Last week, I went into the lab with Gil Hedley. I experienced my previous 6-day human dissection course with Gil back in 2012, so it’s been awhile since I shared space with the dead.
The dead are magical teachers.
Back in 2012, my steely-eyed intent was to “get” anatomy. I wanted to see the insertions of muscles, touch a hip joint, and palpate the knee ligaments. This time, I entered the space with less agenda. I spent time marvelling over tattoo ink on the reverse side of the skin, staring at chunks of fibrin that had condensed out of blood (a reminder that blood is actually a connective tissue), and turning over a human heart in my hand to admire the extraordinary size and swirl of its vessels.
Here are my top five wows from the week.
1. The body is fractal, not mechanical.
You know the movie Aliens? The alien ships are always looking strangely fractal, swirly, and everything gets coated in goo? Well…that’s actually more like real life! For some reason (“Euclidean geometry,” says Gil), we build our human environment in boxes and squares. We make walls and floors at perfect right angles. We apply this mechanistic metaphor to the body, thinking of it as a machine with parts that work, or don’t work. Our model skeletons look boxy and clean. But the reality is that the human body is full of swirls, whorls, and spirals. I don’t think there’s a right angle anywhere in the human form. Bones twist, arteries meander, nerves snake.
No wonder we get cranky in cubicles.
2. Stability is more than muscles.
As a yoga teacher, I’m a huge fan of muscles. (Oooo, and fascia! We LOVE fascia.) Give me tendons, bones, and ligaments and I’d think, “There, that’s stability!” This week, I became acutely aware of how much of our stability is provided by the tree like branching structures of our blood vessels and nerves. These vessels penetrate and snake through all of our tissue layers, anchoring us in some places and gliding easily in others. When muscle tissue disintegrates with barely a swipe of the finger, and you can lift a whole body by tugging on the celiac plexus, you start to get the idea that these structures are integral to holding us together.
3. Skeletal variation is just the beginning.
In recent years, we’ve all been very excited about skeletal variation. But this is only part of the story. What about when two livers look radically different from each other? When lungs can have different number of lobes? When the digestive system can be completely rotated around relative to where it “should” be? Human variation is the norm. So next time you’re in a twist, perhaps contemplate that the sensations in your posture could be about your spleen.
4. Your heart is a conch shell.
I didn’t say that. Gil said that. And it’s such a good reframe that I have to share it here. Your heart spirals on itself. I spent a couple hours with a heart, tracing its curves and figuring out how the blood flows through it. It’s not point A to point B, my friends. The best distance between two points is not the shortest, thank goodness (insert metaphor for life here!). Your heart is like the curving interior of an alien vessel, spinning blood into sinuous meander. Curves. Not lines.
5. You are one thing.
We think we’re many things. We pull stuff apart, name the pieces, and decide that that is reality.
The biggest lesson came from the physical labor that it required (six days with five people on each table) to take apart a human form. Why did it take so long? Because the human body is one thing. We are connected; no part is separate. Everything that is pulled apart, swept away and set aside is an artificial imposition. Sure, it’s useful to “dissect,” as long as we don’t lose sight of the fact that we are the ones creating the pieces.
My brain didn’t learn this lesson intellectually; my body absorbed this truth from the ass in chair/scalpel in hand labor it took to create parts from something unified.
Final thoughts
The greatest gift from spending a week in the lab is that the mystery is not solved. We may be able to locate and name these wondrous structures (pineal gland, aorta, vagus nerve, mammary bodies), but the mystery of our “aliveness” remains as awe-inspiring as ever. Peering our complexity and the crazy intelligence of the body only serves to highlight how jaw droppingly weird it is that we are alive. Right now, as I type these words, my brain is coordinating some kind of wild chemical thunderstorm to make my hands move (how? I have no idea!?).
Some answers can only be felt. And some mysteries can only be admired. And that includes looking in the mirror.
*After my first lab, I was inspired to write a rather sexy poem that you’re welcome to read. There’s something about spending time with mystery that inspires some juiciness.
