DO YOU SPEAK ANATOMY?
ANATOMY IS A LANGUAGE (A LOVE LANGUAGE)
TWO SCENARIOS
Imagine you walk into your practitioner’s or movement teacher’s office, and you get the feeling they don’t listen to you? On top of that their answers are besides the issue you are trying to unpack and what they say is completely over your head. You don’t understand their .. everything moves really fast. How would that make you feel?
You probably won’t return back to this practitioner.
Now, let’s turn towards the sun. You are working with a health professional, who doesn’t show and inch of her own pre-conceived ideas or agenda, who first and foremost is interested in you, what you have to say, how you describe it.
How would you feel when this person really listens to you. When someone tries to understand you deeply? You feel seen, heard and acknowledged. You develop a productive relationship with your healing partner.
BUILDING MEANINGFUL CONNECTIONS WITH YOUR CLIENTS
By connecting with our clients and students in the best way possible, we not only need an open mind, the willingness to pay attention and a language that is precise, yet meets the world of our client, we build meaningful connections, this is how we improve healing outcomes.
When you truly listen you don’t react to what the person is saying, you don’t pre-formulate your answer in your head, you respond, you ask more questions, and it terms of movement education, it enables you to see with fresh eyes.
When it comes to working as a health professional, you can choose your point of focus. Your area of expertise, your love language.
If this happens to be in the physical therapy realm, and you aim to understand the universe of our students/clients better by the means of physiology, anatomy and functional movement know-how. You will have to learn the language of anatomy.
As a movement teacher or manual therapist, it helps you embody the practice you teach, to understand the body in motion, to boost the proprio- and interoceptive awareness. And this is what our work is all about! It furthermore refines your recognition of postural- and movement patterns. It defines what you see-feel with your hands, and what you communicate to your clients and colleagues.
It also helps you to communicate effectively with other health professionals. because if I see one thing, and you see another, and we don’t have a common language, then we would be lost This doesn’t mean you have to study medicine to become proficient with the language of anatomy. To be honest, in the beginning years of my yoga teaching years, I thought it is not necessary to 'know my anatomy' that well. I stuck to the gross anatomy and chose to teach the feeling of the poses, yet gradually moved into the study of fascia and anatomy.
And as a student and client, the language of anatomy is the means of ownership of your health, to have agency and a sense of control of your healing process.
REAL TALK
Obviously it takes a certain discipline putting in your work, when we have the language we can begin to describe how we look at ataoty:
anatomy is grunt work, yes there are parts you can infer: eg.
but anatomy you need to memorise,
Don't be afraid of big words and complex sentences in medical texts. It takes time (and repetition) to learn any new language.
Let me say this clear: Anatomy needs to be memorised. And there are ways that makes this memorisation easier, e.g. learning your anatomy with the help of a bodymap, like the Anatomy Trains Myofascial Meridians.
Additionally, a learner and speaker of four languages (German, English, French, Spanish and well, Anatomy, so five really), I know that the best way to grow into a new language is to expose yourself as much as possible to it. Bathe in it, play with it, sing it, dance it, and if you learn French, indulge in it culinary, spend time with the people who want to use the same language!
Do I know it all Anatomy by now? Of course not! Compared to my teachers and the anatomists and authors I learn from, I am still scratching the surface, but that doesn't mean I won’t aim to get better and won’t stop me talking about it!
If I hadn't tried to speak Spanish, I wouldn't have been able to travel through Central America, make friendships, teach at a local school in Honduras, nor absorb the rich and colourful culture of each country. And so it is with anatomy.
You have to get out of your comfort zone, do your first wobbly steps applying the language. It will feel new and uncomfortable, and that’s exactly how it should be! New neuro-connections are made, that never feels comfortable. Best is to get comfortable with it.
In order to LEARN HOW TO SPEAK ANATOMY, it may be: see it, feel it, read it, speak it, write it.
For example:
look at images
touch, move and try to feel the body part you are studying,
draw it (my drawings are shocking, I do it anyway),
use anatomy apps to put it into relation with other structures,
find different names for the structure,
watch dissections (if that's your thing),
plan a class around it,
read relevant pathologies and healing solutions,
have a study buddy or study group to explore the body and to apply your new knowledge,
…
One of my mentors always says: 'You learn anatomy in layers.'
Which means:
Be patient. You don't learn a language overnight.
Don't be put off of medical jargon that makes you want to feel asleep. Find the authors and teachers that resonate with you and meet your learning style.
Begin understanding the more gross structures that are relevant to most people on a day-to-day basis, or that are relevant to you, personally. Starting with the hyoidmuscles or the sypsons fascia will probably put you off straight away.
