The Anatomy Of Movement

Today we are looking into the Anatomy Of Movement; an over reaching title, but one that sums up
what we have been doing over the past few weeks. This takes us back to where we started last month with Rotating Shoulders when I got stuck writing a blog series about shoulder pain and movement as I couldn't find the words to describe the anatomy in an integrated way. Our forms are too complex to isolate them into singular muscles, and so the past few posts have been exploring a little bit of the history of anatomy and how we see it today. No longer do we have to box the systems up and put them in pigeon holes; now we can see how we move in fluid flow.

The whole reason why I wanted to look at the movement of anatomy was to get away from the rigid terminology that Anatomy has been shrouded in over the past few centuries. I don't believe that we were created to be stuck in a mould that could be described with generalized, isolated movement testing. The clients that I see move! I move!

With 3D scanning and printing giving us such unique ways of looking at (and hopefully treating) the body, it is no longer appropriate to look at ourselves in such caged viewpoints of nerves, blood, lymph, muscle etc. We now see muscles contract and relax, massaging the lymph around the body and giving stimulus for the blood to keep going round. The joint capsules have direct relationships to all aspects of tendon, bone, ligaments, nerves and blood. Viscera, which is ignored by so many massage therapists, cannot be cut out of any equation. The body really does interplay between the sum of all parts.

The best part about the viewing technology is that we can see it all in real time as the clients/patients move and we can view them in all planes of movement. Feet can now be scanned in a 3D scanner whilst wearing heel and then the layers are taken away on the screen revealing the bones and the job they have to do to keep us balanced.

The Greeks, Romans, painters in the Renaissance, nor the Doctors 50 years ago could have dreamt that we could see the body in movement through cameras that can take away layers to see the reality under the skin. This means that we have to start playing catch up in the way we view the relationship between anatomy, language, movement and the treatment room. We simply can't afford to stick with a language that was developed to describe theories that are becoming outdated.

So, we need a way of describing anatomy in movement during massage and body-work and that is where I see Integrated Anatomy really helping us move (!) our work closer to a more realistic conversation between the clients and the therapists.

I also hope that integrated anatomy becomes a bridge builder between the differing types of Holistic Therapy, but also within the Medical world. I long for the day my clients can go to the 'Knee Surgeon', and they will take the whole body posture into account, video the gait movement, talk to the Lymphatic and Vascular specialists and take an over all picture of the background of the patient before simply going and 'tidying up' a bit of ligament or cartilage here and there.

I hope that the YouTube video helps explain this a little better and that you find it helpful. Excuse the scary face - I'm still working out how to use Google Capture! I'm sure there will be a re-take soon.