Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Bones


From a fascinating article in the NY Times this morning "... although bone may seem like stone, it is tirelessly, ambitiously alive. In many ways, bone is more animate than the muscles and fat draped over it or the quivering visceral organs it protectively encages. It certainly can be more attuned to its surroundings. "

"Bone is built of two basic components: flexible fibers of collagen and brittle chains of the calcium-rich mineral hydroxyapatite. But those relatively simple ingredients, the springy and the salty, are woven together into such a complex cat’s cradle of interdigitating layers that the result is an engineering masterpiece of tensile, compressive and elastic strength."

If this sounds interesting...read the whole article here.

Paul Grilley, who first turned me on to the amazing diversity of bone structures in the human body, has a photo gallery on his website that illustrates one of the reasons why we each do our yoga postures (and everything else) in ways that are unique to our bodies.

1 comment:

Jeanne Desy said...

Hi Kit -
I love that you posted this. Tom has twice told me I have to read that article - you'll know why if you read my blog today. It's cool that we're in synchrony, though I had to come by my respect for bones the hard way.
Jeanne