Wonders Within

Image / Innards by Michelle Parliament


Technology is constantly advancing, and because of that we're learning a great deal about how our minds and bodies actually work. Every now and then, these discoveries completely change how we conceive of ourselves. An incredible video I want to share with you, Strolling Under the Skin, was made possible by endoscopic surgery and the efforts of Dr. Jean-Claude Guimberteau, allowing us to glimpse connective tissue at work within a living body. Because this extra-cellular matrix is changed by dehydration (rendering it very difficult to see in the formaldehyde-treated bodies studied by anatomists), this is our first real understanding of the living, hydrated, chaotic and fractal nature of the one system that covers, intertwines with, and supports every part of our physical bodies.

This video represents the first look at some things we "knew" but hadn't yet truly seen in live action within living tissue, and it also reveals some things we didn't fully anticipate:

"He has seen that connective tissue is not only a tissue for connection between different organs, it is actually the constitutive tissue, the tissue that makes the frame and gives organized and structural existence to the body. Form is maintained and preserved thanks to this interior fibrillar architecture, in which different cellular specificities are embedded.
He has challenged the paradigm that the anatomy of living tissues is composed of virtual spaces or separate layers and replaced it with the notion that our bodies function as one dynamic tissue continuum.

He has opened a window into a strange world of fibrillar chaos and unpredictable behavior, Fascia could be considered as the fractalized tensional architectural network of the human body whatever the level, from the molecule to the surface of skin.
The body seems to be an ideal mesh, made of fibres, fibrils and micro-fibrils, and micro-vacuolar spaces with a structural rationalism allowing us to associate molecular physicochemical biodynamics with quantum physics."

- Basic Ideas, Dr. Jean-Claude Guimberteau

I hope you'll enjoy this half as much as I did! A note for the squeamish - it is a surgical video, and there is a short moment of traditional anatomical tendon cutting in the opening moments of the film. If you can get through that little bit, I promise there's a world of beauty awaiting you through the remainder of the film. Prepare to gain an even greater reverence for this amazing body you call home.


Dana Wyss Healing Arts
Breathe deeply, practice often, be well.
http://www.danawyss.com/