Apart from very few “true ligaments” such as the cruciates, which exclusively join bone to bone, most others are part of a larger architecture including elements that are named separately, but do not exist separately in the body. It implies that the anatomist is using his knife to design and name a part of the body (assigning it the role of a

This was an essential aspect of Renaissance art: to capture the charisma (“charism” meaning soul-essence) of the subject(s) permanently.

For every active pose we invite a counter-pose. To assimilate the active asanas, meditation is the natural counterbalance. It represents vital movement balanced by living stillness.

Schleip recommends an attitudinal shift that is clearly beneficial to both manual and movement practitioners. It errs towards fostering self-regulation as the purpose of any intervention, rather than creating dependency upon the teacher.

“To give an example: in real bodies, muscles hardly ever transmit their full force directly via tendons into the skeleton, as is usually suggested by our textbook drawings. They rather distribute a large portion of their contractile or tensional forces onto fascial sheets. These sheets transmit these forces to synergistic as well as antagonistic

The word “biotensegrity” is a shortening of “biological tensile integrity”. It refers to a type of tensional, three-dimensional structure that is formed under tension and compression.

Touch skills are an essential part of teaching a physical movement form, if only because they occur in the same kinaesthetic language as the movements. Nevertheless, adjustment is a domain in which the power differential comes in to play and this is a hot topic for debate in manual therapy.

Simply pausing in your day (at your desk, in the shower, wherever works) once or twice a day to take a few breaths and be present to breathing as an expression of vitality contributes to expanding our awareness. Over time it enlarges the ability to gradually bring this fundamental bodily rhythm into consciousness (not thinking about it but being

It is argued here that pandiculation might preserve the integrative role of the myofascial system by (a) developing and maintaining appropriate physiological fascial interconnections and (b) modulating the pre-stress state of the myofascial system by regularly activating the tonic musculature.”9 Is this perhaps Nature’s way of maintaining the