Hi everyone! Unfortunately I screwed up the recording of Jules’ first session. Fortunately, it was intro material.
Jules introduced herself and spoke about the upcoming several weeks. She made a point that the introduction/basic vocabulary is both overwhelming, dry, and a necessary starting point. We went over the handout she provided, the main gist of which was use that vocabulary as something to study. Choose one section to memorize and memorize it. Look at it several times before we met again. Just don’t stuff it in a drawer until the next meeting. Use it to orient yourself to any anatomy book, explore your own practice and questions, develop a rudimentary language from which you can either a) explore anatomy forever or b) recognize how to apply anatomy in a workable way to what we actually do.
Some highlights from that talk:
Anatomy is the naming of parts. It is a memorization thing. It is a language thing, someone made it up in order to talk about bodies. But it isn’t how bodies actually think/move/or are in themselves. It is also not super useful when learning about movement. The anatomical parts are abstractions.
Some of the key unspoken themes of anatomy are human evolution and embryology. Once we grasp that those concepts are behind all our naming of parts, we grasp the quality of change and uniqueness that can get lost in the memorization.
Another is etymology or where the words come from and what they mean. Acetabulum is the latin word for ‘little oil cup’; when you know that and can see that the hip socket in the pelvis is shaped much like a little bowl, it takes on meaning. This is more about meaning than expertise.
Biomechanics (and kinesiology as a more umbrella term) are related to but different than anatomy: they are an exploration of movement and, specifically, forces and how they move. Gravity being one such force. Muscle contraction and joint movements being others. Along the way in the next several weeks we’ll look a bit at physics (forces), histology (cell and tissue, what makes a muscle, a bone, connective tissue and how do they change), and biochemistry (how do muscles breath, ‘get strong’, ‘get tight’ etc).
Some important highlights to look at, study, and work to understand from the handout and all your possible anatomy sources:
planes of movement
regions of the body (lumbar, sacral, dorsal, femoral etc)
major bones
directions (superior inferior, distal proximal etc) and
movements (flexion, extension, adduction, abduction etc)
I’m so sorry I screwed up. But I am glad it was this session and not some other. To close, Jules suggests that the ‘best way to study’ is to get interested and go with what has meaning for you. If you get interested in what the heck hip flexion is, then you go find the hip flexors in your coloring book for example.