Lately I’ve been enjoying my preparations for the upcoming conferences in Austin (“Spread Your Wings”) and Santa Clara (“Mind Body Spirit”), as well as Peak Pilates’ premiere specialty CEC course, “Living Anatomy Series.” The latter has been most interesting but I try to consolidate my efforts by tying the different workshops, conferences and sometimes media material I’m currently working on, together in a cohesive manner. It keeps me focused and helps me with my research.
The “Living Anatomy” series underpins everything created because it’s such a rich, three-dimensional experience that affects all aspects of my work. It is a really, really cool course. It’s where students use their hands to build parts of the body in clay. Later the same day, students see the respective parts of the body dissected, in an unprecedented opportunity; at the Enlightenment Cadaver Labs facility outside of Boulder (it is enlightening by the way). Lastly, I take the students in the Pilates Studio and work the practical side rounding off the course with real life stuff.
Speaking about real life, I can’t help but think about one of the cadavers in the lab, I think his name was Pete, who lived to a ripe old age and he did that with considerable physical pain. How can I tell? As “Master Dissector” Todd Garcia – speaking like a Pilates instructor – said, the body speaks. One can see how an individual has lived their life through what is retained in the tissue of the organs, muscles and bones. For instance, with Pete it was easy to see he was a sedentary man because of his pot belly, lack of muscular development and degeneration in the spine. But more interesting and telling was the massive adhesions through his colon which surely affected his health and well-being at all levels. Pete had had surgery in his colon and with careful skill Todd took the group through the pathway of his adhesions.
I could literally see how like a “cancer web,” the adhesions had spread to surrounding areas creating a tight mass of weird looking tissue. One could assume it was simply due to lack of movement after the surgery and, what I suspect was lack of proper follow-up care. I don’t really know the latter for sure, but I do know if adhesions aren’t worked through to healthy mobility by bringing circulation to the affected area, that area becomes stiff and restrictive. This restriction is contagious. Well not literally, of course, but as an area stops moving and getting blood flow, the surrounding area takes the heat and begins to become restrictive as adhesions continue to build up. This underpins the importance of massage and appropriate exercise after an injury or surgery.
In the case of surgery, these things are not traditionally prescribed therapy. Certainly with Pete it was obvious he didn’t do much after his surgery. If he had done Pilates or something of that nature, massaging and moving his internal organs, the adhesions would not have been as prolific. I can assume elimination was altered as well as other normal activities and even his posture. One could extrapolate the effect of his internal health to his mood and personality. It’s fascinating.
Pete was quite a specimen to view and I am thankful for his contribution to my education and to the students in the course. In fact, participating in the Enlightenment Cadaver Lab makes me appreciate the value of what I do, what we all do as movement specialist as Pilates’ teachers. We help people at so many levels achieve health, much of which we aren’t aware of at all, it just happens through what we do.
- Colleen Glenn, Peak Pilates Master Trainer