opal bones

"Skeletons are a sort of "living story" you are continuously writing. bone robusticity is a result not only of genetic data, but of data created via behavior. It is through your choices of movement and the cellular loads these choices create that your body becomes your autobiography."

 -- Katy Bowman: Move your DNA.

Sunday Tune

Opalized Bones

Opal forms in cavities within rocks. If a cavity has formed because a bone, shell or pinecone was buried in the sand or clay that later became the rock, and conditions are right for opal formation, then the opal forms a fossil replica of the original object that was buried.

-- Australian Opal Center via evencleveland

 1. Lot of four opalized clam shells, found at Bonhams.
2. Opal bone fossils 
3. Opalised jaw of Steropodon galmani

and many more here.

Dem Bones: Skeletal Structure and Movement Function

"We should be very wary about anyone dictating to us what proper form is in regard to a particular activity without considering our individual variations in structure."

- Todd Hargrove

Optimal alignment or posture for a certain function is partly a result of having as many joints in neutral as possible at any one time. And the shape of the bones will determine how many of your joints you can keep in neutral at the same time in a particular functional task so considering your own skeletal shape is very important.
Click HERE to read Todd's great piece about why skeletal shape matters when it comes to movement and function.

Gathering is peculiar, because you see nothing but what you're looking for. If you're picking raspberries, you see only what's red, and if you're looking for bones you see only the white. No matter where you go, the only thing you see is bones.

--Tove Jansson

Janine Antoni

“My work has always focused on the body and how it exists in the world; how it makes meaning. It’s an exploration of what it means to be female; it’s important to claim that."

"Our bodies physically store our memories. We are the history of our lives, so to be in touch with one’s body is to have access to those memories.”

“We treat our bodies as a vehicle to transport our thinking minds. I’ve been on a journey to embodiment. I want to enter my body, to trust it. I want to make sculptures that talked about that experience. Making this work has been a way to externalize a bodily understanding. Making has been a form of healing.”

All works and quotes from Janine Antoni

Why We Are Digging Up Old Bones

The remains of Cervantes have been discovered. Art history sleuth Silvani Vicenti thinks he has identified the remains of the woman we know as the Mona Lisa. The Archbishop of Canterbury has just conducted the funeral of Richard III in Leicester Cathedral. On Front Row the sociologist Tiffany Jenkins explains our fascination with bones of cultural and historic significance. Listen here. 

phosphate of calcium

What reconciles me to my own death more the anything else is the image of a place: a place where your bones and mine are buried, thrown, uncovered, together. They are strewn there pell-mell. One of your ribs leans against my skull. A metacarpal of my left hand lies inside your pelvis. (Against my broken ribs your breast like a flower). The hundred bones of our feet are scattered like gravel. it is strange that this image of our proximity, concerning as it does mere phosphate of calcium, should bestow a sense of peace. Yet is does. With you I could imagine a place where to be phosphate of calcium is enough. 

--John Berger
and our faces, my heart, as brief as photos

found via giphy

gif found here

“For the perfect accomplishment of any art, you must get this feeling of the eternal present into your bones — for it is the secret of proper timing.”

-- Alan Watts

Happy Valentines!

(Found here)

You are a woman. Skin and bones, veins and nerves, hair and sweat. You are not made of metaphors. Not apologies, not excuses.

-- Sarah Kay, excerpt from “The Type”
 (Source: larmoyante)

Bodies

Bodies
are less like temples
and more like biographies
they carry all the
broken hearts, false hopes and cobwebs
neatly mapped in your veins and tendons,
a whole history
tucked away in the spaces in between
your ribs and collarbones. 

-- Annalise Gill

(Source: vacants)

Thor and Wistle

Bone bracelets, rings and necklaces by Thor and Wistle

Found here

Movement Basics

Bones - Bones have many functions including providing leverage when muscles act upon them, transmitting forces (when we walk or run the force of the weight of our body is received largely through the skeleton) and baring some of our weight.

Skeletal muscle - or "voluntary muscle" is anchored by tendons (or by aponeuroses at a few places) to bone and is used to effect skeletal movement such as locomotion and in maintaining posture.  It is an energy intensive system!

Smooth muscle- or "involuntary muscle" is found within the walls of organs and structures such as the esophagus, stomach, intestines, bronchi, uterus, urethra, bladder, blood vessels, and the arrector pili in the skin (in which it controls erection of body hair). Unlike skeletal muscle, smooth muscle is not under conscious control.

Ligaments -  fibrous tissue that connects bones to other bones and there to limit the movement in our joints

Tendons -  (or sinew) a tough band of fibrous connective tissue that usually connects muscle to bone and is capable of withstanding tension.

Fascia - A fascia is a structure of connective tissue that surrounds muscles, groups of muscles, blood vessels, and nerves, binding some structures together, while permitting others to slide smoothly over each other

This connective tissue supports the skeleton in a similar way to that in which guy ropes support the frame of a tent. Slight sway will be restrained by a pull on this elastic tissue, and in many areas of the body it is this restraint that preserves muscular effort. It also helps absorb shock in movement. 

Fluids - when contained by the body's muscles and connective tissue fluids create pressure. This pressure provides a very effective response to gravity. 

We are using all these supporting mechanisms all of the time. Emphasis shifts from one system to another as we move and in a well organised body we can reduce muscular effort (the only system we can knowingly engage) to make more effective use of these other systems. 

Your yoga, practiced intelligently, can help mitigate the over use of skeletal muscle which is so often the cause of discomfort and complaint.

Bones and space!
Perfect swimming costumes