Have you ever used the term “body mechanics“? Or heard someone compare your body to a machine? Just how important is it to use a proper metaphor anyway?

Well, when it comes to our bodies and people like you whose life’s work revolves around them, I would say it’s pretty important.

I’m here to say that we should put that metaphor to rest once and for all. Shifting the root metaphor for our physical existence can help us better understand our consciousness and how the world works as well.

So what do I propose as a reframe? First, let’s go back to the work of Buckminster Fuller. Chances are you have spent time in one of his most famous inventions, the geodesic dome.

Somehow, his domes are strong and maintain their structure without the use of solid walls. The two keywords that underpin his architecture are “tension” and “integrity“, from that we get the concept of “tensegrity”.

Suspension bridges are another form of this, these structures are strong, flexible, and resilient. So while it might be more of a mouthful than man-as-machine, thinking of ourselves as ‘biotensegrity structures’ is much more accurate.

Forget muscles as pistons, joints as levers, or bones as scaffolding. Instead, imagine the solid elements of your skeleton floating in a flexible web of fascia, tendons, and muscle that provide continuous tension. That’s what makes fluid movement possible.

Your physical body is a strong, beautiful, and resilient network. When the elements are in harmony. movement is easy and good health comes naturally.

The bigger picture here is that dualistic thinking is where the Western mind gets into trouble. When everything is reduced down to a polarity between two opposing forces, things in the middle tend to break.

It’s not just our bodies. Society, and the organizations that sustain it exist under the same rules. Tensegrity requires three elements to be in balance — tension, compression, and crucially, the field of connection in between.

As dancers, that ’space between’ where the connection happens is our domain. Let’s not sell it short by reducing what matters to mechanical metaphors.

Merci et à bientôt!

M+

ML #642

Mark Metz
Monday Love Movement Calendar