Bodily Misnomers

How we're taught to describe the body is the first mistake

This thing keeps happening to me, where I wake up at 4am with thoughts that won’t let me sleep until I write them down, or bare minimum explore their direction. It’s as though they keep knocking on my brain to wake me up and give them some attention.

One such experience this week happened two nights ago, when a realisation about the shape of my body ‘dawned’ on me. It’s not a rectangle with four sticks poking out for arms and legs, my torso is an oval shape and a 3D one at that. It has a front, back, upper and lower part that all have different angles from the ribs inside that keep its shape and protect my vital organs.

It got me questioning where my arms begin.. from my Feldenkrais studies and Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen’s teachings I’ve learned that my ring and little finger rotate from the shoulder blade, thumb index and middle fingers from the collar bone. Skeletally it makes sense, however I’d never really thought about the musculature surrounding the bones.

Then I remembered boiling c…