Bodies at South Street Seaport
Howdy folks,
If you have not been to Bodies...The Exhibition down at South Street Seaport, I highly recommend that you go. (Note: This is not to be confused with Bodies! The Musical, which, if such a thing exists, I probably would not recommend.) I'm sure you've seen the billboards. It is an anatomy exhibit that lets you examine real human specimens up close that have been cut away in different ways, so you can see all the muscular layers, as well as all the other systems of the body. I doubt there is anything else like it short of going to med school.
If you do go, it will help you visualize the way your body functions, and it will help answer one frequently asked question I get: are those bumps you keep going over knots?
Yes and no. Here's the way I think of it: if you go to the exhibit, you will see exactly how many layers of muscle and connective tissue there are. This is because muscles can only do one job: contract. This is great for simple jobs (to raise your for arm, just contract your bicep); but anything that needs to rotate, swivel, or generally move in more than one direction has to have seperate muscles or combinations of muscles to pull in that direction. That means all those muscles overlap in all kinds of crazy directions, and that overlap is what creates the bumps. Everybody has different sizes and textures of those bumps, because everybody has different sizes of muscles.
So the bumps are supposed to be there, but ideally there should be a fluidity to them. As muscles fibers get stuck in a contracted position, and all the other muscles that work with it are also unable to work efficiently, the blood supply gets restricted, the connective tissue gets stiff, and the whole are area tightens up. It's the same overlap but because it's not moving properly it feels like a knot.
Anyway, go to the exhibit and imagine every band of muscles you see being able to contract and release at will. It will change the way you think about your body.
Have a good weekend.
cam
Cameron Aiken
www.cameronaiken.com
If you have not been to Bodies...The Exhibition down at South Street Seaport, I highly recommend that you go. (Note: This is not to be confused with Bodies! The Musical, which, if such a thing exists, I probably would not recommend.) I'm sure you've seen the billboards. It is an anatomy exhibit that lets you examine real human specimens up close that have been cut away in different ways, so you can see all the muscular layers, as well as all the other systems of the body. I doubt there is anything else like it short of going to med school.
If you do go, it will help you visualize the way your body functions, and it will help answer one frequently asked question I get: are those bumps you keep going over knots?
Yes and no. Here's the way I think of it: if you go to the exhibit, you will see exactly how many layers of muscle and connective tissue there are. This is because muscles can only do one job: contract. This is great for simple jobs (to raise your for arm, just contract your bicep); but anything that needs to rotate, swivel, or generally move in more than one direction has to have seperate muscles or combinations of muscles to pull in that direction. That means all those muscles overlap in all kinds of crazy directions, and that overlap is what creates the bumps. Everybody has different sizes and textures of those bumps, because everybody has different sizes of muscles.
So the bumps are supposed to be there, but ideally there should be a fluidity to them. As muscles fibers get stuck in a contracted position, and all the other muscles that work with it are also unable to work efficiently, the blood supply gets restricted, the connective tissue gets stiff, and the whole are area tightens up. It's the same overlap but because it's not moving properly it feels like a knot.
Anyway, go to the exhibit and imagine every band of muscles you see being able to contract and release at will. It will change the way you think about your body.
Have a good weekend.
cam
Cameron Aiken
www.cameronaiken.com
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