Body Mind & Spine Alignment

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!

Tim Driscoll

Tim Driscoll, Backbone and Wingspan®

Backbone and Wingspan founder and owner

and author of Pilates Iconoclast

is located on the Upper East Side at

Mind Your Body Pilates

1370 Lexington Avenue @ 90th Street

and at Studio Contour in Bedford Hills

Tim can be reached at

212-647-8878

Call him today for info or find our about his special intro rates for new clients!

Email: tim@backboneandwingspan.com

Read Some Great Press and 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 You 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."

You can 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 three's:

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 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 down to the sacroiliac

The triceps should not be cut up or ripped because then they cannot connect to the larger power of 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 the page of my website entitled

Method

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!

 

Tim Driscoll, Backbone and Wingspan®

Backbone and Wingspan founder and owner

and author of Body Mind & Spine Align

is located on the Upper East Side at

Mind Your Body Pilates

1370 Lexington Avenue @ 90th Street

and at SPACE 

Pilates, Yoga, & Beyond in Bedford Hills

(formerly Studio Contour)

Tim can be reached at

212-647-8878

Call him today for info or find our about

his special intro rates for new clients!

Email: tim@backboneandwingspan.com

Read Some Great Press and See the Website: Backbone and Wingspan

Backbone and Wingspan LLC

 

 

 

 

Discovering Your Core Strength in Working from the Back Body through Understanding the Power of Three: Third in a Series Reversing Da Vinci's Homo Quadratus

I was recently interviewed regarding my back body beliefs & core strength

within the Backbone and Wingspan approach to exercise & movement

by Ingrid Skjong for an article on the website Well + Good NYC

 "Is the back the new core?"

In the article she talks

about how this work

"gives you practice at

stabilizing your shoulder blades,

redirecting your breath

into your lower ribs, and

extending your lumbar spine down through the sacrum."

 

Very often in writing, we use three adjectives or three phrases

to describe something in detail.

  The power of three in our way of detailing a process or a circumstance actually comes from what is present in the composition of our bodies. It's most obvious and most core-oriented when you think of the spine and the way it is composed:

 There are:

Three Curves of the Spine:

Lumbar-Thoracic-Cervical

 

When you stabilize the shoulder blades, you free up the cervical spine or neck.

When you breathe into the lower back ribs, you free up the thoracic or mid-spine,

When you extend the lower vertebrae down thorough the sacrum, you free up the lumbar spine.

 

What I have learned in more than a decade of looking at people from the back side, is that empowerment comes first from a change of perception.

Because we see and perceive ourselves and each other from the front side most often, you have to use sensation and imagination to connect to the back body places that support the spine and help you get to the core strength.

 

This is what my fascination for attempting to reverse the perception of the famous Da Vinci drawing has come from:

if you see the body from the front,

the tendency is to perceive a torso with arms and legs sticking out from it.

But if you see the body from the back side,

it is more clear and more possible to perceive a spine with arms coming from either side off the spine like wings and

the legs coming off either side of the spine like the haunches on a horse.

The power of three is more prevalent here:

one central spine with

two arms arising off of it from either side &

one central spine with

two legs extending off it from either side.

 

Just the idea of "core" implies something central - and something that is central would have something on either side of the central thing as well as  something above & below the central thing.

Finding this central spine in you is what first and foremost grants you access to your core -

then the core extends the lower center of you down into the ground &

                           suspends the upper center of you out the top of your head.

Threes within the three's:

I wrote in the previous post which is part two of the three, about how there are three triceps heads which attach to each scapula or shoulder blade.

This begins the action which grants wings which come off of either side of the thoracic spine and serve to suspend it off the lower spine & legs.

 

There is this same power of three in the hamstrings which connect up on to each sit bone:

there are three hamstrings on each leg, and when you connect them up to each sit bone, they serve to support the lower or lumbar spine.

So you have three in that there is one spine

supported by a pair of legs and

                            a pair of arms, 

  and you have three in that there are

three tricep heads and

three hamstrings

which are what connects those pairs of arms and pairs of legs

to that central line of spine.

 

 

 This is why the back is of utmost importance

to supporting the spine, 

much more so than the frontal abs -

which many people just pull in to

try to support the deep-underneath spine.

 

 And if you're interested in toning those hard-to-tone areas of

the undersides of the arms or the upper sides of the legs,

you really must get in touch with the truth of using

the triceps-to-scapula  and the hamstrings-to-sit-bones connections!

 

Thanks so much for reading!    Comments most welcome here!

 

Tim Driscoll, Backbone and Wingspan®

Backbone and Wingspan founder and owner

and author of Body Mind & Spine Align

is located on the Upper East Side at

Mind Your Body Pilates

1370 Lexington Avenue @ 90th Street

and at SPACE Pilates Yoga & Beyond in Bedford Hills

(formerly Studio Contour)

Tim can be reached at

212-647-8878

Call him today for info or find our about

his special intro rates for new clients!

Email: tim@backboneandwingspan.com

Read Some Great Press and

See the Website: Backbone and Wingspan

Backbone and Wingspan LLC

 

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 Tim and the Backbone and Wingspan way of understanding your body:

Rounding the Spine Arching the Spine Side Bending the Spine 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.

Tim Driscoll, Backbone and Wingspan®

Backbone and Wingspan founder and owner

and author of Body Mind & Spine Align

is located on the Upper East Side at

Mind Your Body Pilates

1370 Lexington Avenue @ 90th Street

and at SPACE

Pilates Yoga and Beyond

in Bedford Hills

 

Tim can be reached at

212-647-8878

Call him today for info 

 

 

Read Some Great Press and

 

 

 

 

See the Website: Backbone and Wingspan

Backbone and Wingspan LLC

 

Email: tim@backboneandwingspan.com