Funny, I was just talking with my phenomenologist about the astronauts yesterday….

I would guess you are aware that the astronauts used pilates-like equipment in space called “the shuttle”(?). There is a continuum in deciding what’s best for the human body in microgravity and on earth. There are repercussions to the body in a microgravity field, right?

As an aside, the trampoline is often used in our studio, as well as a lot of hanging for some people….I don’t mean to sidetrack.

I think that different people/brains conceptualize differently and this is where it gets really interesting for me. Just as some people need proof from research that pilates works, some people might need to hear the info on tensegrity to understand qualities of movement. I came about my understanding through dance. Modalities like pilates, Trager, and understanding the work of Josephine Rathbone helped to understand what I was observing about movement qualities. I would love to see all the info hook up which as you said, starts conversations, which creates new topics for research, which leads to finding new and interesting ways to get people excited about movement practice.

Using different imagery is helpful depending upon which movement quality you are interested in creating in the body. The rolfing logo was helpful to get the modality this far…where will it go from there?

Thanks for your work, Phil.

Anyone reading Levin’s papers will soon grasp the insufficiency of a compression-based model to hold and move our structure. Anyone viewing movies of Tom Flemons’s models can intuit that those simple constructions are capable of demonstrating an amazing amount of human motion. The astronauts on the international space station are grateful that compressional loading is not essential to our day-to-day physiology, because they could not survive in a microgravity environment.

It’s clear that some other model is in play for those astronauts — and for us, and it’s not compression-based. The next question: if some floating/tensional mechanism is in play, why would nature also build a compression-based system? Nature avoids putting in redundant systems….

I’m not dismissing a stacking model; I am seriously questioning it. More to the point, I fondly hope that others follow the chain of reasoning of Levin’s papers and come to their own conclusions.

Can you give some examples of helpful imagery from a stacking-world? Have you seen if something from a floating-world would work?

So glad you said that. So many great models to explore. I am interested in how they hook up. I use AIM as a translation tool for my clients. Movement theory and practice that we use in the studio “match up” to and are enriched by other perspectives. Of course, it’s more like how it is an a cellular level or like connective tissue running throughout everything, all simultaneous and interwoven. I enjoy contemplating mental constructs.

I am also glad to hear that you are not out to dismiss the stacking model, since the imagery is helpful to a point. Even though we know the earth is round, it appears flat to us most of the time. It’s interesting to note our beliefs and how they manifest in our lives.
-Carole

I have my own thoughts about the applicability of a floating compression model. Individuals can pursue the discussion about that: Levin’s papers on his website, Meyer’s text “Anatomy Trains” (with a 20-page summary available for free here), Tom Flemon’s wonderful models . They could also see what impact the model has on their movement (and I’d recommend doing that through body/mind classes). Simply thinking that one model is “right” will make little difference; I’m far more interested in having someone engage in the conversations.

As you are aware, there is a fantastic diversity of body-mind disciplines, and sub-divisions in many of those disciplines. I’ve thought for several years this is a testament to the nuanced and rich expressiveness of our bodies. Something like Flemons’s double-layered pelvis model is tremendously instructive, because it shows that a concert of muscles are always influencing the position of particular bones. One must remember that we’re able to alter the tensions of any of those tensile segments in the model. I like to think that the deeper layers provide a platform for movement while the superficials use that platform for the actual movement (but there is always an overlap in those two muscular functions).

It clearly makes a difference what ratios of muscular tension and sequencing we use to hold postures and accomplish movement. Any discipline opens up those ideas to students certainly sounds like a good thing.