Tensegrity, Biotensegrity
- Written by Maria Holm
What is Tensegrity and Biotensegrity, and why is it important to know and think about as we practice the GYROTONIC® Method?
If we look at the GYROTONIC® Machines, the Pully Towers we practice on, we can see the Pully system and the weights of the machine clearly, and feel how they help to suspend our body into a “floating” place. Where the joints can be open and move freely in their full range, and our muscles support that full movement while working more fully threedimentionally themselves. We also use a “rhythm” of our breath to the movement to move our bodies in a continuous flow. Breath supports the movement, and breath and movement is one, in unison. There is a “pulse”, a Biological Pump through our system. We feel longer, taller, lighter.
How can we achieve this by ourselves, anytime, anywhere?
By thinking about ourselves as a “Pully system”. If we apply pushing and pulling, contracting and releasing, suspending and grounding, breathing and suspending breath, action and function. Not using more force through the body than the action needs, or we have an anchor for, or being too passive.
That way we can suspend ourselves into a physically stronger place, where we use our whole body more fully, feel lighter, more open and available. Become more graceful and have smoother movements. We might feel more calm, since everything is working in harmony and unison.
This benefits not only the body, but our whole system, body, mind, spirit and breath, since it all is interconnected and feeds off each other.
The result is an available, present Body, Mind and Human being.
When we practice and work on the machines in the studio, we learn and remind ourselves of this feeling, action and work, and give our body the sense of how it can move, how that feels and what to do.
“Tensegrity, tensional integrity, or floating compression is a structural principle based on a system of isolated components under compression inside a network of continuous tension, and arranged in such a way that the compressed members (usually bars or struts) do not touch each other while the prestressed tensioned members (usually cables or tendons) delineate the system spatially.” - Wikipedia
“Biotensegrity, a term coined by Dr. Stephen Levin, is the application of tensegrity principles to biological structures. Biological structures such as muscles, bones, fascia, ligaments and tendons, or rigid and elastic cell membranes, are made strong by the unison of tensioned and compressed parts. The musculoskeletal system, maintains tension in a continuous network of muscles and connective tissues, while the bones provide discontinuous compressive support. Even the human spine, which seems at first glance like a stack of vertebrae resting on each other, is actually a tensegrity structure. - Wikipedia
“Biotensegrity is the exhibited strength that results when push and pull have a win-win relationship with each other” - Cranial Intelligence, Sumner & Haines, page 40
See you on the Machines!
Maria Holm