particles; a metabolic interchange, which takes place at the cellular level. This activity is ordered by the Original Matrix. An activity implies motion. Lack of motion is pathology.

Inertial Fulcra

Pathology

Pathology results from the breakdown of motion. Loss of fluidity and stasis follows. There is a decrease in metabolic flow in the cells involved. In health all cells and tissues display mutability. This ability to change is normal; lack of change is abnormal. It manifests as loss of subtle and gross motion and results in pathology. The Breath of Life maintains a blueprint of optimal health for each unique individual, not an abstract notion of perfect health. Loss of relationship with that individual template leads to disease. For example, cancer can be viewed as an example of cells ‘forgetting’ their identity, ‘forgetting’ how to be lung cells or liver cells. The mutant cells are out of touch with the blueprint of health.

Experience

Conditional forces are the forces of our experience. The biodynamic forces maintain our integrity as we meet these external influences. Life is a conditional process, you cannot have a life without a body and your body cannot exist without conditions, without experience. A living organism always has an experience of being alive; whether conscious or not. Life can be described as a fluid dance, a dynamic equilibrium between biodynamic and conditional forces.

Experience comes with conditional (experiential) forces.

Picture a cabbage growing with plenty of sunshine and water and another growing in a draught in poor soil. Each one has a different life experience and each becomes a different plant. There is no such thing as a universal, perfect cabbage, created solely by the biodynamic forces of the Breath of Life. If only the biodynamic forces existed we would all look the same and act the same. Conditional forces are sometimes processed with little change or they can either enhance or overwhelm our blueprint. The stresses of experience can exceed our individual tolerances or threshold resulting in loss of function and inertia.

You can see this effect of conditional forces in images of trees growing in different environments. The environmental experience of each tree, such as strong wind or poor soil, literally shapes that tree. The original blueprint of that tree is distorted. Damage to any part of a system will distort that whole field, hence the distortion pattern is apparent throughout the entire tree. You can say that the tree’s biography is discernable in its external form. If we apply this to people, a knee injury will throw the posture of the entire musculoskeletal system out of balance. This will in turn lead to compromises in the vascular, lymphatic and nervous systems. An apparently isolated injury will have an effect on the physiology as a whole.

Inertial fulcra – ‘high density health’

We have seen that the loss of function is a loss of motion. We call the absence of motion inertia. So any dysfunctional structure or location in the body is characterised by inertia and loss of connection to the Original Matrix. Three forces are present at any site of dysfunction: biodynamic, conditional and the force of inertia which resists motion. There is a local loss of motility as forces become entrapped. The conditional forces maintain the new situation while the biodynamic forces centre the disturbance to provide the best possible conditions under compromised circumstances. Together these forces resist motion, an inertial force is introduced. The site where the biodymanic and conditional forces become entrapped is called an inertial fulcrum.

Although the intelligence of the potency of the Breath of Life acts to preserve the best possible health, this is a compromise; there is a price to pay. The effect of an introduced inertial fulcrum is threefold:

  1. There is less potency throughout the system. A lot of energy is bound up in centring the problem hence less is available to the whole energy field. This can be sensed as poor fluid drive, weak Mid Tide or the inability to access a State of Balance.
  2. An inertial fulcrum will produce local disturbance in the fluids. Rather than moving with the tide, fluctuations, whirlpools and ripples occur around the fulcrum point. You can visualise this as a rock in a river, which caused the water to swirl and crash instead of flowing smoothly.
  3. Because an inertial fulcrum resists motion it distorts the tissue field, causing compression and strain patterns. These manifest as areas of tissue density (local loss of motility) and off-centre dragging motions around or towards the inertial fulcrum.

A student once described an inertial fulcrum as a centre of ‘high density health’. This makes sense because at the fulcrum as ‘Bio-energy of Wellness’ (Becker’s term for biodynamic forces, Becker 1997) centres and limits the disturbance. So the biodynamic force is gathered at the fulcrum at the expense of the whole energy economy.

Inertial fulcra generate many of the phenomena we experience in practice, such as one temporal moving more than the other, or fluids swirling around a stiff joint, or pulls in the tensile tissue field. These are all expressions of a loss of motility somewhere in the system so the system no longer moves as a unified whole. Over our lifespan we collect lots of inertial fulcra through physical injuries such as falls; illness, which frequently results in fluid stasis and reduced motility in the affected part, or as a result of emotional and psychological stresses. These fulcra can lock up a lot of potency in their effort to maintain health, leaving the system as a whole, depleted and fragmented.

References

Becker, R. (1997) Life in Motion. Portland, OR: Rudra.

Blechschmidt, E. (2005) The Ontogenetic Basis of Human Anatomy: The Biodynamic Approach to Development from Conception to Birth. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books.

Jealous, J. (1994) Around the Edges. Bradford on Avon: The UK Sutherland Society.

Sutherland, W.G. (1998) Contributions of Thought, 2nd edn. Fort Worth, TX: The Sutherland Cranial Teaching Foundation, Inc.

van der Wal, J. (2008) Lectures and workshops. London. Organised by CTET.

Katherine Ukleja July 2010

The book is out!

July 19, 2010 in Book progress | by Steve Haines | 3 comments

The book is now available. We were hugely excited to get copies in our hands at the start of last week. It feels like a proper book, which it is, obviously, but it is still slightly surprising. A big thank you to the staff at Jessica Kingsley Publishers for doing a great job. You can order from Singing Dragon, click on the link on the left. We would love to get your feedback. You can leave comments on this post or, really useful for us, give it lots of stars (we hope) and a review on Amazon.

Listening from your Fascia

July 9, 2010 in Biodynamics | by Ged Sumner | 1 comment

Ever wonder what intuition actually is? Well look no further than your fascial matrix which covers all your muscles, nerves, arteries and veins, organs, bones: in fact every structure in your body. It’s the skin of things. Everything needs a skin to contain and support itself. It also acts as the communication system of the body through which the blood and nerve supplies travel and most of the immune system exists within it. It’s also the most sensitive part of your body and carries the general senses. Most of the time we orient to the world around us through our special senses especially our vision and hearing but that is just a small part of the body’s overall sensory system. The vast majority of our senses are located in our fascia. Feelings of pressure, proprioception and interoception are all located here. The brain needs to know how the body is internally and in relationship to movement. The number of sensory neurons in the general senses is many more times that of the special senses, so the stream of sensory information coming from your fascia is the greatest in the body and that makes fascia your no. 1 sensory organ. It’s worth digesting that fact for a minute, as it’s not much talked about. It should be talked about because in simple terms it means our greatest sensitivity is located through the felt sense of the whole body not through eyes and ears and nose. Much of this information is coming to your brain through the unconscious. However as you start to become more body aware i.e. more in touch with the sensations of your body, then the more you notice how your fascia informs you about your internal state and feel of the body, so you get more in touch with yourself, with your feelings and instincts. You will also notice it brings you information about your environment. Fascia is more than just a sensory organ for the body its also highly sensitive to the world around you including other people. If you learn to listen to your fascia you can begin to feel its ability to relate to other fascias and understand that it’s what goes on in the communication between people. Your fascia talks to another persons fascia and shapes around it and brings you information about how someone else’s body is. You physically map around someone else so that you gain a so called instinctive knowledge about them. So if you listen to your fascia more you will become more in touch with the intuitive information about someone else and therefore more empathetic. Here’s an interesting exercise, bring to mind an image of someone you know, and as their face and body start to appear in your mind and you remember interacting with them, be interested in how your body responds. Notice what takes place through the length and breadth of your body as well as the superficial and deep layers of the body. What’s your body response? What is your fascia telling you? You can learn to listen better to it through practice. In the modern world we aren’t taught to listen to this part of us and the more we become fixated on our special senses the more our fascial intelligence becomes buried within our unconscious so that we lose the ability to listen to our instincts. If you are a craniosacral practitioner see what happens when you not only listen through your hands but you also listen through your fascia. Be sensitive from the whole of you. Lots of information comes to you about your clients system and the relational field deepens. The empathetic link becomes greater and the level of acknowledgement within the field increases greatly so that the body can more deeply connect with the breath of life.

Top ten things about embryology that are useful to biodynamic craniosacral therapy practice

June 19, 2010 in Biodynamics, Embryology | by Steve Haines | 3 comments

I am endlessly trying to make sense of embryology. It provides many insights into how the body moves and heals in the biodynamic paradigm. Buying the new, 4th, edition of Larsen’s Human Embryology (very good, especially the online features), plus a debate with Ged (we actually got to meet in Brighton instead of skype from various corners of the world) prompted me to make a mindmap on my top ten embryology insights that inform my practice. It is focused on understandings that have actually made a difference to how I treat and perceive change. You can download the full mindmap here:

embryology top ten v5

A condensed version (the full version has too much detail to work as an image in the blog) is shown here:

You can read the information in the mindmap as a list below (but remember our brains are not good at lists and it is much easier to look at the mindmap). The list is in no particular order.

I would be very interested in other peoples embryological insights that inform their practice. I like the images and work of Blechschmidt, his descriptions of how the embryo forms are very powerful. The ‘spatially ordered metabolic fields’ is a much richer and more complex model than hinted at in my mindmap. I have enjoyed my limited reading of the writing of Jaap van der Wal (especially the idea of the embryo making ‘gestures’), but I am hesitant to accept where the anthropological model leads. The Rohen passages quoted in Torsten Liem’s book have never quite made sense to me, certainly not in a way that informs what I feel when I treat people. I look forward to some comments.

Top ten things about embryology that are useful for biodynamic cst practice

Steve Haines June 2010

1. Conception and in utero events can leave an echo in the developing person

  • Quality of field at conception (for example drunk or aggressive or love).
  • Stress and toxicity affect development.

How it supports practice: The whole system may still resonate with experiences present in the field as the individual form was created.

2. Outer cell mass/trophoblast as the biosphere

  • Three cavities: chorionic, yolksac, amniotic.
  • Extraembryonic support tissues.

How it supports practice: Can orient to a bigger space around the body and root that perception in the knowledge that our bodies grew surrounded by tissues with our own genome.

3. Spatially ordered metabolic fields

  • Fluid fields.
  • Relationships in space determine development.
  • The embryo as a fluid membranous whole.
  • Blechschmidt accounts for the morphology of the growing embryo using spatially ordered metabolic fields.

How it supports practice: In biodynamic practice the body is commonly experienced as a dynamic fluid whole. We can get a felt sense of the body as amoeba, expanding and contacting in response to experience with an internal fluid information exchange. A surging, streaming, bag of protoplasm.

4. Ignition dynamics

  • Surges of potency at different stages of development (plus sparking up of three centres at birth).
  • Conception.
  • Heart beating.
  • Laying down of the neural tube.
  • Ignition in the third ventricle in the neural cavity, the heart in the thoracic cavity and the umbilicus in the abdominal cavity.

How it supports practice: Orienting to potency spreading from the three major ignition centres into their surrounding cavities is an extremely powerful orientation. Often one of the ignition centres feels relatively dampened down. Ignition can be seen as the emergence of coherence and order.

5. Germ layers

  • Retain coherent identity in the adult.
  • Ectoderm, mesoderm and endoderm.
  • Neural crest cells as fourth germ layer.

How it supports practice: Structures that grew together can be treated together. Appreciating the mesoderm roots of all connective tissues helps understand and percieve the unified felt sense of fascia and membranes, for example.

6. Midline

  • Primitive streak and the notochord. The end of the notochord as a still organising centre for the midline and all generation of form.
  • Symmetry.
  • Somites form in relationship to the midline. Structures that grew from and around the somites (myotomes, bones, dermatomes, nerves) maintain a segment identity with the nucleus pulposus as the natural fulcrum.

How it supports practice: The midline is the natural fulcrum for the generation of all form. The continuity and clarity of the midline dynamics is a key indicator of health. Any structure coming back into relationship to the midline is a clear sign of a shift towards health. The practitioners own midline is a powerful orientation as the practitioner attempts to stay present.

7. A fluid filled neural tube that bends and folds

  • Curling forward of the whole embryo is lead by the neural tube.
  • Growing brain imprints on the cranial base and stretches the vault bones.
  • Curling and uncurling of the neural tube is oriented to the lamina terminalis.
  • The shape of the ventricles arises from the morphology of the neural tube.

How it supports practice: The felt sense of a fluid filled tube is a central experience in orienting to the nervous system. The movements and coherent identities of the cranial bones and reciprocal tension membranes only make sense if understood from an embryological perspective.

8. Nourishment via the umbilicus

  • The umbilicus as a fulcrum for relationship.
  • Ignition through the umbilicus.

How it supports practice: The umbilicus is a still organising centre for the whole person. It holds defining dynamics around being in relationship.

9. Organs dynamics are determined by how they grew in the embryo

  • The folding of the organs in mesentery.
  • Gut as a tube with organs that bud off the tube.
  • Expansion of the heart.
  • Anticlockwise rotation of the small and large intestines.
  • Rolling up and to the right of the liver. The combined translocation of the liver and stomach.

How it supports practice: Mobility of the organs is much clearer to palplate and can be understood more easily if the growth movements during embryology are included in the perceptual process.

10. Branchial arches as horizontal fluid fields

  • The formation of the face.
  • Cranial nerve ganglions.
  • Expression and the social nervous system described by Porges.

How it supports practice: Orienting to the branchial arches reveals the underlying dynamics of the formation of the facial complex and the throat. It explains the usefulness of working with the whole package of nerves, muscles and tissues that grew from the branchial arches. Very helpful in downregulating overwhelm responses, supporting the vagal brake and working with cranial nerves.

Dural Chi Kung

June 5, 2010 in Biodynamics | by Ged Sumner | Leave a comment

Check out the youtube link below. It describes a craniosacral chi kung that connects with the dura mater. The beauty of this chi kung is that it can specifically orient you to the dura and allow you to experience its quality and motion dynamics. It will also reveal health and patterns of restriction that start to resolve as you repeat the form. Try it, it’s a great way of clarifying your core connective tissues.


Vast Space of the Microcosm

May 31, 2010 in Biodynamics | by Ged Sumner | 1 comment

Since the advent of nuclear physics and the study of the atom, it has become more and more evident that the atomic world is not at all what we expected. The smaller you go the less mass there seems to be. At the macro level of the universe it seems that there’s structure and that objects have mass. Planets, people, cars, trees and so on. But observing the atom suddenly there seems to be hardly any mass at all i.e. there’s hardly anything really solid in the atom. Mostly it’s the nucleus which is made of protons and neutrons that has mass but that’s a small part of the atom, most of which is made of electrons which hardly have any mass at all and show properties of both particle and wave i.e. mass and light. These days the atom is viewed as having an electron cloud around it that has more in common with energy than matter. If you took all of the humans on the planet, and got rid of all of the space within their atoms and just kept the bits that definitely show as matter then you would have the human race reduced down to the size of a sugar lump. Therefore 99.99% of our body is space, not matter. Truly that’s one of the mysteries of modern science. Do we start to experience this as craniosacral therapists when we orient to a very wide perceptual field. Very similar affects seem to be experienced in this state that relate to a lack of matter and a shift towards space and energy. The experience of long tide is the body becoming light in weight and phantom like as if its hardly there as an object of mass at all, and there’s much more similarity with a world made of light energy. As we shift from an orientation to mass to an orientation to light waves, we reveal our dual nature that is held within our very atoms.

The Atlas of an Elephant

May 28, 2010 in Embryology | by Steve Haines | 2 comments

The above picture was taken on a recent trip to a game park near Victoria Falls. This atlas (first cervical vertebra) of an elephant is so big you could stick your head through the central hole. What struck me looking at the bone was how familiar the shape was. It is just a scaled up version of a human atlas (a human atlas at the same scale is pictured in the bottom left corner, a human atlas would fit easily into the palm of your hand). In fact, lots of the other bones lying around from the skeleton were easy to identify as they were so similar to human bones. You could even tell that this elephant had some arthritis in its lower spine before it died due to the gnarly, misshapen facet joints and vertebral bodies of the lumbar vertebra.

The atlas and axis of a human


Arthritis in a human spine

Humans share a vertebrate body plan with amphibians, reptiles, dinosaurs, birds, and mammals. We are all tetrapods, descended from a common ancestor, the lobe-finned fish. (Wikipedia). Evolution adapted the structures of the basic plan, for example horses walk on tiptoe on the equivalent of the middle finger and have almost entirely lost their other toes and fingers. It surprised me to realise that giraffes only have seven neck vertebra, the same as humans; they must be huge.

Held (2009 pp 58-59) describes how genes determine the shape of the vertebrae as they develop in the embryo. Vertebrae arise from blocks of tissue called somites in the early embryo. Somites (see picture below) arise in a wave from head to tail and initially look alike. They acquire separate identities (“individuation”) through a Hox code (a set of genes). Experiments to turn the Hox genes on and off in mice lead to bizarrely shaped vertebrae. Held argues that mutations affecting the expression of Hox genes account for how human ancestors lost the ape tail and how giraffes lengthened their cervical vertebrae.

The somites of this embryo can just be seen on the back of the body

Held L.I. Jr (2009) Quirks of Anatomy – An Evo-Devo Look at the Human Body. Cambridge

Life is a Bag

May 10, 2010 in Biodynamics | by Ged Sumner | 3 comments

I was sitting on a train the other day and suddenly into my perceptual field came into strong focus everybody’s bag. They had been there all along I just hadn’t noticed them as anything significant. Maybe it was because the train was full and people were having to deal with their bags that I noticed them as they were moving them into a new position on their shoulders or putting them between their feet or holding them differently. There wasn’t enough room for the bags all of a sudden, just people. Anyway there was a train full of bags glaring at me and it struck me that we are obsessed by bags. Everyone has a bag or two or three and there are shops that sell them and we need them of course for putting things in. It also struck me that everything is a bag. The whole of life, the universe and everything is a bag. And I chuckled to myself when I thought that because it’s true. Chances are that the bags I was looking at contained other bags inside them plus never mind the bags what about us. We are a bag too – a series of bags really. There’s the obvious bag of the skin, that we wear other bags over – trousers, shirts, dresses, they are all body bags, shoes are foot bags, gloves are hand bags! Hats are head bags. It goes on. All clothes are bags therefore. Cars and trains and planes are too. They are metal bags we get in that enfold us. Then there’s the rest of the body which in many ways is a whole series of bags or skins that wrap individual muscles and organs and nerves and bones. And when you think there must be something in these bags that are the real thing and not bags and you start to look at the microscopic side of things you see that there’s wrappings in there too. Each nerve fibre is wrapped, each muscle fibre and then you look even closer and see that they are all made of cells that are bags too. Each cell has a membrane, that’s a bag and in the cell there’s objects (organelles) but when you really look at them they too are cleverly disguised bags wrapped into all kinds of different shapes and then when you get down to the nano level of things you are looking at molecules and atoms and they too have shells that wrap around the nucleus of the atom which is more and more looking like its composed of nothing. So basically I saw a great truth I think, that we carry bags to remind us that the whole universe macro and micro is made of cleverly disguised bags with ultimately nothing in them. All we have to do is get past the bags then we will see what the Buddha saw. Here’s a picture of one of my favourite bags.

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Other books by Ged Sumner

Steve is trying out Twitter