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Welcome back to Fascia and Bones: Unpacking the Mystery.  Some things I love—fascia and bones with a detective mystery. I am a practicing manual osteopath and structural integrator and love working with the connective tissue of the body and the holistic systems of the body. I am also a long-time educator in the field of bodywork and movement. My hope is to share some insights into the fields I practice.

As you may have heard in the previous podcast with Lauren Christman, I have some musings around changing how we talk about anatomy and physiology. Primarily, this is influenced by my study in embryology—the motion of form and function. There is a felt sense and somatic response that happens within me when anatomy is taught from a reductionistic lens—and I am guilty of this too. It is challenging to find new language to describe the relationship between structures and how they were formed. What do I mean by this? For example, my latest obsession is the continued deep dive into neurobiology in the trauma field. If I begin describing the parts of the anatomy, I speak about the vagus nerve, amygdala, nucleus tractus solitarius, periaqueductal gray, and nucleus ambiguous. However, they all grow in relationship and formation to the whole system in the first few weeks of life in utero. When I wear the lens of embryology, the distinction between these processes is more relational. In this podcast, my hope is to unpack the relational lens of anatomy along some recent experiences that invited me to explore this further.

Two recent experiences invited me to think within this lens. The first I experienced was with an anatomy teacher at the Fascia Research Congress, where they were quite combative in how they spoke and challenged the group. I am not sure if this is how they teach in their normal settings, as I haven’t experienced it. I had a visceral response to feeling quite uninvited to engage with the person. I tried to stay present, and I realized after an hour of feeling like the group was being berated, I did speak up in the group to invite a reframe, and the invitation was not received.

The second experience was when I heard another anatomy teacher speaking about the body as if the muscles, insertions, and origins have a certainty to them. It really struck me that we as teachers are not helping move the field forward in a more holistic and embryological model of understanding. I have deeply pondered this, and I am challenging myself as a teacher to find more fluid and holistic models of teaching in my upcoming courses.