"Use Affects Functioning: Tracing Our Structure, Exploring Our Movement" with Dorothea Magonet

Presented by Dorothea Magonet

8^th November

By Andy Smith

Anatomy can be a dividing topic among the AT community. There are some wonderful teachers who rarely (if at all) refer to specific anatomy during their teachings, while there are some equally wonderful teachers who use anatomy as the foundation for their lessons. Likewise, some training courses cover little anatomy while others go into great depth. And of course, there are some pupils who respond very positively to learning about the body’s structures while to others find it a turn-off.

So this workshop, run by the very experienced Dorothea Magonet, promised to offer a fascinating insight into just why those teachers who refer to anatomy find it so useful.

There can be few people better qualified to cover this topic than Dorothea. An AT teacher for more than 30 years, she previously worked as a physiotherapist and is now assistant head of training at the Westminster Alexander Teacher Training Course. She is also a STAT moderator and has worked with music students at the Alexander at the Royal Academy of Music, and to top it all off, she will be presenting continuous learning sessions at the AT Congress in August 2015. So the group of AT teacher trainees and recent graduates who travelled to Euston in November were treated to a workshop full of expert knowledge of how an in-depth understanding of the human body can be applied to both learning and teaching AT.

Using activities to explore our own bodies, then referring to diagrams, posters and charts, we began to deepen our appreciation of how exactly the human body fits together and how it functions. Dorothea compiled a very comprehensive set of notes from a wide range of sources, of which we all received a copy, and the attendees took it in turns to read aloud, discuss topics and ask questions.

Areas covered included:

• The skeletal system, including the different types of bone according to both density and shape, and the process of how bone grows from cartilage.
• Our musculature, including the flexor and extensor systems, and our connective tissues (cartilage; tendons; ligaments and fascia).
• The development of the embryonic spine and how our ectoderm (skin, brain and nervous system), mesoderm (bone, muscle, connective tissue and some internal organs including heart and kidneys) and endoderm (gut and internal organs such as lungs and liver) begin to form from just the third week in utero.
• The structure and function of our joints (fibrous, cartilaginous, and synovial).
• The various types of movement: flexion, extension, abduction, adduction, circumduction, elevation, supination, pronation.

It was an in-depth morning of learning but Dorothea made it quite clear that the majority of the information she presented was included for our benefit as AT teachers, rather than to specifically pass on to pupils.

The idea was that once we had increased our knowledge of some anatomy fundamentals we would be better able to relate it to movement, body awareness and the primary control and therefore incorporate some of the learning into our teaching.

It’s a trap to only think of the skeleton, Dorothea stressed to us, because the muscles create a more active rhythmic process in our bodies. And as muscles work in pairs, if we only contract them then everything tightens. So to maintain balance, we want to think of one side lengthening as the other side contracts, then allow our muscles to come back to neutral.

We heard how there’s a constant interplay between the musculature in the front of the body and the back, and how there are two layers of deep back musculature that run up and down the spine like a woven plait to provide strength and support. We also covered some of the important muscles that go from the back of the body to the front, including sternoclydomastoid that becomes overactive in startle pattern, and iliopsoas which links the spine to the pelvis and is engaged into length when thinking the direction “knees forward and away”.

The intriguing topic of hypermobility also came up and we learned how we may need to consider hypermobile people differently in our teaching. Many who have the syndrome compensate for the extra joint mobility by becoming heavier in their movement and can therefore experience release in a different way. So more than ever, it is essential to see them as individuals and work with their movement patterns accordingly.

Over the course of the day, the workshop did contain of a lot of information and it hit home how important it is to carefully select which pieces of anatomical knowledge to pass on to our pupils, as it can be a little daunting to be flooded with information. But Dorothea was on hand with another piece of sound advice, which I guess is true for all teaching, whether anatomical or not, and that was to maintain a sense of liveliness. Non-doing and inhibiting can shut us down if we’re not careful, she said. So when we pause we should still be alert, calm and ready.

And being alert, calm and ready was a lovely thought with which to leave a very enjoyable and informative workshop.

Some key things I took away from the workshop

• AT teachers don’t need to have a vast anatomical knowledge to incorporate some anatomy into a lesson. Pupils will often benefit from just a simple understanding of the basics.
• Having a deeper knowledge can help tailor your teaching to better suit the individual as it can provide an anatomical understanding of their habits and potential aches and pains.
• The growth of the embryonic spine into the human body is fascinating (and far too intricate to go into here, so Google it if you can).
• For a series of excellent anatomy videos, visit www.anatomyzone.com