Space Between the Bones

There IS space between all of our bones even if it is minimal space. That space, even when filled with fluid, allows for movement and cushioning between the bones. It means that bones don’t actually sit on bones – they float and balance in relation to each other. The bones are held together by the tension throughout the muscles, tendons, and ligaments – guide wires, if you will. This makes our bodies’ tensegrity systems (a la Buckminster Fuller and the geodesic dome) where the struts don’t touch each other but suspend inside the system.

Considering this model for the structure of the body is a paradigm shift for many of us. Instead of thinking of our body as bones piled up and resting on top of each other (the post and beam or stack of plates system), the body is seen as a fluid and mobile structure capable of free and easy movement.

As we consciously lengthen our bodies and allow for the spaces between our bones, we can maintain the integrity of the tensegrity system.

Entertaining this way of understanding the body can change the way you experience your body.

Try this experiment:

First, as you sit or stand, think of your bones as supporting your body by resting on each other and thus compressing your body weight into the floor – how do you sense yourself?

Now conscious allow for space between your bones. Think of space between every bone, even between the bones of your head.

Add to that the thought of your body lengthen up out through your head, rebounding from gravity, and see how you sense yourself.

This is a good way to see how much our thinking changes how we move. Working with new ideas can reveal what we have been thinking in the past. Even if those previous thoughts have been unconscious we have been functioning from those principles.

At the recent AGM (Annual General Meeting of AmSAT American Society of the Alexander Technique) Carol Boggs gave a presentation where she quoted Dr. Stephen Levin who said that “all bones are sesamoid bones.” We played with this concept during Carol’s workshop and found that it significantly changed our experience of own body and balance.

Wikipedia says that in anatomy, a sesamoid bone is a bone embedded within a tendon. Basically our tissues thin and thicken into tendons, ligaments, and muscles. Fibers from one density flow into fibers with another density or elasticity. Our structure is continuous and fluid.

We suspend, we float, and we balance AND you can experience it!!!!