Under our skin

Feb. 21, 2008

Dear D.M,

At the exhibit "Body Worlds 3" in St. Louis, real human bodies are brought back to life, in a way, through a process called Plastination. Fluids and fat have been replaced by plastics that prevent the bodies from decaying. The skin is removed to expose the underlying self. The self beyond our image of ourselves.

A German anatomist invented the process to enable his students to examine organs and body parts without them being encased in plastic. He put the plastic on the inside instead.

The bodies belonged to people who volunteered, perhaps a pitch for a kind of immortality. The process requires time and care. To plastinate an elephant takes three years.

Skin ages, but under the skin the muscles of old and young are impossible to tell apart. The swarm of capillaries covering almost every part of our bodies is a reminder that the more we do to get our blood moving the better off we are.

In his book "Somatics," Thomas Hanna contends that aging is a myth, that it's stress and trauma that can render us stiff, inflexible and stooped as we age. He developed ways to remind our bodies how to let go of muscle contractions and reactions that have become unconscious.

His message and one of Body Worlds' is that our bodies have minds of their own. We do well to listen to them and honor their wisdom.

At "Body Worlds 3," the bodies portrayed in dynamic gymnastics and dance poses teach through the stretching and contracting ligaments and tendons that each movement we make requires sublime cooperation, a dance within our bodies we cannot be consciously aware of but one that must take place for us to move.

An appreciation for our bodies' incredible complexity is one reaction people of to seeing all these parts so intimately displayed. For me another was the feeling of being connected to everyone else in the crowded exhibition hall. No matter how we look on the outside and what color our skin is, we are the same on the inside -- females and males, too, aside from a few specialized organs.

Unless you smoke. Then your lungs, even the outsides, are blackened with tar. And unless you are obese. Then all kinds of heinous disturbances can occur in your internal organs. And unless you have not cared for your heart and it swells to gigantic proportions.

Leaving, I vowed to take better care of my own little ol' vessel. The exhibit also made me appreciate in a new way the beauty of the human body. When everything else is removed the strands of the human nervous system splay out from the spine like a long fringed vest. Without skin and fat we all look red-bloodedly lean and powerful.

DC was a bit shaken by Body Works. She thought the exhibit might turn her back into a vegetarian. Some of those body parts shorn of their skin looked too much like roasts to her. She probably liked the center's Build-A-Bear Workshop better.

Twenty-five million people around the world have seen one of the Body Worlds exhibits. No. 4 is beginning its tour right now. In the new exhibit, one of the bodies is posed like a rock 'n' roll guitar player. Jimi lives.

Sam

Sam Blackwell is a reporter for the Southeast Missourian.