Using your magic anatomical imagination

My deepest desire this week was something I don’t want to do.

I don’t want to contribute more energy to the spinning vortex of fear and violence that is moving across our political landscape.

What does that have to do with experiential anatomy? Let me tell you. For me, anatomy is a magical, wild place that I can go to for solace. It is a creative palette I can use to remake myself.

This chaos is deliberately being generated by people who have a lot of power. It’s terrifying to be in its presence. What can you do with the ferocious anger and fear that arises? Is it safe to let go and express yourself?

In this moment I feel it’s really important to not feed their beast.

I want to feed my own beast instead. I love her! Take my angry monster self for a walk in the woods – in my case, the imaginary woods, since I live in the city. I need to Maurice Sendak myself!

I can do my own monster dance and generate some good energy. This is what dance has always done for me.

Once I’ve danced it out, I have better energy to contribute out in the world.

Thinking it through certainly doesn’t help nearly as much, in my case.

So today’s video is coming from that simple place: a walk in the experiential anatomy woods, perhaps grow a tail, or a bump somewhere that it’s not supposed to be…but there it is! Magic!

Here’s a quick rundown of the three-part practice:

• All Bones Are Floating In Tissue:

Bones float in a matrix of very sensitive tissues, though some kiss each other through a covering of cartilage called joints. They are never “fixed” in relationship to each other, but are evolved to slide and glide and move.

The movement of our floating bones within sensate tissue like muscle, fascia, and skin, is how we sense the force of the earth pressing up against us. This contact is what we use to buoy ourselves up into the air/sky/cosmos.

• Some Bones Are Really Floating In Tissue:

Some bones, like the kneecap and sesamoid bones, truly float inside tendons and muscle tissue with no joints to hold them close. Bringing your attention to these floating bones while moving has effects throughout your entire interconnected tissue web and effects all your other bones as well.

• Imaginative Anatomy:

You can put the image of a kneecap anywhere in your body that you want! Any muscle that feels heavy, stuck, or stiff…put a kneecap in there with your mind. How would it glide as you stretch and move?

This ability to re-imagine ourselves is, I’m convinced, good for our brains and bodies.

It’s like making a wild painting with your body schema, your sensory and motor maps, confounding your cortex. It’s neuroplasticity in action.

I think our nervous system needs this imaginative engagement with our structure. We grow and change ourselves this way. We’re not always reiterating old patterns, old knowing, old habitual ideas or structures.

We can create our own desired inner states through magic anatomical imagination.

The magic is in here – all you have to do is ask for it.

That’s what we are doing in my weekly dance class. Give it a try if you want a nice long walk in the anatomical woods!