Biotensegrity, Fascia & Somatic Movement

(updated 10.12.23)

Biotensegrity, fascia and somatic movement have exciting overlaps in the experiential realm. Interdisciplinary Movement & Somatics weaves somatic practice and theory with principles from biotensegrity, fascia science, structural kinesiology, dynamic systems theory, and the neuroscience of stress/trauma. Movement science helps us understand human movement and performance, injury prevention and rehabilitation, motor development and function. Embodied movement science brings attention and experiential practice to how patterns shape our behaviors and support whole-body organization.

Embodiment is your real-time, lived experience of coming into the thing. Embodiment is a process of tracking the felt-sense of how you are in the unseen spaces of your inner body and mind. Movement science is a technical field of study that helps movement teachers learn about how the systems of the body work together to provide efficient and coordinated movement. When we add a bottom-up approach to learning, we tap into our embodied experiences of moving. Principles of movement science no longer remain in the realm of cognitive theory but instead become enlivened through systems sensing.

somatic movement & inquiry

Somatic inquiry is a practice of paying attention to our body speak and how these impulses underlie our perceptions and behaviors (movement and/or actions). Movement, from a somatic viewpoint, expands beyond observable body action and includes movement of our inner body like thoughts, feelings, energy, breath and fluids.  Learning arises from sensing systems or tracking the relationships between felt-sense events

In somatics, we explore lived body consciousness by way of tracking sensation. Sensory information arises through inner force flows and embodiments and through the constraints or openings from environmental social forces.  Somatic Groundwork encourages active participation with subtle impulses and non-verbal communications arising from movement research. Systems sensing while moving allows for new choices in movement to appear and shines a light on underlying beliefs and habits. These ideas are discussed further in Sensing-perceiving-acting Cycle.

Somatics explores lived experience and recognizes body and mind as a unified whole. We are granted this exquisite thing called experience because of sensory receptions. These are sensory pathways that include: interoception, exteroception, proprioception and neuroception. Somatic movement first invites us to tune into our inner body through interoception + proprioception.  Together, these sensory receptions give us a kinesthetic intelligence. With practice we learn to track our body’s signals, impulses and vibrations. As we observe these felt-senses and refine our somatic techniques and skills, we notice appearances of other phenomenon like emotions, thoughts and narratives that braid with our movement patterns.

Our extensive sensory system largely arises from our tissue architecture. Within the fabric of our fascial matrix we are gifted with the ability to feel ourselves felt. For example, nearly every technique used to settle our nervous system (a primary skill for honest relating) is about tracking sensory feedback or eliciting sensation that is relayed from or through our fascia (breathing, grounding, rocking, rolling, bouncing, shaking, humming, sounding, tapping, etc.). Further, we come to know our nervous system states (defense postures) because of how sensations travel from the fascial system to higher integration centers in the brain.

biotensegrity & nature’s design

Tension and compression are the forces that both hold our body together and create the virtual spaces within our form that keeps things apart. The physical representation of these invisible forces are made visible in a tensegrity structure.  The word tensegrity is the blending of the words tension + integrity. Buckminster Fuller coined this architectural concept and his student Kenneth Snelson developed it further through his sculptural works. Tensegrity is the synergistic relationship between tension and compression. In the images of Snelson’s Needle Tower below, the stainless steel cables are under continuous tension and the aluminum tubes are under discontinuous compression.

Needle Tower – Kenneth Snelson

At the National Mall in Washington D. C. in the 1970’s, orthopedic surgeon Dr. Stephen Levin was inspired by Needle Tower. He had been looking for a new design model for the human body that was more closely aligned with our movement function and organization. Levin established the term “biotensegrity” as a branch of science and brought the principles to the study of human posture and movement.  Biotensegrity is the study of how the principles of tensegrity manifest themselves into biology and living systems. To hear about Dr. Levin’s journey and how he developed biotensegrity, watch this series with kinesiologist and movement scientist Leonid Blyum.

Cells, molecules and tissues demonstrate the building principle of tensegrity that we see in human-made models and structures (read more from cell microbiologist Donald E. Ingber). In living systems, fractals and nested tensegrities are part of biological pattern formation and complexity. Triangulated tensegrity structures are found in nature because they are efficient and possess a high mechanical strength with a minimum of materials. The ground breaking imagery in Strolling Under the Skin, filmed by hand surgeon Jean Claude Guimberteau, shows the fractalization of our living tissue. Tap here for a small 2-minute clip.

Biotensegrity is a complex-systems science where fascia is the star of the show. In fact, without the first principles of biotensegrity (see Graham Scarr’s book), fascia is poorly misunderstood.  For hundreds of years, fascia was discarded during cadaver dissection. Fascia, being absolutely everywhere, made it messy to see more defined structures like organs, vessels and muscles. This ubiquitous, undefined “scruffy stuff” was considered inert and thrown away to get to the easily defined parts.

We study anatomy in order to identify, describe and understand these parts of our human body. One limitation with classical anatomy is due to the practice of dissecting structures and studying them as isolated events. Biotensegrity is a science that seeks to understand how the parts are interconnected from molecule to organism. A primary question in biotensegrity may be: how do nature’s principles create living organization at every size scale?

fascia in movement

Maybe Ida Rolf, or my friend Dawn, was the first time I read the word fascia.  I am glad I had the images found in Thomas Myer’s book Anatomy Trains to complement the science.  Dawn and I were facilitating an embodiment lab with a group of students to research different western somatic methods. During those experiential classes, I tapped into the felt-sense of fascia . . .  without knowing it was fascia.  

In those early introductions to fascia during my time at the University of Montana Dance Department, I understood that fascia connected things, like muscles.  I applied fascia to muscle slings and was able to appreciate that muscles did not work in isolation. And I learned about a mysterious fluid called ground substance that seemed to be highly intelligent. At the time, I also believed that fascia was something only manual therapists could access for healing and repair.  

Somatic Groundwork is a movement practice that has been developing parallel to my life path.  Turns out the reason Somatic Groundwork helps in such a good way is because it relates with this global fabric of fascia through mindful attention, unwinding, the tracking of forces and weighted contact with ground. I took a course with John Sharkey through Embodied Biotensegrity in early 2019 that was an introduction to biotensegrity. The course was also about fascia. At that moment I realized my knowledge about both sciences was minimal. My movement science bubble popped. 

To really understand how fascia does what it does, a shift from classical anatomy and biomechanics to biotensegrity is a requirement. Otherwise, the fascial matrix essentially gets boxed into a limited scope (read Joanne Avison’s book).  Fascia illustrates a living architecture that is recursive, non-linear, emergent, geometric, multi-dimensional, adaptable, responsive . . . hey, that sounds a lot like nature. Biotensegrity is based on universal principles of design that can be applied to all living organisms at every size scales. Further, this is a science that sparks embodied resonance for movement teachers and manual therapists. I highly recommend Susan Lowell de Solorzano’s book for more about how biotensegrity informs human movement.

Explore fascia in movement with this 45 minute Somatic Groundwork class.

weaving

As a movement teacher and dancer, I am excited about what biotensegrity brings to my understanding of movement science.  When it comes to teaching and studying movement, bridging experiential learning with evidence-based research has long sparked my curiosity. The fundamental principles in biotensegrity echo my own organic and creative somatic movement research.  Experience (maybe even consciousness) is made possible through the 250 million sensory receptors (recent findings here) embedded in our fascial matrix.