Why do we move the way we move? As a dancer this question has always fascinated me. As a student of Kinesiology this is a focal point of study. It always amazes me that people take their bodies for granted. The one thing that is always with you most often gets overlooked. I was discussing posture and muscle tone with a student the other day and asked if they had ever read the manual on their body. They had read the manuals for just about everything else they might use in life, but the body? It had gotten skipped. Anatomy and Physiology can seem daunting but the great thing about those areas of study is - YOU HAVE EXPERIENCE AND A FRAME OF REFERENCE! You own an actual body.

I spend a lot of time looking at people and how they move and trying to figure out what they spend their time doing. Unless we are conscious about controlling how our bodies are shaped, the environment will to a great extent, shape ones' body. The hunch and twist of a surgeon, the rolled shoulders and head drop of an engineer, the lopsided pelvis and raised shoulders of a mommy, even the twisted spine of a ballroom dancer - these are all created by what we do to survive in our environments. Another level of movement patterns are the ones we carry forward from our formative years with our parents. I am always amazed watching children and seeing what little quirks they've gotten from mom and dad; and regularly horrified when I realize I am doing something I used to see my parents doing! (Especially when it is something that I typically am trying to fix on them) We always talk about the emotional baggage we all carry forward from our parents, guess what? We have physical too! Some bags are good and some are well worn and need to be chucked. This brings me to my actual point... (By now you are all wondering when I will get around to butts)

This week has had some pretty serious family trauma in it for me. We all have these times in our families; things that you think may not work out and are a little scary. Sometimes they do and sometimes they just don't and sometimes you are left waiting a really long time for some sort of resolution. I was talking to one of my support system about it though and he brought up butts, horses butts. There is an urban legend that the modern day width of railroad tracks is based on the width of two horse’s butts and a chariot. (Something that carried forward from Roman times when roads had to be designed for the popular mode of transportation at that time. The Romans were really good and spreading fads around so I am sure a few roads across Europe probably did follow this thought process. (Rome spread a lot of stuff around the world including a base for our modern day democracy) I thought this was funny, partly because stress makes my sense of humor fairly easy to entertain, and partly because the idea that we would still be basing part of our modern day building concepts on a couple of horses butts to be quite funny. It got me thinking though; which was the friend's intention. Sometimes we carry silly thoughts in our heads about how we need or should re-act to certain situations based on how we were raised or our fears that we've carried forward, but do I really want to keep basing my decisions on a “butt”? An amazing thing about our lives, like our bodies, is when we consciously start asking " why do I do what I do?" and take the time to read an owner's manual or talk to an experienced user, we can start basing our thoughts, movements and words on something other than a couple of butts; and be free to build our tracks any size we like.