Monday, February 13, 2012

The Joy of Articulation

For once I'm not talking about the art of talking or the joy derived from vocabulary. No, I'm talking about the joy and excitement of feeling the movement in the articulation of a joint. You can't believe how excited four early-days students of sports massage got when they found the greater tuberosity of the humerus and then felt the the intertubercular groove and then the lesser tuberosity as the arm went through a lateral movement! Now your idea of fun might not be to spend your time with your thumb inside someone else's armpit trying to feel the surface of the shoulder blade and the rib cage, but we were having a fine time of it!
There is of course so much to learn and not enough brain capacity to retain it, or so it seems, so repetition os key. I just keep reading an poking about around my shoulder and chest and arms looking for these landmarks. As I do I think several things ranging from "is that the right place?", to "I hope no one caught a glimpse of me probing around my sternum again!"
But the more I read, the more I try to learn and the more I get explore, the more in awe I am of how my body works. Of how the bones have their shapes and movements. It is a truly amazing things the way the skeleton and muscles work together to make even the most complex articulation work effortlessly. The degree of control I have over my movements and muscles is quite awesome. I can toss a ball with one hand, while rotating my other arm in the opposite direction to bring it up and over my shoulder from behind, rotating the forearm and wrist in such a way that I can hit a tennis ball. Or, using the same muscles I can bowl a leg-break, delivering a cricket ball out of the back of my hand. And yet again, another combination of all these muscles allows me to pick a cat hair of my jumper or strum a chord on a guitar.
How amazing is that!

No comments: