Nia - Voice of the Bones
Posted: Jul 22, 01:18 PM
Each Voice of The Body is defined within a Structure made up of the Cognitive, Symbology, and Sensory Awareness aspects. Each aspect is defined by particular elements that impart the scientific components and deeper meanings of the Voice of The Body. Review the Structure to better understand this issue’s Voices of the Body.
Cognitive
Who Am I: I am your skeleton, an architectural masterpiece of living mechanical design. I give you shape, protect internal organs, and make it possible for you to move with the help of your joints and muscles.
Voice of the Bones: I am the voice of the bones. I have a remarkable internal and external design. Moveable architecture, I provide you with protection, support, and a place for the storage of minerals, salts, and a new and fresh supply of red blood cells. I am permeated with blood vessels that feed me and you.
By design I come in a variety of shapes and sizes, contoured to fulfill specific roles that support movement and the function of systems. My foundation is a fibrous protein called collagen. My collagen is twisted like rope, surrounded and impregnated by needle-like crystals of a calcium phosphate called apatite. I am filled with cells called osteocytes, which live in caverns called lacunae. I store minerals in these caverns for later use.
My long and short parts act as mechanical levers to convert muscle contraction into powerful movement. All of us connect to at least one other bone, except the hyoid bone in your neck, which anchors your tongue. Despite my light weight I am stronger than reinforced concrete, designed to withstand great mechanical stress.
My living internal architecture thrives on the elegant blood vessels that ascend in tiny canals through my dense mass of bone cells. Blood-producing marrow lives in my core, encased in sheets of bone. Marrow supplies components for your blood and nutrition for your bones.
Much of my strength comes from my internally cross-hatched design, which helps you to deal with all kinds of resistance and pressures, energetic and mechanical forces of life.
As a femur, your thighbone, I am a hollow cylinder whose design gives you great strength with minimum bulk, making it possible for you safely bear weight and pressure — 1200 pounds per square inch when you walk, and up to 20,000 pounds per square inch during a landing from a pole vault. I love to receive force along my axis, but if you apply force from the side, or at right angles I may break.
I provide a foundation for your shape, and protect your delicate internal organs. My outer surface is strong, while my inner core is soft and spongy. I am designed to reinforce myself wherever stress is applied; movement and exercise will increase in my volume, density and strength.
Together with your joints I make linear, spiral, circular, fast, and slow movement possible. I am alive, a porous masterpiece of collagen, fiber, bone, cartilage, tendon, and ligament. Extremely compact, there are over 206 of me that range in size and shape from short to long, flat, rounded and irregular.
You will find me in you as your long femur bone, the short pisiform bone in your wrist, the flat sphenoid bone protecting your brain, your intricate & irregular vertebrae, and as a rounded anchor at the end of another bone.
I feel deeply, and I hurt and bleed if I get injured. Excited muscles move me. You keep me healthy by drinking water, moving me, and stimulating me with all of the five sensations, and by feeding me with good nutrition. Keep me strong by testing my strength, stressing me in positive ways that increase my density. I become brittle and porous if you become sedentary or do not move.
My Gift to You: I give your muscles a place to hang on, and to lengthen and shorten along, giving you the freedom to stand, sit, and fold and unfold.
Symbology
Imagine Me As: Visualize me as long and short levers that can lift and lower heavy weights and manipulate delicate objects.
Sensory
In Nia: The Craft and Techniques you use to keep your bones healthy are:
The Movement Forms, whose endless variety of shapes, and energies help keep bones strong, resilient, and adaptable to all kinds of forces and stress.
X-Ray Anatomy, to talk with your bones and guide them into correct alignment. Guide your bones to work with your joints to move safely and efficiently. Activate the 200-700 codes as an opportunity to use all of your 206 bones in unique and energetic ways.
CPT, Conscious Personal Training, is a way to teach yourself to move your bones consciously. It is easier to control moving bones than muscles, coordinating your muscles to work in pairs. Use your Intention to direct a single bone, and use visualization see bones in new ways and develop a whole body relationship with each part.
Play with Three Planes and The Three Intensity Levels, to add positive stress to your bones. By playing on and off balance you will redistribute body weight and create the positive stress that bones need to stay strong. Shifting off and away from the vertical line is an excellent way to strengthen the bones of your spine, hip joints and sockets.
Awareness, consciously paying attention to notice sensations of pain and pleasure.
Pleasure guides you to realign bones and to improve your craft and technique. Feed your bones with love so that the special arteries and veins that nourish your bones receive the loving stimulation they need.
Dancing Through Life, to celebrate living in your skeleton, dancing and moving through life joyfully. Appreciate the twenty years of growth it takes to produce the kind of bones built to withstand all the weight and pressures life brings to you.
The Five Sensations guide you to treat your bones well so that they will be a source of your internal strength, flexibility, mobility, agility, and stability!
When Dancing Through Life: Every day, consciously pause to sense your bones in action. Connect to the lightness of your bones as you move and dance. Stimulate your bones with all kinds of movement shapes and energies. Change the weight-bearing pressure, playing with the chemistry of Modern Dance, moving on and off balance. As you walk to the bathroom maintain soft and relaxed joints, and shift your weight from left to right, pretending you’re going to fall off balance—but don’t fall! Play with this on-off balance walk to strengthen your spine and hip joints.
Be aware of moving your thighbones and the bones of your hands as you walk, bringing life into your base and upper body at the same time. In the bathroom, pause to breathe in and out, filling and emptying your lungs completely. Feel your rib cage expanding and contracting. Stand still and sense your arm bones hanging freely from the clavicle bones, as if your arms were the arms of a sweater hanging off a hanger.
Make slight postural changes so your bones feel more relaxed and full of energy. Feed your bones with sensation—shake and vibrate them, shimmy them into wellness, rock your pelvis side-to-side with power and grace. Spiral your forearm bones while you wait in line at the bank or grocery. Pull back from the computer and rest for a moment, extending the bones of your fingers way out into space, and then squeeze your fingers around an imaginary ball. Stand up, with your feet hip width apart, and roll around the edges of your feet. Pound the bones of your fists up and down into space to release stress and tension. Push the bones of your hands out and up into space to stretch your chest and back. Throw the bones of your hands up into the air to express joy, and to energize your spirit. Stand tall, energetically falling up into the sky with the bones of your skull, connecting to Heaven and to Earth.
