mind body

Do I want to see tomorrow?

Posted on by SomatiCat

I lost my anchor.

My dog was my tether to reality, to this life. He was undeniably real. He lived entirely in the moment. When I woke in the middle of the night, lost in the vast nothingness—confusion and darkness pressing in—I would reach out and place my hand on him. He was warm, solid, breathing. Alive. And in his version of reality, if he was alive, then so was I. I felt safe in the world he held for me. It was as if I were drifting in a night ocean of existential anxiety, and he was my life raft.

With his passing, I lost my favorite version of reality.

I don’t have to protect anyone. I don’t have to take care of anyone. I don’t have anyone to come home to. I don’t have to worry about losing him anymore.

What remains is my own version of reality.

Every morning, I wake up and start my routine. I make coffee, brush my teeth, check emails. I function well. I smile. I chat with neighbors. I act normal. But I am not here. I’m floating an inch above the ground, like a plastic bag caught in the wind, weightless and directionless.

Once in a while, I do feel real. On a recent trip, I went to a shooting range and practiced pistol shooting for the first time. In that moment, I was completely focused. The weight of the gun in my hands, the shock waves reverberating through my body, the hot shells grazing my skin—burning, tangible—I felt alive. For that brief moment, the act of shooting was my anchor. (Don’t worry, I won’t shoot any living being, including myself.)

Then I came home, and my fragmented reality returned.

Fortunately, I can hold it together. I don’t have the affliction my cousin does—the one that warps reality beyond repair. I can pretend. I can fit in. I just don’t feel alive.

So I go to the gym. I work out on one of those torture machines. The intense contraction in my quads pulls me back into my body, back into the present.

Do I want to see tomorrow?

I don’t know.

But I want to be here now. In my body.

Meditation on Cadavers-Prologue

Posted on by SomatiCat

Savasana

I am not writing an anatomy book, nor a dissection manual, though I use nomencIature of anatomist when it is more clear than everyday language. This book/writing is not about scientific knowledge. If you want to learn detailed anatomical information, there are tons of great books you can choose from. This is just A story of my personal experience facing cadavers in dissection labs, and a story about how that experience has affected my perception of who I am, how I relate to everything, especially to my body, in this lifetime.

I once read about a meditation technique where you lie on your back and imagine your body gradually decomposing until it becomes a skeleton. I heard that in Buddhism there is a meditation method in which one observes one’s own body both from the inside and outside while observing an actual corpse decompose. I liked this meditation method because I interpreted it as a training to realize that all material existence in this world, including one’s own body, is a mere phenomenon, just like a decaying corpse. 

When we experience unbearable trauma, our body and consciousness may become dissociated in order to protect ourselves. The body becomes a thing that performs a specific function, and becomes separated from the ”I” consciousness.

Once I had sessions with a Zen psychology therapist. He often asked me, “What do you feel in your body?” I looked up at the ceiling, looked around the room and always looked for the answer outside of my body. “Can you feel your feet on the floor?” he asked. Of course I could feel my feet physically touching the floor, but that was completely disconnected from what I was feeling mentally. 

I didn’t have much knowledge about my own body. So even when I meditated on a corpse, I couldn’t visualize it very well, and I had no conscious connection to my body, so the corpse quickly turned into abstract bones. I couldn’t understand how complex and delicate the human body was, and how it was related to my very existence.

Through the gross anatomy training, I gradually recovered the connection between my self and my body. Every time I stood at the dissection table, I felt like I was slowly regaining my humanity. It has been more than 10 years since I was initiated into human dissection, and I have spent over 1,500 hours in dissection labs. Now attending an annual dissection workshop is like a Zen practitioner regularly practicing at a temple. 

I see it as my spiritual practice. It prepares me for the reality of death and dying, and reminds me of the meaning of living this moment. 

Savasana in yoga is said to be a pose where you lie on your back and imitate a dead body. When we go to a dissection table in a dissection lab, we face a donated body that is quietly in Savasana pose. It is the last pose we all will take.

copyright 2024

Integral Anatomy Workshop: Day 2

Posted on by SomatiCat

We spent entire day separating the skin from the underlying superficial fascia, literally getting under the skin of Tony.

What I learned today.

  1. The skin separates me from what is not me.
  2. The skin protects me from what is not me, like a breathable armor.
  3. We shed the surface layer of skin like crazy.
  4. Shed skin becomes what is not me or is it still part of what is me?
  5. You should not cut your armor unless absolutely necessary.  Once cut, the energy field changes dramatically even in a cadaver.  Tensional integrity will be lost.
  6. We are innately wet and moist being but without the skin/boundary, we dry pretty quickly and it will change the quality of being.
  7. The skin does not want to be separated from the adipose layer.
  8. Considering how delicately we worked to seperate the skin intact, liposuction is abomination.

I am happy with the way our group members treat Tony. I feel each of us is making our best effort to make Tony comfortable. He is cared and respected.

We have 8 groups.  Each group has started to show its distinct personality and it’s reflected on the cadaver we are working on as if we are sculpting our own image out of the “form”.

Drawing by Tam Tran Valenti

Drawing by Tam Tran Valenti

The Infinity Circle of Lunch

Most of us spent one hour lunch time outside on the green grass under the blue sky.  We spontaneously created the infinity circle of lunch.  After iIntensly staring at yellow adipose tissue, we need other colors to balance our brain.

Infinity Circle of Lunch

Infinity Circle of Lunch