Body Mind & Spine Align

Da Vinci Drawing of Vitruvian Man Re-Versed - Exploring Perceiving and Utilizing the Human Body from the Backside Part One of Three

This famous da Vinci drawing is perhaps the most recognized rendering of the human body known to people around the world.

It's sometimes called Vitruvian Man because it portrays the human body in a perfection of proportions discovered and detailed by the architect Vitruvius who used measures of the human body for constructing buildings.

 

 The proportions:                                                                                    

4 fingers constitute one hand width
4 widths of a hand constitute one foot 

6 widths of a hand constitute one arm or yard
4 yards constitute the height of a man

There's great detailed and illustrated information on the

Geometrical construction of the Vitruvian Man by Leonardo da Vinci

on the website: World-Mysteries.com

The proportions rendered by da Vinci in this drawing which is based on  the measures of  corresponding body parts put forth by Vitruvius have great potential effect on people: the way we feel a sense of ease and belonging within a building or the deeper senses of beauty that bring forth feelings of oneness and clarity and purpose from works of art.

But because da Vinci renders Vitruvian Man from the front,

the drawing doesn't show the spine.

The body's beauty in corresponding proportions can be related to spaces in which we live and work and also works of art that inspire and empower us.

But from the standpoint of function that will get you through a day at your desk, a long plane flight, or dancing all night, you really must have a sense of the back body that supports the spine.

I'd like to propose a different perspective on the da Vinci fully frontal frontal image that isn't based on proportion, but perception.

It's a big belief of mine that helping people change their perceptions of themselves is really primary to teaching

 

them how to strengthen the muscles that will support the spine.

 

 

What if we performed a vitruvius reversal and portrayed the human body from the backside?

 

This could be called:

Vitruvian Man With a Wingspan

 

Expansion of the Back
Grants
Extension of the Spine
Grants
Empowerment of the Body

When you learn how to:

Expand the back
Which is like a wingspan

Then you experience how to:

Extend the spine
Which is the veritable backbone

Ease & Empowerment
Go Hand in Hand

Working the wingspan wide
to free the backbone through

Eases the pain in the overworked neck and shoulders

while at the same time

Empowers the muscles that are in proximity to support the spine

 

It is my mission to relate these back-body support-for-the-spine principles that have been worked out in me through years of teaching many people how to better use their spines. I wish to help change people's perceptions of themselves as having powerfully supportive backs as well as freely expressive fronts.

Most of my days of teaching are spent sitting behind, kneeling behind, or crouching behind people's backside bodies to help them sense the power of the muscles in their back bodies: hamstrings, lats, trapezius, transversus - and to help people sense the stability in the bones of the back body: sit bones, scapula, sacrum, tail bones, occipital points, heels.

I hope to help you in relating these words and putting forth these images to offer a change the perception of yourself in order to start to sense the powerful places that will support your spine.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the next part of this series of posts. I will show photographically and also elaborate and detail more specifically in words which muscles and bones of the back body support the spine. I also wish to show you how from a percerption of oneself from the backside, it is much more simple to understand many pain-free and powerful ways the muscles work. 

Thanks so much for reading! Comments most welcome here!

Herald

Backbone and Wingspan® founder and owner

and author of Body Mind & Spine Align

can be reached at 212-647-8878

Email: [email protected]

See the Website: Backbone and Wingspan

Backbone and Wingspan LLC

Da Vinci Drawing of Homo Quadratus Gives Insight into Accessing Perception & Power of the Body from the Backside Part Two in a Series of Three

 
  With Backbone and Wingspan and it's emphasis on:

 Integrated Back Strength & Spine Support

 You Will Become Body Conscious...

 in a newfound way that serves all movement, postures, & senses of well-being...

 
Much of this new consciousness arises from getting in touch with supportive places in the body which we are unfamiliar with because these places are located in the backside of the body...

   The da Vinci drawing places Vitruvian man

      inside of both a circle and a square... 

     This da Vinci drawing is also known as

   Homo Quadratus  

   which means literally in Latin: Man and Square

   but can also be interpreted as "perfect man" as

   in regards to the perfection of proportion.

 

 

 

 

 

Homo Quadratus can also be

interpreted as a man or human

functioning from four quadrants

 

However, Vitruvius also brought out the potential empowerment and stability that comes from working from the triangular approach:

Vitruvius stated: "One has to know that when spreading one's legs the space between the legs is a equilateral triangle."

There is detailed information about both da Vinci's notes that accompany his drawing of Vitruvian Man - and Vitruvius' text describing correlating measures of the human body at:

The ratio's in the drawing

So in order to work from the back body in four quadrants that equally support the spine on all sides, it's very helpful to tap into the truth of the revurring three's in the human body:

There are:

Three Curves of the Spine: Lumbar-Thoracic-Cervical

Three Joints to the Arm: Shoulder-Elbow-Wrist

Three heads of each triceps muscle connecting on to each shoulder girdle

 

It's a Triangle that Connects Triceps to Traps to Lats to Sacro Iliac

 

The triangle formed when both sets of

triceps connect into the lower traps

Learn

to 

Use:

Triceps
Traps
Lats

Scapula
Humerus

Triceps has three heads
The muscle wraps back and under the scapula
Releases the shoulder & then the neck
Connects into the powerful lats and lower traps
Lats wrap all the way down to the sacroiliac joints on either side of the pelvis 

The triceps should not be cut up or ripped because then they cannot connect to the          larger muscles that empower the back body: lats, lower traps, and transversus.

Learning a way to work the arms into the back

Assists with many exercises and movements:

Pull ups or chin ups
Hanging from a bar
Holding handlebars when biking 

Keystroking computer posture
Subway Straphangers

Carrying a Baby or Picking Up a Toddler

 

With this wingspan way of

working the arms, improve:

Golf Stroke

Squash Racket Swing

Tennis Ball Serve

  

This is one of the signature exercises of

Backbone and Wingspan® which is pictured and detailed to more specific degree

on one of the pages of my website

Check it out to see all the benefits of working the arms from this wingspan of triceps into traps into lats

 

Also check out this video (just over 2 1/2 minutes in length) to gauge the

benefits of releasing a stiff neck, tight shoulders, and upper back tension.

See live the kinds of hands-on support I provide in a one-on-one session.

Witness how she uses her wingspan to hover and fly her spine instead of

having to hike herself up from her shoulders as she arches and lengthens.

This is the triceps wrapping back to the scapula which creates the wingspan.

 

Thanks so much for reading! Comments most welcome here!

 - Herald

Backbone and Wingspan® founder and owner

and author of Body Mind & Spine Align

can be reached at 212-647-8878

Email: [email protected]

See the Websites: 

* Integrated Back Strength & Spine Support

   located at Backbone and Wingspan

* Foot Function for Spinal Support & Pain Relief

   located at Feet for Fitness

* High Heel Pain Relief

   at  High Heel Healing

Backbone and Wingspan LLC 

Related articles

Release Foot Pain from Wearing High Heels and Tone the Legs at the Same Time

Using Relationships Between the Heel & the Arch & the Ankle of the Foot Creates Space for Pain Relief & Freedom of Movement

Backbone and Wingspan: Spines in Flight

Backbone and Wingspan® focuses on the bones of the back, not all of which are the obvious vertebrae that comprise the spine - albeit the backbone.

 

 

 

 

It is my mission within each and every session to create a true learning experience within the exercises we may perform for strengthening or the stretches we may perform for releasing tightness and tension.

I'm really here to relay experiential information that can change the way you perceive your body as opposed to giving you cues for how-to-do or adding a tip or two while you move.

Backbone literally implies possessing a sense of the spine but figuratively, in a way that translates to your physicality,

 

Backbone connotes a mutual feeling of both ease and empowerment.

 

 

 

Backbone is a great facility and freedom in the expression of oneself.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There are several other bones along the backside of the body

that serve to support the spinal column and

thus give full access to the entire line of spine and

grant a true sense of both ease and empowerment -

 

 

these other bones along the backside are

 

the scapula,

 

the sit bones,

 

and the sacrum.

 

 

 

 

The scapula are the wing bones, and dropping into the musculature underneath the scapula

(the triceps, the lats, the lower traps)

ultimately gives one

the sense of being winged.

 

 

 

In The Power of Myth 

Joseph Campbell states, 

"The serpent bound to the earth, the eagle in spiritual flight - isn't that conflict something we all experience? And then, when they amalgamate, we get a wonderful dragon, a serpent with wings. All over the earth, people recognize these images."

I had a revelatory moment one day in my teaching while relaying to a student that the quality of the spine moving through space is an undulation. 

I remembered someone telling me that the spine is a serpentine line.

You'll discover and experience all the ranges of motion of the spine within your study

with the Backbone and Wingspan Integrated Back Strength way of understanding your body:

Rounding the Spine           Arching the Spine               Side Bending the Spine

 and      Rotation of the Ribcage while Unwinding or Spiraling the Spine

 

 

I put together that serpentine comes from serpent.

I realized that when I chose Backbone and Wingspan, without knowing it, I had given my business - and my beliefs about the body - a mythological name.




Backbone and Wingspan
is a spine that has the capacity to feel flight.

- Herald

Backbone and Wingspan®

Founder and Owner

is the author of this

Body Mind & Spine Align Blog

as well as 

an alternate website & blog about

Foot Function for Spinal Support:

FeetForFitness.com

Heel & Sole for Foot Pain

 

 

Herald can be reached at 212-647-8878

Email: [email protected]

      or:     [email protected]

Call or email him today for info about the movement classes he currently offers.

See the Websites: Backbone and Wingspan and High Heel Healing

Copyright and Trademark: Backbone and Wingspan LLC

Related articles

Spring Forth into Summertime Stilettos or Sandals: The High Heel Recovery Clinic Principles Serve Your Feet In Any Shoe

For Foot Pain When Wearing High Heels Here's A Downward Dog to Save Your Own Tired Dogs

Core Support in a Search Engine Society

Search Engine Society

We operate within a phenomenon
someone thought to call a
 world wide web 

(world implies a sphere, a global perspective, a fully-realized creation; wide implies expansive, far-reaching, all-encompassing, embracing;
web implies intricacy, being caught-up, captured)

We search ubiquitously from some enormous ephemeral astounding interconnection of information and imagery.

Our lives are influenced in countess subtle incomprehensible ways through this invisible technology driven largely by something someone thought to call metatags:

brilliantly built-in markers devised to make expedient searches for information and products we expect with immediacy.

If you perform an initial unsatisfying search, then you are given an option to perform another one with a label someone thought to call refined.

These are the terms that are tangled with technology

with easily accepted but estranged meanings:

search, refined, history, refresh.

We've lost touch with the refined inward searches for deep meaning accessed through a forgotten image and story based mythology driven by something someone thought of long before metatags.

Metaphors.

*******************************************************************************

In our bodies which house a vast storage of wisdom information, you don't access deep support for the spine by performing something as unrefined and unsustainable and undimensional as pulling in something from the front.

You access an inwardly deepening sustainable and refinable support from connecting first to what is below - you root.

I believe there is a mythology (distinct from the definition of a myth being a false notion)

which through potent imagery can change how people perceive the core, which I believe is inclusive of the entire abdominal structure, the musculature directly connected to the lower spine, the lower spine itself, the entire serpentine spine sensed as a vertical line, the pelvic floor, the three lower chakras........

This world wide web technology has literally flattened our perspectives on our bodies, peering for hours into a flat screen searching, surfing, spending -      we are conditioned to an      outside-of-ourselves experience relieving us of (virtual)ly any            inner depth exploration.

*****************************************************************************

No wonder people think their abs should be flat!

Tell someone the term wrap and they'll most likely think you mean a type of sandwich rather than an encircling ultimately embracing force that literally touches upon our deepest core.

You need a rooting force towards the ground to find a sustainable  suspension of the spine.

Rooting and wrapping go hand in hand as I often put one hand lengthwise under someone's lumbar spine to help direct a rooting force into the stability of the sacrum,

and the other hand width-wise over the abdomen to help the person sense the wrap.