“Our languaging of body is rapidly changing. The limited, isolated biomechanical language that once defined and shaped our perception of self and other is dissolving. Burgeoning is a biologically rich vocabulary based on a wild calling, coaxing and inviting us to deconstruct and decolonize our static conceptual framework so we can be “claimed” and emerge from isolation to embrace life as cooperative, expressive, and creative.” -Liz Koch, Stalking Wild Psoas: Embodying Your Core Intelligence
Newtonian physics reduces the body as a set of forces, levers, and vectors. Our bodies move as a whole system, not in parts. Those of us who study physical medicine and rehabilitation are beginning to discover how movement is informed by the inner material of the body. The woven web is a network called the extracellular matrix. This collagenous network is created by intercellular elements. It is a living material called fascia. This inner webbing of a soft, gel-like material gives us shape through a complex synergetic system of organized fractal mathematics. We are encased in an inner webbing of fantastic connectivity. We are held as we move.
The human body is organized by function and works to maintain equilibrium. Muscle fibers, cells, and tissues form complex patterns that store energy, matter, and information. Fascia is the great conductor of these patterns, forming its own fractals of beauty and structure, promoting life to regulate and maintain equilibrium. We are not mechanical structures but systems of a woven tapestry.
Objectification of body is an act of complicity. We are in process of being lived with the assistance of complex inner building structures that give us agency, resilience, and nonlinear connectivity.
Our bodies are stabilized by compression and tension, with a structured distribution independent of gravity. That is how we can move and maintain our shape. We have what Buckminster Fuller called tensegrity.
Energy is transmitted through our system, through the webs of tissue and fluid that connect everything to everything else. This web is here to give us structure, balance, and flow. We are fractal distributions. This is the net that weaves us into a whole and allows us to move through the world. You are held.
