Your Bones are Badass

I love skeletons. I don’t quite remember when this started, but for as long as I can remember I loved skeletons. My childhood memories include associations with The Bones Brigade skateboarders, the 1980s paper halloween skeleton decorations, and my favorite silver skeleton earrings with joints that moved. Skeletons never felt morbid to me, but instead reassured me of the strong structure I had inside of me to support me through life.

In college I studied a lot of art history, and learned about the recurring theme of memento mori. Bones can remind us of the ephemeral quality of life, and yet our bones last for so long! 

As a Pilates instructor, I learned about how alive our bones are. They are constantly building new bone and breaking down older bone. As they remodel themselves they adjust their structure to our lifestyle. How cool is that?! This 2-minute video explains this process really well–courtesy of the bone museum in Brooklyn, NY! 

I also find it fascinating that each person's bones are shaped differently. Even in the same person, we might have our right and left humeri, or upper arm bones, shaped a little differently.

That could mean that your right shoulder is more prone to injury simply because of the shape of its humeral head where it meets your shoulder. Or that your right arm has a little more range of motion than the left because of the bone shape. There are other factors, but this is one of them.

When I teach Pilates, I'm focusing on the alignment of your bones for a specific purpose. Our muscles move our bones, and when we change the alignment of our bones we can emphasize specific muscles as either movers or stabilizers. In your class or session, I aim to take you through various body positions and movements so that we keep your body feeling both mobile and stable in all kinds of situations. Your bones respond to this training by creating an internal structure (called a trabeculae) that is your foundation as you encounter different types of force and load in your daily life. Maybe a 75-pound dog just lovingly jumped up to greet you, or your grandkid wants a piggy-back ride, or you are able to dodge and weave on NYC sidewalk with confidence. Your bones are there for you through it all!

I hope these thoughts give you a little more swagger as you move through your day, because your bones are bad ass! (and so are you <3)