Author: Juno Üjiié

Telltale Feet

Posted on by Juno Üjiié

Feet are as individual as faces. They show how we’ve carried our weight through the world. They’re our interface with gravity, recording every step, stance, and every way we’ve held ourselves in space. 

The donor we called “Anna” was missing her second toes, and the rest were squeezed together. She looked like the kind of grandmother who would welcome a dozen grandchildren with a wide smile. But her feet told another story—bunions and hammer toes from years of stylish high heels.

I see the same story in many of my clients’ feet. Narrowed toes, bunions, hammer toes. Perhaps in youth they danced away the pain, as I once did. I’m grateful I stopped wearing what I now call torture devices. Sometimes I think of Chinese foot binding—an old, brutal attempt to force bodies into unnatural expectations.

Every cadaver’s feet are unique. The skin, fascia, and fat fuse into a sole strong enough to hold a lifetime. Looking at a male donor’s large feet, I imagine their story: soft, curling baby feet; first steps against gravity; running after his father or chasing a dog. Playing football, or soccer.  Later, leather shoes on a granite office floor or steel-toed boots on a construction site. Feet that walked him out of a chapel with his bride, carried him on hikes with his son, down the aisle with his daughter, and held him steady as he lifted his grandson high in the air. And finally, feet at rest, no longer bearing weight.

Anna’s feet tell a different story—one of a young woman dressing up, dancing through the night in pointed heels, ignoring the ache, embracing the moment.

I used to be one of those “ungrounded” people, moving through life on tiptoe. It took me decades to realize how little awareness I had of my connection to the ground. Now I pay attention to the soles of my feet and the shifting of my weight. It anchors me. I am here.

HAND Reveals

Posted on by Juno Üjiié

Surprisingly, hands retain a sense of personhood almost as much as the face. They are often left untouched until later stage of dissection because working on their small and intricate surfaces requires skills and anatomical knowledge. Hands are another major interface with the outside world—not much socially but physically and emotionally. They are our probes into the physical world, our means of acting on intent, and a way to express emotions.  

When we are born, we are held with hands, fed with hands. The first contact with the outside world is through hands of our caregivers. Hands have a high concentration of nerve endings, and we navigate the world by touching. Our first instinct when we encountering something new is to reach out and touch it. If it is unpleasant, we learn to withdraw our hands. The more we touch, the more intricate our understanding of our environment becomes. 

What would happen when a naturally curious child exploring their word hear their parents say “Don’t touch it” again and again. It may be the child is about to touch hot surface and the adult intends to keep them from harm and injury. It may be the child is about to touch an expensive fragile object and the parent is afraid that they would break it. Every time a child hear “Don’t touch it” their world gets smaller and more dangerous. Their energetic reach out to the world is cut short. 

Imagine being a child at the dinner table with all the adult guests. You’re hungry, you reach for the breadbasket, and suddenly—“Don’t touch it!” your mother snaps, slapping your hand, or worse. What do you think that child would feel in their body the next time they reached out for something?

I was that child.

Now imagine if that child happens to be a kinesthetic, tactile learner. I learned to pull back, to contract, to shrink away from the outside world. After decades of living in that confined state, I realized I had to retrain my inner child. So, I took her to the zoo and the aquarium. I let her push every interactive button, touch everything that was allowed to be touched. For once, I gave her permission.

We interact with others and express our emotions using our hands. Hugging and holding of hands are physical expressions of affection. We lend a hand when somebody needs help. When we are safe, we are in good hands. We work together, hand in hand. We stay involved by keeping a hand in, even getting our hands dirty. But when we can’t act, our hands are tied, and the matter is out of our hands. Hands, in many ways, represent our life in action. 

We touch others with our hands, but have you ever thought about what information your hands are conveying? I used to be a teaching assistant for a body awareness class at an acting school. When the students were in odd numbers I would step in as a partner for pair exercises. Once I partnered with an attractive young man, and I gave him the assigned bodywork. Then we switched roles. The moment he touched me, I felt sorry for his girlfriend—or boyfriend. It was like being poked with an inanimate object, like a piece of wood. He wasn’t really there. Did my hands feel as inanimate to him as his did to me? I couldn’t help but wonder if he had never been touched properly by his family. What kind of childhood would leave a person so absent in their hands? 

I grew up in a family  where the sense of boundaries was unclear. I don’t remember my mother’s touch, except when I was sick. I experienced inappropriate touches from family members. Even so, I can be present in my hands. Being present in your hands is crucial for manual therapists—and for actors. Your hands tell a lot about you. 

When you’ve experienced inappropriate touches in early in life, you can become very sensitive to the intent behind others’ hands. Trust your feelings and quietly walk away. The other person might be unaware of their underlining intent, or it could just be your interpretation. Either way, what you felt is real. So walk away.

I once trained with a master of martial arts. He was also an energy healer with quite a following. After a year of training, one day he offered me hands-on healing session. He laid his hands on my upper chest. I had paid for sessions with him before and never felt threatened. He didn’t do anything inappropriate; he just laid hands on my chest. But unpleasant memory resurfaced. 

I thought about it for a while. Was it just my imagination? The master, this guru, was probably doing me a favor with this treatment, and I shouldn’t doubt his good intentions, right?  (I was younger then and perhaps more attractive than the older disciples.)  But then it hit me—this might be exactly what happened in those yoga guru sexual abuse incidents. I trusted my instincts and left the group. Otherwise, I would have allowed the past repeat itself, again and again. 

With a high concentration of nerve endings, your hands are both receivers and transmitters. Use them mindfully. In the anatomy lab I held the hand of a cadaver and contemplated what he might have touched, throughout his life—from birth to death. I wondered how he touched, how he navigated the world and how he interacted with others. Was his touch loving and caring? What was the last thing he touched before his death? What did he reach for, and what did he recoil from?  This hand held his child, caressed his lover, petted his dog, wiped tears, and waved goodbye…

The only time I saw the skin of a living human slip away was in a drawing depicting the aftermath of the atomic bombing in Hiroshima. The skin of the hand slipped off like a glove, caught at nails, hanging from the fingertips. Otherwise, while not impossible, it’s very difficult to remove the skin of hands in one piece. The skin of the hands is intimately bonded.  

copyright 2025

Face Reflected

Posted on by Juno Üjiié

Sometimes, face, hands, and feet are left undissected for a longer time unless there is a dissector specifically interested in these areas. Novice dissectors often feel a strong hesitation to make incision on those structures. We tend to identify individuals by their faces, as it is the most public and social part of the body. It serves as the primary interface between “I” and the society. We can’t see our faces directly: what we see is merely a reflection in a mirror or an image captured by a camera at a particular moment. As a result, a person’s self-image does not always align with their physical face. 

When I went home for my father’s funeral, I found my junior high yearbook.  I recognized the faces of girls I hadn’t seen in decades; one by one, they came back to life in my memory. I knew those teenage girls; they looked exactly as I remembered. I turned pages looking for my photo, but I couldn’t find it.  I felt confused, being certain I was in the yearbook. I started over from the first page, and with each turn, the faces of the girls became clearer in my memory. Still I couldn’t find my own face. 

On the third try, I finally found my name under a photo. She was a beautiful teenage girl. I didn’t recognize her because I had been told I was an ugly, unattractive, miserable creature—an image I had come to believe due to the distorted reflections I had been shown. Did I look ugly to you, Dad?  Or did I threaten you?  Did I look ugly to you, Mom?  Or did you also believe what Dad saw? 

Anyway, it’s too late. I lost the chance to live the life of a pretty girl and became a plain looking high school student. When I remember my high school years, I see myself as that unpopular girl with long hair hiding half of her face, like Violet Parr in The Incredibles, believing that she is invisible. My best friend is that popular girl who dates the football team captain. Years later, I had the opportunity to attend a high school reunion. One guy—who was neither the football team captain nor an academic high achiever—told me that I had been his crush in high school. I was stunned.  “You were a beautiful and intelligent girl,” he said, “and I admired you.”  I didn’t know.  I knew he liked me, but I couldn’t believe that anyone would genuinely like me. So I missed the chance to live the life of a popular girl in high school. When surrounded by distorted mirrors, we come to believe the distorted images they reflect.  

Some people are desperate to modify their faces to match their self-image. Skin is often rubbed, massaged, moisturized, medicated, and painted. It is sometimes cut, stretched, peeled, threaded, paralyzed, and modified in various ways. The skin of face, in particular, receives the most attention. 

I often see older women in my neighborhood with skin stretched unnaturally, resembling a Japanese Noh mask. For those individuals, the skin is not an archive of their life’s history but rather a screen on which they project their fears about the future. They are desperately trying to reverse the time, even though their faces, frozen in a perpetual state of youth, no longer reflect who they truly are. 

The skin is continuous throughout the body, and you won’t find perforated lines to guide your cuts. You need to decide where to make an incision. Where does the face start? The skin on the face is quite thin, so you won’t see much subcutaneous adipose tissue. Instead you will find the parotid glands, which look like pads of fat, under ears. Working on it requires a meticulous attention. 

One facial expression muscle you might miss if you don’t know its location is the platysma. In many dissection workshops, it is mistakenly cut away along with subcutaneous adipose tissue. When I managed to save it from being partially cut away with the superficial fascia, I was fascinated. This extremely thin and broad muscle, which extends from the chin to the upper chest, resides between the sheets of subcutaneous adipose tissue. I can activate it and make it pop up. Despite being easy to miss during dissection, this muscle is not immune to modification: platysmaplasty, or neck lift, is a common procedure. 

Once the skin and superficial fascia are removed from the face, the cadaver looks less personal and more like an anatomy chart. 

copyright 2025

The story you tell about them might not be their real story

Posted on by Juno Üjiié

We were standing in the lab, looking at three cadavers on dissection tables. As workshop participants, we were to choose a body to work on.

One was a slender woman with unnaturally perky breasts. Her nails were impeccably manicured, her hair full and glossy. She was beautiful.

Another was a heavily boned woman with a muscular build. “She must have been an avid hiker,” someone said.

The third was a woman of significant size.

She looked exactly like a good friend I had—someone who suffered from psychological and mental health issues and who had steadily gained weight until she was nearly immobile.

I felt a pang of sadness when I saw her body on the dissection table, and I experienced a slight aversion to standing at her station. No, I didn’t want to dissect her. I already knew it would be physically harder to remove her superficial fascia.

And yet, somehow, I ended up at her table.

As I began releasing her from the bounds of skin, I couldn’t help but project. I imagined the subcutaneous adipose tissue as emotional baggage she had accumulated over a lifetime, or maybe as a thick armor she wore to shield her psyche from the outside world. Under the tremendous weight, it felt like she had been collapsing inward.

The layer of superficial fascia we freed from her dermis was sizable—just as she had been with her skin on. We began removing the adipose tissue, as if freeing her from the tortured existence of living in a large body. It was hard work. The layer was easily three inches thick in her midsection.

As I worked, I thought about all the nerve endings embedded in that adipose tissue. She probably had ten times more nerve length than I do. This was a hypersentient state of being.

And then, beneath the adipose, her muscular structure appeared—and we were all astounded.

What had been hidden under that armor of fascia was not a collapsed, atrophied frame. She was robust. I had never seen an elderly female cadaver with such powerful muscles. Her legs were so strong she looked like she could’ve squeezed the life out of a big, bad cowboy. Her gracilis was not slender at all; it was substantial. None of us had ever seen gracilis muscles like that.

Her musculature had supported the weight of her adipose armor. She had the body of an Amazon warrior. There was no trace of wasting. She must have remained mobile and active until quite recently, carrying her physical existence bravely.

Internally, too, she was robust.

Her organs were intact. No calcified arteries, no arteriosclerosis. Her colon was six feet long, padded with a healthy amount of visceral fat. No fatty liver. No damaged kidneys. No fibrosis in the uterus. Her heart was beautiful. Her lungs were slightly darkened, but free of adhesions.

She was healthy.
Much healthier than I am.

The slender, model-like woman, on the other hand, had gone through hell. Once her skin and minimal adipose were removed, her body appeared almost transparent. Cancer had riddled her form—metastatic, likely starting from the breast. A chemotherapy port protruded from her chest.

She was a fighter, too.

I find myself reflecting on my projections.

You can’t tell who someone is just by looking from the outside.
The story you tell about them might not be their real story.

Superficial Fascia: somewhat technical contemplation from the lab

Posted on by Juno Üjiié

As a manual therapist, this layer holds additional significance. When I work on a specific “muscle,” I am actually working through this layer, in addition to the skin. Unlike the skin, the subcutaneous adipose layer is more uneven in thickness and depth. Generally the adipose tissue is firmly attached to the skin and moves along with it, but its relationship with muscles is more complex. 

Subcutaneous adipose tissue is loose, areolar connective tissue with collagen fibers that provide structure. If you were to remove all the lipids from this tissue, a scaffolding-like matrix made of collagen fibers would be revealed. In Integral Anatomy, this is referred to as superficial fascia. In the human body, adipocytes—commonly know as fat cells—are embedded in this collagen matrix and cannot be separated from it. A typical fat cell has a diameter of about 0.1mm, making it too small to be seen with the naked eye. The lobules you observe at a gross level are not individual fat cells but rather clusters of them, encapsulated within the matrix. Each fat cell is enclosed by a cell membrane, with lipid stored inside. Under normal conditions, body fat doesn’t melt and can’t be sucked out like melted butter—unless it’s in a state of putrefaction.

In meditation, I imagine fat cells dissipating like dew on a spider web touched by the first summer sun, leaving a soft, white, flexible, three-dimensional lace-like structure. The cosy beeswax-yellow fleece onesie transforms into a milky-white dress, gently covering my body like summer clouds in the sky. Though it appears ephemeral, the fabric is deceivingly strong. It holds the weight of skin—the epidermis, dermis, and hypodermis—in places. The skin, after all, is the largest and heaviest organ, weighing between 5 and 10 kilogram.  Gil Hedley, Ph.D., demonstrated the strength of superficial fascia with and without adipose.  He could lift 22 kilograms with a piece of superficial fascia that had adipose intact, and 14.5 kilograms with it removed. I personally participated in this experiment, and the tactile sensation of handling the piece of superficial fascia without adipose has stayed with me ever since. In a tub of warm water, it floated and danced like a mystical creature.

Subcutaneous Adipose Tissue Removal

I’m not talking about liposuction, which I consider a form of amputation, given the destruction of structural, vascular, lymphatic, and nervous elements.  Subcutaneous adipose tissue has structural integrity. 

On dissection tables, human forms lie without the boundary that usually blocks observers from entering the inner space. I’ve never sensed hesitation to cut from workshop participants at this stage. They are usually eager to cut into the tissue and reveal the familiar, anatomy-book-defined muscles hidden beneath the shapeless yellow. I used to feel the same.

Without the dermis, human forms become transparent in a way. The dermis layer is relatively uniform in depth, while the subcutaneous adipose layer varies considerably from one area to another. When manual therapists manipulate soft tissue, they typically aim to target specific muscles. However, this work is done through the dermis and the subcutaneous adipose tissue. I need to be mindful of the variability in adipose layers. For example, the glutes are covered with thick adipose tissue, while the adipose tissue covering forearm is generally thin.

The process to remove subcutaneous adipose tissue is a significant learning opportunity. When you carefully incise the tissue with the tip of scalpel, it opens up with relative ease. Most of the time, you still see the yellow tissue, and you have no idea how deep it goes. You cut again until you finally reveal the familiar brown muscular tissue, covered with a transparent sheen. The energy around the table shifts from weariness to excitement and expectation. Suddenly energized, you eagerly remove the yellow, wet substance. However, if you become too hasty and task-oriented, you risk missing the wealth of information this process can reveal. 

This is where tactile learners, like myself, have an advantage. Unlike the removal of skin (dermis), subcutaneous adipose tissue allows blunt dissection by fingers. The relationship with the underlying structure can be loose, and tissue planes can be easily separated. A scalpel cuts through the connecting structure between tissue planes with little effort. It almost feels as if the subcutaneous adipose layer slide over the muscular structure beneath it. 

When you grasp your forearm and twist it without moving the forearm itself, your skin (all three layers) slides over the muscle. There is a massage technique called skin rolling, where a therapist pull the skin away from muscle tissue and “rolls” it forward. This is possible because the bond between the skin and underlying muscular structure has some play, allowing for movement. In some areas, subcutaneous adipose tissue is firmly anchored to the structure beneath, preventing the skin from slipping. In other areas, the plane where two layers meet is so intimately bonded that the only way to separate them is to carve the adipose tissue away.  

Because of sudden weight loss, I have an abundance of extra skin, which is somewhat loose. It’s relatively easy for me to pull up and “roll” the skin. For some people with tighter skin and/or firmer fat, it’s not as easy. However, there is a limit how much the skin can “slip.” There’s always a connection at the interface. No part of my body wants to be a separate entity. 

We shouldn’t overlook the perforating nervous and vascular structure that travel continuously through the layers. Nerves exit from muscular structures and extend into the subcutaneous adipose tissue, then continue to the dermis like a branching tree. Remember, the nerve endings are the furthest end of your brain, constantly searching for proof of life throughout the body. When I use a scalpel to separate subcutaneous adipose layer, I feel a consistent rhythm of bumps. This resistance occurs when the scalpel encounters something firmer than collagen fibers. Even though the nerves are very fine at the ending, they are strong enough to be part of the structure that physically hold your body in place.

I imagine my brain reaching out, through adipose tissue which cocoons me. How would it feel? The moist, warm, soft beeswax-yellow tissue moves, changes shapes, slides, and dances, conducting heat, sound, and energy. Don’t you feel the love in this layer?

Storage of Emotional Energy

Posted on by Juno Üjiié

The subcutaneous/hypodermis tissue is the deepest layer of your skin, usually dissected away along with the skin to reveal the underlying muscular structure. In Integral Anatomy, this layer is known as the superficial fascia, clearly distinguished from the skin layer. When I slid the scalpel deep enough, the distinctive yellow tissue broke through the pale edge of dermis. Its texture was strikingly different from that of the skin—it was wet, soft, vibrant in color, and greasy. This subcutaneous adipose, commonly known as fat, which everybody seems to dislike.

The true skin or dermis is tightly connected to the subcutaneous layer. They don’t want to be separated. Subcutaneous tissue is a connective tissue, anchoring the skin throughout the body. When I cut through this connection, I felt the resistance through the scalpel. The blade dulled quickly from hitting strong fibers in between. In my first dissection workshop, we spent a week dissecting away the skin layer as one continuous piece to reveal the yellow layer underneath. Every day, every minutes, we were faced with this yellow, bubble -wrap-like tissue. It was an assault on my nervous system. Most novice dissectors hated it. After class, when I closed my eyes, I saw yellow everywhere. Eventually, my nervous system seemed to adjust to the stimuli, and at a certain point, I began to appreciate and cherish this layer. 

Due to my stress-management diet of ice cream and cheesecake, I use to have an abundance of adipose tissue around my midsection, which I jokingly referred to as an “emergency energy reserve” for a potential zombie apocalypse. When I experienced a Meniere’s flare-up and couldn’t eat much, I lost about 20 pounds in three months, and my skin looked like that of a Shar Pei dog. I lost a substantial amount of “fat” along with some muscle mass. I didn’t feel unhappy about losing my energy reserve. Fat is something everybody dislikes having beneath the skin.

We are all covered with subcutaneous adipose tissue. Its distribution varies from one individual to another, though common patterns can be observed. For example, the surface of shin or tibia has very sparse, almost negligible adipose tissue beneath the skin, while the buttocks are primarily shaped by adipose tissue. Female breasts are mostly shaped by fat. When I lost weight, my breasts lost their shape, and the skin appeared looked loose and saggy.

Hate it or love it, a human being can’t live without subcutaneous adipose tissue. This loose connective tissue is embedded with adipocytes, those teeny tiny bags of fat. Currently about 23% of my body weight is subcutaneous fat, which is within the normal range for a woman. Sure, I wish I had abs like young Britney Spears or Miley Cyrus, but it’s my vanity talking. 

What happens if we lose too much of fat?  I once saw a cadaver without any adipose tissue. She was an elderly, petite woman who was so emaciated that she virtually had no fat. Once  the skin was removed, her body was almost translucent, revealing a white matrix of connective tissue without the familiar yellow. The mammary glands were visible on her breasts. She was beautiful but otherworldly. It still makes me sad to imagine her last days, with no soft layer hugging her body, keeping her warm, and cushioning her from pressure and occasional bumps and falls. It’s a cruel state of being.

Healthy babies come with a generous layer of fat, essential for their survival. Their softness and warmth, which make them so cuddle-worthy, are thanks to the subcutaneous fat. This fat layer is what makes a mother’s hug feel so soothing to the baby. (So I hear from parents.)  Subcutaneous fat tissue acts as both a cushion and insulation. You really appreciate its cushioning function when you bump your shin against something hard or land on your rear end without breaking your sit bones.

Even though I have my fair share of fat, as a petite Asian woman, it is relatively thin compared to someone larger. I used to do scuba diving, and even in warm water, I needed a long-sleeved wetsuit to avoid loosing body heat quickly. Larger folks with more subcutaneous fat were fine with just a thin half-suit or even a swimsuit. Even as a cadaver, someone with a thick layer of adipose looked warmer compared to the translucent cadaver of the elderly woman. Adipose tissue is also known as the largest endocrine organ, producing hormones like leptin and estrogen. It’s vascular, innervated, and has lymphatic vessels running through it. Your midsection fat isn’t just a mere blob that can be cut away without consequences.

So, If fat beneath the skin isn’t just a lump of lipids, what is it? It is not a lump that you can simply suck out like a melted butter. It’s connective tissue anchoring the skin and holding the fat lobules in place. It firmly grips the skin and moves with it. Even though the textures are different, the skin and subcutaneous adipose tissue are indivisible. Think of an orange: the peel has a thin outer layer and a fibrous white inner layer. They aren’t separate layers but part of an integral “skin.” To separate them into two layers, you need to carve away the zest.

After you reflect the outer skin layer to reveal the yellow tissue beneath, you get a rare perspective of the dermis from underside. You see a cantaloupe-rind-like reticulate pattern, drawn in white all over. The density and size of this mesh vary depending on location and individual. It looks like a reflection of the adipose lobules in the subcutaneous layer. I imagine it as a mesh framework for sculpting, holding the plaster in shape. 

With the skin removed, a cadaver looks different, yet still retains the distinct shape of the individual. They are mostly covered with sometimes glistening, sometime muted yellow soft, wet substance. It is a human form most of us have never seen or imagined. The tone and saturation can vary within a single cadaver. You might see dark reddish areas, likely caused by subcutaneous bleeding after death. When a person dies, their body lies on its back. Without a beating heart, blood succumbs to gravity, pooling and coagulating in the tissues where it contacts the ground or a hard surface, staining the adipose tissue reddish-brown. In the abdominal area, you might even see an unusual green color, a sign of decay within the human form.

Female cadavers usually have more abundant adipose. Their breasts, shaped almost entirely by adipose, droop toward the sides of the body when the skin is removed, as gravity takes hold. Male cadavers also have substantial adipose tissue, but its distribution differs somewhat. After spending many hours in the dissection lab, I’ve come to appreciate this layer. The human form shrouded in yellow looks content to me. Freed from the skin, that once bounded and contained their shape, they seem relaxed. There is no longer a hard boundary between what’s inside and what’s outside. The body’s water content begins to leak and dissipate. 

More naked than actual nakedness, a body covered in adipose tissue can evoke strong emotional reactions: aversion, vulnerability, discomfort, shame, confusion, sadness—or even relief, strength, joy. I observed cadavers with all kinds of fat: thin, thick, compact, or loose. The first time I saw one — actually, we had six in the lab — I felt confusion and aversion. It wasn’t something I wanted to have in my body. For the first time, I confronted the usually hated fat, and the meaning of the word shifted from an abstract idea to the actual substance, as integral part of human beings. Just seeing and touching that ubiquitous yellow tissue exhausted me.  It’s this tissue that formed the physical image of the individual. And it’s the very substance I’m molded from at this moment. Throughout my life, I’ve gained, retained, and lost fat, and my present physical and energetic shape is represented by this layer. 

I sense that this layer holds a lot of energy—not just in a caloric way, but in a non-physical sense too. It demands that the beholder confront their emotional reaction, which actually reflects my own relationship with body fat. I’ve accumulated some around my midsection thanks to stress eating. Were those fats generated to protect me from the stresses I encountered too often?  Who knows? I heard one dissector started crying, recalling her relationship with fat. You just never know.  I realized I didn’t have any deep trauma stored in this layer. Eventually, I started to love this comfy, snuggly onesie made of soft beeswax pellets. 

I sometime chant Heart Sutra for meditation.  When I chant, I feel the sound wave and vibration travel through my body, and I often end up breaking into a sweat. I wonder if adipose tissue is acting as an energy conductor.