Love for the human body and its sacred geometry!

I’m trying to recall when I first fell in love with living in a human body. Was it while creating beautifully symmetrical snow angels at Christmas time? Was it in finding the stillness of balancing in the center of one of those metal push merry-go-rounds on the playground? Or in experiencing the centrifugal force of hanging onto the outside edges with my hair streaming out behind me? 

Or maybe it was learning to do a line of cartwheels, so that my two hands and two feet rotating around my midpoint allowed me to roll circularly across the floor…  Or learning to stand upside down on my head! 

Whenever that moment of pure delight occurred, it has accompanied me ever since. And some of that rapture stems from my mind and soul’s love for symmetry, balance, and the beauty of physics and mathematical harmony. 

To me, our human bodies are sacred geometry in motion. 

What about you? When did you first begin to appreciate living in a human body? Was it maybe when you first learned to balance on a bike down the sidewalk, maybe with no hands? Maybe when you realized you could use your two hands to do two different things at the same time when you were playing an instrument… Maybe when you managed to get a yoyo to climb up and down its cord, or when you managed to put a toric spin on a football…

Looking at DaVinci’s image of the Vitruvian man opens up to our minds a whole set of geometric suggestions about these amazing bodies we live in. 

Yesterday I lay on the floor, arms outstretched, with my fingertips touching one wall. I measured the space between my opposite hand’s fingertips. Then I lay my body down on that measurement. Guess what? My body’s length came to within an inch of the length of my armspan! That means my outward reach is the same distance as my height when standing. So I would fit perfectly within the square of DaVinci’s drawing! Cool, yeah?

Next I rotated the square of my body a quarter turn, still reaching my arms straight sideways. I would now be touching the sides of a perfect imaginary cube around my body. So we’ve got 3D coolness! 

And what about circles and spheres? Imagine grasping a tennis ball, and now look at your hand. See how your thumbs and fingers perfectly wrap around it in a spherical shape? Take a moment to gently rotate your head in a circle, and balance it out by rotating in the opposite direction. Know how we can do that? We have a ring-shaped first vertebra at the top of our spine appropriately called our Atlas – like the Greek god Atlas who held up the globe.. It’s our atlantoaxial joint that works spherically to allow our head to rotate almost omnidirectionally on our neck.

Actually, each of our bones can move circularly through space, invisibly creating what we call kinespheres! Truly human geometry in motion!

I’m also keen on the star-like nature and the “five-ness” of our physical being, which we can also see in the DaVinci man. Our one upward reaching head and plus four arms and legs suggest a five-pointed star. Each of our remarkably-capable human hands splays out five fingers, and our five toes on each foot balance us with exacting precision. You’ll find other human fives that I tell you about in the video my sweet husband Cliff filmed for me before dawn a few days ago. It’s located at the bottom of this letter.  

Being in love with this living body of ours, I used to be horribly repelled by the thought of seeing a corpse. But then one day in college, I was waiting outside the anatomy lab for my med-school-bound brother. Another student came to the lab and was about to walk in, so I asked them to let my brother Todd know I was there. In a moment, Todd came charging out the door, threw me over his shoulder and carried me into the lab. Kicking and screaming, I shouted, “I have my eyes closed!” as I inhaled the scent of formaldehyde. 

Knowing my fear of cadavers, which he thought was ridiculous, my brother replied, “Fine,” and plunked me down on my feet. “Find your way out!”  So of course, as soon as I opened my eyes, I saw the cadaver he was dissecting. UGH!!!

Stay with me here, folks.

I somehow called up my courage to turn this unexpected disaster into a learning opportunity. I asked my brother to show me around the anatomy he was studying in this female cadaver. There she was, all five star parts – four limbs and a head – with five fingers on each hand and five toes on each foot, and many other quite interesting human features. But my dominant impression was how different this lifeless, wax-like human body was from a living one.

Since that time I’ve attended the deathbeds of several loved ones. The first time was quite disconcerting for me, not having a clue what to do after Cliff’s mom had left her body. The fantastic Japanese film “Departures”, taught me and also our hula teacher Doris Morisaki something about how to tend to the beloved bodies of those close to us. I just learned that Doris had brought her mother’s cosmetic bag to the hospital after she passed, adding a touch of lipstick and blush to her mother’s lovely face that she would have appreciated. 

A few months ago I attended the funeral of the mother of our Sri Lankan friend Sooriya Kumar  – the copper artist who has created all of the beautiful copper art at Still & Moving Center. I’ve always hated open-casket funerals, but Sooriya’s family members showed a whole different approach to the human body after the life spirit has passed. They all patted and hugged their mother’s form, rubbing in oil, putting the sacred ash on her forehead, just as they would have done if she were still alive. They were fearless, giving their last embraces of appreciation to this beautiful old body that had brought two or three more generations of family members into this world. 

After that experience with Sooriya’s mother, I really can no longer see even a deceased human body as something to fear and avoid. I see this human body as a sacred temple that we inhabit for our life span.

And allow me one more recent story, if you would.

Thanksgiving weekend we scattered our father’s ashes. Some of them went into a garden bed of blooming flowers he had once tended. As I watched those flakes falling onto the earth, to be absorbed into new flowers, I commented, “This reminds me of Carl Sagan’s quote: We are made of star stuff!” 

And there we are: back to the human body in DaVinci’s star. Our bodies follow the pattern of the stars.

Don’t you love these human bodies of ours?  3D geometry, still or in motion.