In my early days of anatomy training I learned about the diaphragm as a skeletal muscle: its origins, insertions, and actions, and how it moves like a pump when I breathe. Anatomy teaches us individual parts, and it can be easy to imagine that one part of the body can move independently, that one limb or organ can move and not affect all other things in all directions, but what we are learning is that this old model is incomplete. Biotensegrity is showing us that everything is, in fact, connected.
One of the things I love so much about the tensegrity model is that it’s considering the whole, all the time. It’s a huge perspective shift. This model doesn’t give you pieces and parts to memorize, it gives you a big-picture view of wholeness that gets you thinking in a very different way. When you think about breathing from the perspective of tensegrity, you factor in EVERYTHING. One thing moves, and everything moves with it. Nothing is separate. The diaphragm can’t *not* be impacting everything in every moment.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that the study of individual parts wasn’t appropriate at some point in the evolution of understanding human anatomy, it’s just that it’s not the end of the road. Now that we have a solid understanding of individual pieces and parts, we need to look toward a better understanding of wholeness, how those parts move with and for each other, and their constant relationship to each other.
What if we thought this way about all levels of being human? That everything we do impacts the whole, all the time. That we don’t in fact move independently through the world but, just like this video image here, we move and everything around us moves, too. How would our actions change? How would our world change? What could be possible?
The next time you take a deep breath, picture this image. 👇See if you can feel into the sensation of the lungs and heart being stretched and toned and the intestines being squished and massaged. On your exhale, see if you can feel the reverse. As you breathe normally and naturally see if you can feel the movement and pull of everything inside the thoracic and abdominal cavities. Can you feel how that movement carries even into your limbs? Your cells? Let me know how it goes!
Want to join us for a free introduction to a connected breathwork practice?
It’s on March 19th from 10-12 MDT
