I have received an enormous volume of emails asking me to give more detail regarding BioTensegrity and its importance in bodywork and movement therapies. I am happy to provide some short posts with videos to visually support my hypothesis. Of course I owe great gratitude to Steve Levin and all of the members of B.I.G. Please feel free to share this post. It is a mixture from several articles I have written on the topic. I have not provided references as this is only an opinion based FB post and I want to keep it light but if references are needed let me know. BioTensegrity I am not suggesting that we throw the baby out with the bathwater but what I am saying clearly is that we need a new explanation for how living things move. Our knowledge of anatomy needs to change radically and the premise for movement also demands change. Why? Simply put our current paradigms are, in my opinion, wrong. All living anatomy, the structure of all living things, is tensegrity based. Fascia is now recognised as playing an important role (thanks in no small part to people like Myers, Schleip, Guimberteau, van der Wal) while sadly the role of bones is considered trivial at best and inconsequential generally. Bones may be more efficient at returning stored energy than tendons or other soft connect tissues. We need research into this proposal so it can move from opinion to fact. What we do know as a fact is that mathematical calculations of human movement rely on inter-abdominal pressure to make up the deficit in their computation. The problems encountered using current mathematical equations is patently clear when according to Gracovetsky an individual’s inter-abdominal pressure would have to increase by 20 times more than their blood pressure, enough for them to explode, to allow a 250kg lift. Gracovetsky further informs us that the maximum load the erector spinae musculature could possibly support is no more than 50kg approximately. To support the need for a new mathematical model for biomechanics Dr Steve Levin, similar to the example provided by Gracovetsky, explains that a two kg fish hanging at the end of a three-meter fly rod would exert a compressive load of 120 kg, at least, on the lumbosacral junction. If the weight of the rod, torso, arms and head were included the calculated load on the spine would far exceed the critical load resulting in fracture of the lumbar vertebrae of the average mature male. Humorously, Levin suggests this would make fly fishing an exceedingly dangerous activity. Dr Levin has put forward a model for human movement that he calls “BioTensegrity” strongly influenced by the pioneering work of Buckminster Fuller and Kenneth Snelson. In this model there are no joints in the body. Joints become points of force transfer while loads acting on the body are distributed throughout the tensegrity. This means there are no origins or insertions when discussing muscles. A tensegrity has two members, one is continuous and provides tension (this would be the connective or soft tissues of the body) and the second member is a discontinuous strut providing compression (this would be the harder tissues or skeletal system). Of course both members are connected to and are continuous with each other. As a clinical anatomist I break that relationship or connection with my scalpel. I create parts. I separate what has been united for a lifetime. A growing number of respected researchers have provided the foundation for a new vision of anatomy. This new vision embraces global dynamics and continuous matter (a tissue continuum) and sheds new light on the relationships between the connective tissues of the human body including dense sheets of muscle coverings, aponeuroses, specific local adaptations such as ligaments, tendons, blood vessels, lymphatic’s and nerves. In the next post I will discuss the 4th dimension (tesseract) and its implication in living movement and BioTensegrity. In the meantime take a look at the video I have included in this post. I hope this video will provide a strong visual impact that will help my FB friends to frame 4D in a meaningful way. john s
Posted on: Sun, 04 Jan 2015 00:12:27 +0000
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